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The NATO/Ukraine Defeat in Kursk (and Beyond)

by Gordonhahn, September 14, 2024,  https://gordonhahn.com/2024/09/14/the-nato-ukraine-defeat-in-kursk-and-beyond/

Contrary to the view of Beltway pundits regarding the sunny side or various alleged successes of Ukraine’s Kursk incursion (https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/kursk-offensive-and-future-russia-ukraine-war-%C2%A0-212669), the Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelenskiy’s newest simulacra attack – substituting a fake reality for the real one – has led to yet another predictable catastrophe in the real world of war and politics.

Zelenskiy’s gambit had no military logic behind it. Its essence was made up of a propagandistic/PR component and perhaps a terrorist element. It was a reckless, desperate last roll of the dice to overturn the playing board which never had a hope of succeeding. Not one of the goals stated by Ukrainian officials was achieved, nor was the unstated, potential goal of seizng the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant achieved. What was ‘achieved’ was a decimation of some of Ukraine’s best remaining men and materiel`. 

Ukrainian officials publicly stated several goals of the operation: (1) to force Moscow to redeploy troops away from Russian forces’ increasingly rapid advance on Pokrovsk and across the Donetsk front; (2) to seize Russian territory to encourage Moscow to negotiate and to trade for the return of Ukrainian lands in peace talks with Moscow; (3) to capture Russian prisoners of war to exchange for Ukrainian prisoners; (4) to create angst in Russia among the elite and population in order to weaken support for the war and/or Putin’s hold on power; and (5) to make Russia feel the pain of death and destruction that Ukraine has been feeling (Zelenskiy alone said this). None of these goals was achieved. 

Regarding the first goal, Ukrainian Armed Forces Commander Gen. Oleksandr Syrskii has acknowledged that the Russian forces did not redeploy from Donetsk to Kursk. The strategy was misconceived from the get-go. The Ukrainians tried to get the Russians to make an obvious mistake: divert forces need for their offensives in Donetsk to the Ukrainians’ mini-salient in Kursk and thereby weaken their offensive force. Ironically, in order to get the Russians to make the mistake of diverting valuable resources from Donetsk to Kursk the Ukrainians had done the same. This led to an acceleration of the Russian advance towards Pokrovsk – a key hub and perhaps the last best barrier hindering the Russian army’s march to the Dnieper.

Regarding the second and third, before the incursion Putin and other Russian officials had repeated their willingness to negotiate, but Kiev refused or ignored each statement. After the incursion, the Russians announced that there will be no talks while Ukrainian forces remain in Kursk and other Russian territories, according to Moscow’s definition (https://ctrana.news/news/471809-v-rf-snova-zajavili-chto-ne-budut-vesti-perehovory-s-ukrainoj.html).

Moreover, as one exiled Ukrainian newspaper Ctrana.news, notes, no Russian is going to give back 18 percent of Ukrainian territory held by Russia in return for 5 percent of Kursk region’s territory. The same paper notes that even prominent Russian liberals, editor-in-chief of the banned Ekh Moskvy Aleksei Venediktov and Yabloko Party leader Grigorii Yavlinskii (who met with Putin weeks back to discuss peace talks), thought negotiations might have begun by year’s end until the Kursk incursion spoiled the mood in the Kremlin (https://uiamp.org/kurskiy-tormoz-kakie-seychas-perspektivy-peregovorov-ukrainy-i-rossii). No talks means there will be no trading for land or prisoners, contrary to Kiev’s goals.

Regarding the fourth goal, there has been no discernible elite or popular demand for a change in Putin’s ‘special operation policy’ (SMO). To the contrary, prominent hardliners and others intensified their clamor for untying the Russian military’s hands and undertaking a full-scale war on Ukraine, and this may explain an escalation in Russian missile attacks. In terms of the population, public opinion surveys demonstrate both continuing popular support for Putin and the mirror opposite effect on its views than that intended by Kiev. Ukrainian forces began their incursion on August 6th, crossing the Ukrainian-Russian border between Sumy, Ukraine and Kursk, Russia. In the Levada Center’s polling in July Putin’s approval rating was 87 percent. In August it fell a mere 2 points to 85 percent (within the margin of error) ((www.levada.ru/2024/08/29/rejtingi-avgusta2024-goda-otsenki-polozheniya-del-v-strane-nastroeniya-respondentov-odobrenie-organov-vlasti-doverie-politikam-i-partiyam/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=newsletter-post-title_81).  

Levada’s polling also shows that after a short period of shock regarding the Kursk incursion, Russian public opinion adapted and is taking in stride. It ranks fifth in the populace’s mind among the most important events since the SMO’s start in February 2022. Concern was largely localized to regions around Kursk, and discontent with performance was directed at the military, border troops, and intelligence services, not the political leadership, no less Putin personally. Levada’s monthly polling on the public mood showed a barely significant jump just above the margin of error. Whereas in July negative feeling was registered among 18 percent, in August it rose to 24 percent. 

However, Levada offered comparative context by noting that this jump pales in significance to the more than doubling (21 to 47 percent) of those admitting to a negative mood in autumn 2022, when the Putin government announced a mobilization of new soldiers for the SMO (www.levada.ru/2024/09/03/privychnaya-trevoga-chto-dumayut-rossiyane-o-nastuplenii-vsu-v-kurskoj-oblasti/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=newsletter-post-title_81 and www.levada.ru/2024/08/30/konflikt-s-ukrainoj-i-napadenie-na-kurskuyu-oblast-osnovnye-pokazateli-v-avguste-2024-goda/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=newsletter-post-title_81). Support for the SMO strengthened in the wake of the Kursk invasion as of August. Support for the military’s war efforts slightly increased (78 percent), and the percentage of those who supported continuing the war without peace negotiations and of those who supported beginning talks shifted from 58 percent and 34 percent, respectively, to 49 percent and 41 percent, respectively. (www.levada.ru/2024/09/03/privychnaya-trevoga-chto-dumayut-rossiyane-o-nastuplenii-vsu-v-kurskoj-oblasti/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=newsletter-post-title_81).

The only way the Kursk incursion could spark greater discomfort with the SMO and Putin’s course would be if a second mobilization is undertaken in response, since this was the most alarming event for Russians since the SMO began, according to Levada’s surveys (www.levada.ru/2024/08/30/konflikt-s-ukrainoj-i-napadenie-na-kurskuyu-oblast-osnovnye-pokazateli-v-avguste-2024-goda/?utm_source=mailpoet&utm_medium=email&utm_source_platform=mailpoet&utm_campaign=newsletter-post-title_81).

Regarding the Ukrainians’ goal of making Russians feel their pain, as noted above the pain has been limited and adjusted to by Russians. Moreover, if there was pain it was in response to Ukrainian brutality broadcast on Russian media and it has led, as noted above, to greater support for continuing the SMO or upgrading it to full-scale war, which so far Putin has resisted. Thus, among those in the already noted Levada opinion survey who expressed concern about Ukraine’s Kursk invasion, the second-most frequently expressed concern (25 percent) was outrage over the cruelty of the Ukrainian troops in relation to Russian civilians as conveyed by Russian media (www.levada.ru/2024/09/03/privychnaya-trevoga-chto-dumayut-rossiyane-o-nastuplenii-vsu-v-kurskoj-oblasti/). This, as noted in Levada surveys noted above, and the fact of the incursion itself apparently provoked outrage that only increased the desire among Russians to continue the war and decreased the number of those preferring to start peace talks.

In regard to the Kursk gambit’s unstated and likely real goal of seizing the Kursk NPP and or nuclear weapons storage site in the hope of holding the local population and the Putin government hostage to a possible terrorist attack and/or trading control of the Kursk object(s) for control over the Zaporozhe NPP, now held by the Russians and badly needed to help Ukraine get throught the upcoming winter, given the diminution of the country’s electricity system as a result of Russia’s repeated attacks. So just like the attempts to destroy the Crimean Bridge and the drone attacks on Moscow and St. Petersburg, the effect of this newest Kievan-Western move has been the precise opposite of what was supposedly intended. Moscow and all Russia are even more committed to ‘Putin’s unprovoked war of aggression’ and any ‘unprovoked responses’ the Kremlin may mount.

Worst of all for the bright lights who conjured up this operation in Langley or elsewhere, the war is getting closer to ‘the last Ukrainian.’ The Kursk gambit has led to the destruction of much of Kiev’s best fighters and equipment, and it is likely many of those Ukrainian and other troops who made the incursion will be encircled in short time. At the same time, the Kursk gambit made Russian advances greater along much of the front but especially on the Donetsk and southern Donetsk fronts, which will lead to the more rapid fall of Pokrovsk, Vugledar, and the entire Ukrainian defense effort east of the Dnieper River. And do the Second Ruin of Ukraine continues with Western crocodile tears and calls to keep up the fight in defense of NATO expansion for as long as ‘it’ takes.

September 16, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

UK approves Ukrainian missile strikes deep inside Russia – Guardian

According to The Guardian, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken “gave the strongest hint yet” about permitting Ukraine to use long-range ATACMS missiles against Russia during his visit to Kiev on Wednesday. The decision is “understood to have already been made in private,” the British outlet claimed.

 https://www.rt.com/news/603878-ukraine-storm-shadow-missiles/ 12 Sept 24

The Western media is manufacturing public consent for the move, according to a Russian senator

Washington and London may have already decided to let Kiev use long-range missiles for strikes deep inside Russia and are now seeding the narrative through the media, Russian Senator Aleksey Pushkov has said.

Britain has already given the green light for the use of Storm Shadow missiles, The Guardian reported on Wednesday, citing anonymous government sources. London, however, is not expected to announce the move publicly, the sources claimed.

“The decision to strike Russian territory is clearly being prepared,” Pushkov wrote on Telegram on Wednesday. “There are too many conversations and hints about it for it to be reversed. Even if it has not been made yet, it looks like it will be a matter of days. The leak via The Guardian is not accidental. Public opinion is being prepared.”

Limitations on the use of Western-supplied weapons were originally put in place to allow the US and its allies to claim they were not directly involved in the conflict with Russia, while arming Ukraine to the tune of $200 billion. Kiev has been clamoring for the restrictions to be lifted since May, however.

According to The Guardian, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken “gave the strongest hint yet” about permitting Ukraine to use long-range ATACMS missiles against Russia during his visit to Kiev on Wednesday. The decision is “understood to have already been made in private,” the British outlet claimed.

Blinken “signaled” the potential shift from Washington on Tuesday, according to Bloomberg, by bringing up Iran’s alleged delivery of missiles to Moscow.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who tagged along with Blinken to Kiev, has said the Iranian missile delivery was a “significant and dangerous escalation” that influenced the thinking in London and Washington.

The escalator here is [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. Putin has escalated with the shipment of missiles from Iran. We see a new axis of Russia, Iran and North Korea,” The Guardian quoted Lammy as saying.

Iran has denied sending any missiles to Russia, calling the accusations “psychological warfare” and particularly rich coming from countries heavily involved in arming Ukraine.

An open letter from 27 US congressmen and senators sent to President Joe Biden on Wednesday did not mention Iranian missiles at all. Instead, it claimed that Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region “changed the very nature of the war” and argued that “Ukraine is not intimidated by Putin’s tyranny, and in the defense of liberty, we should not be either.”

The US “continues to test the limits of our tolerance for hostile steps,” and is “paving the way to World War III,” the Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, told reporters on Wednesday.

“It is impossible to negotiate with terrorists. They must be destroyed,” Antonov added. “As in the years of the Great Patriotic War, fascism must be eradicated. And the goals and objectives of the special military operation must be fully achieved. No one should doubt that it will be so.”

Putin has previously warned NATO members to be aware of “what they are playing with” when discussing plans to allow Kiev to strike deep inside Russian territory using weapons provided by the West. The Russian military is “taking appropriate countermeasures,” according to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, while Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the use of Storm Shadow missiles inside Russian territory “playing with fire.”

September 15, 2024 Posted by | Russia, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Die Welt predicts a mass exodus of people from Ukraine in winter

Die Welt predicts a mass exodus of people from Ukraine in winter

▪️ The article states:

Rolling power outages are already occurring across the country. In the summer, they are perhaps a minor inconvenience, and only cause real problems when it comes to refrigeration units or storage facilities. However, in the winter, such a situation could lead to a large-scale catastrophe. Millions of people would flee en masse.

▪️ The publication notes that only half of Ukraine’s energy production capacity remains, and the situation could become extremely difficult by winter.

September 15, 2024 Posted by | ENERGY, Ukraine | Leave a comment

UK sent Kyiv large supplies of old military equipment, watchdog finds

One defence official, not involved in the audit, said: “The war has tested our stockpiles, but it’s a good thing for us that we have cleared out old kit and can now replace it with new equipment.”

Defence ministry dispatched kit ‘due to be scrapped or replaced’, according to National Audit Office

Ft.com John Paul Rathbone in London, September 11 2024

Much of the military aid the UK has given to Ukraine has consisted of old equipment, such as army boots that otherwise would have had to be thrown away, according to a spending watchdog.

Military gear that was “often due to be scrapped or replaced” was prioritised by the Ministry of Defence because it was believed to have “immediate military value” to Ukraine — but sending it to Kyiv also “reduced waste or costs relating to disposal”, the National Audit Office said on Wednesday.

The ministry also used other “innovative ways of sourcing military equipment”, such as reverse-engineering replacement tracks for Soviet-era T72 tanks from samples at a tank museum in Dorset, the NAO noted.

The findings come as some of Kyiv’s western allies tire of supporting Ukraine almost three years after Russia launched its full-scale invasion. The £7.8bn of military aid the UK has pledged or sent to Kyiv make it the third-largest supplier of western support to Ukraine after the US at £56.5bn, and Germany at £16.2bn, the NAO said. The UK has pledged to continue providing £3bn a year of military aid. Other western allies have also given ageing equipment to Kyiv: in one recent US example, 10 donated vehicles ostensibly worth more than $7mn had a combined book value of zero.

However, ageing military equipment cleared from British stockpiles was only a small portion of total UK aid sent to Ukraine, because it had a book value of just £171.5mn versus an estimated replacement cost of £2.7bn. Three-quarters of it also came during the first year of the invasion. The UK spent a further £2.4bn on procuring equipment, contributed £500mn to an international fund, and spent £830mn on operational support, some channelled via Nato………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

One finding concerned the value of UK military supplies. The report cited 17,000 pairs of army boots, which the UK donated in March 2022. The shoes were nearing the end of their usable life and, if not sold, “would have been sent to landfill”. In another example, the NAO said the 14 Challenger 2 tanks sent in 2023 had a book value of just £17mn, compared to their original purchase price at the end of the 1990s of £47mn.

One defence official, not involved in the audit, said: “The war has tested our stockpiles, but it’s a good thing for us that we have cleared out old kit and can now replace it with new equipment.”

The UK has set aside £2.5bn to replenish its stockpiles depleted by the war. In April, the previous Conservative government pledged £10bn in investment to boost munitions productions over the next decade.

Bolstering Britain’s defence industry is also expected to be a priority in the “root and branch” defence review launched by the Labour government in July…………………………..  https://www.ft.com/content/f44bf7d0-0895-4f63-9fce-d3de8e686b57

September 15, 2024 Posted by | UK, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

US, UK to announce expansion of NATO weapons strikes inside Russia

Andre Damon, 11 Sept 24 https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/09/12/lsqq-s12.html

The United States and United Kingdom will imminently announce a major expansion of Ukrainian strikes deep inside Russia using NATO weapons, the Guardian and Politico reported on Wednesday.

The announcement will come just days after Ukraine launched its largest drone barrage deep inside Russian territory on Monday, for the first time killing someone in Moscow and destroying dozens of homes in the capital city of a nuclear-armed state.

The move was discussed between US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and British Foreign Minister David Lammy during their meetings with Ukrainian officials in Kiev on Wednesday.

When asked whether “Ukraine needs this long-range capability of striking into Russian territory,” Blinken replied that “we discussed long-range fires” with Ukrainian officials and that it would be further discussed when US President Joe Biden meets UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Washington on Friday.

He continued, “From day one, as you heard me say, we have adjusted and adapted as needs have changed, as the battlefield has changed, and I have no doubt that we will continue to do so as this evolves.”

Regarding the discussions, the Guardian reported, “British government sources indicated that a decision had already been made to allow Ukraine to use Storm Shadow cruise missiles on targets inside Russia, although it is not expected to be publicly announced on Friday when Starmer meets Biden in Washington DC.”

When asked on Tuesday about allowing expanded strikes inside Russia, Biden replied, “We’re working that out now.”

Politico cited Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin as saying he “would not be surprised” if the decision had already been made. The report continued, “Wednesday’s joint visit to Kyiv by Blinken and Lammy to meet Zelenskiy would not be taking place had there been no positive decision regarding Storm Shadow, the sources added.”

The news outlet noted, “But it would be considered unnecessarily provocative to make a public announcement about long-range missiles in Kyiv.”

In other words, the announcement will take place in a proverbial “Friday night news dump” to make the fact that NATO weapons will be raining down on Russian cities appear less “provocative” and to keep this development, which threatens to dramatically escalate the war, out of public consciousness.

In a statement on X, Lammy declared, “I am in Kyiv today with @SecBlinken to reiterate our united and ironclad support for Ukraine. We must stand up to Vladimir Putin’s imperialism. Our collective security depends on it.”

Blinken framed the massively provocative action being prepared by the US and UK as a response to an “escalation” by Russia. “And we’ve now seen this action of Russia, Russia acquiring ballistic missiles from Iran, which will further empower their aggression in Ukraine. So if anyone is taking escalatory action, it would appear to be Mr. Putin and Russia,” Blinken said.

On Monday, a group of leading House Republicans published a letter to President Biden calling for the lifting of all remaining restrictions on the use of NATO-provided weapons from Ukraine.

The letter demanded, “We write to urge you to lift the remaining restrictions on Ukraine’s use of U.S.-provided long-range systems, specifically Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), against legitimate military targets deeper inside Russia.”

The letter declared that “concerns about escalation” have been “consistently invalidated since day one of the war.” It asserted, “Neither Ukraine’s use of U.S.-provided weapons in Russia nor its military incursion into Russia’s Kursk region—the first foreign occupation of Russian territory since World War II—has triggered a Russian escalatory response.”

Commenting on the reporting by the Guardian, Russian Senator Aleksey Pushkov wrote on Telegram, “The decision to strike Russian territory is clearly being prepared. … There are too many conversations and hints about it for it to be reversed. Even if it has not been made yet, it looks like it will be a matter of days. The leak via The Guardian is not accidental. Public opinion is being prepared.”

Anatoly Antonov, the Russian Ambassador to the US, declared that Washington “continues to test the limits of our tolerance for hostile steps” and is “paving the way to World War III.”

On Wednesday, former Kremlin adviser Sergey Karaganov gave an interview to the Kommersant daily in which he urged the country to be prepared to use nuclear weapons in response to NATO attacks. “We have allowed the situation to deteriorate to a point when our adversaries believe we will not use nuclear weapons under any circumstances. … Having nuclear weapons without being able to convince your enemies that you are ready to use them is suicide.”

He added, “The main goal of a doctrine should be in convincing all current and future enemies that Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons.” He added, “It’s high time we stated that any massive strikes against our territory give us a right to respond with a nuclear strike.”

The massive escalation of the US-NATO war against Russia forms the backdrop of Wednesday’s presidential debate in which Vice President Kamala Harris pledged that her candidacy would be dedicated to “ensuring we have the most lethal fighting force in the world” in order to defend America’s “standing” in the world.

September 14, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

White House finalizing plans to expand where Ukraine can hit inside Russia

The talks have been closely held among a small group of officials inside the White House.


Gunners fire at a Russian position in the Kharkiv region, on April 21, 2024, amid the Russian invasion in Ukraine. | Anatolii Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images

Politico, By Erin Banco, Joe Gould and Paul McLeary 09/11/2024 

The White House is finalizing a plan to ease some restrictions on how Ukraine can use U.S.-donated weapons and better protect itself from Russian missiles, according to a Western official and two other people familiar with the discussions.

The talks have been closely held among a small group of officials inside the White House, one of the people involved in the debate said. All were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the conversations.

The details of the plan are still coming together. But officials in Washington, London and Kyiv have in recent days discussed expanding the area inside Russia that Ukraine can hit with American and British-made weapons. They’ve also discussed how to prevent additional cross-border attacks by Russia, including the U.S. agreeing to allow Ukraine to use U.K. long-range missiles that contain American parts to strike inside Russia.

The current conversations between Washington and Kyiv mark a significant change in tenor from the ones the two countries held earlier this summer. And it signals the Biden administration may be ready to finally agree to Kyiv’s requests to enable Ukraine’s military to more forcefully defend itself and to make more aggressive moves inside Russia.

The National Security Council declined to comment.

In an interview with PBS Newshour in June, national security adviser Jake Sullivan indicated that the U.S. might be willing to expand the area it would allow Ukraine to use U.S. weapons in Russia.

“It is not about geography. It is about common sense,” he said. “If Russia is attacking or about to attack from its territory into Ukraine it only makes sense to allow Ukraine to hit back.”

When asked if the administration would lift restrictions on long-range weapons, Biden told reporters Tuesday: “We’re working that out now.”…………………………………………………………..

U.S. officials have also pointed out that since the Army no longer buys Army Tactical Missile Systems, the inventory is limited and is drawing close to where the U.S. would be concerned about its own stockpile. The maker of the missile, Lockheed Martin, is still producing several hundred a year but they are slated for sale to allies overseas. The replacement for the weapon, the Precision Strike Missile, is only beginning to be fielded and not in numbers to fully replace the missiles currently being expended.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his British counterpart David Lammy were in Kyiv on Wednesday to huddle with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss the weapons issue, along with Ukraine’s incursion into Russia and recent Russian advances in Ukraine.

British defense leaders have been in discussions with their U.S. counterparts for weeks about getting the U.S. to sign off on Ukraine using British Storm Shadow missiles to strike inside Russia. No decision has been reached, according to one person familiar with the talks, but the issue will be a part of the discussion between President Joe Biden and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer when the two meet at the White House on Friday………………………………………..

It’s unclear if the Biden administration has decided to lift its restrictions on long-range Army Tactical Missile Systems, which the U.S. has transferred to Ukraine. It has previously told Ukraine it does not want its military using those weapons to strike deep inside Russia………………..

Biden’s earlier decision to allow Ukraine the ability to conduct limited strikes inside Russia came with several caveats, including that Kyiv could only use the weapons in and around the Kharkiv region. The U.S. eventually expanded that geographic plane largely so that Ukraine could shoot down Russian glide bombs………………………………………………………………….. more https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/11/white-house-weapons-ukraine-00178673

September 14, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Biden administration split over Ukraine’s use of US weapons inside Russia

Pentagon and intelligence community caution against deployment of ATACM missiles by Kyiv

Ft.com Felicia Schwartz in Washington, September 11 2024

US President Joe Biden has said he is considering a request by Ukraine to use weapons provided by the US to strike deep inside Russian territory. Biden’s admission on Tuesday comes as his government is split over whether to allow the use of US weapons, with the state department, which is more open to Kyiv’s request, pitted against the Pentagon and the US intelligence community. “We’re working that out right now,” Biden said when asked by reporters whether he would allow Ukraine to use American long-range Army Tactical Missile System, or ATACMS, to target sites inside Russia.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has repeatedly called for restrictions on western-supplied, long-range weapons to be lifted so his military can strike Russian airfields and missile launchers, as well as the ammunition depots, fuel storage and command and control centres that are critical to Moscow’s war.  Washington in recent months has shifted away from a blanket ban on the use of US-supplied weapons to attack Russian territory, allowing Ukraine to deploy them for defensive strikes. But Zelenskyy is pressing the US and other western countries to permit the use of long-range weaponry deep inside Russia as part of his strategy of increasing the cost of the invasion for President Vladimir Putin.

Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, is travelling to Ukraine this week with UK foreign secretary David Lammy to meet Zelenskyy and discuss his request and show support for their ally. Ahead of the visit, Blinken told a press conference in London “we’ll be listening intently to our Ukrainian partners. We’ll both be reporting back to the [British] prime minister, to President Biden in the coming days.” He added that Biden would discuss the matter with Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, when he visits Washington on Friday.

The UK has urged the US to grant Ukraine permission to use long-range weapons provided by its western allies deep inside Russia and believes Kyiv should be able to target Russian sites and assets. US sign-off is needed in order for Ukraine to use the Storm Shadow missiles provided by the UK for long-range strikes inside Russia. While the US state department is more receptive to arguments from Ukraine and many of its western allies, the Pentagon and US intelligence community have cautioned against the use of the long-range weapons deep inside Russia.

The latter recently assessed that 90 per cent of Russian aircraft have been relocated to airfields at least 300km away from Ukrainian-controlled territory, outside of the range of ATACMS………………………………………. https://www.ft.com/content/48289996-e1bf-4c3e-befb-031698e89e1b

September 14, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

‘Let’s Just Fight’: How Britain Prefers War Over Peace in Ukraine

Boris Johnson avoided promoting a compromise peace in Ukraine after Russia invaded. Now, Labour continues to help prolong the conflict to secure British interests.

DECLASSIFIED UK, MARK CURTIS, 9 September 2024

Last week, defence secretary John Healey announced that the UK “will continue to step up our support to help Ukraine achieve victory” in its war with Russia.

Both he and foreign secretary David Lammy have repeatedly said “Labour will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes to win”. 

When President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukrainian forces conducted an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region last month, Healey praised the move as “bold”, saying it put Russian president Vladimir Putin “under pressure”.

Equipment used in that offensive included UK-supplied Challenger tanks sent to Ukraine last year.

Prime minister Keir Starmer has also told Zelensky he is willing to allow Ukraine’s use of UK-supplied long-range missiles to hit targets inside Russia – provided the US agrees to it.

Despite Labour’s public relations about “change” during the general election, Lammy has consistently said that “with Labour there will be no change in the UK’s financial, military, diplomatic and political support for Ukraine”.


The consequences of this are hard to overstate. Since Russia’s brutal invasion, inflicting untold misery on millions of Ukrainians, bombarding civilians and committing war crimes, UK governments have been overwhelmingly focused on one thing – “winning” the war.

Yet one thing Whitehall has conspicuously avoided is making serious attempts at promoting a compromise peace that would end the fighting.

Indeed, one casualty of Ukraine’s recent incursion into Russia is that it derailed secret talks to negotiate an agreement halting strikes on energy and power infrastructure, according to the Washington Post.

There are specific reasons Whitehall prefers war over peace in Ukraine. It is worth going back to the very first chance negotiators had to end this devastating conflict soon after Russia invaded. 

Scuppering peace prospects

There is considerable evidence showing the UK helped scupper the prospects for peace within a few weeks of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.

The following month, direct peace negotiations between Ukrainian and Russian delegations and mediation efforts by the then Israeli prime minister, Naftali Bennett, created a genuine chance for ending the war peacefully.

Meeting in Turkey, the two sides produced the Istanbul communiqué in late March 2022 in which Ukraine promised not to join Nato or allow foreign military bases on its soil. For its part, Russia promised to withdraw its occupation troops from Ukraine, although not from the Donbas region or the Crimea. 

David Arakhamia, the parliamentary leader of Zelensky’s “Servant of the People” party who led Ukraine’s delegation in the talks, later revealed that Moscow was “ready to end the war if we took neutrality… and made commitments that we would not join Nato”. 

This was the key point”, he said in an interview in 2023.

Reports suggest Zelensky was then prepared to give up Nato membership and that he understood this was the key issue for Moscow. “And as far as I remember, they started a war because of this”, he said at the time.

‘Permanent neutrality’

Russia and Ukraine appeared relatively close to a deal that would “have ended the war and provided Ukraine with multilateral security guarantees, paving the way to its permanent neutrality and, down the road, its membership in the EU”, according to one detailed study…………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

‘Keep fighting and dying’

In their summit in Brussels on 24 March 2022, Nato decided to oppose peace negotiations until Russia had fully withdrawn all its troops from Ukraine. 

By early April, the Washington Post was reporting that “For some in Nato, it’s better for Ukrainians to keep fighting and dying than to achieve a peace that comes too soon or at too high a price for Kyiv and the rest of Europe.”

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who acted as one of the mediators in the Istanbul talks, later said that “nothing could happen because everything else was decided in Washington…. the Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to. They first had to ask the Americans about everything they discussed.”

Enter Boris Johnson

As talks were approaching a possible agreement, UK prime minister Boris Johnson arrived unannounced in Kyiv on 9 April 2022. 

A report in Ukrainska Pravda noted that Johnson brought two messages: “The first is that Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with”, and “the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements or guarantees, they [the collective West] are not”.  

Before his visit, Johnson “instructed” Zelensky “not to make any concessions to Putin”, columnist Simon Jenkins wrote in the Guardian.

David Arakhamia said that Johnson had come to Kyiv to inform Ukrainian officials the West wouldn’t sign any agreement with Moscow, instead urging: “let’s just fight.”……………………………………………..

Peace feelers

The March/April 2022 negotiations may have produced the best opportunity to bring about a compromise peace, but there have been others since.

It is difficult to gauge whether the peace feelers put out by the Kremlin over the past two and half years are simply part of its propaganda strategy or serious attempts to end the fighting. The reason is that they have never been seriously tested by Washington and London……………………………………………………………..

Total war

The US and UK have long publicly rejected talks based on anything other than Russia’s complete withdrawal from Ukraine. 

This principled position might have merit but for the real world intervening. Aggressors should surely not be rewarded in international relations, but this is something that applies as much to the US/UK in Iraq or Libya, or Israel in the occupied Palestinian territories, as to Russia in Ukraine. 

Only in the case of Ukraine, however, has the UK held to the high-minded position that Moscow must withdraw all its forces before any peace moves can be considered.

The second obvious truth is that holding to the position of regaining full control over all Ukrainian territory – including the disputed areas in the Donbas and the Crimea – is simply a recipe for ongoing war.

As leading analyst Anatol Lieven has written, “To recover everything it has lost since 2014 looks impossible. It would require the total defeat of the Russian military.”

Yet this appears to be what Keir Starmer wants. “This terrible conflict must end with the defeat of Putin in Ukraine”, the then UK opposition leader said in the House of Commons in 2023.

Although Zelensky vows to fight on, some senior Ukrainian figures are more than aware of the need for pragmatism. ………………………………………………….

What does Britain want?

To the UK establishment, the Ukraine war is a proxy one against Russia, its key rival for influence in Europe. 

With Ukraine as the latest battleground in a modern great game, Whitehall’s main goal is to maintain Russia as a pariah state and end its independent foreign policy, which challenges Nato’s supremacy in Europe and, to an extent, the Middle East. 

The war has enabled the UK to cement relations with an important new ally. UK officials have barely hidden their glee at overcoming their European competitors to get to Kyiv first. ……………………………………………………

MI6 in Ukraine

It turns out that British intelligence was increasingly active in Ukraine for years before Russia’s invasion – a remarkable turnaround from the blackout of the Cold War years.  

A bombshell New York Times investigation in February 2024 notes that the CIA established 12 secret “forward operating bases” along Ukraine’s border with Russia in the decade before 2022…………………………………………………..

According to the New York Times, in the run-up to the 2022 invasion, the head of one of Russia’s intelligence services reported to Putin that CIA and MI6 were controlling Kyiv and were turning the neighbouring country “into a beachhead for operations against Moscow.”

In other words, “Ukraine was drawn into a Western coalition for the purpose of waging a broad-based shadow war against Russia”, comments Mark Episkopos, a fellow at the Quincy Institute.

He adds: “Moscow repeatedly warned — for many years before 2014 — that it was and remains prepared to take drastic action to prevent Ukraine from being used by the West as a forward operating base against Russia. Yet that, as recounted in lurid detail by the New York Times, is precisely what has happened over the past 10 years”.

This budding intelligence relationship has been cemented by the war itself. US Defense Department documents leaked in March 2023 showed Britain then had the largest number of special forces operating in the country, with 50 troops. 

War profits

Courting Ukraine as a new ally has major benefits for the UK arms industry, which exerts enormous influence over Whitehall’s foreign policies. War is good for them, peace not so much.

In the ten years before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, UK arms companies sold only £35m in military equipment to Kyiv. That figure has skyrocketed since February 2022 to over £800m. 

UK arms corporations have secured a new, lucrative market……………………………………….

The war is a boon right across the UK’s substantial military industry: Britain has sent around 400 different military capabilities to Ukraine since 2022.

For US arms companies, the prize has been even greater. Washington has provided over $150bn worth of military equipment and aid to Ukraine since 2022.

Endgame

Journalist Branko Marcetic has long documented reports highlighting Western opposition to Ukraine peace prospects. 

“It’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny the war in Ukraine could have been ended mere months into the Russian invasion — and that the US and UK governments worked to prevent this from happening”, he writes. 

If a compromise peace holds little value for the British elite, what does “winning” mean? A war with Russia? 

In May this year the UK and US publicly gave Ukraine the go-ahead to use British-supplied weapons to strike targets inside Russia, saying it was up to Kyiv whether to do so. 

That decision appeared to cross a line. With senior British military figures saying the UK must be prepared to fight a war with Russia, who knows what endgame is being planned in Whitehall, or what Keir Starmer’s limits might be. https://www.declassifieduk.org/lets-just-fight-how-britain-prefers-war-over-peace-in-ukraine/

September 13, 2024 Posted by | UK, Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

CNN Shared A Glimpse Of Just How Bad Everything Has Become For Ukraine

The ideal solution for Kiev would be to reach a ceasefire for facilitating its voluntary withdrawal from part of Donbass (ex: Pokrovsk’s surroundings) in parallel with pulling out of Kursk, which are terms that Russia might entertain since they’d advance some of its political and military goals.

Andrew Korybko, Sep 09, 2024, https://korybko.substack.com/p/cnn-shared-a-glimpse-of-just-how

Outgunned and outnumbered, Ukraine’s military is struggling with low morale and desertion

By Ivana Kottasová and Kostya Gak, CNN, 8 Sept 24

The Ukrainian Armed Forces are in the midst of converging crises caused by the failed counteroffensive, the forcible conscription policy, and Zelensky’s Kursk blunder, which are leading to more desertions, defeats, and ultimately more desperation.

CNN carried out a rare act of journalistic service with their detailed report about how “Outgunned and outnumbered, Ukraine’s military is struggling with low morale and desertion”. It candidly describes the numerous problems afflicting the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) at this pivotal moment in the conflict as they continue to occupy part of Kursk but are still losing ground in Donbass. Their story begins by introducing a battalion commander who lost most of the around 800 men under his control.

This figure couldn’t take it anymore and thus transferred to a cushy military administrative job in Kiev. He and the five others who CNN spoke to when researching their report informed them that “desertion and insubordination are becoming a widespread problem, especially among newly recruited soldiers.” In the words of one commander, “Not all mobilized soldiers are leaving their positions, but the majority are…They either leave their positions, refuse to go into battle, or try to find a way to leave the army.”

The reader is then informed that these troops are forcibly conscripted, thus adding context to why they desert, but they also claimed that morale problems began to infect the armed forces’ ranks during the now-resolved impasse over more American aid to Ukraine. While that likely played a role, CNN conspicuously omits to mention last summer’s failed counteroffensive, which proved that Ukraine is unable to reconquer its lost lands despite all the hype and the aid that it received up until that point.  

Moving along after having clarified the real reason behind the UAF’s plunging morale over the past year, drones have made the battlefield more unbearable than before, and the amount of time between rotations has grown since some troops simply can’t leave their positions without risking their lives. CNN then added that “In just the first four months of 2024, prosecutors launched criminal proceedings against almost 19,000 soldiers who either abandoned their posts or deserted”.

They also acknowledged that “It’s a staggering and – most likely – incomplete number. Several commanders told CNN that many officers would not report desertion and unauthorized absences, hoping instead to convince troops to return voluntarily, without facing punishment. This approach became so common that Ukraine changed the law to decriminalize desertion and absence without leave, if committed for the first time.”

The impending Battle of Pokrovsk, which could be a game-changer for Russia on the Donbass front, risks turning into a total disaster for the UAF since “some commanders estimate there are 10 Russian soldiers to each Ukrainian.” Just as alarming is the claim from one officer that “There have even been cases of troops not disclosing the full battlefield picture to other units out of fear it would make them look bad.” Communication problems are also reportedly rife between Kiev’s varied units there too.

The Kursk front isn’t as bad, but it might not have served its political purpose of boosting morale among the UAF unlike what Zelensky has claimed. CNN quoted some sappers who were unsure of the strategy involved, questioning why they were redeployed from defending Pokrovsk to invade Russia when the Donbass front is experiencing such difficulties as was already reported. The piece then ends with a psychological support expert declaring that he’s no longer going to be emotionally attached to anyone.

Reflecting on CNN’s surprisingly critical report, it’s clear that the UAF is in the midst of converging crises caused by the failed counteroffensive, the forcible conscription policy, and Zelensky’s Kursk blunder, which are leading to more desertions, defeats, and ultimately more desperation. In such circumstances, Ukraine can either stay the course by remaining in Kursk at the expense of losing more ground in Donbass, withdraw from Kursk to help hold Donbass, or asymmetrically escalate.

The first two scenarios are self-explanatory while the last could concern expanding the conflict into other Russian regions, Belarus, and/or Moldova’s breakaway Transnistria region, seriously damaging Russian nuclear power plants out of desperation to provoke a nuclear response, and/or assassinating top Russians. There are only a few months left before the winter impedes combat operations on both sides, after which the status quo will persist until spring, when one or both sides might go on the offensive.

This timeline adds urgency to the impending Battle of Pokrovsk, which Russia wants to win as soon as possible in order to push through the fields beyond, capture more territory, threaten the Kramatorsk-Slavyansk agglomeration from the south, and possibly prepare to make a move on Zaporozhye city from the northeast. If Ukraine can hold out into next year, then it could have more time to build more defenses beyond Pokrovsk, thus reducing the pace of Russia’s advance if it comes out on top there.  

Even if Ukraine holds on for at least several months or perhaps as long as half a year longer there, the problems touched upon in CNN’s piece will likely only exacerbate seeing as how more forcibly conscripted troops will be thrown into what might by then become the next infamous meat grinder. Morale will probably continue plummeting while defections could spike, both of which could combine to cripple the UAF and create an opening for Russia to exploit in Pokrovsk or elsewhere along the front.

The ideal solution for Kiev would be to reach a ceasefire for facilitating its voluntary withdrawal from part of Donbass (ex: Pokrovsk’s surroundings) in parallel with pulling out of Kursk, which are terms that Russia might entertain since they’d advance some of its political and military goals. It’s better for Ukraine from the perspective of its regime’s interests to have an orderly withdrawal than a chaotic one if Russia achieves a breakthrough, but Zelensky and his ilk aren’t known for their rational decisions.

Nevertheless, those like India and Hungary who are want to help politically resolve this conflict could propose something of the sort, perhaps also suggesting the revival of last month’s reported Qatari-mediated partial ceasefire proposal for eschewing attacks against the other’s energy infrastructure. Zelensky is unlikely to agree, especially since he’s under the influence of uber-hawk Yermak, but it would still be best to informally circulate some variant of the aforementioned proposal sooner than later.

Regardless of well-intentioned third parties’ proposals, the conflict appears poised to continue raging into the next year absent a complete military and/or political breakdown in Ukraine, neither of which can be ruled out though considering how bad everything has become per CNN’s latest report. Ukraine and its Anglo-American “deep state” allies could also stage a major provocation aimed at desperately “escalating to de-escalate” on more of their terms, so observers shouldn’t rule that scenario out either.

September 12, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Ukrainian Tipping Points: UPDATE 2

Russian and Eurasian Politics, by Gordonhahn, September 11, 2024

Outgoing US President Joe Biden has said his administration is working on approval of Ukrainian use of U.S. long-range missiles against targets deep inside Russia (https://www.ft.com/content/48289996-e1bf-4c3e-befb-031698e89e1b). The UK is pressuring the US to approve such use, and US Secretary of State and UK’s foreign minister have just arrived in Kiev (https://ctrana.news/news/471869-blinken-i-hlava-mid-britanii-pribyli-v-kiev.html).

UPDATE 1:

Reuters reports US is just about se to send long-range missiles to Ukraine for attacks deep inside Russia:

US close to agreeing on long-range missiles for Ukraine; delivery to take months.

Summary

-Stealthy JASSM weapons have range to hit targets inside Russia

-Decision expected in autumn, U.S. officials say

-Pentagon trying to integrate JASSMs on Soviet-era Ukrainian jets

WASHINGTON, Sept 3 (Reuters) – The U.S. is close to an agreement to give Ukraine long-range cruise missiles that could reach deep into Russia, but Kyiv would need to wait several months as the U.S. works through technical issues ahead of any shipment, U.S. officials said.The inclusion of Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) in a weapons package is expected to be announced this autumn, three sources said, though a final decision has not been made (https://www.reuters.com/world/us-close-agreeing-long-range-missiles-ukraine-delivery-take-months-2024-09-03/).

ORIGINAL ARTICLE:

The NATO-Russia Ukrainian war is at a tipping point; one that leads to a Russian march to the Dniepr River and the relocation of what remains of pro-NATO Ukraine’s populace to right bank Ukraine and its Maidan government away from the western banks of the Diner and deeper into western Ukraine, likely Lvov. Not surprisingly, Kiev therefore is desperate and trying to escalate in ways that implicate or bring deeper, more direct NATO involvement, which has been deep and escalating on NATO’s part for years. For Kiev, ideal would be a full-scale NATO military intervention. The West’s previous strategy of gradual escalation –  ‘boiling the frog’ by providing redlined air defense systems, then short-range missile/artillery systems, then tanks, then F-16s – hasd run its course.

The only options now are permitting Kiev to use Western missiles to hit deep inside Russia and target Russian President Vladimir Putin and other top leaders. Until now neither Kiev nor the West has crossed any Russian or ‘Putin red lines’ because there have not been any Russian-declared ‘red lines’ but Western MSM-set red lines. One would-be hard-pressed to cite even one clearly expressed Putin ‘red line.’

I fear the Western escalation will continue up to crossing an actual ‘red line’ that Russians have indirectly hinted at – Ukraine’s use of long-range Western missiles such as American ATACMs and British Storm Shadows to strike deep into Russia – will be crossed one way or another, likely after the U.S. presidential election on November 5th.……………………………………………………………………………………………………………… more https://gordonhahn.com/2024/09/11/ukrainian-tipping-points-update-2/—

September 12, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Victoria Nuland, former US deputy secretary of state, confirms West told Zelensky to abandon peace deal

Comment: Nuland confirms what was already known. The reason the conflict is ongoing is because the US wanted it to be so.

 https://www.rt.com/news/603708-ukraine-istanbul-us-nuland/ 9 Sept 24

Ukraine-Russia talks fell apart after Kiev asked foreign backers for advice, the former US deputy secretary of state has said.

The US, UK and other backers of Ukraine told Kiev to reject the deal reached at the 2022 Istanbul peace talks with Russia, former US under secretary of state Victoria Nuland has said.

In an interview with Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar, former editor-in-chief of the liberal news channel Dozhd, which aired on Thursday, Nuland was asked to comment on reports that the peace process between Moscow and Kiev in late March and early April 2022 collapsed after then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Ukraine and told Vladimir Zelensky to keep fighting.

“Relatively late in the game the Ukrainians began asking for advice on where this thing was going and it became clear to us, clear to the Brits, clear to others that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s main condition was buried in an annex to this document that they were working on,” she said of the deal being discussed by the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Türkiye’s largest city.

The proposed agreement included limits on the kinds of weapons that Kiev could possess, as a result of which Ukraine “would basically be neutered as a military force,” while there were no similar constraints on Russia, the former diplomat explained.

“People inside Ukraine and people outside Ukraine started asking questions about whether this was a good deal and it was at that point that it fell apart,” Nuland said.

The veteran diplomatic hawk, who during her time in the State Department was renowned for her hostility towards Russia, quit the post of under secretary of state for political affairs in March this year. Nuland played a key role in the violent Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, which toppled Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovich.

During the escalation between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022, she called for deeper US involvement in the conflict and advocated for Ukraine to be armed with increasingly sophisticated weapons. However, in February, the 63-year-old essentially acknowledged the failure of her longstanding policy of containing Moscow, telling the CNN that modern Russia had turned out to be “not the Russia we wanted”

During her conversation with Zygar, Nuland confirmed that both Moscow and Kiev were eager to seek a diplomatic solution a month after the outbreak of the fighting.

“Russia had an interest at that time in at least seeing what it could get. Ukraine, obviously, had an interest if they could stop the war and get and get Russia out,” she said.

US officials “were not in the room” during the talks in Istanbul, only offering Kiev “support” in case it were needed, she claimed.

Putin said last week that the only reason the Istanbul deal failed was because of “the wish of the elites in the US and some European nations to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia,” adding that Boris Johnson served as the messenger to quash the peace process.

The negotiations in Türkiye yielded a draft agreement, which would have ended the hostilities, Putin recalled. Kiev was willing to declare military neutrality, limit its armed forces, and vow not to discriminate against ethnic Russians. In return, Moscow would have joined other leading powers in offering Ukraine security guarantees, he stressed.

According to the Russian leader, talks with Kiev are still possible, but can only happen “not on the basis of some ephemeral demands but on the basis of the documents that were agreed and actually initialized in Istanbul.”

September 10, 2024 Posted by | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

IAEA’s Grossi says Zaporizhzhia cooling tower likely to be demolished

WNN 05 September 2024

International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi has inspected the cooling tower affected by fire last month at Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant and says it is “not usable in the future, so it will probably be demolished”. 

Grossi, on his fifth visit to the six-unit nuclear plant which has been under Russian military control since early March 2022, said that the security situation remains “very fragile … so our work continues … we will be analysing, assessing what we saw today – until the conflict is over or it enters a phase where there is no more active military activity … the possibility of something serious cannot be excluded”.

The IAEA has had a team of experts stationed at Zaporizhzhia for two years – with 23 rotations of staff during that time. Their presence is intended to boost nuclear safety and security at the plant which is on the front line of Russian and Ukrainian forces.

Ukraine and Russia each blame the other side for putting nuclear safety and security at risk. After the fire at the cooling tower Russia accused Ukraine of causing it with drone attacks, while Ukraine accused Russia of causing it deliberately, or by negligence………………………………….. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/IAEA-s-Grossi-says-Zaporizhzhia-cooling-tower-set

September 8, 2024 Posted by | safety, Ukraine | Leave a comment

USING UKRAINE SINCE 1948

By Joe Lauria, Consortium News., June 11, 2024,  https://popularresistance.org/using-ukraine-since-1948/


The U.S. Has Staged Operations With Extremists From Ukraine To Undermine Russia For Nearly 8 Decades.

It’s led us to the doorstep of nuclear annihilation.

The United States has for nearly 80 years seen Ukraine as the staging ground for its once covert and increasingly overt war with Russia.

After years of warnings, and after talk since 2008 of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia fought back two years ago. With neither side backing down, Ukraine is increasingly becoming a flashpoint that could lead to nuclear war.

The West thinks Russia is bluffing.

But its doctrine states that if Russia feels its existence is threatened it could resort to nuclear arms. Instead of taking these warnings seriously, NATO is recklessly opening corridors for a ground war against Russia in Ukraine; France says it’s putting together a coalition of nations to enter the war, despite Russia saying French or any other NATO force would be fair game.

In Paris the other day Joe Biden said Russia wants to conquer all of Europe but can’t even take Khariv. It is this kind of inflammatory nonsense, combined with allowing Ukraine to fire NATO weapons into Russian territory, that is imperiling us all.

The danger started building up many years ago but it is now reaching a climax.

The U.S. relationship with Ukraine, and its extremists, to undermine Russia began after the Second World War. During the war, units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) took part in the Holocaust, killing at least 100,000 Jews and Poles.

Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist OUN-B, was recruited by the C.I.A. after the war, according to a 2010 study by the U.S. National Archives.

Lebed was the “foreign minister” of a Banderite government in exile, but he later broke with Bandera for acting as a dictator. The U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps termed Bandera “extremely dangerous” yet said he was “looked upon as the spiritual and national hero of all Ukrainians….”

Instead of Bandera, the C.I.A. was interested in Lebed, despite his fascist background. They set him up in an office in New York City from which he directed sabotage and propaganda operations on the agency’s behalf inside Ukraine against the Soviet Union.

The U.S. government study says:

CIA operations with these Ukrainians began in 1948 under the cryptonym CARTEL, soon changed to AERODYNAMIC. …

Lebed relocated to New York and acquired permanent resident status, then U.S. citizenship. It kept him safe from assassination, allowed him to speak to Ukrainian émigré groups, and permitted him to return to the United States after operational trips to Europe.

Once in the United States, Lebed was the CIA’s chief contact for AERODYNAMIC. CIA handlers pointed to his ‘cunning character,’ his ‘relations with the Gestapo and … Gestapo training,’ [and] the fact that he was ‘a very ruthless operator.’

The C.I.A. worked with Lebed on sabotage and pro-Ukrainian nationalist propaganda operations inside Ukraine until Ukraine’s independence in 1991.

“Mykola Lebed’s relationship with the CIA lasted the entire length of the Cold War,” the study says. “While most CIA operations involving wartime perpetrators backfired, Lebed’s operations augmented the fundamental instability of the Soviet Union.”

Continued Until And Beyond Ukrainian Independence

The U.S. thus covertly kept Ukrainian fascist ideas alive inside Ukraine until at least Ukrainian independence was achieved.

Mykola Lebed, Bandera’s wartime chief in Ukraine, died in 1998.

He is buried in New Jersey, and his papers are located at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, the U.S. National Archives study says.

The Successor Organization To The OUN-B In The United States Did Not Die With Him, However. &Nbsp;It Had Been Renamed The Ukrainian Congress Committee Of America (UCCA), According To IBT.

“By the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with UCCA members. Reagan personally welcomed [Yaroslav] Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7,000 Jews in Lviv, in the White House in 1983,” IBT reported.  “Following the demise of [Viktor] Yanukovich’s regime [in 2014], the UCCA helped organise rallies in cities across the US in support of the EuroMaidan protests,” it reported.

That is a direct link between the U.S.-backed 2014 Maidan coup against a democratically-elected Ukrainian government and WWII-era Ukrainian fascism.

Since 2014, the U.S. pushed for an attack on the Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine who had rejected the coup, and NATO began training and equipping Ukrainian troops.  Combined with talk since 2008 of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia reacted after years of warning.

More than two years after Russia’s intervention, with Ukraine clearly losing the war, Western leaders will do just about anything to save their political skins, as they’ve staked too much on winning in Ukraine.   Don’t listen to them.  They need a West in denial of the dangers facing us.

As President John F. Kennedy said in his 1963 American University speech:

“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”

The world may wake up when it’s too late — after nuclear missiles have already started flying.

September 7, 2024 Posted by | history, secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine, USA | Leave a comment

Rare photos show Earth’s fatal hotspot that can kill any human standing nearby in just five minutes

Harrowing photos of the lethal area reveal how dangerous it is to be near the hotspot

Joshua Nair, https://www.ladbible.com/news/world-news/chernobyl-elephants-foot-radiation-photos-743946-20240906 6 Sept 24

There’s a spot on Earth that is so dangerous, it could kill someone if they stood nearby for just five minutes.

And the story behind it is haunting.

A lot of things on our blue planet can be dangerous towards us humans, but something we can’t really avoid is radiation.

No, I’m not talking about generating electricity for all of our technology, I mean the radiation that can be caused by the use of weapons, which can leave everlasting effects on certain areas of the world.

Nuclear weapons are bad, but the biggest tragedy related to this isn’t to do with weapons at all, and it occurred in Chernobyl after a tragic power plant explosion in Pripyat, Ukraine.

What was the Chernobyl disaster?

At a nuclear power plant in the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl on 26 April, 1986, reactor number four exploded during a failed steam test, killing 30 people instantly.

Radiation released could be detected in countries as far as Sweden, while several civilians and workers in the area would go on to die from severe radiation poisoning, while others died from other health issues and terminal illnesses from the unsafe levels of radiation put into the atmosphere.

It is still by far and away the worst nuclear disaster in human history, reportedly costing governments around $700 million (£532 million) to deal with, while the area is uninhabitable.

The ‘Elephant’s Foot’

Known as the most dangerous object on the planet, it was caused by the Chernobyl disaster as a large hunk formed at the bottom of the reactor, which was caused by uranium fuel becoming molten when it overheated.

Steam blew the reactor apart, as heat, steam and molten nuclear fuel combined to make a 100-ton flow of dangerous chemicals that poured out of the reactor and through to the basement of the plant, solidifying and being given the name the ‘Elephant’s Foot’, resembling one.

Why is it so dangerous?

People soon realised after the explosion that it shouldn’t be approached for a while, as the radioactive lump continued to sear for months.

When measured, the Elephant’s Foot released almost 10,000 roentgens per hour, equivalent to the exposure given by four and a half million chest X-rays.

It’s is incredibly dangerous, with photos of people near the hotspot showcasing some of the bravest scientists out there, putting their lives at risk to better understand the Elephant’s Foot.

According to science magazine Nautilus, 30 seconds of exposure would have your cells haemorrhaging, and in just four minutes, violent vomiting and diarrhoea would hit, and if you got to five minutes in the lump’s vicinity, you’d die within two days.

Studies on the Elephant’s Foot

People have chosen to visit and study the site for short periods of time, and while it is still cooling down, the Elephant’s Foot is incredibly dangerous to be around, as scientists have only taken the smallest of samples to carry studies out on.

The Elephant’s Foot remains entombed in the New Safe Confinement (NSC) that was slid over Chernobyl to prevent any more radiation leaks from the nuclear power plant.

September 7, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, wastes | Leave a comment

Ukrainian Tipping Points: UPDATE

by Gordonhahn September 3, 2024 https://gordonhahn.com/2024/09/03/ukrainian-tipping-points-update/

Rueters reports US is just about se to send long-range missiles to Ukraine for attacks deep inside Russia:

US close to agreeing on long-range missiles for Ukraine; delivery to take months

Summary

-Stealthy JASSM weapons have range to hit targets inside Russia

-Decision expected in autumn, U.S. officials say

-Pentagon trying to integrate JASSMs on Soviet-era Ukrainian jets

WASHINGTON, Sept 3 (Reuters) – The U.S. is close to an agreement to give Ukraine long-range cruise missiles that could reach deep into Russia, but Kyiv would need to wait several months as the U.S. works through technical issues ahead of any shipment, U.S. officials said. The inclusion of Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) in a weapons package is expected to be announced this autumn, three sources said, though a final decision has not been made (https://www.reuters.com/world/us-close-agreeing-long-range-missiles-ukraine-delivery-take-months-2024-09-03/).

September 6, 2024 Posted by | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

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