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Britain’s nuclear submarine base at risk from climate change

 The United Kingdom’s nuclear military bases are being threatened by climate change, according to a recent report from the Nuclear Consulting Group. Paul Dorfman, the report’s author, said that the U.K.’s coastal nuclear infrastructure is vulnerable to flooding, due to rising sea levels and more frequent and severe storms.

“All of the models or predictions, all of the analysis, all of the data has really begun to run hot,” Dorfman told CNBC. “It’s good that people are taking notice, but it’s bad that this new data is showing us that we really do need to get our acttogether.”

The report also found that coastal flooding frequency is estimated to increase by between 10 and more than 100 in several European locations. In the United States, “the Pentagon has recently reported that
79 nuclear military bases will be affected by rising sea-levels and frequent flooding,” Dorfman added.

 CNBC 21st Feb 2022

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2022/02/21/faslane-britains-nuclear-submarine-base-at-risk-climate-change-is-to-blame.html

February 24, 2022 Posted by | climate change, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Russian President Vladimir Putin orders Russian forces to ‘maintain peace’ in eastern Ukraine’s two breakaway regions.

On Monday, local time, a Biden administration official said, however, the area was already controlled by Russian-backed separatists and Moscow, in practice, and that Mr Putin’s decision to send troops he called peacemakers into the breakaway regions of Ukraine did not as yet constitute a further invasion that would trigger a broader sanctions package.

“This isn’t a further invasion since it’s territory that they’ve already occupied,” the official said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin orders Russian forces to ‘maintain peace’ in eastern Ukraine’s two breakaway regions.

President Vladimir Putin has ordered his Defence Ministry to dispatch Russian forces to “maintain peace” in eastern Ukraine’s two breakaway regions, the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, after he said Moscow would recognise their independence.

Key points:

  • Vladimir Putin, joined by Russia-backed separatist leaders, signed a decree recognising the independence of the breakaway regions
  • In his address, Mr Putin delved into history as far back as the Ottoman empire and as recent as the tensions over NATO’s eastward expansion
  • French President Emmanuel Macron earlier said the US and Russian leaders had agreed in principle to hold a summit

The Kremlin decree, spelled out in an order signed by Mr Putin, did not specify the size of the force to be dispatched, when they would cross the border into Ukraine nor exactly what their mission would be.

Hours later, a Reuters reporter witnessed unusually large columns of military vehicles and hardware, including tanks, moving through Donetsk, the largest city of the self-proclaimed republic.

Mr Putin earlier signed decrees to recognise the two breakaway regions as independent statelets………………………

On Monday, local time, a Biden administration official said, however, the area was already controlled by Russian-backed separatists and Moscow, in practice, and that Mr Putin’s decision to send troops he called peacemakers into the breakaway regions of Ukraine did not as yet constitute a further invasion that would trigger a broader sanctions package.

“This isn’t a further invasion since it’s territory that they’ve already occupied,” the official said.

But, the official added, that a full invasion could come at any time.

The United States will continue to pursue diplomacy with Russia until “tanks roll,” another official said.

“Russian troops moving into Donbas would not itself be a new step. Russia has had forces in the Donbas region for the past eight years … They are currently now making decisions to do this in a more overt and … open way,” the official said……………………

In his lengthy televised address, Mr Putin, looking visibly angry, described Ukraine as an integral part of Russia’s history and said that the regions in eastern Ukraine were ancient Russian lands and that he was confident the Russian people would support his decision. 

Russian state television showed Mr Putin, joined by Russia-backed separatist leaders, signing a decree recognising the independence of the two Ukrainian breakaway regions, along with agreements on cooperation and friendship.

Under the two identical friendship treaties — submitted by Mr Putin for ratification by parliament — Russia has the right to build bases in the separatist regions and they, on paper, can do the same in Russia.

The parties committed to defend each other and signed separate agreements on military cooperation and on recognition of each other’s borders.

Their 31-point treaties also say Russia and the breakaway statelets will work to integrate their economies. Both regions are former industrial areas in need of massive support to rebuild after eight years of war with Ukrainian government forces.

The 10-year treaties are automatically renewable for further five-year periods unless one of the parties gives notice to withdraw. 

Defying Western warnings against such a move, Mr Putin had announced his decision in phone calls to the leaders of Germany and France earlier, both of whom voiced disappointment, the Kremlin said.

The UN Security Council will meet publicly on Ukraine at 2am GMT (1pm AEDT) on Tuesday, a Russian diplomat said, following a request by the United States, the United Kingdom and France………………………..

EU will respond to ‘illegal act’ with sanctions against Moscow

According to another White House statement, Mr Biden had also discussed with France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Olaf Scholz “how they will continue to coordinate their response on next steps”. ………………..

The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called out Mr Putin’s decision to recognise the separatist regions as independent as “a violation of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine” in a statement read by his spokesman, Stéphane Dujarric.

“The Secretary-General urges all relevant actors to focus their efforts on ensuring an immediate cessation of hostilities, protection of civilians and civilian infrastructure, preventing any action and statements that may further escalate the dangerous situation in and around Ukraine, and prioritising diplomacy to address all issues peacefully,” Mr Dujarric said.

…………….

With his decision to recognise the rebel regions, Mr Putin brushed off Western warnings that such a step would be illegal, would kill off peace negotiations and would trigger sanctions against Moscow.

“I deem it necessary to make a decision that should have been made a long time ago: to immediately recognise the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic,” Mr Putin said.https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-22/putin-orders-russian-peacekeepers-ukraine/100849964

February 22, 2022 Posted by | politics international, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Damage limitation and US nuclear strategy 

if America is able to target all of Russia’s missiles, this creates an incentive for the United States to try a damage‑limiting preventative attack that otherwise it would never have attempted.

It is within this situation that the Kremlin’s concern over even limited BM can be placed

the current situation demonstrates how damage limiting capabilities driven by the intent to save lives can lead to unwanted results – including not only Russia’s new weapons, but potentially also novel systems and more missile silos in China. As such, the recent recommitment of world leaders to the notion that nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought provides a small but welcome step on the path to maintaining the uneasy peace.

Damage limitation and
US nuclear strategy  https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/damage-limitation-and-us-nuclear-strategy VICTOR ABRAMOWICZ 20 Feb 22,

In an atomic world, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.    Almost four years ago, I argued in The Interpreter that Vladimir Putin’s decision to pursue a range of weapons specifically designed to defeat America’s Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) system was irrational behaviour, being an expensive solution to a problem which did not exist.

In particular, while the Kremlin worried that BMD might make Washington immune to Moscow’s existing missiles, in turn opening Russia to coercion or destruction, I observed that America’s 44 interceptor missiles could not hope to defeat Russia’s 1,700 warheads. And while the United States could potentially manufacture hundreds more, there was no indication that Washington planned to do so – and if this occurred, Russia’s existing countermeasures including chaff and jammers represented more cost-effective solutions.

Yet in the years since, having learned more about American nuclear warfighting policies, I’m forced to conclude that there may be more sense to Russia’s actions than first meets the eye – and they do not even require a view of Washington as a villain.

In particular, while the United States and Russia’s primary aim is to avoid a nuclear war, should this arise both of course still seek to minimise harm to themselves, including by saving the lives of millions of their citizens. In turn, both sought to achieve this imperative in many common ways – such as storing medicines or building civil bunkers.

Yet one key means, referred to as “damage limitation” appears to have only been pursued by America, perhaps because of its extraordinary expense. Damage limitation refers to the vastly complex task of seeking to be able to destroy (mainly by atomic attack) most and ideally all of Russia’s missiles before they are launched, including fixed silo-based and mobile land and sea-based weapons.

Washington’s interest in being able to pre-emptively ruin all these types of rockets is obvious and arguably even benign: they present a threat to millions of US lives. But by potentially successfully seeking such a capability it has also dramatically increased, from Moscow’s perspective, the risk of nuclear war.

This outcome reflects that both sides’ mobile assets in particular have been the crux of stability by enabling an “assured second strike”. That is, by being moveable and hence hard to destroy in an atomic first strike, such weapons helped ensure such an attack would never come as they promised obliteration in return.

Yet if America is able to target all of Russia’s missiles, this creates an incentive for the United States to try a damage‑limiting preventative attack that otherwise it would never have attempted.

It is within this situation that the Kremlin’s concern over even limited BMD can be placed, as any such defences further-increase the imperative to attack. So, while some Russian rockets would almost certainly survive a first strike, their reduced numbers are much more likely to be defeated by even a handful of interceptors. And should Washington manufacture more, even out of purely defensive intent, the appeal of a pre-emptive attack increases in turn.

In this light, Moscow’s novel weapons appear much more rational. They do not require unreasonable American malevolence, simply a recognition of Washington’s aim to save US lives.

After all, in a real nuclear crisis, what would a future president do if advised that America had a possibly fleeting fix on all of Russia’s weapons? What if, in such a scenario, Washington realised that Moscow had detected – and might at any moment fire upon – an American attack submarine that had been trailing a Russian missile‑sub, noting such vessels each hold enough warheads to wipe out the United States?

In such situations the incentives to strike first would be enormous. And to offset this grim calculus, even small numbers of BMD-immune weapons can disproportionately rebalance the scales and thus present a sensible investment.

Of course, Russia’s developments are only one means to address the evolving nuclear dilemma, and a variety of more peaceful measures have been suggested also. Yet the current situation demonstrates how damage limiting capabilities driven by the intent to save lives can lead to unwanted results – including not only Russia’s new weapons, but potentially also novel systems and more missile silos in China. As such, the recent recommitment of world leaders to the notion that nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought provides a small but welcome step on the path to maintaining the uneasy peace.

February 22, 2022 Posted by | politics international, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Ukraine Crisis Could Trigger a Nuclear Catastrophe – Tilman Ruff


The Ukraine Crisis Could Trigger a Nuclear Catastrophe,  https://johnmenadue.com/the-ukraine-crisis-could-trigger-a-nuclear-catastrophe-nobody-wants/ By Tilman Ruff 21 Feb 22,

  There are two potential nuclear dimensions to a war in Ukraine, which could create a massive humanitarian disaster and have profound global implications.

In the first week of February, US officials estimated that if war using conventional weapons broke out, 25,000 to 50,000 civilians could die in Ukraine, along with 5,000 to 25,000 Ukrainian and 3,000 to 10,000 Russian soldiers, and that between 1 and 5 million people would flee their homes and become refugees.

The toll could be much greater, especially if the conflict spread to neighbouring countries and NATO forces became embroiled. As Max Fisher wrote in the New York Times on 15 Feb: “threats and bluffs work best when they are backed up by action, increasing the risk of a war that neither side may truly want”, and “the more both sides try to make their threats credible, for example by relocating troops, the more they heighten the risk of a miscalculation that could careen out of control. He quotes Columbia University international relations scholar Dr. Keren Yarhi-Milo: “Every day that we’re not resolving it, we are increasing the percentage chance that something will go wrong”.

Conventional wars can be horrific enough. There must scarcely be a family in Russia or Ukraine without a relative among the close to 14 million Russians or 7 million Ukrainians who died during World War II, and Ukraine has been scarred by repeated invasions from both east and west. Modern weapons have greater destructiveness, range, accuracy while military spending has continued to increase to record levels even through the COVID-19 pandemic, to a staggering USD1981 billion in 2020. NATO members account for 56%, the US alone for 39%, and Russia for 3.1% of the global total.

 Eruption of armed conflict in Ukraine risks involving not only Ukraine and Russia (and Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine it has occupied), but neighbouring countries where Russian forces are stationed – Belarus and Modova, and many of NATO’s 30 members in Europe and across the Atlantic, notably the US, with forces stationed in many other NATO countries.

However a war in Ukraine could have two potentially devastating nuclear dimensions.

 Nuclear power plants as potential ‘dirty’ bombs

Nuclear power plants are huge potential pre-positioned radiological weapons.

Ukraine, site of the world’s worst ever civilian nuclear disaster in Chernobyl, has 15 operating nuclear power reactors, in 4 nuclear plants in different parts of the country. The largest is Zaporozhye, in Enerhodar in the southeast of the country. It lies on the east (towards Russia) side of the Dniepr River, 330km west of the city of Donetsk and 200 km from the border of the Donetsk region, part of which has been taken over by Russian/Russian-backed forces. The site has 6 nuclear reactors of 950 Mw each, producing about a quarter of Ukraine’s electricity. It is the second largest nuclear power plant in Europe and one of the 10 largest in the world.

Like most nuclear power plants, highly radioactive and hot used reactor fuel is onsite in cooling ponds, as the fuel needs to be actively cooled for several years, before being put in dry assemblies, which are also on site. As reactor fuel becomes more radioactive the longer it is inside a reactor, cooling ponds often contain more radioactivity in the spent fuel than the reactors themselves do, but are housed in simple buildings without the multiple engineered layers of containment reactors typically have. As we saw in the Fukushima nuclear disaster, reactor meltdowns and explosions releasing vast amounts of radioactivity do not require a high level military assault breaching reactor cores. They can happen simply from disruption to the constant power and circulating water system required to keep reactors and spent fuels pools cool.  At the Fukushima Daiichi site at the time of the disaster, 70% of all the radioactivity on site was in the spent fuel pools.

Nobel laureate physicist Prof Joseph Rotblat described in his landmark 1981 study “Nuclear radiation in warfare” that precision-guided bombardment or a commando raid with conventional weapons could rupture a reactor’s containment and pressure vessel, but that very serious radiological consequences could ensue even without rupture of the pressure vessel if the reactor cooling system were put out of action. He stated that: “In a pressurized water reactor [all Ukraine’s operating power reactors are of this type] the melt-down of the core could occur within less than one minute after the loss of coolant”.

War in Ukraine could turn nuclear if any of its nuclear power reactors and/or spent reactor fuel cooling ponds were damaged sufficiently to cause loss of coolant meltdown and/or explosion. The Russian-made Buk missile which brought down Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 in eastern Ukraine in 2014, killing all 298 people on board, appears to have been launched by Russian-backed separatists. A nuclear power plant may be an attractive high-impact target, including for proxy groups who may not be under direct military control but have access to high level weaponry.

Russia is one of the growing number of states actively engaged in cyberwarfare. Nuclear power plants and other nuclear facilities have repeatedly been targets of cyberattack, including infamously the  Stuxnet computer virus targetted by Israel and the US to disrupt Iran’s uranium enrichment centrifuges in 2009.

Rotblat also described how the radioactive fallout from a damaged reactor, and even more so from an explosion in a spent fuel pool, could release more and longer-lived radioactivity than detonation of a nuclear bomb.

Thus nuclear power plants are effectively huge pre-positioned potential radiological weapons.

War turning nuclear

 If fighting erupted in Ukraine, it would almost certainly begin with conventional weapons. Many of these have sufficient accuracy, range and destructiveness to put targets that are of high military value to Ukraine, Russia and NATO members at risk, even far from any frontline – like military and air bases; intelligence, command and logistical centres. Both Russian and NATO/US military doctrines allow first use of nuclear weapons in situations where the prospect of military defeat looms

Russia has 1600 deployed strategic nuclear weapons, and 1912 tactical nuclear weapons. Most of the delivery systems for the latter can carry either conventional or nuclear warheads, increasing the risk of worst-case thinking and precipitous and over reaction on the other side, and the danger of the threshold to nuclear escalation being crossed.

The  US has 1650 deployed strategic nuclear weapons, and 100 B-61 nuclear bombs deployed to bases in Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and Turkey for delivery by aircraft of those nations.

in addition,  France has 280 deployed nuclear weapons, and the  UK 120 deployed nuclear weapons.

If the threshold of use of nuclear weapons is crossed, those who have managed nuclear weapons and nuclear war plans tell us the risks or rapid and large-scale escalation are very high. The current Ukraine crisis involves not only complicated history, politics and personalities, but hundreds of senior officials; many thousands of civilian and military officials and advisors; multiple enormous complex and dispersed command, control and communications systems; a web of often unconnected communications across many time zones and languages; and through Russia and NATO involves the 4 nations that possess all the world’s 3750  currently deployed nuclear weapons, including all the 2000 nuclear weapons on high alert, ready to be launched on short notice (counted in minutes).

There is a lot that can go wrong.

Diplomacy to remove the danger of nuclear escalation is desperately urgent and needs to progress to negotiations among all nuclear armed states to eliminate their nuclear arsenals under strict verification and timelines. Otherwise it will be a matter of time before our luck finally runs out.

Tilman Ruff Tilman Ruff AO is Co-President of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (Nobel Peace Prize 1985); and co-founder and founding international and Australian Chair of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, the first to an entity born in Australia.

February 21, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Nuke Power at the Brink of Bankruptcy, War, Apocalypse

Nuke Power at the Brink of Bankruptcy, War, Apocalypse  https://www.rsn.org/001/nuke-power-at-the-brink-of-bankruptcy-war-apocalypse.html?print=1 Harvey Wasserman/Reader Supported News 19 Feb 22,

Fifteen atomic reactors in Ukraine currently spew out massive quantities of radiation alongside the smoldering ruin of Chernobyl Unit 4.War could easily—-and soon!—-turn each into a nuke of mass destruction, blasting into the eco-sphere clouds of lethal fallout far in excess of actual A-Bombs, including Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Like the rest of the global fleet, Ukraine’s reactors are sitting ducks, set to explode. They symbolize an monumental technological failure, left in the radioactive dust by the rise of renewables. But a devious, deceitful industry is desperate to kill green power, even if its dirty, decayed rump reactors could mushroom as you read this.

The essential unity between atomic power and weapons has been set since birth. France’s Macron now explicitly argues that “peaceful” reactors are needed to sustain the French atomic weapons program.

Cesium fallout from the four exploded Fukushima reactors exceeds that from Hiroshima and Nagasaki by a factor of more than 100. A compendium of studies at Chernobyl indicates a human death toll of more than a million. People and animals died in droves at Three Mile Island. After six decades of development, no US “Peaceful” atomic reactors can get private insurance against the liabilities of a catastrophic accident.

But the 400 nukes operating worldwide (93 in the US) threaten just that.

They burn at 571 degrees Fahrenheit, heating the planet. They spew carbon 14 and other greenhouse gases as they gouge their fuel, burn their innards and plague us all with unmanageable wastes.

Construction began on ALL US nukes at least thirty years ago. They’re embrittled, cracked, under-maintained, obsolete, ticking time bombs. Many are operating far beyond original design specs. Their workforces are aging and retiring. They sit in earthquake zones and flood plains, vulnerable to hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis, sabotage, war.

Attempts to build more of these old-style water-cooled clunkers have catastrophically failed at Olkiluoto in Finland, Flamanville in France, V.C. Summer in South Carolina (abandoned at a cost of $10 billion), Vogtle in Georgia…where two reactors that may never open have soared past $30 billion, potentially bankrupting the Peach State.

Powered with a mix of plutonium, the explosion at Fukushima Unit Three threw up a familiar mushroom cloud. Millions of gallons of radwaste there are poised to be poured into the Pacific.

Yet the nuke industry wants to paint itself green. It hides its massive carbon emissions…ignores the gargantuan quantities of heat and wastes each reactor pours into the eco-sphere….kills billions of land and sea creatures every day.

The reactor industry’s clearest present danger centers on its non-stop radiation releases and millions of tons of radioactive offal that can’t be managed.

But possible war in Ukraine (or elsewhere) could dwarf Chernobyl in a matter of moments. As both the Russians and the Ukrainians well know, these are pre-deployed Atomic Bombs, easily turned Apocalyptic by conventional weapons, advanced cyber-attack or simple incompetence.

The latest stab at reviving this zombie technology centers on “Small Modular Reactors.” Some models are meant to be cooled by liquid sodium, which has already caused an explosive 1959 radiation release at Santa Susana, north of Los Angeles, and a 1966 melt-down at Fermi I, south of Detroit.

All SMRs are years away from mass production. If built, they’ll emit huge quantities of heat and greenhouse gasses. They’ll divert enormous quantities of resources that could otherwise go for renewables that are cleaner, cheaper, safer, more reliable, more job-creating, more quickly deployed…and that that won’t explode, create radioactive waste or heat the planet.

SMRs today currently work primarily as scams grifting billions of public dollars into the pockets of the likes of Bill Gates. They’re virtually certain to fail. One or more are likely to explode.

They can never compete with the solar, wind, battery and LED/efficiency technologies revolutionizing global green energy. With an astonishing record of meteoric advances, these four pillars of Solartopia have pushed all fossil/nuclear technologies into history’s economic waste bin. As long as there are rooftops bare of solar panels, and offshore sites ready for wind turbines, the real market for any other form of new energy is marginal at best.

But the corporate nuke pushers don’t care. Their mainly theoretical new reactors can never compete. Their old ones are uninsured, falling apart, spewing heat, carbon, radiation and death while losing mega-tons of YOUR money.

AND they can blow up… as at Fukushima and Chernobyl.

With war coming right at them, ALL reactors need to be shut NOW…before they ignite the next Apocalypse…which YOU will pay for with your life, health, family, fortune and future.

Harvey Wasserman’s America at the Brink of Rebirth: The Organic Spiral of Us History can be had via www.solartopia.org. The Strip & Flip Selection of 2016: Five Jim Crows & Electronic Election Theft, co-written with Bob Fitrakis, is at www.freepress.org.

February 19, 2022 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UK trained Ukraine military, including a thousand-strong neo-Nazi unit.

The battalion’s founder has said that Ukraine should “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen[subhumans].”
UK Denies It Agreed to Train Neo-Nazi Linked Ukraine Unit  Consortium News, February 15, 2022 Ukraine’s National Guard says that last year the U.K. military agreed to start training its forces, which include a thousand-strong neo-Nazi unit, Matt Kennard reports. The U.K. Ministry of Defence disputes the claim.

By Matt Kennard  Declassified U.K.

  • Photos of meeting in Kiev last year – which U.K. personnel thought was private – were posted by Ukraine’s National Guard (NGU)
  • U.K. MoD tells Declassified it has no plans to train NGU and that British commander was misquoted
  • But U.K. military is engaging with NGU and aware of “the peculiarities of [its] combat operations”
  • Apparent member of another far-right Ukrainian group was trained at Sandhurst in 2020

Details and photos of the meeting in the capital, Kiev, were posted in Ukrainian on the website of Ukraine’s National Guard (NGU) last year.

Declassified understands the U.K. Ministry of Defence (MoD) believed the September 2021 meeting to be private and should not have been publicized. There is no mention of the meeting in any U.K. records that are publicly available.

Three British commanders of Operation Orbital — the U.K. military’s training mission in Ukraine — are pictured, alongside three NGU officers. They sit around a table taking notes.

The MoD refused to give Declassified the names of the U.K. personnel who attended the meeting, citing operational and personnel security issues.

However, the NGU report names Lt Col Andy Cox, deputy commander of Orbital, while two other British officers are pictured, one with his name tag prominently displayed.

Orbital, which was launched in 2015, has so far only trained Ukraine’s regular armed forces. Expanding it to include the National Guard would be controversial due to sensitivities around the far-right sympathies of some of its units.

The NGU was formed in 2014 to incorporate an array of paramilitary and volunteer battalions which were fighting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. This included a neo-Nazi unit, the Azov Battalion, which reportedly has a thousand soldiers.

Now an official regiment within the NGU — and therefore part of Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs – Azov fighters have been pictured in eastern Ukraine with Nazi insignia such as swastikas and SS runes on their helmets.

The battalion’s founder has said that Ukraine should “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen[subhumans].”…………………………….

In June 2018, Canadian military officers were briefed by leaders from the Azov Regiment and were photographed with its officials despite warnings about the unit’s Nazi ideology……………………………..     https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/15/uk-denies-it-agreed-to-train-neo-nazi-linked-ukraine-unit/

February 19, 2022 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament marks 40th anniversary of Nuclear Free Wales Declaration

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in Wales is to mark the 40th
anniversary of the Nuclear Free Wales Declaration with a webinar, a new
website, and an exhibition touring Wales. The exhibition will visit
locations in all 8 of the County Councils that existed in 1982, including
at the Eisteddfod in Tregaron, and finishing in the Senedd in early
December.

Wales was declared ‘nuclear free’ on 23 February 1982 after
local authorities around the country refused a UK Government instruction to
draw up civil defence plans, including the establishment of nuclear bunkers
from which the aftermath of a nuclear war would be “managed”.

After opposition to the government’s plans, all eight county councils
eventually refused to participate and passed resolutions declaring
themselves nuclear-free zones. The Nuclear Free Wales Declaration
emphasised that the whole of Wales was declared a nuclear-free zone, and
that the people of Wales wished to live in peace without the threat of
nuclear war. Nation Cymru 17th Feb 2022https://nation.cymru/news/exhibition-to-mark-40-years-since-the-nuclear-free-wales-declaration

February 19, 2022 Posted by | UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ukrainian Pacifists Say US, NATO and Russia Share Responsibility to Avoid War.

Truthout, Amy Goodman & Juan González, Democracy Now! 16 Feb 22,

ATO officials have joined the U.S. and other Western nations in saying they have yet to see evidence that Russia is pulling back some troops near the shared border with Ukraine, as Russia claimed earlier this week. We speak with Yurii Sheliazhenko, executive secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, who says, “Both great powers of the West and the East share equal responsibility to avoid escalation of war in Ukraine and beyond Ukraine.”TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

……….. We go now to Kyiv, to the capital, where we’re joined by Yurii Sheliazhenko, the executive secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement and a board member of the European Bureau for Conscientious Objection, also member of the board of directors at World BEYOND War and a research associate at KROK University in Kyiv.

……………………………………………… The escalation towards major war in Ukraine is unnecessary. Our government became part of it when we recklessly took side of the West in global power struggle. And instead, we should be neutral country. We should commit to universal peace. People of Ukraine, as well as all people in the world, want to live in peace and be happy. Both great powers of the West and the East share equal responsibility to avoid escalation of war in Ukraine and beyond Ukraine and give up nuclear stockpiles threatening to kill all life on the planet because of these absurd political quarrels. I believe all governments should join Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. If global leaders fail to negotiate sustainable peace in good faith, instead of blame game and violent settlement of their power dispute on the local battlefield in Ukraine, it will be a shame. But, unfortunately, Ukraine became a battlefield of the new Cold War between the United States and Russia.

…………………. it is part of the influence of — both great powers created social networks of clientele, nationalist clientele of Russia and nationalist clientele of the West. So, when Ukraine became battlefield of the new Cold War between United States and Russia, these two great powers are competing for control over Ukraine, using and inflating in their global power struggle militant nationalism of Ukrainian government and similar militant nationalism of pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk. Peaceful life of Ukraine was destroyed by these militant nationalisms and great power struggle. Eight-year bloodshed took thousands of lives of civilians, turned millions into refugees and internally displaced persons, devastated our economy and debilitated our society.  https://truthout.org/video/ukrainian-pacifists-say-us-nato-and-russia-share-responsibility-to-avoid-war/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=5cab6a32-d17c-4e19-8dfe-d79b2658a92c

February 17, 2022 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Any missile launch may be perceived as nuclear strike amid tensions

Any missile launch may be perceived as nuclear strike amid tensions — security official, Tass, 16 Feb 22,

“Hardly anyone, except specialists, comes to realize that modern systems spot launches of missiles quite quickly but cannot identify whether these missiles carry nuclear weapons,” Mikhail Popov noted

…………….. Commenting on a statement by German Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer that the West must be increasingly decisive in its deterrence of Russia, demonstrating its readiness to employ nuclear weapons, the deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council pointed out that it is “quite irresponsible” for an official of this level.

“Moreover, considering that Germany does not possess nuclear weapons, this statement can be viewed as a call on the United States to use its nuclear potential, including tactical nuclear charges deployed at forward bases in NATO countries,” the security official said.

An official of this level must be aware that in the event of employing nuclear weapons, US facilities on Germany territory will be subjected to a retaliatory or a retaliatory counter strike, he pointed out.

It would be interesting to hear an answer to the following question: In the event of a nuclear apocalypse, would the surviving electors forgive such short-sighted behavior by their country’s defense minister?” the security official said.  https://tass.com/defense/1404657

February 17, 2022 Posted by | EUROPE, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Terrifying “nuke map” reveals danger zone if nuclear bomb dropped on YOUR city

DEAD SCARY Terrifying “nuke map” reveals danger zone if nuclear bomb dropped on YOUR city, Jamie Harris, Technology and Science Reporter, The Sun 16 Feb 2022  

EVER wondered what the devastating impact would be if a nuclear bomb dropped on your area?

A terrifying tool reveals how some of the most destructive weapons known to humankind would pan out if launched on any spot around the world.

The NUKEMAP estimates everything from possible casualties to radioactive fallout.

Real weapons tested by North Korea, Russia and the US are among the detonations that users can simulate.

Even catastrophic bombs such as the ‘Little Boy’, which killed up to 166,000 people in Hiroshima in 1945, are available to try.

Expert Professor Alex Wellerstein came up with the idea using declassified nuclear weapons effects data.

Since launching it in 2012, the historian has seen 220million virtual detonations carried out on his site.

At one point he said the site picked up on a possible visit originating from North Korea………….

The so-called ‘King of the Bombs’, aka the Tsar Bomba’s maximum design yield (100 Mt) which was tested by the Soviet Union, has proven to be the most popular nuke to try.

If it was launched on London right now for example, casualties could be over 5.9million people.

Dropping it on New York would be even more devastating, with an estimated death toll of more than 8million people…………… https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/17670602/nukemap-nuclear-bomb-simulator/

February 17, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The goal of Russia is to destroy NATO by exposing its impotence.

By 2008 NATO had become a bloated edifice largely unrecognizable from the organization that had been created at its founding, in 1949. Its appetite for expansion knew no bounds, with membership offers being dangled before two former Soviet Republics, Georgia and Ukraine, and military engagements being initiated in North Africa and the Persian Gulf.

Once NATO began expanding, both in terms of membership composition and scope and scale of its non-European military commitments, it was obvious to any observer exercising a modicum of intellectual curiosity that NATO existed for the sole benefit of the United States.

Exposing NATO

By militarizing the Ukraine crisis, Russia has exposed the absolute military impotence of NATO. First and foremost, after dangling the bait of NATO membership before Ukraine for the past fourteen years, NATO was compelled to confess that it would not be able to come to the defense of Ukraine in case of any Russian military invasion because Article 5 only allowed collective defense to be invoked for NATO members, which Ukraine is not.

Germany, Biden was saying, is little more than a colony of the United States.

The Ultimate End of NATO,   Russia’s goal is not to destroy Ukraine—this could be accomplished at any time. Rather, the goal of Russia is to destroy NATO by exposing its impotence, writes Scott Ritter.  Consortium News 11 Feb 22, 

” …………………………………………. A Messy History.

Students of history might be experiencing what Yogi Berra once famously called “Déjà vu all over again” when examining the frenetic activities undertaken by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) today, as it responds to what it alleges is a provocative Russian military buildup along the Russian-Ukrainian border.

The Trans-Atlantic alliance is a strange amalgam of political, economic, and military belief systems cloaking a mass of 30 nations who manage the day-to-day activities of their organization through a consensus-based, collective decision-making process that is as unwieldy as it is inefficient.

Originally formed as a collective of 12 nations united by the desire, as the first secretary-general of NATO, Lord Ismay, once quipped, “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”, the Trans-Atlantic alliance was, first and foremost, a club comprised of nations which had two things in common—a shared belief in the primacy of democratic governance, and a desire to be protected under the umbrella of American military power.

Early on the alliance witnessed a period of expansion, as it grew to 16 nations following the admittance of Turkey, Greece, Spain, and Portugal. These 16 nations served as the foundation of NATO throughout the Cold War, united in their determination to stand up to any potential Soviet aggression targeting the territory of western Europe.

NATO was always, from a political standpoint, a mess. Strong pro-communist movements in France and Italy led to the unseemly situation where the intelligence services of an allied nation, the United States, were engaged in manipulating the domestic political affairs of two ostensible allies to keep the communists out of power.

West Germany carried out its own unilateral Ostpolitik, seeking better relations with Soviet-occupied East Germany, much to the consternation of the United States. France, offended by what it (rightly) believed to be the dominance of the United States in the military command structure of the alliance, withdrew its military from NATO command authority. And Turkey and Greece were engaged in their own regional Cold War which, in 1974, went hot over the island of Cyprus.

The glue that held the alliance together was the collective defense provisions of Article 5 of the NATO Charter, which provides that if a NATO Ally is the victim of an armed attack, each and every other member of the Alliance will consider this act of violence as an armed attack against all members and will take the actions it deems necessary to assist the Ally attacked.

For much of the Cold War, the NATO alliance was configured militarily so that there was little doubt as to what actions would be taken, with a standing NATO army deployed in West Germany in constant combat readiness, prepared to repel any attack by the Soviet Army and its Warsaw Pact allies. Likewise, NATO maintained significant air and naval forces deployed in the Mediterranean Sea ready to confront any Soviet aggression there. These forces were anchored by a massive standing U.S. military presence comprising hundreds of thousands of troops, tens of thousands of armored vehicles, thousands of combat aircraft, and hundreds of naval vessels.

This full-time presence of concentrated combat-ready military power, prepared as it was to fight at the drop of a hat, gave the Article 5 obligation far more gravitas than it perhaps deserved. The reality of Article 5 is such that, upon its invocation, Allies can provide any form of assistance they deem necessary to respond to a situation based upon the circumstances.

While this assistance is taken forward in concert with other Allies, it is not necessarily military in nature and depends on the material resources of each country. In short, Article 5 leaves to the judgement of each individual member country to determine how and what it would contribute in the case of its invocation.

With the end of the Cold War in 1990-91 came the dismantlement of this full-time combat-ready military force. The unified nature of the NATO military component that existed in the 1980’s ceased to exist barely ten years later, with each member state carrying out its own demobilization and restructuring based upon domestic political requirements, and not the requirements of the alliance.

NATO Goes on Offense

During this time NATO also watched its long-held mantra of being a purely defensive alliance fall to the side as it engaged in offensive military operations on the soil of the former Republic of Yugoslavia, and non-member, and a offensive bombing campaign against Serbia, despite Serbia not having attacked any NATO member.

This deconstruction of NATO’s military capabilities and status as an exclusively defensive organization took place hand in glove with a decision by NATO to expand its membership to include the former members of the Warsaw Pact, beginning with the accession of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in 1999. The enlargement of NATO was seen as achieving two objectives—from the NATO perspective, it brought most of Europe together into a single collective of allied parties who, because of their membership, would contribute to the overall stability of Europe.

But there was another perspective at play, that being that of the U.S.. While NATO responded to the U.S. invoking of Article 5 after the 9/11 attacks, providing airborne surveillance aircraft for North American patrols and naval forces in the Mediterranean Sea, several core members, led by Germany and France, balked at becoming involved in the post-9/11 military misadventures of the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This prompted then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to make a quip denigrating “Old Europe” at the expense of “New Europe.” The continued expansion of NATO eastwards, absorbing all of the former nations of the Warsaw Pact along with three former Soviet Republics in the Baltics not only pushed NATO’s geopolitical center of gravity further east, but also put NATO on a collision course with Russia, whose opinion most NATO members had conditioned themselves to ignore.

NATO went on to provide military and police training support to Iraq in 2004, following that nation’s defeat at the hands of a military coalition which included the U.S., U.K., and Poland providing combat troops, and Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands providing political support.

Likewise, NATO contributed significant military forces to reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. These troops operated under Article 4 authorities after the U.S. brought the Afghan situation post-9/11 to the attention of the general membership, which voted to authorize member states to deploy to Afghanistan in support of U.S. reconstruction and nation-building operations.

In 2011, NATO engaged in offensive military operations in Libya, part of a larger political campaign to remove the Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddafi, from power.

A US Adjunct

By 2008 NATO had become a bloated edifice largely unrecognizable from the organization that had been created at its founding, in 1949. Its appetite for expansion knew no bounds, with membership offers being dangled before two former Soviet Republics, Georgia and Ukraine, and military engagements being initiated in North Africa and the Persian Gulf.

While the bloated organizational structure of NATO looked impressive on paper, there were two realities that no amount of puffing and posturing could obviate. First and foremost was the absolute dearth of real military power on the part of the non-U.S. NATO components.

 To support and sustain their respective military commitments to Afghanistan, the major NATO nations involved—Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, France, and Italy—were forced to cannibalize their overall military capability to surge their respective military components forward. Even then, none of these nations could accomplish their Afghan mission without the logistical support provided by the United States.

This over-reliance upon U.S. military capacity only underscored the inconvenient reality that NATO had become little more than an adjunct of U.S. foreign and national security policy. The U.S. had always played an oversized role in NATO. If this was singularly focused on preserving European security, the non-U.S. members of NATO could deceive themselves into believing that they were co-equal partners in a defensive-oriented Trans-Atlantic arrangement.

Once NATO began expanding, both in terms of membership composition and scope and scale of its non-European military commitments, it was obvious to any observer exercising a modicum of intellectual curiosity that NATO existed for the sole benefit of the United States.

Nothing drove this point home more than the humiliation NATO suffered at the hands of the U.S. when it came to the abandonment of the Afghan reconstruction mission. The decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was made unilaterally by the United States, without consultation. NATO, faced with a fait accompli, had no choice but to do as ordered, and leave Afghanistan with its tail between its legs.

The ultimate humiliation was yet to come. Nothing takes place in a vacuum, and the expansion of NATO, combined with its offensive re-orientation, drew the ire of Russia, which took extreme umbrage over the encroachment of a military alliance no longer bound by the constraints of collective self-defense, but rather imbued with a post-Cold War posture built around the notion of containing and constraining a Russia which was recovering from its post-Soviet collapse malaise and, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, was actively restoring it position as a regional and global power.

NATO Fissures

Russia had, since 2001, been sounding a claxon call about NATO expansion and the threat it posed to Russian security interests. These calls were ignored by NATO and its U.S. masters, largely because they believed Russia to be too weak both militarily and economically.

While NATO chased post-9/11 ghosts in the Middle East and Afghanistan at the behest of its American overseer, Russia worked to reform its economy and military. In 2008 Russia defeated Georgia in a short but violent war precipitated by a Georgian military assault on the breakaway territory of South Ossetia. In 2014, Russia responded to the U.S.-orchestrated Maidan coup that ousted the democratically-elected president of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovich, by annexing Crimea and throwing its support behind pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region of Ukraine.

The important thing to note about the current crisis in Ukraine is that while the underlying issues are solely the byproduct of NATO overreach, the timing of the crisis is based upon a Russian timetable defined by purely Russian goals and objectives. The goal of Russia is not to destroy Ukraine—this could be accomplished at any time. Rather, the goal of Russia is to destroy NATO.

This will not be accomplished through the direct use of military force, but rather the indirect threat of military action which forces NATO to react in a way which exposes the impotence of an organization which long ago lost its raison d-etre, collective defense, and instead flounders under the weight of a mission—the containment of Russia—it cannot achieve, and which its membership is not united in pursuing.

Here are a few statements of fact—the Russian military would defeat any force NATO can assemble in a stand-up conventional fight. The entire notion of collective self-defense is predicated on the ability to deter any potential adversary from considering military action against a NATO member because the outcome—the total defeat of the attacking party—was never in dispute.

While a truly defensive alliance would have the moral authority to call out the build-up of Russian military power around Ukraine as un-duly provocative, NATO has long since lost the ability to apply that label to itself with any degree of seriousness. From the standpoint of Russia, when the same “defensive” alliance which bombed its ally Belgrade and worked to overthrow the leader of Libya puts its sights on acquiring Ukraine and Georgia as members, such actions can only be viewed as aggressive, offensively oriented-measures that function as part of a broader anti-Russian campaign.

Exposing NATO

By militarizing the Ukraine crisis, Russia has exposed the absolute military impotence of NATO. First and foremost, after dangling the bait of NATO membership before Ukraine for the past fourteen years, NATO was compelled to confess that it would not be able to come to the defense of Ukraine in case of any Russian military invasion because Article 5 only allowed collective defense to be invoked for NATO members, which Ukraine is not.

Moreover, the “massive” economic sanctions that NATO has promised to unleash in lieu of a military response have turned out to be as impotent as NATO’s military power. Despite what the political leadership of NATO and the United States may say to the contrary, there is no unity of purpose when it comes to imposing sanctions on Russia in the event of a military incursion into Ukraine.

In short, any sanction package that targets Russian energy and/or access to banking institutions will hurt Europe far more than Russia. While the United States continues to push for Europe, and in particular Germany, to wean itself off Russian energy supplies, the fact is there is no viable alternative to Russian energy and, moreover, Europe is increasingly recognizing that the U.S. position has less to do with European security and more to do with a play by the U.S. to grab the European market for itself.

Under normal conditions, the U.S. cannot compete with Russia in terms of price and volume when it comes to natural gas deliveries. If, through sanctions, the U.S. can cut off Europe from Russia, then the U.S. will be able to impose its own energy products on Europe at prices that otherwise would be uncompetitive.

NATO’s Realization

The individual members of NATO are beginning to awaken to the reality that their organization is little more than an impotent tool of American global hegemony. Hungary has cut its own gas deal with Russia, in defiance of U.S. directives to pull back. Croatia and Bulgaria have made it clear that they will not be deploying troops in support of NATO posturing on Ukraine.


Turkey has stated that it views the Ukraine crisis as little more than a thinly disguised effort by NATO and the U.S. to weaken Turkey by forcing it to fight Russia in the Black Sea. But perhaps the most telling moments came when the two European powerhouses of NATO, Germany, and France, were compelled to come face to face with the reality of their subservient role vis-à-vis the U.S..

When French President Emmanual Macron flew to Russia to try and negotiate a settlement to the Ukraine crisis, he was confronted with the reality that Russia won’t negotiate with France without the U.S. first expressing support for the positions being put forward by the French President. The U.S. matters; France does not.

Likewise, the German chancellor was forced to stand mutely during his visit to the White House while U.S. President Joe Biden “promised” that he would unilaterally shut down the NordStream 2 pipeline project, even though the U.S. had no role to play in the construction and administration of the pipeline. Germany, Biden was saying, is little more than a colony of the United States.

The final nail in the NATO coffin came on Feb. 4, when the Russian president met with Chinese President Xi Jinping at the opening of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. The two leaders issued a 5,000-plus word joint statement in which China threw its weight behind Russia’s objection to NATO expansion into Ukraine.

The Sino-Russian joint statement was a de facto declaration that neither Russia nor China would allow the U.S.-led “rules based international order” being promulgated by the Biden administration to go forward unchallenged. Instead, the two nations announced that they will be pursuing a “law based international order” which draws on the United Nations Charter for its authority, in contrast to unilateral rules which only serve the interests of the U.S. and small blocs of allied nations.

A Different World

The world has fundamentally changed. NATO literally has no relevance. Its last gesture of defiance lays in the deployment of forces into eastern Europe to bolster the defensive capabilities of that region in accordance with Article 5. The forces deployed—a few thousand American paratroopers, and a smattering of other contingents from other NATO nations—not only cannot defeat a Russian adversary, but doesn’t even provide a modicum of deterrence value should Russia be inclined to shift its sights away from Ukraine toward Poland and the Baltics.

What NATO doesn’t realize is that Russia has no intention of invading either Ukraine or eastern Europe. All Russia has done is demonstrate the empty shell that NATO has become by underscoring just how empty the Article 5 promise of collective defense truly is.

In this regard, one should view NATO’s current round of muscle flexing as the modern-day equivalent of Picket’s Charge, the high-water mark of the Trans-Atlantic alliance. In the weeks and moths to come, NATO will be faced with the reality that Russia is not invading anyone, and that the muscle flexing it is currently engaged in is not only not needed, but worse, unsustainable.

The fractures exposed in NATO’s membership when it comes to Ukraine will only grow larger over time. It may take years for NATO to go away, but let no one be fooled by what is happening—NATO is finished as an alliance.

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm, and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD.  https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/11/the-ultimate-end-of-nato/

February 14, 2022 Posted by | politics international, Russia, weapons and war | Leave a comment

USA’s plan – far right Ukrainian militia to attack Russia-speaking Donbass Region – drawing Russian support – USA then to claim Russia aggression

Al Ronzoni <aronzonijr@msn.com> wrote:

The World Socialist Website also confirms from sources in Donetsk that it actually looks like Ukraine will make the first move v. them and Luhansk. Then, if Russia responds in any way, that will constitute the “invasion,” then Menendez “Mother of All Sanctions” will be imposed and Nord Stream 2 will be cancelled.  Hell, even if Russia doesn’t actually do anything, the fact that fighting will be taking place , ‘fog of war” etc. can be used to still claim Russia has invaded. No doubt Biden and US leadership think this can be “managed” with Russia embroiled in a protracted conflict in the Donbass Region that can be capitalized on to marginalize Russia’s economic relations with Europe, in favor of the US and to make further NATO expansion, perhaps now including Sweden and Finland, easier. 

Another brilliant essentially neo-con type plan. What could go wrong?

US accelerates troop deployments as Biden threatens “world war” with Russia, WSWS,Alex Lantier, Johannes Stern, 12 February 2022  

As Washington and its NATO allies work to militarily surround Russia, US officials yesterday declared that a US-Russia war is imminent.

Yesterday, Washington announced the deployment of 3,000 troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to bases in Poland, which borders Ukraine. Britain and Germany will send hundreds of soldiers to strengthen NATO battlegroups in Estonia and Lithuania. This comes after NATO countries have for weeks delivered Javelin anti-tank missiles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and Turkish TB2 Bayraktar drones to the Ukrainian regime in Kiev.

Nearly two decades after Washington invaded Iraq based on lies that it had “weapons of mass destruction,” US imperialism and its NATO allies are concocting a strategy to trigger a war with Russia, a nuclear-armed power, under conditions where they can blame Russia for it. Reports of mounting Ukrainian military activity in the Donbass region suggest that a NATO-backed military provocation can be staged there to trigger the war.

The narrative NATO is peddling—that it is acting to defend Ukraine from Russia—is a pack of lies. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly declared that Russia’s military posture is not consistent with plans for an all-out invasion of Ukraine. Moreover, when reporters challenged US claims that Russia is preparing an attack, State Department spokesman Ned Price could do nothing but argue that undisclosed “intelligence information” meant his claims were true.

In 2014 … the NATO powers backed a putsch in Kiev, where far-right militias toppled a pro-Russian Ukrainian president and set up a NATO puppet regime. As these militias backed by NATO mercenaries attacked Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine like Donbass and Crimea, these areas broke off from Ukraine, with Crimea voting to rejoin Russia. Since then, far-right Ukrainian militias have faced off against Russian troops in Crimea and Russian-backed militias in the Donbass.

…………. Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine are reporting highly advanced NATO war preparations. Yesterday, Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) leader Denis Pushilin cited Biden’s call on US citizens to leave Ukraine, warning that war was imminent. “The US President, probably, given US influence in Ukraine, has information that allows him to make such statements and take such a position. … Ukraine may attack at any moment. Ukraine has everything ready for that: the concentration of forces and means makes it possible to do it at any moment, as soon as a political decision is made.”

On February 9, the DPR Militia’s Deputy Chief Eduard Basurin said Ukrainian tanks are taking positions only 15 kilometers from theirs, near Avdeyevka, Gorlovka and Novgorodskoye. Yesterday, Basurin said Ukrainian forces also deployed an S-300 missile system.

Such deployments violate the 2015 Minsk accords, which temporarily froze the Ukraine conflict and sent the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor the front line. Basurin said, however, that Kiev regime forces are using electronic jamming to prevent OSCE observers from using drones to observe these deployments. “It seems that OSCE observers are quite content with a situation where it is impossible to record violations by Ukraine,” he said.

Significantly, DPR forces last month warned, based on their sources in Kiev, that they expect an attack to come as soon as Ukrainian armored assault brigades are assembled and in position.

On January 28, Basurin said: “According to our intelligence, the Ukrainian General Staff under the guidance of US advisers at the Ukrainian Defense Ministry is putting final touches to a plan for offensive operations in Donbas. The date of aggression against the people’s republics will be set when the attack groups have been created and the operation’s plan approved by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council.”

These are conditions in which NATO could goad Russia, a nuclear power, into war. Were such an attack to begin, DPR forces would likely require Russian military assistance to avoid being overrun by far-right Ukrainian militias, which call for killing Russians and have bombed Russian-speaking Ukrainian cities near Russia’s borders. If Moscow intervened against this, however, it would provide grounds for NATO war propaganda, denouncing Russian aid to the DPR as an “invasion” of Ukraine……….. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/02/12/ukra-f12.html

February 14, 2022 Posted by | politics international, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine, weapons and war | 1 Comment

The RAND Corporation’s plan for regime change in Moscow.


RAND Corporation study calls for regime change in Moscow, http://space4peace.blogspot.com/2022/02/rand-corporation-study-calls-for-regime.html Bruce Gagnon,13 Feb 22,

Obama’s ambassador to Ukraine made a trip to US-NATO training base in western Ukraine (where the Nazis predominate). US Special Forces are rotated into the base from Ft. Carson, Colorado to train the Kiev regime’s Army. Many of the Nazis have been brought into this ‘new military unit’.

More than 27 million people in the former Soviet Union died during Hitler’s WW II invasion. Imagine how Russians today feel when they see the US arming, training and directing Nazi forces to attack the Russian-ethnic citizens living in the Donbass region of Ukraine, right next to the Russian border.

Imagine how Moscow felt when they first read this RAND Corporation study. When we look at current events can we notice the direct connection to the points from this study listed below? Whether it is US-NATO military expansion right up to Russian borders or efforts by Washington to kill the Nordstream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany – it is clear that there is a method behind US-NATO madness. If you were sitting in Russia’s shoes how would you react to these proposals below – many of which have been or are now being implemented?

Despite these vulnerabilities and anxieties, Russia remains a powerful country that still manages to be a U.S. peer competitor in a few key domains. Recognizing that some level of competition with Russia is inevitable, RAND researchers conducted a qualitative assessment of “cost-imposing options” that could unbalance and overextend Russia.

Continue reading →

February 14, 2022 Posted by | politics international, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UK SPENDS OVER £80M ON MEDIA IN 20 COUNTRIES AROUND RUSSIA

The project is likely part of the ongoing information war between Russia and Nato.

The British government is spending tens of millions on media projects in Eastern Europe which are often presented as fighting “Russian disinformation”, but which may involve the UK’s own information operations. DECLASSIFIED UK , MATT KENNARD, 8 FEBRUARY 2022   The British government ploughed at least £82.7m of public money into media projects in countries bordering or near Russia in the four years to 2021.

The projects, which take place across 20 countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, are run through the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF), a cross-government pot of money with the stated aim of preventing “instability and conflicts that threaten UK interests”. 

The National Security Council, which is chaired by the prime minister, sets the fund’s strategic direction. But a parliamentary committee found the CSSF was “being used as a ‘slush fund’ for projects” which “do not meet the needs of UK national security.” 

The findings come as tensions between Britain and Russia are high over Ukraine. The UK has accused Russia of planning to invade or launch a coup in Ukraine to install a pro-Moscow government. 

Last month Britain began supplying the eastern European country with new anti-tank weapons. Some of the UK-funded media projects appear focused on Ukraine.

‘Counter-disinformation’ 

The project most clearly directed at Russia is the Counter Disinformation and Media Development programme. It is run around Russia’s western border, from the Baltic States to Central and Eastern Europe, although project documents do not disclose specific countries. 

It cost £60.4m in the four years to 2021. …….

The project is likely part of the ongoing information war between Russia and Nato. The funds, UK documents note, aim to “understand and expose disinformation across the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (Nato) space.”

The project was launched in 2016 and initially called the Russian Language programme. ………

,,,,,,,,,  the programme may be a cover for the UK’s own information operations in the region. The UK Ministry of Defence is one of the implementing departments in the counter-disinformation programme. It is not obvious what role the UK armed forces would have in a media support project.

……….In the four years to 2021, the programme cost the UK public £140.5m, although a breakdown of the media component is not provided by the government. 

The UK is also “working closely with the US on media reform” through the programme……………

UK spends over £80m on media in 20 countries around Russia

February 14, 2022 Posted by | media, spinbuster, UK, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Conflict resolution – the positive way out of the Ukraine crisis

According to Anatol Lieven, an academic and Ukraine specialist, this is “the most dangerous crisis in the world today; it is also in principle the most easily solved”. A solution exists, drawn up by France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine in 2015, which involves the implementation of the Minsk II agreement. This offers demilitarisation, a restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty including control of the border with Russia, and full autonomy for the Donbas region. The main objection for Kyiv is that autonomy for the Donbas would prevent Ukraine from joining Nato and the EU.

One way through this would be for Nato to declare Ukraine a neutral country and decree that it does not join Nato for at least a decade. In practice, Ukrainian membership of the EU is ruled out for at least a generation because of Ukraine’s corruption, political dysfunction and lack of economic progress.

I’m a conflict mediator. This is a way out of the Ukraine crisis   https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/feb/09/conflict-mediator-ukraine-vladimir-putin, Gabrielle Rifkind

Instead of ramping up the threats, western nations should be offering Vladimir Putin a ladder to climb down,  The current western narrative on the Ukraine crisis is that Russia is a machiavellian power with an expansionist agenda. That view is shaping our response: we are matching Vladimir Putin’s aggression, meeting strength with strength and threats with threats. But what if we tried to get inside the mind of the enemy, and ask what was motivating the aggression? By doing so, could we break this cycle – and offer Putin a way out, too?

When the USSR deployed ballistic missiles to Cuba in the 1960s, their proximity to the US nearly unleashed a third world war. Sitting in Moscow today, does Putin see being encircled by Nato as an equivalent threat? After all, one of his core demands is that Nato curbs its expansion close to the Russian border, and that Ukraine must not join. Russia claims that the US repeatedly told Soviet leaders it would incorporate Russia into a cooperative European security framework. In practice, Nato emerged as a US-dominated security frame with about 75,000 US troops still on European soil. Great powers always treat with suspicion and hostility the presence of rival great powers on their borders.

Putin was always bitter about the collapse of the Soviet Union. He bided his time, and in 2014 Russia seized Crimea and sent troops into Ukraine’s mostly Russian-speaking Donbas region to support the separatist movement.

Russia today is no benign liberal democracy and President Putin has an intelligence mindset, playing poker, not chess. He is prepared to threaten war, create chaos and spread misinformation to push back Nato from Russia’s borders. Using coercive diplomacy, he has amassed more than 130,000 troops on the eastern border of Ukraine, a continued threat to its sovereignty.

Yet however provocative Russia’s behaviour, western governments have a responsibility not to escalate the threat of war. The consequences of a direct US-Russian confrontation in Ukraine would be catastrophic on all sides. A full-scale conventional war could escalate into nuclear war. Even a limited war would create a ruinous global economic crisis that could destroy for the foreseeable future any chance of serious action against climate change.

I have worked in conflict resolution for the past 20 years and seen the dangers of stumbling into wars, unable to stop or turn back. Selling weapons to a country may look like a principled act in support of an ally but it usually takes them deeper and deeper into the quagmire of conflict. The US and the UK have instigated and been involved in four failed wars this century, but we seem to have failed to have learned the lessons.

There are those who argue that sending military support to Ukraine strengthens Nato’s hand at the negotiating table. Yet there are inherent dangers in this approach – the use of deterrence could be the very thing that escalates the situation.

Washington and London have pledged to increase offensive military aid to Ukraine and have announced arms deliveries, ammunition and anti-tank weapons. The UK is seeking to put itself at the forefront of western efforts to forestall what the prime minister, Boris Johnson, has called the risk of a “lightning war” in eastern Europe.

Germany has been much more sceptical, blocking the transfer of German-made weapons from Baltic states to Ukraine. It has long argued against sending weapons to active conflict zones. Germany has declared that it is prepared to have a serious dialogue with Russia to defuse the highly dangerous situation, arguing that diplomacy is the only viable way.

Whatever western governments feel about Moscow’s behaviour, de-escalating the conflict and giving Moscow a ladder to climb down is in everyone’s interest. We should not underestimate the link between humiliation and aggression. Putin is a very proud man, and smart politics by western governments should offer face-saving gestures if we are serious about avoiding war.

According to Anatol Lieven, an academic and Ukraine specialist, this is “the most dangerous crisis in the world today; it is also in principle the most easily solved”. A solution exists, drawn up by France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine in 2015, which involves the implementation of the Minsk II agreement. This offers demilitarisation, a restoration of Ukrainian sovereignty including control of the border with Russia, and full autonomy for the Donbas region. The main objection for Kyiv is that autonomy for the Donbas would prevent Ukraine from joining Nato and the EU.

One way through this would be for Nato to declare Ukraine a neutral country and decree that it does not join Nato for at least a decade. In practice, Ukrainian membership of the EU is ruled out for at least a generation because of Ukraine’s corruption, political dysfunction and lack of economic progress.

Talks between Putin and France’s President Macron this week were more conciliatory in tone. Macron said: “There is no security for Europeans if there is no security for Russia.” A permanent forum where Russia is welcome is needed to re-examine the post-cold war security system in Europe. This approach to issues such as missile deployments, arms control and transparency around military exercises could ease this conflict. Such a dialogue could create a climate of security cooperation with Russia.

  • Gabrielle Rifkind is a specialist in conflict resolution and the director of Oxford Process

February 12, 2022 Posted by | 2 WORLD, politics international, weapons and war | 1 Comment

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