On the Brink: The NATO-Russia Ukrainian War Comes to Europe
Russian and Eurasian Politics, by GORDONHAHN, June 2, 2024
The NATO-Russia Ukrainian for, the war for and against NATO expansion, is on the brink of expanding to the NATO countries that provoked Russia to invade Ukraine on 24 February 2024 and have supported its continuation ever since, save one—the United States of America—ironically, the real force behind the war’s genesis. Sixteen years ago today’s CIA Director, at the time US Ambassador to Moscow, William Burns was ignored when he informed Washington:
“Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face. ….“Russia’s opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia is both emotional and based on perceived strategic concerns about the impact on Russia’s interests in the region. It is also politically popular to paint the U.S. and NATO as Russia’s adversaries and to use NATO’s outreach to Ukraine and Georgia as a means of generating support from Russian nationalists. While Russian opposition to the first round of NATO enlargement in the mid-1990’s was strong, Russia now feels itself able to respond more forcefully to what it perceives as actions contrary to its national interests” (https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html).
Rather than heed Burns’s warning and that of numerous objective experts, the US and NATO tried to remake Ukraine, funding anti-Russian forces and backing what became a violent, terrorist coup led by neofascists in February 2013, confounding an agreement worked out by regime, opposition, Europe, and Russia that would have resolved the crisis.
The post-coup NATO involvement in Ukraine was discussed in unusual pieces. One had purposes beyond the present discussion, The New York Times (NYT), acknowledged that the CIA was involved in Maidan Ukraine no later than immediately after the coup (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html).
In one rare objective opinion published in NYT on the subject, it was noted: “Over the next decade, the US and its allies built a powerful Ukrainian army while sabotaging the Minsk agreement and later (after the Russian invasion) also sabotaged the Istanbul negotiations. Weapon systems poured in, Ukrainian ports were modernised to fit American warships, and Ukraine was becoming a de facto NATO member. Top Ukrainian officials like Arestovich argued openly they were preparing for a war with Russia. A top adviser to former president Nicolas Sarkozy, warned that the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership of November 2021 convinced Russia that it must attack or be attacked’” (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/opinion/us-ukraine-putin-war.html).
The decision to supply nuclear capable F-16 fighter jets to Kiev and the recent French and presumably other Western countries’ coming declarations making official their previous and future deployments of ‘instructors’ and ‘advisors’ to the Ukrainian front is dangerously escalatory enough. Moscow is required to respond with an answering escalation to save face internally before the Russian people and externally before the world. Now NATO, in the person of its GenSec, has opened up the Overton window by way of convening discussions with member-states on the introduction of troops and the use of Western-supplied mid-range rockets to hit deep inside Russian territory.
Poland is on the verge of deploying its missile defense systems to protect Ukraine from Russia attacks. Moreover, a claim is being circulated to the effect that decision of 12 NATO countries (UK, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania so far) to allow Kiev to use Western missiles to strike deep into Russia — as far as Moscow and Russia’s ‘second capitol’ of St. Petersburg. Germany, not included in the list, has apparently changed its position and now supports attacks on Russia using Western weapons, as Chancellor Olaf Shultz stated standing next to French President Emmanuel Macron last week. Berlin also is still considering sending long-range Taurus missiles to Kiev.
For its part, the US is considering giving permission to Kiev to use US weapons, such as ATACM missiles (180-mile range), against military targets deep inside Russia (https://www.wsj.com/world/blinken-signals-u-s-may-allow-ukraine-to-strike-inside-russia-with-u-s-weapons-61fedb10). The US has announced that it will allow the use of weapons it has supplied to Ukraine for attacks on Russian proper in the battle in the Kharkov (Kharkiv) border region now the focus of a Russian counteroffensive.
Otherwise, for the moment Washington will continue to pretend it is opposed to Ukraine’s use of American weapons against Russia proper, using official statements and media plants to this tune: “a U.S. official said Washington had expressed concerns to Kyiv over Ukraine’s strikes — using its own weapons — on Russian radar stations that provide conventional air defense and early warning of nuclear launches by the West.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/30/ukraine-us-strategy-disagreement-corruption/).
Ukraine’s armed forces could not have made this attack without US assistance. The US also will soon conclude a US-Ukraine Security Pact likely intended to institutionalize US weapons, training, intelligence, operational, and financial support to Kiev for the ‘long war.’ Fifteen European states have already concluded such long-term security agreements with Kiev over the last few months (https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2024/05/31/7458547/).
All this —added to the Western weapons, intelligence, training, operational planning, and undercover military personnel contributed to Kiev — makes Ukraine de facto a full-fledged NATO member-state. In other words, NATO countries — and thus de facto NATO itself — are preparing to do officially what they have been doing clandestinely since February 2022: fight Russia in Ukraine for the right to expand NATO when and where Washington and Brussels want. Before all this, Western countries — all the leading members of NATO — were de facto and de jure co-belligerents with Ukraine against Russia. Suffice it to note that Ukraine does not have space based reconnaissance data for targeting but is receiving such from French, German, US and other NATO militaries.
It appears that the recent Western escalations are driven in part by the need to prevent a Russian victory at all costs in order to save face for the US and NATO and, perhaps no less importantly, to salvage US President Joe Biden’s career in the coming presidential elections—a career that has been so disastrous for his family, Americans in general, and now the world. ………………………………………………
………………….. A kind of perfect storm is coming. This autumn there likely will be: the collapse of the Ukrainian front and/or army and/or regime; the Russian army’s approach to the Dniepr and perhaps encirclement of Zaporozhe, Kharkiv, even Kiev; and an American political crisis (given the guilty verdict against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump). The possibilities are almost endless, and some rather dire ones are becoming increasingly more probable.https://gordonhahn.com/2024/06/02/on-the-brink-the-nato-russia-ukrainian-war-comes-to-europe/
Presidents Who Gamble With Nuclear Armageddon
Each of the last five presidents, both Democrats and Republicans, have brought us closer to the brink. We desperately need leaders with a knack for peace who can steer the nation, and the world, toward a more secure and less dangerous future.
JEFFREY D. SACHS, May 29, 2024, https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/nuclear-armageddon
The overriding job of any U.S. president is to keep the nation safe. In the nuclear age, that mainly means avoiding nuclear Armageddon. Joe Biden’s reckless and incompetent foreign policy is pushing us closer to annihilation. He joins a long and undistinguished list of presidents who have gambled with Armageddon, including his immediate predecessor and rival, Donald Trump.
Talk of nuclear war is currently everywhere. Leaders of NATO countries call for Russia’s defeat and even dismemberment, while telling us not to worry about Russia’s 6,000 nuclear warheads. Ukraine uses NATO-supplied missiles to knock out parts of Russia’s nuclear-attack early-warning system inside Russia. Russia, in the meantime, engages in nuclear drills near its border with Ukraine. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg give the green light to Ukraine to use NATO weapons to hit Russian territory as an increasingly desperate and extremist Ukrainian regime sees fit.
These leaders neglect at our greatest peril the most basic lesson of the nuclear confrontation between the U.S. and Soviet Union in the Cuban Missile Crisis, as told by President John F. Kennedy, one of the few American presidents in the nuclear age to take our survival seriously. In the aftermath of the crisis, Kennedy told us, and his successors:
Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy—or of a collective death-wish for the world.
Yet this is exactly what Biden is doing today, carrying out a bankrupt and reckless policy.
Nuclear war can easily arise from an escalation of non-nuclear war, or by a hothead leader with access to nuclear arms deciding on a surprise first strike, or by a gross miscalculation. The last of these nearly occurred even after Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart Nikita Khrushchev had negotiated an end to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when a disabled Soviet submarine came within a hair’s breadth of launching a nuclear-tipped torpedo.
The Doomsday Clock was at 17 minutes to midnight when Clinton came to office, but just 9 minutes when he left it. Bush pushed the clock to just 5 minutes, Obama to 3 minutes, and Trump to a mere 100 seconds. Now Biden has taken the clock to 90 seconds.
Most presidents, and most Americans, have little idea how close to the abyss we are. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, which was founded in 1947 in part to help the world avoid nuclear annihilation, established the Doomsday Clock to help the public understand the gravity of the risks we face. National security experts adjust the clock depending how far or how close we are to “midnight,” meaning extinction. They put the clock today at just 90 seconds to midnight, the closest that it’s ever been in the nuclear age.
The clock is a useful measure of which presidents have “gotten it” and which have not. The sad fact is that most presidents have recklessly gambled with our survival in the name of national honor, or to prove their personal toughness, or to avoid political attacks from the warmongers, or as the result of sheer incompetence. By a simple and straightforward count, five presidents have gotten it right, moving the clock away from midnight, while nine have moved us closer to Armageddon, including the most recent five.
Truman was president when the Doomsday Clock was unveiled in 1947, at 7 minutes to midnight. Truman stoked the nuclear arms race and left office with the clock at just 3 minutes to midnight. Eisenhower continued the nuclear arms race but also entered into the first-ever negotiations with the Soviet Union regarding nuclear disarmament. By the time he left office, the clock was put back to 7 minutes to midnight.
Kennedy saved the world by coolly reasoning his way through the Cuban Missile Crisis, rather than following the advice of hothead advisors who called for war (for a detailed account, see Martin Sherwin’s magisterial Gambling with Armageddon, 2020). He then negotiated the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Khrushchev in 1963. By the time of his death, which may well have been a government coup resulting from Kennedy’s peace initiative, JFK had pushed the clock back to 12 minutes to midnight, a magnificent and historic achievement.
It was not to last. Lyndon Johnson soon escalated in Vietnam and pushed the clock back again to just 7 minutes to midnight. Richard Nixon eased tensions with both the Soviet Union and China, and concluded the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), pushing the clock again to 12 minutes from midnight. Yet Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter failed to secure SALT II, and Carter fatefully and unwisely gave a green light to the CIA in 1979 to destabilize Afghanistan. By the time Ronald Reagan took office, the clock was at just 4 minutes to midnight.
The next 12 years marked the end of the Cold War. Much of the credit is due to Mikhail Gorbachev, who aimed to reform the Soviet Union politically and economically, and to end the confrontation with the West. Yet credit is also due to Reagan and his successor George Bush, Sr., who successfully worked with Gorbachev to end the Cold War, which in turn was followed by the end of the Soviet Union itself in December 1991. By the time Bush left office, the Doomsday clock was at 17 minutes to midnight, the safest since the start of the nuclear age.
Sadly, the U.S. security establishment could not take “Yes” for an answer when Russia said an emphatic yes to peaceful and cooperative relations. The U.S. needed to “win” the Cold War, not just end it. It needed to declare itself and prove itself to be the sole superpower of the world, the one that would unilaterally write the rules of a new U.S.-led “rules-based order.” The post-1992 U.S. therefore launched wars and expanded its vast network of military bases as it saw fit, steadfastly and ostentatiously ignoring the red lines of other nations, indeed aiming to drive nuclear adversaries into humiliating retreats.
Since 1992, every president has left the U.S. and the world closer to nuclear annihilation than his predecessor. The Doomsday Clock was at 17 minutes to midnight when Clinton came to office, but just 9 minutes when he left it. Bush pushed the clock to just 5 minutes, Obama to 3 minutes, and Trump to a mere 100 seconds. Now Biden has taken the clock to 90 seconds.
Biden has led the U.S. into three fulminant crises, any one of which could end up in Armageddon. By insisting on NATO enlargement to Ukraine, against Russia’s bright red line, Biden has repeatedly pushed for Russia’s humiliating retreat. By siding with a genocidal Israel, he has stoked a new Middle East arms race and a dangerously expanding Middle East conflict. By taunting China over Taiwan, which the U.S. ostensibly recognizes as part of one China, he is inviting a war with China.
Trump similarly stirred the nuclear pot on several fronts, most flagrantly with China and Iran.Washington seems of a single mind these days: more funding for wars in Ukraine and Gaza, more armaments for Taiwan. We slouch ever closer to Armageddon. Polls show the American people overwhelmingly disapprove of U.S. foreign policy, but their opinion counts for very little. We need to shout for peace from every hilltop. The survival of our children and grandchildren depends on it.
Biden Lets Ukraine Strike Russia With US Weapons While Ukraine Attacks Russian Nuclear Defenses
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAY 31, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/biden-lets-ukraine-strike-russia?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=145149954&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Well it finally happened: Biden is now letting Ukraine strike Russian territory with US-supplied weapons. Escalations in nuclear brinkmanship which would have been unthinkable a few short years ago are becoming increasingly common as Ukraine loses more and more territory and runs out of soldiers to fight.
In a new report from Politico titled “Biden secretly gave Ukraine permission to strike inside Russia with US weapons” which cites multiple anonymous US officials, the article’s authors correctly describe the new White House authorization as a “stunning shift the administration initially said would escalate the war by more directly involving the U.S. in the fight.”
This report comes shortly after an article by The New York Times titled “From Allies and Advisers, Pressure Grows on Biden to Allow Attacks on Russian Territory,” in which David E Sanger accurately forecast that “Biden is edging toward what may prove to be one of his most consequential decisions in the war for Ukraine: whether to reverse his ban on shooting American weapons into Russian territory.”
Politico reports that the approval for these attacks is limited to “solely near the area of Kharkiv,” but, again, these escalations were once unthinkable even for this administration, and every time a new escalation is authorized the warmongers are already well on their way to pushing for a further one. We will surely see increasing calls for Biden to authorize US-backed strikes deeper into Russian territory in the coming weeks.
This new development comes just after we learned that Ukraine has been repeatedly attacking Russia’s early warning systems for incoming nuclear strikes, with Ukrainian drones targeting Russian radar sites hundreds of miles from Ukrainian-controlled territory.
Just a few years ago if I had told you that a NATO proxy would soon be attacking Russia’s nuclear defense infrastructure, you’d probably have assumed we’d be pretty close to another Cuban Missile Crisis-level nuclear standoff, and that it would be receiving high levels of alarm and attention. But this report is barely in the news, and hardly anyone in the west even knows it’s happening.
This also comes as Reuters reports that France is preparing to send “several hundred” troops to Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, which of course means we may soon be seeing the armed forces of a NATO power getting killed by the Russian military.
Any of these three new developments has the potential to lead to unpredictable events which spiral out of control into a nuclear war between NATO and the Russian Federation, which would be the single worst thing that could possibly happen on planet Earth. There is no excuse for anyone to be playing around anywhere remotely close to such a precipice, and yet here we are.
As we discussed last year, the terrifying thing about the west’s pattern of continually escalating against Russia every time it doesn’t get a nuclear ICBM in the kisser for the last escalation naturally incentivizes Russia to attack NATO directly in order to re-establish its credibility for deterrence. So far Russia has been content to respond to NATO’s escalations by just tearing into Ukraine with greater and greater ferocity, but if the western empire keeps interpreting every time Russia doesn’t attack NATO forces directly as a sign that it’s safe to keep escalating, at some point Russia’s going to have to hit NATO.
It is not sane or acceptable that any of this is happening. The empire knowingly provoked this war, and now it’s getting more and more casual about risking the life of everyone on this planet as its proxy runs out of lives to throw into its gears.
And it’s so hard to draw attention to this, because there are so many other horrible things happening in the world which the western empire is also directly responsible for. The empire is increasingly acting like a wounded, cornered animal as China rises and the US slowly sinks into post-primacy, the only major difference being that wounded, cornered animals have teeth and claws instead of weapons of armageddon.
Top Biden aides signal openness to letting Ukraine strike Russia with US weapons
No final decision has been made, but the consideration comes amid mounting pressure from allies and Democrats.
Politico, By MATT BERG, ALEXANDER WARD and NAHAL TOOSI, 05/29/2024
Two senior Biden administration officials Wednesday opened the door to allowing Ukraine to use American-donated weapons to strike inside Russia.
The move, if made, would come as European allies, lawmakers and Ukrainian officials exert pressure on the White House to lift the restrictions, and as Russia has made major advances on the battlefield. It also suggests that President Joe Biden and his team are increasingly worried about Kyiv’s ability to fend off Russia’s attacks, especially its latest advance in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken signaled the possible change during a visit to Moldova when pressed by reporters. A “hallmark” of the Biden administration’s approach toward Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion two years ago “has been to adapt as the conditions have changed, as the battlefield has changed, as what Russia does has changed.”
“We’ve adapted and adjusted, too, and we’ll continue to do that,” he continued.
Shortly afterward, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, while stating that there’s “no change” in the current policy that says Ukraine can’t use U.S.-supplied weapons to strike inside Russian territory, also noted that America’s “support to Ukraine has evolved appropriately.”
Two other Biden administration officials cautioned that no final decision has been made and that Blinken and Kirby were describing a general trend of American support for Ukraine during the war — one of initial caution followed by permission. They were not necessarily guaranteeing a forthcoming shift.
The topic is “under consideration,” a U.S. official familiar with the issue said. Both were granted anonymity to speak about sensitive internal deliberations.
Kyiv hasn’t seen concrete movement on the matter from the Biden administration, according to a person close to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office. Zelenskyy, during a visit to Belgium on Tuesday, begged Western governments to “please give us permission” to use their weapons to strike targets in Russia’s sovereign territory………………………………………..
This month, U.K. Foreign Minister David Cameron said Kyiv could use British weapons to strike sovereign Russian territory. Then on Monday, NATO’s parliamentary assembly adopted a resolution calling on Western countries to allow Ukraine to use weapons to strike military targets inside Russia.
The issue gathered momentum on Tuesday, when French President Emmanuel Macron opened the door to Ukraine using donated weapons to “neutralize” Russian military sites…………………………………………………………………
Many top U.S. lawmakers are publicly supportive of the idea……………………………………. more https://www.politico.com/news/2024/05/29/biden-aides-signal-openness-to-allowing-ukraine-to-strike-russia-with-us-weapons-00160462
Rafah Invasion Was Once Biden’s “Red Line” — But Israel Continues to Cross It
Israel’s Rafah massacre has been widely condemned as a grave violation of international law, but there has been no clear criticism or outrage from the White House.
Israel bombed civilians it had previously ordered to move to a designated “safe zone” in the northwestern part of Rafah.
By Michel Moushabeck , TRUTHOUT, May 28, 2024
Two days after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to halt its military offensive on Rafah, dozens of displaced Palestinians were killed in Israeli airstrikes. On Sunday night, the Israeli military bombed civilians whom it had previously ordered to move to the designated “safe zone” of Tal Al-Sultan in the northwestern part of Rafah.
Israel has bombed Rafah dozens of times since the ICJ ruling. But on Sunday, the bombardment of Palestinians in a tent encampment behind the UNHCR school in Rafah resulted in a large inferno and massive casualties, including children who were burned alive in a sea of flames. According to Al Jazeera, the Israeli airstrikes struck the camp at night. The fire from the bombs falling on the plastic tents spread rapidly, killing at least 45 Palestinians, injuring 249, and razing the tent camp to the ground. This was reportedly followed by an Israeli drone strike on the Kuwaiti Hospital entrance as medics were bringing in the dead and the wounded, killing two staff members.
Hospital director Suhaib al-Hams announced on Monday that the Kuwaiti Hospital would have to suspend services due to “the repeated and deliberate attacks on the hospital’s surroundings.”
The graphic images and cell phone video recordings that have been circulating on social media — a headless child, charred bodies of children, women and children frantically running in all directions trying to escape the fires — are painful to watch. They bring Israeli atrocities in Gaza to a new level of unspeakable cruelty and horror.
I don’t know how anyone can recover from this gruesome monstrosity. Do we mourn the dead infants or weep for those who have just been orphaned? Do we scream for those children who have been maimed, or for the parents who had to wrap their loved ones in white shrouds?
Israeli officials first said the strike was “based on precise intelligence” and claimed that the bombardment targeted a Hamas compound, killing two senior Hamas officials. After global condemnation, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu instead started calling the strike “a tragic accident.”
The U.S.-made bombs that were dropped on the camp in Tal Al-Sultan came after Israeli airstrikes hit shelters in northern Gaza and Gaza City, killing 160 displaced Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. In Jabalya, at least four people were reportedly killed when a missile hit a residential building during an intense night of shelling. Witnesses reported raging fires throughout the city. Elsewhere in the north, Israeli occupation forces continue to demolish residential neighborhoods, burying countless numbers of people under the rubble. Israeli soldiers were also seen firing on a group of Palestinians filling water containers in the Al-Faluja area.
Israel’s Rafah massacre has been widely condemned as a grave violation of international law, but there has been no clear criticism or outrage from the White House.
As the Biden administration emphasizes the deaths of Hamas leaders and utters the same words we’ve become accustomed to hearing over the past eight months — that the U.S. urges Israel to protect civilians and minimize civilian casualties — its statements have become a farce. The inaction on the part of the Biden administration and the continued flow of weapons to the Israeli state as it carries out such massacres in front of the eyes of the entire world — and in defiance of the ICJ ruling — show the extent of the U.S.’s complicity and participation in the Gaza genocide.………………………………………………………………. more https://truthout.org/articles/rafah-invasion-was-once-bidens-red-line-but-israel-continues-to-cross-it/—
Italy opposes Ukraine using long-range weapons to strike Russia
https://www.rt.com/russia/598477-italy-opposes-ukraine-strike-russia-nato-weapons/ 31 May 24
Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has specified where missiles his country sends to Kiev can be used
Italy will never send troops to Ukraine and any weapons it has supplied to Kiev should not be used deep inside Russian territory, Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said on Thursday.
He made the remarks as pressure builds on NATO members to allow Kiev use long-range Western weapons to strike targets inside Russia. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg last week urged Western arms donors to allow attacks against targets behind the conflict zone on Russian soil.
“All the weapons leaving from Italy [to Ukraine] should be used within Ukraine,” Tajani said in an interview with public broadcaster RAI.
Italy, although a staunch supporter of Ukraine, has rebuked Stoltenberg over his call for more strikes on Russia with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and other top officials accusing him of escalating tensions with Moscow.
“I don’t know why Stoltenberg said such a thing, I think we have to be very careful,” Meloni told Italy’s RAI 3 TV channel on Sunday.
Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini described the NATO chief as “dangerous.”
French President Emmanuel Macron however said on Tuesday that Kiev should be allowed to hit military sites deep inside Russia.
“We think we should allow them neutralize military sites from which missiles are fired, military sites from which Ukraine is attacked,” he told a joint news conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The German leader now also supports Ukrainian strikes with Western long-range weaponry deep inside Russia, despite his earlier concerns about escalation with Moscow. Speaking alongside Macron, Scholz said that “if Ukraine is attacked, it can defend itself” under international law.
Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics told CNN on Monday that he sees “no rational pragmatic reason not to allow Ukraine to use those weapons against Russia in a way that is the most efficient.”
Ukrainian officials have claimed that the limitations imposed by the West are responsible for Russia’s recent advances in Kharkov Region. Vladimir Zelensky has repeatedly called for increased NATO involvement in the conflict and has argued that the West should not fear Russia’s reaction.
According to Moscow, claims that restrictions on the use of US munitions are in place are false and designed to maintain the illusion that the West is not part of the conflict.
U.S. concerned about Ukraine strikes on Russian nuclear radar stations
Washington conveyed to Kyiv that attacks on Russian early-warning systems could be destabilizing.
By Ellen Nakashima and Isabelle Khurshudyan, May 29, 2024 https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/29/us-ukraine-nuclear-warning-strikes/
The United States fears that recent Ukrainian drone strikes targeting Russian nuclear early–warning systems could dangerously unsettle Moscow at a time when the Biden administration is weighing whether to lift restrictions on Ukraine using U.S.-supplied weapons in cross-border attacks.
“The United States is concerned about Ukraine’s recent strikes against Russian ballistic missile early-warning sites,” said a U.S. official, who spoke on thecondition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
Washington has conveyed its concerns to Kyiv about two attempted attacks over the last week against radar stations that provide conventional air defense as well as warning of nuclear launches by the West. At least one strike in Armavir, in Russia’s southeastern Krasnodar region, appeared to have caused some damage.
“These sites have not been involved in supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine,” the U.S. official said. “But they are sensitive locations because Russia could perceive that its strategic deterrent capabilities are being targeted, which could undermine Russia’s ability to maintain nuclear deterrence against the United States.”
A Ukrainian official familiar with the matter, however, said that Russia has used the radar sites to monitor the Ukrainian military’s activities, particularly Kyiv’s use of aerial weaponry, such as drones and missiles. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security matter, confirmed that Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate, known by its initials as GUR, was responsible for the strikes.
Ukraine is facing a continuing threat to its existence from a Russian enemy force — which boasts the world’s largest nuclear arsenal — that has gained ground of late, in part due to its sophisticated radar and weapons-jamming technology, which has rendered virtually useless some U.S.-provided guided missiles and artillery shells. This capability has also enhanced Moscow’s ability to track British and U.S.-provided longer-range weaponry and drones, which have caused serious damage to Russia’s Black Sea fleet and military installations in Crimea, the southern peninsula illegally seized from Ukraine in 2014.
The Ukrainian official said the goal of the strikes was to diminish Russia’s ability to track the Ukrainian military’s activities in southern Ukraine. The drone that targeted the radar station near Orsk, in Russia’s Orenburg region along Kazakhstan’s northern border, traveled more than 1,100 miles, making it one of the deepest attempted strikes into Russian territory. The Ukrainian official declined to say whether the strike, on May 26, caused any damage.
U.S. officials said they are sympathetic to Ukraine’s plight — administration officials are actively weighing whether to lift restraints on the use of U.S.-provided weapons to strike inside Russia. But were Russia’s early-warning capabilities to be blinded by Ukrainian attacks, even in part, that could hurt strategic stability between Washington and Moscow, the U.S. official said.
The perception issue is likely fueled by “an erroneous conviction that Ukraine’s targeting is directed by Washington,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, security analyst and chairman of Silverado think tank. “But that means attacks by Kyiv on Russian nuclear deterrence infrastructure has potential to trigger a perilous escalation with the West. At the end of the day, nuclear command and control and early-warning sites should be off-limits.”
Some analysts were puzzled at the targets: While Krasnodar is close enough to Ukraine to track missiles and drones, the radar station near Orsk is focused on the Middle East and China, they said.
Asked why they would target a site so far away, the Ukrainian official asserted that Russia “switched all of its capabilities for war against Ukraine.”
Following Ukraine’s disappointing counteroffensive last year, Russia has regained the initiative on the battlefield in recent months, advancing in the eastern Donetsk region and recently launching a new assault in the northeastern Kharkiv region along the border. Kyiv, meanwhile, has with increasing frequency targeted sites deep in Russia — a capability many doubted was possible without Western support and sign-off.
About three weeks ago, shortly after Russia began its assault on Kharkiv, Ukraine asked the United States to ease long-standing restrictions on using U.S.-provided weapons to attack targets inside Russia. Some senior officials favor such a move, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has urged President Biden to agree to lift the restraints. The White House is considering such a proposal, but no action has been taken yet, officials say.
At a news conference Wednesday in Moldova, Blinken said the United States has “not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine, but Ukraine, as I’ve said before, has to make its own decisions about the best way to effectively defend itself.”
Blinken added that the United States has “adapted and adjusted” to changing conditions on the battlefield and that as Russia pursues new tactics of “aggression” and “escalation,” was “confident that we’ll continue to do that.”
There is no restriction on Ukraine using U.S.-supplied air defenses to shoot down Russian missiles or fighter jets over Russian territory “if they pose a threat to Ukraine,” the U.S. official said.
But U.S. officials have previously expressed concern to Ukrainian officials over Kyiv’s attacks on Russian soil, sometimes even intervening during the planning stage. Ahead of the one-year mark of the war, theGUR was planning attacks on Moscow, according to a leaked classified report from the U.S. National Security Agency that was later confirmed by two senior Ukrainian military officials.
Days before the attack, U.S. officials asked Kyiv to scrub their plans, fearing it could provoke an aggressive response from the Kremlin; the Ukrainians complied, according to the leaked U.S. documents and the senior Ukrainian officials.
In a more recent example, Washington took exception to Ukrainian drones targeting oil refineries inside Russia — a request that came directly from Vice President Harris to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference in February, according to officials familiar with the matter. U.S. officials believed the strikes would raise global energy prices and invite more aggressive Russian retaliation inside Ukraine.
Amid growing concern over Russia’s battlefield advances, Washington is facing pressure from NATO and several key European allies to allow Ukraine to use the full force and range of U.S.-provided weapons.
If you cannot attack the Russian forces on the other side of the front line because they are on the other side of the border, then of course you really reduce the ability of the Ukrainian forces to defend themselves,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s top political official, said during a visit to Bulgaria on Monday.
Khurshudyan reported from Kyiv. Siobhán O’Grady in Kyiv and Alex Horton in Washington contributed to this report.
Let Ukraine freely strike Russia with Western arms – NATO chief
https://www.rt.com/news/598218-nato-ukraine-stikes-russia/ 26 May 24
Moscow has dismissed claims that Kiev’s sponsors somehow restrict its use of weaponry.
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has argued that members of the US-led military bloc should let Ukraine freely use their weapons to launch strikes deeper into Russian territory.
“The time has come for allies to consider whether they should lift some of the restrictions they have put on the use of weapons they have donated to Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said on Friday in an interview with The Economist.
“Especially now when a lot of the fighting is going on in Kharkov, close to the border, to deny Ukraine the possibility of using these weapons against legitimate military targets on Russian territory makes it very hard for them to defend themselves.”
Stoltenberg noted that some NATO members have already lifted restrictions on using their weapons to attack targets in Russian territory. Asked whether he was referring to the US as the one major holdout, he said, “I think what we see now demonstrates the need to reconsider those restrictions, not least because we have fighting going on along the border between Russia and Ukraine.”
However, according to Moscow, the rhetoric about restrictions on the use of US munitions are false and designed to maintain the illusion that the West is not part of the conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that US weapons, such as ATACMS missiles armed with cluster warheads, have already been used on attacks inside Russia, including strikes against civilian targets.
“We proceed from the fact that American and other Western weaponry strikes targets on the territory of Russia, primarily civilian infrastructure and residential areas,” he told reporters on Friday.
The NATO chief’s comments come at a time when Western leaders are making increasingly bold statements about attacks on Russian territory. US President Joe Biden held back on sending long-range weapons to Ukraine in the early days of the conflict with Russia, citing concern over the possibility of triggering a wider conflict. When more advanced weaponry was later approved, it came with strings attached, including a prohibition on hitting Russian territory. However, as the New York Times reported on Thursday, views on those restrictions have shifted as Russian forces make battlefield gains.
After making a “sobering” visit to Ukraine earlier this month, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken reportedly began urging the administration to let Kiev’s forces use American weapons as it sees fit. A group of US lawmakers sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin earlier this week, pressing him to give the Ukrainians the permissions they have requested.
Stoltenberg said he believes NATO members can thread the geopolitical needle by supporting Ukraine’s defense without becoming direct parties to the conflict. “We provide training, we provide weapons, ammunition to Ukraine, but we will not be directly involved from NATO territory in combat operations over or in Ukraine,” he said. “So, that’s a different thing.”
Putin warns West about consequences of long-range strikes on Russia
https://www.rt.com/russia/598350-putin-serious-consequences-west/ 29 May 24
Ukraine won’t be able to make such attacks without direct external assistance, the president has warned
Kiev’s Western backers need to understand that long-range strikes on Russian territory using weaponry they have supplied would represent a conflict escalation and lead to “serious consequences,” Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined on Tuesday.
Speaking to reporters at the end of a two-day visit to Uzbekistan, Putin addressed recent Ukrainian demands for NATO to permit the use of its weapons to attack deep inside Russia as well as comments by the US-led bloc’s head, Jens Stoltenberg, appearing to endorse the tactic.
“To be honest, I don’t know what the NATO secretary-general is saying,” Putin told reporters, adding that Stoltenberg “did not suffer from any dementia” when he worked constructively with Russia as the prime minister of Norway (2005-2013).
This constant escalation can lead to serious consequences. If these serious consequences occur in Europe, how will the US behave, bearing in mind our parity in the field of strategic weapons? Hard to say. Do they want global conflict?
Putin explained that long-range precision strikes require space reconnaissance assets – which Kiev does not have, but the US does – and that this targeting is already done by “highly qualified specialists” from the West, without Ukrainian participation.
“So, these representatives of NATO countries, especially in Europe, especially in small countries, must be aware of what they are playing with,” the Russian president said, noting that a lot of these countries have “a small territory and a very dense population.”
Putin told reporters that their colleagues in the West are ignoring Ukrainian attacks on Belgorod and other Russian regions along the border, and only focusing on the Russian advance on Kharkov.
“What caused this? They did, with their own hands. Well, then, they will reap what they have sown. The same thing can happen if long-range precision weapons are used,” the Russian president added.
Asked if Russia was refusing to negotiate with Ukraine, Putin told reporters that such claims by the West were baffling.
“We don’t refuse!” he said. “I’ve said it a thousand times, it’s like they don’t have ears!”
The Ukrainian side initialed an agreement with Russia in March 2022, then publicly reneged and refused to negotiate any further, Putin explained. He described Kiev’s current “peace conference” effort in Switzerland as an attempt to get some kind of international buy-in for its entirely unrealistic “peace platform,” which isn’t working out.
US Endgame in Ukraine — War Without End, Amen
Even the mainstream press, loathe to report the setbacks the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have suffered, describes Russia’s northeast campaign, which began a few weeks ago, as a rout. The Kremlin says it has no interest in taking Kharkiv, and this so far appears to be the case.
the well-coordinated if not very artful American propaganda machine has begun preparing the public for a wider war that is to extend, as a matter of policy and military strategy, into Russian territory.
What happens when a powerful nation cannot afford to lose a war it has already lost?
By Patrick Lawrence, Special to Consortium News May 28, 2024
It is now two and a half years since Moscow sent two draft treaties, one to Washington, one to NATO in Brussels, as the proposed basis of talks toward a new security settlement — a renovation of relations between the trans–Atlantic alliance and the Russian Federation.
An urgently needed renovation, we must quickly add. And after that we must also quickly add the Biden regime’s rejection of Russia’s proposals as a “nonstarter” faster than you can say “deluded.”
Let us pause for a sec to bring to mind all those who have died in the war that erupted in Ukraine a year and a few months after Joe Biden refused, even mocked, Vladimir Putin’s honorable diplomatic demarche. All the maimed and displaced, all the towns and cities destroyed, all the farmland turned into moonscape.
And the all-but-complete peace accord, negotiated in Istanbul a few weeks into the war that the U.S. and Britain rushed to scuttle. And of course all the billions of dollars, somewhere north of $100 billion now, not spent on improving Americans’ lives but spent instead on arming a regime in Kiev that steals aid extravagantly while fielding an army with professed neo–Nazis.
It is useful to recall these things because they give context to a string of recent developments it’s important to understand, even if our corporate media discourage any such understanding.
If we keep recent history in mind, we will be able to see that the viscously irresponsible decisions of a couple of year ago, so wasteful of human life and common resources, are now repeated such that it is now certain the brutalities and waste will continue indefinitely even as their pointlessness is now way, way, way beyond denying.
The doorway opening on to this new sequence of events is the recent advance of the Russian military in Ukraine’s northeast. This new incursion now threatens Kharkiv, which is Ukraine’s second-largest city and lies a mere 25 miles from the Russian border.
Even the mainstream press, loathe to report the setbacks the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) have suffered, describes Russia’s northeast campaign, which began a few weeks ago, as a rout. The Kremlin says it has no interest in taking Kharkiv, and this so far appears to be the case.
But the AFU’s rapid retreat bears a strong whiff of final defeat wafting in from not so far off in the distance. “Several Ukrainian combat brigades have not defected, or considered doing so,” Seymour Hersh, quoting his customary “I have been told” sources, reported in his newsletter last week, “but have made it known to their superiors that they will no longer participate in what would be a suicidal offensive against a better trained and better equipped Russian force.”
Brigades average 4,000 to 5,000 soldiers each and can run to 8,000 or even more. Hersh’s report suggests that a considerable number of Ukrainian troops, and maybe a very considerable number, are now effectively in mutiny against the AFU’s high command.
In evident response to Russia’s swift new incursion and the direction of the war altogether, the well-coordinated if not very artful American propaganda machine has begun preparing the public for a wider war that is to extend, as a matter of policy and military strategy, into Russian territory. This effort began with a New York Times interview with Volodymyr Zelensky, which was videoed and published in last Wednesday’s editions. A transcript of the interview is here.
This document is plainly intended to appeal to kale-consuming, Biden-supporting liberals who must be assured of the Ukrainian president’s just-like-us humanity and good judgment. He talked about his children and his dogs — there must be dogs in this sort of imagery — and how he reads fiction every night but is too tired to get very far.
But the core point, beyond the window dressing, was to insist that it is time to begin bombing Russian territory and that the Biden regime must reverse its prohibition of such operations.
A key passage:
“So my question is, what’s the problem? Why can’t we shoot them down? Is it defense? Yes. Is it an attack on Russia? No. Are you shooting down Russian planes and killing Russian pilots? No. So what’s the issue with involving NATO countries in the war? There is no such issue.
Shoot down what’s in the sky over Ukraine. And give us the weapons to use against Russian forces on the borders.”
Zelensky, a television actor we must not forget, has played this role on numerous occasions: Badger us for tanks, planes, long-range artillery, and missiles, the script written in Washington reads, and we will hesitate briefly before granting you your pressing needs as you defend democracy, the free world, and all those other “values” in the Cold War inventory.
Two days later, two, the Times reported exclusively that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, returning from “a sobering visit to Kyiv,” has of a sudden decided it is indeed time to broaden the war in the direction of a direct confrontation with Russia…………………………………………………………..
Let us all declare we feel unsafe as we realize what these people are talking about and what they are risking. Any allowance for expanded use of U.S.–made weapons against Russian targets, which will require American personnel on the ground in Ukraine, will unambiguously escalate the proxy war into a direct conflict between the U.S. and the Russian Federation.
Quagmire, anyone?
Reuters filed an impressive, equation-changing exclusive last week featuring unmistakably intentional leaks from the Kremlin signaling President Putin’s desire to stop the war in Ukraine and negotiate a ceasefire. Guy Faulconbridge and Andrw Osborn cited interviews with “five people who work with or have worked with Putin at a senior level in the political and business worlds.”
Time to sit up.
“Three of the sources, familiar with discussions in Putin’s entourage,” the two correspondents reported, “said the veteran Russian leader had expressed frustration to a small group of advisers about what he views as Western-backed attempts to stymie negotiations and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s decision to rule out talks.”
They then quoted one of their sources, “a senior Russian source who has worked with Putin and has knowledge of top-level conversations in the Kremlin,” as asserting, “‘Putin can fight for as long as it takes, but Putin is also ready for a ceasefire—to freeze the war.’”
While Putin has sent such signals on numerous occasions over the course of the past decade of war, this is big, in my view. For one thing, it strongly indicates what the new Kharkiv campaign is all about. Moscow does not want to take Kharkiv, the Faulconbridge and Osborn reporting suggests: It wants to enter talks from the position of strength all sides in all conflicts seek in the pre-negotiation phase.
Some other details confirm what distinguishes this set of signals from the Kremlin from others sent previously…………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Via his leaky confidants, who were almost certainly authorized, Putin proposes what amounts to an armistice. Both sides would stop shooting, and territorial dominion would remain as it is—not necessarily etched into the earth, but until both sides can negotiate on to another step toward a lasting settlement.
No, Kiev would not regain Crimea or the four republics that voted in September 2022 to rejoin Russia; and no, Russia would neither have demilitarized nor de–Nazified Ukraine, as it has many times stated as its aims……………………………………………………………………
The net response to the new Russian advances toward Kharkiv and the Kremlin’s artful leaks last week is to launch a new phase in a proxy war the West has already lost — a phase that also seems to have little chance of success, but holds more danger than any truly responsible statesman would ever risk.
Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin’s dapper spokesman, told Faulconbridge and Osborn the other day that Russia didn’t want “an eternal war,” a forever war in the American idiom. This is a good thing not to want.
Neither Biden nor Zelensky, on the other hand, wants this war to end: They cannot afford it for a variety of reasons. This is the reality. They are the main impediment to peace. They have painted the conflict as some kind of cosmic confrontation between good and evil, and in so doing they have also painted themselves into a corner.
But what happens when a powerful nation cannot lose a war it has already lost? https://consortiumnews.com/2024/05/28/patrick-lawrence-us-endgame-in-ukraine-war-without-end-amen/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=aed8d1d4-5275-4b05-9f51-750290521dba
CNN Analysis Reveals US-Made Munitions Used in Rafah Massacre
Multiple weapons experts have confirmed that munitions manufactured by Boeing were used in the deadly strike that sees at least 45 dead.
By Diego Ramos / ScheerPost May 29, 2024
ACNN report revealed that Israel used American made munitions in Sunday’s deadly strike on the displacement camp in Rafah. Scenes of the assault, which killed at least 45 people and injured hundreds more, have spread across social media, showing burned bodies, beheaded children and civilians frantically attempting to escape.
According to the CNN analysis, the attack occurred at “Kuwait Peace Camp 1.” Videos shared on social media enabled reporters to identify the tail of a GBU-39 small diameter bomb, a U.S.-made weapon manufactured by Boeing. The analysis also revealed serial numbers on the bomb remnants, tracing the manufacturer of certain components to facilities in California.
CNN spoke to several weapons experts and veterans regarding the bomb’s identification as a Boeing GBU-39. According to Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army senior explosive ordnance disposal team member:
“The warhead portion [of the munition] is distinct, and the guidance and wing section is extremely unique compared to other munitions. Guidance and wing sections of munitions are often the remnants left over even after a munition detonates. I saw the tail actuation section and instantly knew it was one of the SDB/GBU-39 variants.”
Chris Cobb-Smith, an explosive weapons expert and former British Army artillery officer, told CNN that the GBU-39 is a high-precision munition but “using any munition, even of this size, will always incur risks in a densely populated area.”
Richard Weir, senior crisis and conflict researcher at Human Rights Watch, and Chris Lincoln-Jones, a former British Army artillery officer and weapons and targeting expert also identified the fragments of the U.S.-made GBU-39 for CNN.
Despite pledging to stop supplying weapons “if they go into Rafah,” President Joe Biden is not expected to alter his support for Israel. https://scheerpost.com/2024/05/29/cnn-analysis-reveals-us-made-munitions-used-in-rafah-massacre/
US strike on Russian targets would be ‘start of world war’ – Medvedev
https://www.rt.com/russia/598254-medvedev-us-strike-targets-polish/ 27 May 24
The former president’s warning comes after Poland said Washington would hit Russian targets if Moscow were to use nukes in Ukraine.
Any US attack on Russian targets in Ukraine would automatically trigger a world war, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has warned.
The official, who currently serves as Deputy Chair of Russia’s Security Council, made the remarks after Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski claimed Washington had threatened to conduct such a strike should Russia use nuclear weapons in Ukraine.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Sunday, Medvedev suggested that Sikorski “apparently, has decided to scare his masters.” He noted that Washington, unlike Warsaw, has so far refrained from making any such threats publicly “because they are more cautious” than the Poles.
“Americans hitting our targets means starting a world war, and a Foreign Minister, even of a country like Poland, should understand that,” Medvedev added.
The former Russian president also cited remarks made by Polish President Andrzej Duda last month, when he said his country would be willing to host US nuclear weapons if offered such an opportunity under NATO’s sharing mechanism. Medvedev warned that in case of a nuclear confrontation “Warsaw won’t be left out, and will surely get its share of radioactive ash,” asking if this is the outcome the Polish leadership really wants.
On Saturday, in an interview with the Guardian newspaper, Sikorski expressed skepticism regarding a hypothetical Russian nuclear strike in Ukraine.
“The Americans have told the Russians that if you explode a nuke, even if it doesn’t kill anybody, we will hit all your targets [positions] in Ukraine with conventional weapons, we’ll destroy all of them,” he claimed, describing the presumed warning as a “credible threat.” The Polish diplomat alleged that China and India have also warned Russia against a nuclear escalation.
The minister also suggested that Ukraine’s Western backers should allow Kiev to use their weapons to strike military targets on Russian territory as “apart from not using nuclear weapons, [Moscow] does not limit itself much.”
According to Sikorski, the EU should not be afraid to escalate the situation, and should not impose limits on itself regarding the Ukraine conflict, so that Moscow is left guessing what the next step will be.
While the US and its allies have on several occasions accused Moscow of nuclear saber-rattling, President Vladimir Putin insisted in March that at no point during the Ukraine conflict has Russia considered using such weapons. Around the same time, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov stressed that Russia’s nuclear doctrine envisages the use of weapons of mass destruction only “if something threatens the existence of our country,” echoing a previous statement by the head of state. The official also described the deterrent as a “farewell weapon.”
During his annual address to the Federal Assembly in late February, Putin warned would-be aggressors that the nuclear arsenal was in a state of “complete readiness for guaranteed deployment.”
Earlier this month, the Russian leader ordered an exercise in the use of tactical nuclear weapons in the Southern Military District, which borders Ukraine. According to statements by the Foreign and Defense Ministries, the exercises were meant as a warning to the US and its allies, following escalatory rhetoric from the West.
Ukraine: Stoltenberg calls for lifting restrictions on the use of NATO weapons to strike in Russia
“Denying Ukraine the ability to use these weapons against legitimate military targets in Russian territory makes it difficult for them to defend themselves especially now that there is a lot of fighting going on in the Kharkiv region,” explained the secretary general of the Atlantic Alliance
London. May 25, 2024, Agenzia Nov https://www.agenzianova.com/en/news/Ukraine-Stoltenberg-calls-for-lifting-restrictions-on-the-use-of-NATO-weapons-to-attack-Russia/
Ukraine should also be able to strike targets in Russia with the use of weapons donated by NATO countries. This is what the secretary general of the Atlantic Alliance suggested, Jens Stoltenberg, in an interview with the British weekly “The Economist”. “The time has come for NATO member countries to consider whether they should lift some of the restrictions on the use of the weapons they donated to Ukraine,” she said. “Denying Ukraine the ability to use these weapons against legitimate military targets on Russian territory makes it difficult for them to defend themselves especially now that there is a lot of fighting going on in the Kharkiv region, near the border,” Stoltenberg explained.
Regarding the Russian offensive in the region, the NATO secretary general believes that this will not lead to a breakthrough by Moscow. “They will continue to make marginal advances, for which they are willing to pay a high price,” he said. Stoltenberg, however, admitted that the situation is delicate for Kiev. “The European allies promised one million rounds of artillery ammunition and we have yet to see anything like this,” the secretary general lamented.
Comment: Ukraine is already attacking inside Russia, and many, if not most, of these targets are civilian: Belgorod, The New Donetsk: Report From Russian City Where Ukraine Targets Civilians
It appears that, along with Israel, the West is becoming increasingly desperate, and reckless, and should it cross Russia’s stated red lines and partake in direct attacks on Russian soil, Moscow may be forced to retaliate by neutralising the installations and command centres of the guilty parties in the West: more https://www.sott.net/article/491699-Stoltenberg-urges-alliance-to-allow-Ukraine-to-use-NATO-weapons-for-attacks-inside-Russia
Constant Killing
Despite Blood on Its Hands, The Pentagon Once Again Fails to Make Amends
BY NICK TURSE, Tom Dispatch 27 May 24
For hundreds of years, the U.S. military has been killing people. It’s been a constant of our history. Another constant has been American military personnel killing civilians, whether Native Americans, Filipinos, Nicaraguans, Haitians, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis, and on and on. And there’s something else that’s gone along with those killings: a lack of accountability for them.
Late last month, the Department of Defense (DoD) released its congressionally mandated annual accounting of civilian casualties caused by U.S. military operations globally. The report is due every May 1st and, in the latest case, the Pentagon even beat that deadline by a week. There was only one small problem: it was the 2022 report. You know, the one that was supposed to be made public on May 1, 2023. And not only was that report a year late, but the 2023 edition, due May 1, 2024, has yet to be seen.
Whether that 2023 report, when it finally arrives, will say much of substance is also doubtful. In the 2022 edition, the Pentagon exonerated itself of harming noncombatants. “DoD has assessed that U.S. military operations in 2022 resulted in no civilian casualties,” reads the 12-page document. It follows hundreds of years of silence about, denials of, and willful disregard toward civilians slain purposely or accidentally by the U.S. military and a long history of failures to make amends in the rare cases where the Pentagon has admitted to killing innocents.
Moral Imperatives
“The Department recognizes that our efforts to mitigate and respond to civilian harm respond to both strategic and moral imperatives,” reads the Pentagon’s new 2022 civilian casualty report.
And its latest response to those “moral imperatives” was typical. The Defense Department reported that it had made no ex gratia payments — amends offered to civilians harmed in its operations — during 2022. That follows exactly one payment made in 2021 and zero in 2020
Whether any payments were made in 2023 is still, of course, a mystery. I asked Lisa Lawrence, the Pentagon spokesperson who handles civilian harm issues, why the 2023 report was late and when to expect it. A return receipt shows that she read my email, but she failed to offer an answer.
Her reaction is typical of the Pentagon on the subject.
A 2020 study of post-9/11 civilian casualty incidents by the Center for Civilians in Conflict and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute found that most went uninvestigated. When they did come under official scrutiny, American military witnesses were interviewed while civilians — victims, survivors, family members — were almost totally ignored, “severely compromising the effectiveness of investigations,” according to that report.
In the wake of such persistent failings, investigative reporters and human rights groups have increasingly documented America’s killing of civilians, its underreporting of noncombatant casualties, and its failures of accountability in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere.
During the first 20 years of the war on terror, the U.S. conducted more than 91,000 airstrikes across seven major conflict zones and killed up to 48,308 civilians, according to a 2021 analysis by Airwars, a U.K.-based air-strike monitoring group.
Between 2013 and 2020, for example, the U.S. carried out seven separate attacks in Yemen — six drone strikes and one raid — that killed 36 members of the intermarried Al Ameri and Al Taisy families. A quarter of them were children between the ages of three months and 14 years old. The survivors have been waiting for years for an explanation as to why they were repeatedly targeted………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Getting to “Yes”
While the U.S. military has long been killing civilians — in massacres by ground troops, air strikes and even, in August 1945, nuclear attacks — compensating those harmed has never been a serious priority.
General John “Black Jack” Pershing did push to adopt a system to pay claims by French civilians during World War I and the military in World War II found that paying compensation for harm to civilians “had a pronounced stabilizing effect.” The modern military reparations system, however, dates only to the 1960s.
During the Vietnam War, providing “solatia” was a way for the military to offer reparations for civilian injuries or deaths caused by U.S. operations without having to admit any guilt. In 1968, the going rate for an adult life was $33. Children merited just half that.
In 1973, a B-52 Stratofortress dropped 30 tons of bombs on the Cambodian town of Neak Luong, killing hundreds of civilians and wounding hundreds more. The next of kin of those killed, according to press reports, were promised about $400 each. Considering that, in many cases, a family’s primary breadwinner had been lost, the sum was low. It was only the equivalent of about four years of earnings for a rural Cambodian. By comparison, a one-plane sortie, like the one that devastated Neak Luong, cost about $48,000. And that B-52 bomber itself then cost about $8 million. Worse yet, a recent investigation found that the survivors did not actually receive the promised $400. In the end, the value American forces placed on the dead of Neak Luong came to just $218 each.
Back then, the United States kept its low-ball payouts in Cambodia a secret. Decades later, the U.S. continues to thwart transparency and accountability when it comes to civilian lives………………………………………………………………….
Late last year, the Defense Department also issued its long-awaited “Instruction on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response,” which established the Pentagon’s “policies, responsibilities, and procedures for mitigating and responding to civilian harm.” The document, mandated under the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, and approved by Austin, directs the military to “acknowledge civilian harm resulting from U.S. military operations and respond to individuals and communities affected by U.S. military operations,” including “expressing condolences” and providing ex gratia payments to next of kin.
But despite $15 million allocated by Congress since 2020 to provide just such payments and despite members of Congress repeatedly calling on the Pentagon to make amends for civilian harm, it has announced just one such payment in the years since.
Nick Turse, The Pentagon’s .00035% Problem
POSTED ON MAY 23, 2024
[Note for TomDispatch Readers: You know that I just can’t help it. Once again, I’m pleading with this site’s faithful readers to consider going to our donation page and giving us a boost so that we can keep covering subjects — like Nick Turse’s latest striking report on the killing of civilians in America’s never-ending war on terror — that the mainstream media tends to avoid so much of the time. Take a moment, if you can, to keep this website going in 2024. (And there’s no way I can thank you enough for doing so!) Note as well that TomDispatch will be off-duty on the Memorial Day weekend. The next piece will appear on Tuesday. Tom]
Yes, the number of deaths in Gaza in the last seven months is staggering. At least, 35,000 Gazans have reportedly perished, including significant numbers of children (and that’s without even counting the possibly 10,000 unidentified bodies still buried under the rubble that now litters that 25-mile-long stretch of land). But shocking as that might be (and it is shocking!), it begins to look almost modest when compared to the numbers of civilians slaughtered in America’s never-ending Global War on Terror that began in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and, as Nick Turse has reported in his coverage of Africa, never really ended.
In fact, the invaluable Costs of War project put the direct civilian death toll in those wars at 186,694 to 210,038 in Iraq, 46,319 in Afghanistan, 24,099 in Pakistan, and 12,690 in Yemen, among other places. And don’t forget, as that project also reports, that there could have been an estimated 3.6 to 3.8 million (yes, million!) “indirect deaths” resulting from the devastation caused by those wars, which lasted endless years — 20 alone for the Afghan one — in South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
Today, Nick Turse reports on how the Pentagon has largely avoided significant responsibility for civilian deaths from its never-ending air wars, not to speak of failing to compensate the innocent victims of those strikes. The civilian death toll in this country’s twenty-first-century conflicts is, in fact, a subject he’s long focused on at TomDispatch in a devastating fashion. In 2007, he was already reporting on how the U.S. military was quite literally discussing “hunting” the “enemy.” (“From the commander-in-chief to low-ranking snipers, a language of dehumanization that includes the idea of hunting humans as if they were animals has crept into our world — unnoticed and unnoted in the mainstream media.”) And when it comes to the subject of killing civilians without any significant acknowledgment or ever having to say you’re sorry, he’s never stopped. Tom
Constant Killing
Despite Blood on Its Hands, The Pentagon Once Again Fails to Make Amends
BY NICK TURSE
There are constants in this world — occurrences you can count on. Sunrises and sunsets. The tides. That, day by day, people will be born and others will die.
Some of them will die in peace, but others, of course, in violence and agony.
For hundreds of years, the U.S. military has been killing people. It’s been a constant of our history. Another constant has been American military personnel killing civilians, whether Native Americans, Filipinos, Nicaraguans, Haitians, Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, Afghans, Iraqis, Syrians, Yemenis, and on and on. And there’s something else that’s gone along with those killings: a lack of accountability for them.
Late last month, the Department of Defense (DoD) released its congressionally mandated annual accounting of civilian casualties caused by U.S. military operations globally. The report is due every May 1st and, in the latest case, the Pentagon even beat that deadline by a week. There was only one small problem: it was the 2022 report. You know, the one that was supposed to be made public on May 1, 2023. And not only was that report a year late, but the 2023 edition, due May 1, 2024, has yet to be seen.
Whether that 2023 report, when it finally arrives, will say much of substance is also doubtful. In the 2022 edition, the Pentagon exonerated itself of harming noncombatants. “DoD has assessed that U.S. military operations in 2022 resulted in no civilian casualties,” reads the 12-page document. It follows hundreds of years of silence about, denials of, and willful disregard toward civilians slain purposely or accidentally by the U.S. military and a long history of failures to make amends in the rare cases where the Pentagon has admitted to killing innocents.
Moral Imperatives
“The Department recognizes that our efforts to mitigate and respond to civilian harm respond to both strategic and moral imperatives,” reads the Pentagon’s new 2022 civilian casualty report.
And its latest response to those “moral imperatives” was typical. The Defense Department reported that it had made no ex gratia payments — amends offered to civilians harmed in its operations — during 2022. That follows exactly one payment made in 2021 and zero in 2020.
Whether any payments were made in 2023 is still, of course, a mystery. I asked Lisa Lawrence, the Pentagon spokesperson who handles civilian harm issues, why the 2023 report was late and when to expect it. A return receipt shows that she read my email, but she failed to offer an answer.
Her reaction is typical of the Pentagon on the subject.
A 2020 study of post-9/11 civilian casualty incidents by the Center for Civilians in Conflict and Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute found that most went uninvestigated. When they did come under official scrutiny, American military witnesses were interviewed while civilians — victims, survivors, family members — were almost totally ignored, “severely compromising the effectiveness of investigations,” according to that report.
In the wake of such persistent failings, investigative reporters and human rights groups have increasingly documented America’s killing of civilians, its underreporting of noncombatant casualties, and its failures of accountability in Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere.
During the first 20 years of the war on terror, the U.S. conducted more than 91,000 airstrikes across seven major conflict zones and killed up to 48,308 civilians, according to a 2021 analysis by Airwars, a U.K.-based air-strike monitoring group.
Between 2013 and 2020, for example, the U.S. carried out seven separate attacks in Yemen — six drone strikes and one raid — that killed 36 members of the intermarried Al Ameri and Al Taisy families. A quarter of them were children between the ages of three months and 14 years old. The survivors have been waiting for years for an explanation as to why they were repeatedly targeted.
In 2018, Adel Al Manthari, a civil servant in the Yemeni government, and four of his cousins — all civilians — were traveling by truck when an American missile slammed into their vehicle. Three of the men were killed instantly. Another died days later in a local hospital. Al Manthari was critically injured. Complications resulting from his injuries nearly killed him in 2022. He beseeched the U.S. government to dip into the millions of dollars appropriated by Congress to compensate victims of American attacks, but they ignored his pleas. His limbs and life were eventually saved by the kindness of strangers via a crowdsourced GoFundMe campaign.
The same year that Al Manthari was maimed in Yemen, a U.S. drone strike in Somalia killed at least three, and possibly five, civilians, including 22-year-old Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter Mariam Shilow Muse. The next year, a U.S. military investigation acknowledged that a woman and child were killed in that attack but concluded that their identities might never be known. Last year, I traveled to Somalia and spoke with their relatives. For six years, the family has tried to contact the American government, including through U.S. Africa Command’s online civilian casualty reporting portal without ever receiving a reply.
In December 2023, following an investigation by The Intercept, two dozen human rights organizations — 14 Somali and 10 international groups — called on Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to compensate Luul and Mariam’s family for their deaths. This year, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Representatives Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) have also called on the Defense Department to make amends.
A 2021 investigation by New York Times reporter Azmat Khan revealed that the American air war in Iraq and Syria was marked by flawed intelligence and inaccurate targeting, resulting in the deaths of many innocents. Out of 1,311 military reports analyzed by Khan, only one cited a “possible violation” of the rules of engagement. None included a finding of wrongdoing or suggested a need for disciplinary action, while fewer than a dozen condolence payments were made. The U.S.-led coalition eventually admitted to killing 1,410 civilians during the war in Iraq and Syria. Airwars, however, puts the number at 2,024.
Several of the attacks detailed by Khan were brought to the Defense Department’s attention in 2022 but, according to their new report, the Pentagon failed to take action. Joanna Naples-Mitchell, director of the nonprofit Zomia Center’s Redress Program, which helps survivors of American air strikes submit requests for compensation, and Annie Shiel, U.S. advocacy director with the Center for Civilians in Conflict, highlighted several of these cases in a recent Just Security article.
In June 2022, for instance, the Redress Program submitted requests for amends from the Pentagon on behalf of two families in Mosul, Iraq, harmed in an April 29, 2016, air strike reportedly targeting an Islamic State militant who was unharmed in the attack. Khan reported that, instead, Ziad Kallaf Awad, a college professor, was killed and Hassan Aleiwi Muhammad Sultan, then 10 years old, was left wheelchair-bound. The Pentagon had indeed admitted that civilian casualties resulted from the strike in a 2016 press release.
In September 2022, the Redress Program also submitted ex gratia requests on behalf of six families in Mosul, all of them harmed by a June 15, 2016, air strike also investigated by Khan. Naples-Mitchel and Shiel note that Iliyas Ali Abd Ali, then running a fruit stand near the site of the attack, lost his right leg and hearing in one ear. Two brothers working in an ice cream shop were also injured, while a man standing near that shop was killed. That same year, the Pentagon did confirm that the strike had resulted in civilian casualties.
However, almost eight years after acknowledging civilian harm in those Mosul cases and almost two years after the Redress Program submitted the claims to the Defense Department, the Pentagon has yet to offer amends.
Getting to “Yes”
While the U.S. military has long been killing civilians — in massacres by ground troops, air strikes and even, in August 1945, nuclear attacks — compensating those harmed has never been a serious priority.
General John “Black Jack” Pershing did push to adopt a system to pay claims by French civilians during World War I and the military in World War II found that paying compensation for harm to civilians “had a pronounced stabilizing effect.” The modern military reparations system, however, dates only to the 1960s.
During the Vietnam War, providing “solatia” was a way for the military to offer reparations for civilian injuries or deaths caused by U.S. operations without having to admit any guilt. In 1968, the going rate for an adult life was $33. Children merited just half that.
In 1973, a B-52 Stratofortress dropped 30 tons of bombs on the Cambodian town of Neak Luong, killing hundreds of civilians and wounding hundreds more. The next of kin of those killed, according to press reports, were promised about $400 each. Considering that, in many cases, a family’s primary breadwinner had been lost, the sum was low. It was only the equivalent of about four years of earnings for a rural Cambodian. By comparison, a one-plane sortie, like the one that devastated Neak Luong, cost about $48,000. And that B-52 bomber itself then cost about $8 million. Worse yet, a recent investigation found that the survivors did not actually receive the promised $400. In the end, the value American forces placed on the dead of Neak Luong came to just $218 each.
Back then, the United States kept its low-ball payouts in Cambodia a secret. Decades later, the U.S. continues to thwart transparency and accountability when it comes to civilian lives.
In June 2023, I asked Africa Command to answer detailed questions about its law-of-war and civilian-casualty policies and requested interviews with officials versed in such matters. Despite multiple follow-ups, Courtney Dock, the command’s deputy director of public affairs, has yet to respond. This year-long silence stands in stark contrast to the Defense Department’s trumpeting of new policies and initiatives for responding to civilian harm and making amends.
In 2022, the Pentagon issued a 36-page Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response Action Plan, written at the direction of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. The plan provides a blueprint for improving how the Pentagon addresses the subject. The plan requires military personnel to consider potential harm to civilians in any air strike, ground raid, or other type of combat.
Late last year, the Defense Department also issued its long-awaited “Instruction on Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response,” which established the Pentagon’s “policies, responsibilities, and procedures for mitigating and responding to civilian harm.” The document, mandated under the 2019 National Defense Authorization Act, and approved by Austin, directs the military to “acknowledge civilian harm resulting from U.S. military operations and respond to individuals and communities affected by U.S. military operations,” including “expressing condolences” and providing ex gratia payments to next of kin.
But despite $15 million allocated by Congress since 2020 to provide just such payments and despite members of Congress repeatedly calling on the Pentagon to make amends for civilian harm, it has announced just one such payment in the years since.
Naples-Mitchel and Shiel point out that the Defense Department has a projected budget of $849.8 billion for fiscal year 2025 and the $3 million set aside annually to pay for civilian casualty claims is just 0.00035% of that sum. “Yet for the civilians who have waited years for acknowledgment of the most painful day of their lives, it’s anything but small,” they write. “The military has what it needs to begin making payments and reckoning with past harms, from the policy commitment, to the funding, to the painstaking requests and documentation from civilian victims. All they have to do now is say yes.”
On May 10th, I asked Lisa Lawrence, the Pentagon spokesperson, if the U.S. would say “yes” and if not, why not.
“Thank you for reaching out,” she replied. “You can expect to hear from me as soon as I have more to offer.”
Lawrence has yet to “offer” anything. https://tomdispatch.com/constant-killing/
Gaza: After ICJ order to halt attacks on Rafah, Israel launches over 60 air raids on the city in 48 hours
Israel is continuing its crimes in defiance of the highest international justice body, which issued precautionary measures to prevent genocide on 26 January 2024 and additional precautionary measures on 28 March 2024, plus its latest precautionary measures, issued last Friday. Israel has been carrying out the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip continuously since 7 October 2023, with no real accountability for its crimes, amid the ongoing failure of the international community to protect the Palestinian people from this blatant genocide.
https://euromedmonitor.org/en/article/6348 26 May 24
Palestinian Territory – Israel continues to ignore orders from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), including the Court’s most recent ruling. This ruling requires Israel to halt its military assault on the Rafah Governorate in the southern Gaza Strip and reopen the Rafah border crossing to facilitate the movement of people and humanitarian aid. In the 48 hours that followed the ICJ’s ruling on Friday 24 May, however, Israel conducted more than 60 air raids on Rafah.
Furthermore, dozens of artillery shells and constant gunfire were fired in areas of Rafah where the Israeli military was encroaching. Israel’s ground incursion began at dawn on 7 May and has since spread to the west and central parts of the city, mostly along the border strip. It has already impacted a significant portion of the city.
Thirteen Palestinians were killed in the 48 hours following the Court’s ruling, including six members of the Qishta family, an elderly mother and three of her children—two girls and one boy —and an adult son and his two children. The victims were killed when Israeli planes bombed their home on Saturday 25 May in Khirbet Al-Adas, north of Rafah, an area not included in the Israeli evacuation orders.
Three distinct air raids were also carried out on the same day (25 May) targeting the city’s Al-Shaboura Camp and Awni Dhair Street, resulting in the killing of five civilians.
A Palestinian was also killed and others were injured on Sunday afternoon when Israeli aircraft bombed the Rasras family’s house in the centre of Rafah city, while another Palestinian was killed and others were injured on the day of the Court session.
During the Court session to decide on South Africa’s request, the Israeli army increased its intense bombing of central Rafah, including the Shaboura camp. It destroyed numerous homes and streets, and later claimed that the incident was connected to an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate a leader in a Palestinian faction. As a result, civilians continue pay a heavy price for Israeli military attacks that flagrantly transgress international humanitarian law, particularly the principles of distinction, proportionality, and military necessity, i.e. taking appropriate precautions to avoid civilian deaths. It is important to note that these attacks are classified as war crimes under the Rome Statute.
Israel did not hold back in publicly rejecting the Court’s ruling. The bombing, killing, and destruction intensified immediately after the session ended. The Israeli government, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, swiftly denounced the Court’s decision and attacked it, citing religious statements that denigrate non-Jews. Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir responded, “Our future does not depend on what the gentiles say, but rather on what we Jews do.”
According to Israeli Channel 12, Netanyahu stated that “occupying Rafah and increasing military pressure on Hamas” is the proper response to the Court’s decision, which he called “antisemitic”.
The victims of the Israeli army’s bombing are still lying in the streets and under the debris of destroyed homes, particularly in the eastern and central parts of the city, as rescue workers and medical teams are unable to remove them from those areas, according to the Euro-Med Monitor field team.
In addition to the hundreds of housing units destroyed since the beginning of the most recent attack on Rafah, during which entire neighbourhoods were destroyed and reduced to rubble, the Euro-Med Monitor team had also previously received information about the destruction of approximately 170 housing units.
Meanwhile, the World Food Programme warehouse and the UNRWA distribution centre in Rafah remain inaccessible due to the ongoing Israeli military attack.
Since taking control of the Rafah border crossing on 7 May, Israeli forces have prevented the entry of humanitarian aid through it (beginning the day before, on 6 May) and have continued to keep it closed to sick and injured people seeking to receive medical treatment abroad.
Discussions about reaching a deal to allow aid trucks to pass through the Kerem Shalom crossing, which Israel closed on 5 May, do not address the root causes of the issue, nor do they provide for the 2.3 million people living in the Strip. These individuals are victims of ethnic cleansing and genocide and once more face the threat of starvation, as eight months have passed since the start of the Israeli aggression.
According to UNRWA, the current Israeli military operation in Rafah is directly impacting the ability of aid agencies to bring critical humanitarian supplies into the Strip, as well as the ability to rotate critical humanitarian staff. From 1–20 May, according to OCHA, 14 missions which were heading to Kerem Shalom to collect aid supplies encountered delays due to traffic congestions blocking the road and delayed clearance by Israeli authorities, resulting in six missions being aborted. During this reporting period (20–22 May), the border crossings were only opened for one day, and only 39 trucks entered the Strip via the Kerem Shalom and Rafah land crossings. Only 143 trucks have entered the Gaza strip via the Karem Abu Salem crossing since 6–20 May.
Israel is continuing its crimes in defiance of the highest international justice body, which issued precautionary measures to prevent genocide on 26 January 2024 and additional precautionary measures on 28 March 2024, plus its latest precautionary measures, issued last Friday. Israel has been carrying out the crime of genocide against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip continuously since 7 October 2023, with no real accountability for its crimes, amid the ongoing failure of the international community to protect the Palestinian people from this blatant genocide.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor reiterates its call on all nations to fulfil their international obligations and halt all military, political, and financial support for Israel’s military assault on the Gaza Strip. In particular, all arms transfers to Israel, including export permits and military assistance, must end immediately; otherwise, these nations will be considered complicit in Israeli crimes committed in the Strip, including genocide.
Furthermore, Euro-Med Monitor urges the International Criminal Court (ICC) to acknowledge and handle Israel’s crimes in the Gaza Strip as international crimes, as they fall under the Court’s jurisdiction. Additionally, Euro-Med Monitor asks the Court to expand its lists of arrest warrants to include more Israeli officials.
The United Nations must send fact-finding and investigative committees to the Gaza Strip, defy Israel’s decision to forbid such committees from entering the Strip, and make clear, public declarations whenever Israel denies these committees entry or refuses to work with them in any manner.
International investigations must be conducted into the widespread violations that have been documented since Israel started its military attacks on the Gaza Strip, all evidence must be preserved, and all international institutions must unite in their efforts to end Israel’s impunity. Those who have committed crimes in the Strip, whether by issuing orders or carrying them out, must be held accountable and brought to justice.
Euro-Med Monitor warns that, should the Security Council be approached to pass a resolution requiring Israel to cease operations in the Rafah Governorate in the event that Israel does not abide by the recent ruling of the International Court of Justice, any use of the veto to prevent this resolution from being passed and enforced would mean that the objecting state—which has previously been the United States in multiple similar situations—will be complicit in the genocide committed by Israel throughout the Gaza Strip. This complicity in Israeli crimes includes crimes in Rafah Governorate, where the Court confirmed that Israel’s US-backed military operation poses a serious and additional threat to the Palestinian people’s right to be protected from the crime of genocide.
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