WHY ARE AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN UKRAINE?
2 EVE OTTENBERG July 15, 2023
EVE OTTENBERG July 15, 2023 https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/07/14/u-s-soldiers-dont-belong-in-ukraine/ — So how many American soldiers fight in Ukraine? The Biden bunch is careful not to reveal or refer to their presence, mercenary or otherwise, but the question keeps coming to mind. It popped up again June 27, when Russia bombed what the Ukraine press called simply a restaurant in Kramatorsk. However, this supposedly innocuous restaurant was part of a hotel complex that apparently attracted lots of western men of fighting age, specifically American soldiers and others from NATO countries. We know this because eyewitnesses heard them speaking American English and saw their U.S. military tattoos (3rd Ranger Battalion) and the American flags on their helmets. Also, American mercenaries were reported dead in twitter accounts. We also know that this missile attack killed 50 Ukrainian officers and two generals and at least 20 of the westerners, including Americans, proving yet again that one American soldier in Ukraine is one too many. |
 nuclear-newsNew comment waiting approval! Emin Minberg just commented on TODAY. “As long as it takes” – WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?.- it takes cluster bombs (to cause later mutilations and deaths, especially children) – it takes depleted uranium weapons, …WHY ARE AMERICAN SOLDIERS IN UKRAINEEVE OTTENBERG July 15, 2023 So how many American soldiers fight in Ukraine? The Biden bunch is careful not to reveal or refer to their presence, mercenary or otherwise, but the question keeps coming to mind. It popped up again June 27, when Russia bombed what the Ukraine press called simply a restaurant in Kramatorsk. However, this supposedly innocuous restaurant was part of a hotel complex that apparently attracted lots of western men of fighting age, specifically American soldiers and others from NATO countries. We know this because eyewitnesses heard them speaking American English and saw their U.S. military tattoos (3rd Ranger Battalion) and the American flags on their helmets. Also, American mercenaries were reported dead in twitter accounts. We also know that this missile attack killed 50 Ukrainian officers and two generals and at least 20 of the westerners, including Americans, proving yet again that one American soldier in Ukraine is one too many. The problem is that we don’t know how many U.S. soldiers – to say nothing of American mercenaries – are in Ukraine. The Russian ministry of defense estimates that there have been over 900 American mercenaries in Ukraine. Meanwhile Washington remains mum, closely guarding its knowledge of this secret for the obvious reason that not doing so might provoke an open confrontation with Moscow. |
And since they don’t want a nuclear World War III, the white house and pentagon nurture an intense interest in concealing facts about the U.S. military footprint in Ukraine and their possible encouragement of it. Even if large numbers of American NATO officers were killed there, we, back in the so-called homeland, would doubtless be kept in the dark.
The scraps of news we do get indicate that the fighting goes poorly for U.S. troops. “This is my third war I’ve fought in, and this is by far the worst one,” Troy Offenbecker told the Daily Beast July 1. “You’re getting fucking smashed with artillery, tanks. Last week I had a plane drop a bomb next to us, like 300 meters away. It’s horrifying shit.”
The Daily Beast quotes another U.S. soldier, David Bramlette: “The worst day in Afghanistan or Iraq is a great day in Ukraine.” Regarding reconnaissance missions, he said, “if two of them get injured…there’s no helicopter coming to get you…shit can go south really, really frickin’ quickly.” In other words, this is a different enemy, a very competent one, and U.S. soldiers in Ukraine sub rosa could die in large numbers that people back home never hear about.
Take the case of the March missile attack on Lvov. We have no idea if the rumors swirling around this assault, rumors of hundreds of NATO dead, including Americans, were true or not. Insofar as they mentioned this alleged catastrophe at all, U.S. press outlets hastened to impugn these reports’ veracity. So this attack received little to zero western coverage. Savvy observers like Moon of Alabama steered clear of it, presumably because the fog of war was just too thick. However, a regular commentor on that site, Oblomovka Daydream, did post an account on the Moon of Alabama open thread on April 15.
It’s worth a look for its elsewhere unreported details. But caveat lector: little is known about Oblomovka Daydream’s track record.
According to this source, back in March Russia launched “Daggers” – Kinzhal missiles – at a NATO command center in the Lvov region. This secret facility, at a depth of one hundred meters, was “a reserve command post of the former Carpathian military district…well protected and equipped with modern communication systems.” NATO generals and colonels chose it. They felt so safe, they dropped their guard: “Sometimes dozens of cars gathered at the entrance to the headquarters even in broad daylight.”
The Dagger was chosen “because such a bunker is invulnerable to conventional missiles.” The Russian assault left no survivors. “And there were more than 200 of them. Including, say some ‘informed’ Western journalists, several American generals and senior officers. And also – British, Polish, Ukrainian.” According to the Greek portal ProNews, which is close to the Greek ministry of defense and was quoted in this post, “dozens of foreign officers were killed” when the Kinzhal hypersonic missiles hit the secret facility. This was “a disaster for NATO forces in Ukraine.”
As aforementioned, western news outlets hastened either not to report one word of this or to cast doubt on these accounts’ credibility. According to Newsweek March 31, claims that a NATO command center had been hit were “baseless.” Newsweek singled out ProNews as “highly questionable,” nonetheless conceding that on the night of March 9 Russia retaliated for sabotage in Bryansk, with Kinzhals, and that one targeted region was Lvov.
So it’s unclear what happened. Oblomovka Daydream cites some convincing details: “Some Kiev sites have also blabbed: after the emergency, representatives of the Ministry of Defense and the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were called to the carpet at the U.S. Embassy, where they were reprimanded ‘for the poor security of the control center,’ and at the same time handed a list of the dead senior American officers and ordered ‘to get them at least from the underground.’”
The point is this: dozens of Americans could have been killed and if so, you can be sure, we’d never hear a peep about it. That’s because this is a proxy war and the U.S. supposedly has nothing to do with it. Even though billions of American dollars and lots of U.S. military hardware have disappeared who knows where into Ukraine. Even though Americans fight and die there. And even though no one, outside of their families and government officials, knows who they are.
But never doubt that Americans have been in Ukraine since the start of this war. Reports surfaced on twitter July 9 quoting an Azov commander, Volyn, to Turkish media that the U.S. and Russia arranged the Azov surrender at Azovstal last year in exchange for the withdrawal of several “high-ranking U.S. officers” from the facility. Indeed, there were rumors of Americans at Azovstal at the time. This Turkish interview would appear to confirm them. Far from objecting, many Americans would support this. But then again, many Americans discount the threat of nuclear war with Russia, something no sane person wants to gamble with.
All of which adds up, yet again, to the argument that Washington should retract its claws and try to bargain. Moscow has said it will strike command centers. How long before a large contingent of American NATO “trainers” are killed and can’t be concealed? Then what? Oopsies…we didn’t mean to start World War III?
Washington should look for a negotiated settlement. A peace plan, like the one arranged by neutral countries in spring 2022, which western geniuses scuttled. Or Washington could swallow its pride and follow up on the Chinese peace proposal. If there was the slightest concern for human life, bigwigs in the imperial capital would do so. One can only conclude there is not.
Oppenheimer: what you need to know before watching
The release of Christopher Nolan’s biopic about Robert J Oppenheimer – leader of the Manhattan project – is driving a lot of questions about nuclear weapons, who has them and how they (continue to) pose a global risk of catastrophe. Here are some key things you should know before going to see the film.
https://www.icanw.org/oppenheimer_facts_myths_nuclear_weapons 16 Jul 23
Fact: The Trinity test left a terrible legacy of cancer on the communities living downwind.
The Trinity Test at Alamogordo was the first, but not the last, nuclear weapon test. Like the tests that would follow, it caused irreversible damage to the environment and surrounding communities.
The communities of the Trinity fallout zone call themselves the ‘Tularosa Basin Downwinders’ because radiation was carried downwind from the test site to their communities. Safety came second at the Trinity Test: the fallout zone was dramatically underestimated, the effects were barely studied, and no one was evacuated. Residents were not told about the test even as fallout ‘snowed’ over their farms, homes, and wells. The damage became clear almost immediately. In the months following Trinity (Aug, Sept, and Oct of 1945) infant mortality in New Mexico increased by 56%, many as a result of rare birth defects. Ionising radiation is particularly damaging to rapidly developing and dividing cells—affecting infants, children, and pregnant women. But when authorities were alerted, nothing happened. Read more here.
Myth: Nuclear weapons ended WWII
The contention that the atomic bombings saved more lives than they took by avoiding the need for the US and its allies to invade the Japanese homeland evades several important issues. First and foremost, it is not possible to know this for a fact because Japan did surrender. Secondly, it means not having to properly address why, once Nazi Germany had surrendered, the weapon was then used against Japan which did not have a nuclear weapons project worth the name. For those who took the decision and those who have endorsed it since, it also conveniently avoids confronting the inhumane nature of these weapons and their knowing use against civilians, which even by the standards of the time many realised was a war crime.
Notably, several of the United States’ top military commanders believed the bombings played little part in Japan’s surrender. The Commander in Chief of the US Pacific fleet, Admiral Nimitz said: “The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.”
Fact: The risk of nuclear weapons use is higher than ever
Even before the war in Ukraine began, the UN was warning that “the risk that nuclear weapons will be used is higher now than at any point since the duck-and-cover drills and fallout shelters of the Cold War.” Analysts for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists calculated that a child born today is unlikely to live out their natural lives without seeing nuclear devastation.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the barrage of nuclear threats and retaliatory statements that have followed, those risks have only increased. That is why the Doomsday Clock is now closer to midnight than it has ever been before. The terrifying but true reality is that we cannot know for certain if Putin – or any leader of a nuclear-armed state – will use nuclear weapons at any time. What we do know is that nuclear weapons pose unacceptable humanitarian consequences – and that there is no response capacity to help survivors in the aftermath.
Myth: Nuclear weapons prevented major conflict or even a third world war
There is no evidence that nuclear weapons deter war and preserve strategic stability beyond the correlation of the existence of these weapons with the fact a third world war has not – yet – occurred.
The mutual build-up of nuclear weapons between the USSR and the US in the Cold War may have prevented the two from engaging in war with one another directly, however, proxy wars (generally on the territories of developing nations) continued. War did not end with the development of the bomb. The chance that one of the proxy wars could have flared into a nuclear war was very close- several times. Also, while – luckily – there hasn’t been a nuclear war since 1945, nuclear weapons have not protected countries from conventional attack. In 1982, Argentina went to war with Britain by invading the British Overseas Territory of the Falkland Islands and the US nuclear arsenal did not deter Al Qaida from mounting the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Not to mention the 1973 Yom Kippur war and the Kargil War in 1999.
Fact: the 9 states with nuclear weapons are wasting billions of public money each year on their arsenals
In 2022 alone, the nine countries armed with nuclear weapons spent $82.9 billion on their nuclear arsenals, 35% of which went into the private sector. The United States spent more than all of the other nuclear armed states combined, $43.7 billion. Russia spent 22% of what the U.S. did, at $9.6 billion, and China spent just over a quarter of the U.S. total, at $11.7 billion.
Read more: Wasted: 2022 Global Nuclear Weapons Spending (ICAN)
Myth: Nuclear weapons are safer today than they were when they were first invented
Nuclear weapons today have much greater destructive power than the first bombs in the 1940s. The bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were equivalent to 15 and 20 kilotons of dynamite which by today’s standards is considered a “low-yield” nuclear weapon. The B83, the largest deployed US nuclear warhead, is equivalent to 80 Hiroshima-sized bombs. At the start of 2023, the US nuclear arsenal of 5,244 nuclear weapons had a total yield of 857.6 megatons, or the equivalent of 57,173 Hiroshima-sized bombs. That’s an average of 164 kilotons per nuclear warhead in the US arsenal. Russia, with 5,889 nuclear warheads, has the equivalent of 65,240 Hiroshima-sized bombs.
There have been many accidents and incidents where nuclear weapons almost detonated or were nearly used since 1945 and it is matter of luck and individuals who were prepared to defy peer pressure and military protocols being in the right place at the right time, including during the Cuban Missile crisis, that nuclear war has so far been avoided.
Daniel Ellsberg, the US military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers, notes in his book Doomsday Machine:
Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner that the military bureaucracy associated with the cold war and mutually assured destruction has largely stayed intact. The maintenance of the status quo in nuclear weapons policy, along with the maintained and constant threat of use, largely suggests we are no safer from nuclear weapons than we were since their first invention. Most notably, the Doomsday Clock set by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, of which Oppenheimer was a founder, in 2023 put the world at 90 seconds to midnight — the closest we have been in history. This means that we are much less secure than we have ever been in regards to nuclear war.
Fact: You can’t uninvent nuclear weapons, but you can reject them
The knowledge of how to build nuclear weapons is out there, one doesn’t even need to go to the dark web to find schematics. But, just because you can figure out how to do it, doesn’t mean a country will choose to do so. Many countries could make nuclear weapons but have decided not to do so – and the non-diversion of nuclear materials used for nuclear energy to weapons is verified by a highly effective international system of safeguards run by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This system could be adapted and extended to all countries once those with nuclear weapons have made the choice to disarm.
Dangerous technology can be and has been successfully controlled. Chemical and biological weapons have been outlawed, as have anti-personnel landmines, cluster bombs and blinding laser weapons. Useful and economically important industrial chemicals that proved to be health hazards or dangerous environmental pollutants have been banned and their use stopped worldwide. It is entirely possible and nuclear weapons are no different. There is nothing magic about them.
Fact: The horrific impact of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings created the nuclear taboo that has helped prevent the further use of nuclear weapons
Nuclear weapons haven’t been used in warfare since 1945. The reports, initially by the International Committee of the Red Cross and devastating images and stories that eventually made their way out of Hiroshima. John Hersey’s coverage in 1946 told the human impact, about the people with melted eyeballs, or people vaporised, leaving only their shadows etched onto walls, cementing the horrors of nuclear weapons use into the public’s imagination.
There are several moments in which the world came dangerously close to the use of nuclear weapons in warfare again, notably during the Cuban missile crisis when it was a combination of luck and the presence of individuals on the
ground willing to make their own minds up that prevented nuclear weapons being used.
More recently, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine under cover of repeated nuclear threats and with nuclear tensions on the Korean Peninsula running consistently high, the discussion of the use of nuclear weapons has become normalised which risks undermining the nuclear taboo.
Myth: Doesn’t deterrence mean never using nuclear weapons?
The theory of nuclear deterrence requires that the threat of use of nuclear weapons be credible. That means that countries who subscribe to nuclear deterrence doctrines are prepared to incinerate cities and mass murder civilians. It also requires leaders to act rationally and predictably- and history shows that’s not what happens in conflict situations. Deterrence is often given the credit for the long record of non-use of nuclear weapons, but much of it is due solely to good luck – which cannot be expected to last forever.
The risk of nuclear weapons being used, whether deliberately, by accident, or miscalculation, is real. It literally could happen at any moment. Worse, many experts assess that the risk of use of nuclear weapons is increasing, due in part to the increased speed of warfare enabled by the expanded use of artificial intelligence by the military. Unless nuclear weapons are eliminated, sooner or later they will be used – and the consequences will be catastrophic.
Myth: Doesn’t Russia’s use of nuclear blackmail over Ukraine show the need for nuclear deterrence?
While it seems Russia’s nuclear weapons may have deterred the US and NATO from direct military confrontation with Russia in defence of Ukraine, western countries have armed and financed Ukraine to the extent that it has been able to push Russian forces back and may even be able to expel them from the areas it has captured since the full-scale invasion started.
So the response to Russia’s actions, including its nuclear threats, has been large-scale coordinated action across diplomatic, economic, financial and military fields and Russia has failed to coerce other countries into not supporting Ukraine.
Furthermore, Russia’s attempt to use nuclear threats as a cover for its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, on the assumption other countries would be deterred from helping Ukraine, shows that nuclear deterrence is a flawed strategy and these weapons don’t preserve stability, but in fact undermine it.
Crimea invasion to cost Kiev 200,000 soldiers: Ex-Zelensky aide
By Al Mayadeen ,16 Jul 2023, https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/crimea-invasion-to-cost-kiev-200000-soldiers:-ex-zelensky-ai
Aleksey Arestovich says any invasion of Crimea would break Ukraine and its economy, adding that the country should negotiate peace in return for NATO membership.
Invading Crimea would be too costly for Kiev, a former advisor to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said this week.
The former advisor, Aleksey Arestovich, told Yulia Latynina, a Russian journalist, that such a campaign would lead to hundreds of thousands of casualties, adding that there are “few prospects” of taking over the Russian Peninsula via military means.
“What will be the cost? Extermination of 200,000 of the adult male population?” he rhetorically asked. Arestovich also warned that the event would lead to the total destruction of the Ukrainian economy.
He added that Kiev is “totally dependent” on Western governments for military supplies and aid, adding that a break in the supply chain would not only severely hinder their counteroffensive, but would also make it difficult for Ukrainian forces to defend their current positions.
“Let’s be honest: Our foreign policy goals in this war contrast sharply with the foreign policy goals of our sponsors and backers,” he said, adding that the West is willing to sacrifice Ukrainian lives in order to achieve its objectives.
“We need relations… based on real profits. That’s the only thing they [the West] understand.” He explained that “immoral policies… and inability to take serious decisions” are the “major weakness of the West.”
“Stop the war and join NATO? Many people would say it is a historical chance,” Arestovich underlined, stressing that this is the only consolation Ukraine can obtain from its venture into the conflict with Russia.
The former advisor described such a process as a “fairly good deal” for Ukraine. He said in order to convince Moscow to agree to a peace deal, the West has to partially lift the sanctions it imposed on Russian industries and entities.
The Russian government has consistently shown its readiness for peace talks with Kiev, blaming it for the closing diplomatic pathways, as the Ukrainian President signed a decree last year that prohibits talks with Russia as long as President Putin remains in power.
U.S. Cluster Bombs Have Arrived in Ukraine
SCHEERPOSTA, by EDITOR, July 15, 2023, By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com
AUkrainian general told CNN on Thursday that Ukraine has received a shipment of US cluster bombs, controversial munitions that have a devastating impact on civilians.
“We just got them, we haven’t used them yet, but they can radically change the situation on the battlefield,” Gen. Oleksandr Tarnavskyi said.
The Biden administration announced last week that it was sending Ukraine cluster munitions in the form of 155mm artillery shells as part of an $800 million weapons package.
It’s not clear how many have arrived in Ukraine so far, but Pentagon officials have said they will provide “hundreds of thousands” of rounds.
The cluster munitions are being provided using the Presidential Drawdown Authority, which allows President Biden to ship Ukraine weapons directly from US military stockpiles……………………………….
The administration’s rhetoric on cluster munitions has radically changed since the beginning of the war. On February 28, 2022, the White House said the use of cluster bombs in the Ukraine war would be a “potential war crime.” https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/15/u-s-cluster-bombs-have-arrived-in-ukraine/
Russia prevents Ukraine attack on Crimea’s Sevastopol
Russian forces claim to have shot down nine Ukrainian drones over the Crimean port of Sevastopol on Sunday.
Jerusalem Post, By REUTERS, JULY 16, 23
Russia’s Sevastopol Naval baseRussian forces claim to have shot down nine Ukrainian drones over the Crimean port of Sevastopol on Sunday.
Russia’s defense ministry said its forces had prevented Ukraine from attacking the Black Sea port of Sevastopol on Sunday, destroying seven aerial and two underwater drones.
“This morning, an attempt by the Kyiv regime to carry out a terrorist attack by seven unmanned aerial vehicles and two unmanned underwater vehicles on objects on the territory of the Crimean Peninsula near the city of Sevastopol was thwarted,” the ministry said on the Telegram messaging app.
There were no casualties and no damage, the ministry added.
It said that two aerial drones were shot down over the Black Sea at a great distance from the coastline, while five were intercepted by Russia’s electronic warfare forces.
Two unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV), known as underwater drones were discovered in the northern part of the Black Sea, and destroyed by fire, the ministry said………………………
No comment from Ukraine
…….Ukraine almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine but has been saying in recent months that destroying Russia’s military infrastructure helps Kyiv’s counteroffensive. https://www.jpost.com/international/article-750213
Russia’s Northern Fleet will not send nuclear sub to main Navy parade
Amid Baltic Sea NATO expansion and growing east-west mistrust, Russia has decided not to sail a nuclear-powered submarine from the Kola Peninsula to the annual high-profile naval parade taking place in St. Petersburg on July 30.
Barents Observer, By Thomas Nilsen, July 14, 2023
State-controlled TASS news agency quotes unnamed military officials confirming the non-appearance of Russia’s most potent naval assets.
“Nuclear submarines of the Northern Fleet will not take part in the Main Naval Parade 2023, unlike previous parades,” the new agency’s source said.
This is the first time since the current Navy Day format was established in 2017 that no nuclear subs from the Northern Fleet sail south to participate. ………………………………………………….
With Finland joining NATO in April and Sweden given the green light just ahead of this week’s NATO Summit in Vilnius, Russia is surrounded by NATO members in the Baltic Sea. Previous Northern Fleet subs at Naval Parade in St. Petersburg:
20% of Ukrainian weapons destroyed in just two weeks – New York Times
Rt.com 15 Jul 23
Kiev’s Western-supplied tanks and armored vehicles “all burned,” one soldier told the newspaper
The Ukrainian military lost 20% of the equipment it sent to the battlefield during the first two weeks of its counteroffensive, the New York Times reported on Saturday. This high attrition rate was reportedly a key factor in Kiev’s decision to pause the operation.
Beginning in early June, Ukrainian forces launched a series of attacks all along the front line from Kherson to Donetsk. Advancing through minefields and without air support, the Ukrainian military lost 26,000 men and more than 3,000 pieces of military hardware, according to the latest figures from the Russian Ministry of Defense.
Ukrainian losses were at their highest during the initial two weeks of the offensive, the New York Times claimed, citing unnamed American and European officials. These officials said that up to 20% of Ukraine’s tanks and armored vehicles were destroyed in this period, including many Western-provided vehicles.
For some units, Western equipment was lost at an even higher rate, the Times continued, citing figures from a pro-Ukrainian organization. Ukraine’s 47th Mechanized Brigade – a NATO-trained unit – apparently lost 30% of its 99 Bradley Infantry Fighting vehicles in two weeks, while the 33rd Mechanized Brigade lost nearly a third of its 32 German-made Leopard tanks in a single week………………………………………………….
With little territorial gain to show for Kiev’s losses, Western officials have expressed disappointment at the pace of the offensive, according to a steady trickle of media reports since mid-June. Zelensky and some of his top officials still insist that the decisive phase of their counteroffensive has yet to begin.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s Western backers are running low on ammunition, particularly 155mm artillery shells. US President Joe Biden admitted this week that “we’re low” on these shells, explaining that the shortage compelled him to send controversial cluster munitions in their stead. The US has also stalled on approving the training of Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets, something that Kiev insists will help restart the faltering counteroffensive. https://www.rt.com/russia/579761-ukraine-counteroffensive-vehicles-lost/
The NATO ultimatum to Ukraine – invitation to win by winter or die
John Helmer Dances with Bears, Tue, 11 Jul 2023
For all its public talk, NATO has agreed on a secret six-month plan for Ukraine. It’s a case of do or die by December.
Either the Ukrainian forces, firing everything the NATO allies can give them — from US cluster munitions to Franco-English Storm Shadow missiles and German Leopard tanks — will gain territory and advantage over the Russians; or else the Kiev regime will be destroyed and must fall back on Lvov while NATO beats its own retreat westward from the Polish and Romanian borders — its military capabilities defeated but its Article Five intact.
This is hardly a secret. “Whatever is achieved by the end of this year will be the baseline for negotiation”, the Czech President Petr Pavel, former Czech and NATO army general, announced on the first day of the summit meetings in Vilnius. There is no more than a six-month window of opportunity, Pavel added, which will “more or less close by the end of this year”. After that, “we will see another decline of willingness to massively support Ukraine with more weapons.”
……………………………..Kissinger acknowledged there is a problem for the Biden Administration to combat European government opposition to NATO membership for the Ukraine. The Ukrainians must fight against that, too, he implied. So long as the US is backing Zelensky, it is necessary for the Ukrainian offensive to demonstrate small territorial advantages; abandon more ambitious ones (like Crimea); and only then agree to ceasefire talks. Although Kissinger told Zelensky he had been speaking with US “military people”, he gave no hint that they had warned him the Ukrainians are facing defeat on the battlefield, and the loss of both territory and European support.
The Russian General Staff calculation is different:
At the current rate of battlefield casualties – announced by the Defense Ministry counting conservatively — by December 31 the Ukrainian army will lose between 75,000 and 100,000 dead, and up to 300,000 wounded and out of combat. In parallel, the destruction of NATO weapons will accelerate faster than the NATO states can resupply and deliver them, or replacement parts to keep the surviving stock going at the front. By the time Russia’s General Winter takes control of the battlefield, there will be too few Ukrainian fighting men left, and insufficient weapons and ammunition, to resist the start of the Russian offensive. A demilitarized zone of mines and cluster bomblets will have taken shape over several hundred kilometres west of the surrendering Odessa, Nikolaev, and Kharkov; they will abandon Kiev when Kiev abandons them.
………………………………………………………….. The text of the 22-page, 90-paragraph agreement by the NATO allies declares……………………………..
(the communiqué promises interoperability with NATO weapons management, and joint command-and-control for warfighting against Russia (China too).)
“”We have decided to establish the NATO-Ukraine Council, a new joint body where Allies and Ukraine sit as equal members to advance political dialogue, engagement, cooperation, and Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. It will provide for joint consultations, decision-making, and activities [sic], and will also serve as a crisis consultation mechanism between NATO and Ukraine.”
The impact is pushing the NATO allies to withdraw back over the Vistula and Oder Rivers towards Berlin and Paris with this admission:
“We will be in a position to extend an invitation to Ukraine to join the Alliance when Allies agree and conditions are met.”
They don’t agree now.The conditions will not be met, cannot be met, if and when – after the coming winter — the capitulation of the Ukrainian armed forces will have been conceded, and the retreat to Lvov begun, leaving the demilitarized zone (DMZ) and Novorossiya to the east.
French General Staff officers have been conceding this retreat by camouflaging it as “not a French war, perhaps an American one”. According to another retired French general, Jean-Bernard Pinatel:
“I absolutely do not believe in the success of the Ukrainian counteroffensive…the biggest disadvantage Ukraine faces is [not] so much the amount of military equipment, which by the way is not always of high quality, because the West supplies Kiev with outdated equipment. Ukraine’s greatest vulnerability is its people, or rather a lack of them. Its best fighters have long been dead.“
………………………………….. On the front, the current daily casualty rate for Ukrainian forces, men and weapons, since July 1 looks like this: [picture on original]
If the daily loss of men averages 500 per day, and the rate of Ukrainian offensive operations continues, then by December 31, the Ukrainian losses will have totalled another 75,000 men. If the rate of attacks is escalated, and the number of killed in action (KIA) averages 715, as it did in the first week of this month, the total losses will reach 107,000.At that point the strategic reserves of men will have been exhausted.
The losses of tanks, other armoured vehicles, artillery and rocket launchers are also increasing at a faster rate than NATO can repair or replace.
The new summit communiqué promises
“to further step up political and practical support to Ukraine as it continues to defend its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity within its internationally recognised borders, and will continue our support for as long as it takes.”
For as long as it takes is short because the time is running out for the Kiev regime; and its replacement in Lvov will have neither the space, the range, nor the manpower to recover the territory it has lost…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://johnhelmer.net/the-nato-ultimatum-to-ukraine-invitation-to-win-by-winter-or-die/#more-88341
Drone crashes in Russian ‘atomic city’ – governor
Rt.com 14 July 23
There were no injuries or damage to critical infrastructure resulting from the incident in Kurchatov, Roman Starovoyt says
A drone went down and exploded early on Friday in the Russian city of Kurchatov, an industrial hub adjacent to the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant, the governor of Kursk Region has said.
“Fortunately, none of the residents were hurt. Critical facilities weren’t damaged,” Roman Starovoyt wrote on his Telegram channel.
…….. Earlier, several Telegram channels reported a loud explosion in Kurchatov. Videos from the scene also captured locals finding what appear to be parts of a drone on the ground.
The city of Kurchatov is located in Kursk Region, which shares a border with Ukraine. It was founded in the late 1960s and named after physicist Sergey Kurchatov, dubbed the “father” of the Soviet atomic bomb.
The Kursk Nuclear Power Plant sits roughly 4 kilometers (2.4 miles) outside urban areas in Kurchatov. The Energotex company, which makes equipment for nuclear reactors, is also based in the city, home to 40,000 people.
A “powerful explosion” was also reported by local media overnight in the city of Voronezh, the capital of the region to the east of Kursk. ……………………………………… more https://www.rt.com/russia/579676-kurchatov-drone-attack-reports/
US could stop Ukraine conflict instantly – Hungary
Washington has not explained to its allies why it wants hostilities with Russia to continue, Viktor Orban said
The US wants the conflict in Ukraine to continue and has failed to explain its reasons to NATO allies, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said.
Orban told national broadcaster Kossuth Radio that if Washington wished, it could stop the fighting at a moment’s notice, as Kiev is fully dependent on the West in the fight against Russia.
The Hungarian leader was speaking on Friday morning, after returning from the NATO summit in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. During the event, the US-led military bloc declined to extend to Kiev a roadmap for membership. Hungary has stood out among members of the alliance by consistently criticizing Western policies on the Ukraine crisis.
“If the Americans wanted it, peace would come the next morning. Why Americans don’t want that is a question that puzzles the entire world,” Orban said. “We didn’t get an answer at the NATO summit.”………………………………………….
Orban went on to warn that if NATO were to admit Ukraine now, it would trigger a world war. He also highlighted the risks incurred by Western states sending increasingly sophisticated military hardware to Kiev………………………………….
The prime minister predicted that the conflict will drag on, and EU nations – including Hungary – will bear the economic cost, including high inflation. https://www.rt.com/news/579682-orban-us-ukraine-conflict/
White House: Ordering the Selected Reserve and Certain Members of the Individual Ready Reserve of the Armed Forces to Active Duty
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including sections 121 and 12304 of title 10, United States Code, I hereby determine that it is necessary to augment the active Armed Forces of the United States for the effective conduct of Operation Atlantic Resolve in and around the United States European Command’s area of responsibility. In furtherance of this operation, under the stated authority, I hereby authorize the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of Homeland Security with respect to the Coast Guard when it is not operating as a service in the Navy, under their respective jurisdictions, to order to active duty any units, and any individual members not assigned to a unit organized to serve as a unit of the Selected Reserve, or any member in the Individual Ready Reserve mobilization category and designated as essential under regulations prescribed by the Secretary concerned, not to exceed 3,000 total members at any one time, of whom not more than 450 may be members of the Individual Ready Reserve, as they deem necessary, and to terminate the service of those units and members ordered to active duty…………………………………………………..
JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR.
THE WHITE HOUSE,
July 13, 2023.
IN KOSOVO, NATO ALLIES BLAME DEPLETED URANIUM FOR CANCER CASES
“This happens every time I visit a site where NATO fired depleted uranium,” my interpreter Dzafer Buzoli commented. “In all the villages nearby people will tell you about a high rate of rare cancers.”
hundreds of Italian veterans who served in Kosovo have successfully sued their defence ministry for cancers their courts accepted were linked to DU exposure in the Balkans.
With Britain and America supplying the toxic ammunition to Ukraine, Declassified investigates the long-term health impact on one of the few countries where the weapon has been fired in anger.
DECLASSIFIED UK, PHIL MILLER, 13 JULY 2023
“………………………………………… Jutting up from the roadside are tattered American and NATO flags around a camouflaged stone column bearing the twin headed eagle emblem of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The rebel movement took the territory nearly a quarter century ago, after US jets pummelled Serb soldiers on the surrounding Ceja mountain with at least 286 rounds of depleted uranium – a chemically toxic and radioactive heavy metal made from nuclear waste.
Such airstrikes were repeated all across the border zone in 1999, driving the Serb-dominated Yugoslav army out of Kosovo within 78 days. Bill Clinton and Tony Blair relished the victory, basking in their newfound popularity. Roads and children would bear their names, spelt locally as Klinton and Tonibler. But this “humanitarian intervention” – designed to protect Kosovar Albanians from ethnic cleansing – has left a bitter legacy in the very communities it was meant to save.
“We have 20 to 30 people a year with cancer here.”
Sipping a macchiato at a roadside cafe opposite the KLA monument, Adil is pleasantly surprised when he hears a journalist has come to ask about cancer in the village. “My father has just died from it,” he tells my translator, as he gladly pays for our drinks. “We have 20 to 30 people a year with cancer here.”
Without prompting, he links the illnesses to weapons used in the war. “We had so many bombs dropped here because we are near the border. A small bomb infects the whole surrounding area.” When told Britain is sending depleted uranium tank shells to Ukraine, Adil exclaims: “I feel sorry for them. I wouldn’t want anyone to experience it.”
Our conversation arouses interest from KLA veterans at the cafe. One of them, who normally works abroad, volunteers to show us a bomb crater. The others fear reprisals if they publicly criticise NATO. Their small country, about half the size of Wales, still depends on the US-led alliance for security against Serbia, which refuses to recognise Kosovo’s independence.
Jumping in my rented Vauxhall Corsa, we gingerly head off road through several fields to a heap of soil sprinkled with wild flowers. “This is one of the spots that was hit six times with depleted uranium,” the veteran informs us. “The crater was five or six metres deep and seven metres wide. We brought healthy soil to put on top, in order to reduce radiation for the people.”
Despite a warning from a Danish NGO, villagers were growing vegetables in the vicinity. The veteran puts the number of local cancer cases even higher than Adil – claiming there are 50-60 patients in the village, many of them young people.
At the last census in 2011, Zhur had a population of under 6,000 – suggesting a cancer rate of around 1%. That would be three times the worst rate in the European Union. The veteran had likely made an overestimate, but I was to hear similar disturbing stories throughout this former conflict zone.
Hidden hazards
NATO’s use of depleted uranium (DU) in Kosovo was not confirmed until the year after the war, amid panic over ‘Balkan syndrome’. Italian peacekeepers who took over many of the bombed out Yugoslav army bases were going down with leukaemia.
In March 2000, NATO’s chief, Labour peer George Robertson, belatedly told the UN’s Kofi Annan that “approximately 31,000 rounds” of DU had been fired “throughout Kosovo during approximately 100 missions”. He said the weapon was deployed “whenever the A-10 engaged armour”, referring to the US air force’s Warthog ‘tankbuster’.
One of the most powerful aircraft ever built, the Warthog’s giant gatling gun can fire a blizzard of 30mm bullets with ultra-dense depleted uranium cores, knocking out tanks in seconds. But its speed is superior to its accuracy. Typically, 90% of rounds miss the target. They spread out over 500 square metres, burying several metres into soft ground.
Upon impact, the rounds partially vaporise and produce a dust that is dangerous for those nearby to inhale, posing a risk to surviving Serb soldiers, local communities and incoming peacekeepers.
Lord Robertson’s admission that the weapon was used paved the way for the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and World Health Organisation (WHO) to inspect target sites – although scientists struggled to find them.
After months of intense internal chicanery over obtaining more accurate maps, they spent 24 days during 2000-1 surveying Kosovo for the twin threat posed by DU: radiation and heavy metal toxicity – which could cause cancer or birth defects.
Much hinged on their findings. A negative outcome would undermine NATO’s humanitarian credentials and hamper the return of refugees from their temporary asylum in western Europe.
Ultimately, their reports were fairly inconclusive. When the WHO came to where I was now in Zhur and the Ceja mountain, they found the “precise location of the targeted site was difficult to pinpoint since access was restricted due to the presence of unexploded cluster bombs” – another controversial weapon dropped by NATO.
This meant scientists were only able to study an area in which they found just two out of nearly 300 rounds of the depleted uranium ammunition fired here. Based on tests of this small sample, the UNEP dismissed any radiation risk but said “from a toxicological point of view the exposure might be significant.”
The experts lamented: “It is unsatisfactory that the risk cannot be assessed quantitatively because the targeted area could not be investigated in its entirety” and warned “it would be prudent to complete the investigation after the area has been made safe.”
Judging by the agricultural approach towards the blast craters that I found in Zhur, there has been no follow up survey. The UNEP’s press office confirmed to me their organisation had never returned to the site, despite their own recommendation, nor has it done any long term monitoring of the community’s health.
The NATO public affairs office in Kosovo also could not confirm it had followed up on UNEP’s recommendation to reinspect Zhur. Instead, the Atlantic alliance seized on some United Nations documents that suggested “sites with depleted uranium pose no significant health risks to the population”.
NATO told me: “This is the scientific evidence. And it has been consistent.” Yet many of these same reports urge precaution and long term monitoring – something those concerned with “scientific evidence” would surely be keen to undertake?
………….towards the mediaeval Ottoman city of Prizren…..
Turning off at Rikavac roundabout ……………
The only signs of the war were three crumbling concrete walls that resembled a bombed out Serb barracks. As I stood near the site, a passerby pulled over to talk. Despite being unaware of what was fired here, he explained that 20-30 people a year were dying from cancer in his nearby village. “The state of Kosovo isn’t doing anything to help the community,” he complained, before driving away.
“This happens every time I visit a site where NATO fired depleted uranium,” my interpreter Dzafer Buzoli commented. “In all the villages nearby people will tell you about a high rate of rare cancers.”
………………………………..He fears depleted uranium is the next tragedy for Kosovo, ever since his mother died in 2015 from a short battle with cancer aged 52. Buzoli turned to their local oncologist for answers. “He told me very informally it was because of what they had thrown at us during the war,” alluding to depleted uranium.
The doctor then emigrated from Kosovo, concerned for his family’s health.
…………….“The power plants were operating at full capacity before the war and we never had this number of cancers,” he insists. “I believe depleted uranium is the cause. When you read about how hard it is for the population in Kosovo, southern Serbia and northern Albania – all these towns near the border where the weapon was fired have almost the same problem of high cancer.”
……………………………The director of Kosovo’s main oncology clinic in Pristina, Dr Ilir Kurtishi, warned last month that 890 new cases of cancer had been detected already this year, which local media described as “alarming”. ………….
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………… many areas NATO liberated with depleted uranium are where Kosovo now relies upon to grow its food.
………………………..my guide, Branko, confirmed the monks were concerned about the possible health consequences, which have featured heavily in Serbian media. “Depleted uranium is the gift that keeps giving from the US,” he noted sarcastically. “And now they’re giving it to Ukraine, one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat.”
……………………………….Italian peacekeepers had conducted extensive demolition work there after the war, before discovering DU rounds in the wreckage. In the decades since, hundreds of Italian veterans who served in Kosovo have successfully sued their defence ministry for cancers their courts accepted were linked to DU exposure in the Balkans.
…………………………The International Campaign to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW), which conducted its own study in the Balkans, said “sites may require ongoing testing of groundwater”, warning that “estimates of how long this may need to be done run into centuries”.
The group believes “no systematic decontamination has been undertaken on any sites in Kosovo”. Even if authorities in Pristina wanted to embark on that route, they may struggle to afford it.
In neighbouring Montenegro, where NATO fired depleted uranium at just one site, the clean up costs are daunting. To decontaminate 480 rounds, which took just 12 seconds to fire, Montenegro spent over a quarter of a million US dollars and devoted 5,000 working person days.
Kosovo has more than 100 such sites.
Radoniq
Six miles north of Gjakova lies Lake Radoniq, a vast reservoir that supplies drinking water for the city and many of southern Kosovo’s 200,000 inhabitants. Yet even this breathtakingly beautiful location was not spared from attack with depleted uranium.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. it seems that no one cited has done a long-term study of people’s health in the parts of Kosovo where the weapon was used.
Buzoli is sceptical that these international agencies which rely so much on Western funding can be impartial on such a sensitive subject. He admits he doesn’t have all the answers, but rightly insists that’s not his role.
“If you are a doctor or a scientist, please come to Kosovo to do research,” he appeals. “Take soil samples, take air samples, take water samples, and come out with a neutral report that helps us understand how bad it is.” https://declassifieduk.org/in-kosovo-nato-allies-blame-depleted-uranium-for-cancer-cases/—
US to deploy 3 armored brigades to Poland and Romania, positioning B-52s in Alaska, closer to Russia
According to Larry Johnson in the interview below (statement made beginning at the 20:44 mark),three days before the NATO meeting in Lithuania, Biden — in a secret meeting with military national security advisors — made the decision to send 3 US armored brigades (15,000 men) to undisclosed locations in Poland and Lithuania (this is in addition to the 3,000 reservists activated to go to Europe to provide reinforcements for Operation European Resolve, which is directed against Russia). In this meeting, it was also decided to move US B-52 bombers from North Carolina to Alaska, so that they could be closer to Russia.
Johnson says that the US and NATO are acting on the mistaken belief that Russia is weak and cowardly, and that this will result in some military disaster for the West in the coming weeks.
http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2023/07/ania-larry-and-me.html
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France detonated nearly 200 nuclear ‘tests’ in French Polynesia — now this activist is calling for accountability
By Bobby Macumber, Dan Smith and Alice Matthews for Stories from the Pacific, 14 July 23 https://news.google.com/articles/CBMiVGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvcGFjaWZpYy9udWNsZWFyLXRlc3RpbmctZnJlbmNoLXBvbHluZXNpYS1oaW5hLWNyb3NzLzEwMjU4NTkzMNIBAA?hl=en-AU&gl=AU&ceid=AU%3Aen
Hinamoeura Cross was seven years old when France tested its last nuclear bomb in 1996 in French Polynesia.
It was detonated deep underground on the atoll of Fangataufa, in a deep shaft drilled into volcanic rock, and sent a white shockwave into the air, visible on grainy television cameras at the time.
“I don’t have any memory of it,” Hina told Stories from the Pacific.
“I was growing up. I never learned about the consequences of nuclear bombs at school. I didn’t even know there had been so many.”
Three to five was the figure Hina had in mind when she was younger.
But in fact, by the time France finished its testing program on the atolls of Fangataufa and Moruroa, around 190 nuclear “tests” had been conducted.
Nuclear explosions had been conducted in lagoons, dropped from planes and suspended from helium balloons. After international pressure, testing moved underground.
The largest was codenamed Canopus, which was a two-stage thermonuclear test that exploded in 1968 while suspended from a balloon.
It was around 200 times more powerful than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The combined effect of the testing was equivalent to a Hiroshima-sized nuclear bomb exploding in French Polynesia every week for 14 years, Hina said
“Today, our ocean is totally contaminated. It’s like a poison,” she said.
“I really feel that in my blood I have been poisoned because of those nuclear tests and we have so many thousands of Tahitian people who are sick … you can’t find a family without cancer.
“And it’s really hard because they don’t understand the consequences of the nuclear tests because they’re not aware today.”
Subjects in school touched on the nuclear bombs dropped in Japan, but Hina said nothing was taught about her country’s own more immediate history — and the health consequences.
France initially said only 10,000 people were at risk of radiation exposure as a result of the nuclear activity.
But a later investigation by a team of researchers from Princeton University, journalism group Disclose, and environmental group Interprt claimed 110,000 people were potentially exposed to toxic radiation.
Hina herself was diagnosed with Leukaemia at 24, while her grandmother, mother, aunt, and sister all had thyroid cancer.
And, she said, to add insult to injury, the compensation scheme in place was complex and “not at all impartial”.
There is one hospital and two clinics on the island of Tahiti, and many islanders are forced to fly to Paris for treatment.
“Today, it’s French Polynesia and all the population that pays for all this, the cost of the illness … and it costs a lot for us,” she said.
Calling a spade a spade — or a bomb a bomb
Hina’s diagnosis was a shock that jolted her into action.
Becoming an anti-nuclear activist, she started by posting articles and links online and eventually addressed the United Nations on the topic.
Now a newly elected member of Parliament in Tahiti, she’s pushing for better in-country medical treatment and to “educate and denuclearise Polynesian memories”.
It starts, she said, with “calling a spade a spade”. Nuclear tests were still nuclear bombs.
“The fact that there were no people that were being attacked … it was the same bomb,” she said.
“I really think that using the term test totally minimises the consequences.”
Another priority is getting France to acknowledge what happened and making her fellow Tahitians aware.
French Polynesia is of strategic importance to France, and Hina said the government was pushing to silence the fight.
“They don’t want to talk about the nuclear history. They don’t admit what happened.”
Hina also hopes to begin a foundation, allowing Polynesians to reclaim the nuclear narrative as well as advocate for anyone with radiation-related sickness to be treated in Polynesia.
Although chemotherapy has kept her leukaemia at bay thanks to an early diagnosis, not everyone is so lucky.
“I think it’s absolutely disgraceful that we don’t have a medical system that’s equal to the damage suffered by these 193 nuclear bombs,” she said.
“But I really thought that maybe if I have this courage, that will motivate other people to stand up and share their story, to speak about the cancers that we we have in our family, because … [many people] have cancer, but they don’t really realise the impact of the nuclear bombs.”
1 This Month
PLEASE OPPOSE HR 8255 AND S.3639 – bills would accelerate satellite deployment, with no environmental review or safeguards – https://ncstd5li.quorum.us/campaign/169331/
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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