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On the Brink: The NATO-Russia Ukrainian War Comes to Europe

Russian and Eurasian Politics, by GORDONHAHN, June 2, 2024

The NATO-Russia Ukrainian for, the war for and against NATO expansion, is on the brink of expanding to the NATO countries that provoked Russia to invade Ukraine on 24 February 2024 and have supported its continuation ever since, save one—the United States of America—ironically, the real force behind the war’s genesis. Sixteen years ago today’s CIA Director, at the time US Ambassador to Moscow, William Burns was ignored when he informed Washington: 

“Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region.  Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests.  Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face. ….“Russia’s opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia is both emotional and based on perceived strategic concerns about the impact on Russia’s interests in the region. It is also politically popular to paint the U.S. and NATO as Russia’s adversaries and to use NATO’s outreach to Ukraine and Georgia as a means of generating support from Russian nationalists. While Russian opposition to the first round of NATO enlargement in the mid-1990’s was strong, Russia now feels itself able to respond more forcefully to what it perceives as actions contrary to its national interests” (https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html).

Rather than heed Burns’s warning and that of numerous objective experts, the US and NATO tried to remake Ukraine, funding anti-Russian forces and backing what became a violent, terrorist coup led by neofascists in February 2013, confounding an agreement worked out by regime, opposition, Europe, and Russia that would have resolved the crisis. 

The post-coup NATO involvement in Ukraine was discussed in unusual pieces. One had purposes beyond the present discussion, The New York Times (NYT), acknowledged that the CIA was involved in Maidan Ukraine no later than immediately after the coup (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/25/world/europe/cia-ukraine-intelligence-russia-war.html).

 In one rare objective opinion published in NYT on the subject, it was noted: “Over the next decade, the US and its allies built a powerful Ukrainian army while sabotaging the Minsk agreement and later (after the Russian invasion) also sabotaged the Istanbul negotiations. Weapon systems poured in, Ukrainian ports were modernised to fit American warships, and Ukraine was becoming a de facto NATO member. Top Ukrainian officials like Arestovich argued openly they were preparing for a war with Russia. A top adviser to former president Nicolas Sarkozy, warned that the US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership of November 2021 convinced Russia that it must attack or be attacked’” (https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/opinion/us-ukraine-putin-war.html).

The decision to supply nuclear capable F-16 fighter jets to Kiev and the recent French and presumably other Western countries’ coming declarations making official their previous and future deployments of ‘instructors’ and ‘advisors’ to the Ukrainian front is dangerously escalatory enough. Moscow is required to respond with an answering escalation to save face internally before the Russian people and externally before the world. Now NATO, in the person of its GenSec, has opened up the Overton window by way of convening discussions with member-states on the introduction of troops and the use of Western-supplied mid-range rockets to hit deep inside Russian territory.

 Poland is on the verge of deploying its missile defense systems to protect Ukraine from Russia attacks. Moreover, a claim is being circulated to the effect that decision of 12 NATO countries (UK, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Canada, Sweden, Finland, Poland, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania so far) to allow Kiev to use Western missiles to strike deep into Russia — as far as Moscow and Russia’s ‘second capitol’ of St. Petersburg. Germany, not included in the list, has apparently changed its position and now supports attacks on Russia using Western weapons, as Chancellor Olaf Shultz stated standing next to French President Emmanuel Macron last week. Berlin also is still considering sending long-range Taurus missiles to Kiev. 

 For its part, the US is considering giving permission to Kiev to use US weapons, such as ATACM missiles (180-mile range), against military targets deep inside Russia (https://www.wsj.com/world/blinken-signals-u-s-may-allow-ukraine-to-strike-inside-russia-with-u-s-weapons-61fedb10). The US has announced that it will allow the use of weapons it has supplied to Ukraine for attacks on Russian proper in the battle in the Kharkov (Kharkiv) border region now the focus of a Russian counteroffensive. 

Otherwise, for the moment Washington will continue to pretend it is opposed to Ukraine’s use of American weapons against Russia proper, using official statements and media plants to this tune: “a U.S. official said Washington had expressed concerns to Kyiv over Ukraine’s strikes — using its own weapons — on Russian radar stations that provide conventional air defense and early warning of nuclear launches by the West.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/30/ukraine-us-strategy-disagreement-corruption/). 

Ukraine’s armed forces could not have made this attack without US assistance. The US also will soon conclude a US-Ukraine Security Pact likely intended to institutionalize US weapons, training, intelligence, operational, and financial support to Kiev for the ‘long war.’ Fifteen European states have already concluded such long-term security agreements with Kiev over the last few months (https://www.pravda.com.ua/rus/news/2024/05/31/7458547/).

All this —added to the Western weapons, intelligence, training, operational planning, and undercover military personnel contributed to Kiev — makes Ukraine de facto a full-fledged NATO member-state. In other words, NATO countries — and thus de facto NATO itself — are preparing to do officially what they have been doing clandestinely since February 2022: fight Russia in Ukraine for the right to expand NATO when and where Washington and Brussels want. Before all this, Western countries — all the leading members of NATO — were de facto and de jure co-belligerents with Ukraine against Russia. Suffice it to note that Ukraine does not have space based reconnaissance data for targeting but is receiving such from French, German, US and other NATO militaries.

It appears that the recent Western escalations are driven in part by the need to prevent a Russian victory at all costs in order to save face for the US and NATO and, perhaps no less importantly, to salvage US President Joe Biden’s career in the coming presidential elections—a career that has been so disastrous for his family, Americans in general, and now the world. ………………………………………………

………………….. A kind of perfect storm is coming. This autumn there likely will be: the collapse of the Ukrainian front and/or army and/or regime; the Russian army’s approach to the Dniepr and perhaps encirclement of Zaporozhe, Kharkiv, even Kiev; and an American political crisis (given the guilty verdict against Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump). The possibilities are almost endless, and some rather dire ones are becoming increasingly more probable.https://gordonhahn.com/2024/06/02/on-the-brink-the-nato-russia-ukrainian-war-comes-to-europe/

June 3, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Biden Lets Ukraine Strike Russia With US Weapons While Ukraine Attacks Russian Nuclear Defenses

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE, MAY 31, 2024, https://www.caitlinjohnst.one/p/biden-lets-ukraine-strike-russia?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=82124&post_id=145149954&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Well it finally happened: Biden is now letting Ukraine strike Russian territory with US-supplied weapons. Escalations in nuclear brinkmanship which would have been unthinkable a few short years ago are becoming increasingly common as Ukraine loses more and more territory and runs out of soldiers to fight.

In a new report from Politico titled “Biden secretly gave Ukraine permission to strike inside Russia with US weapons” which cites multiple anonymous US officials, the article’s authors correctly describe the new White House authorization as a “stunning shift the administration initially said would escalate the war by more directly involving the U.S. in the fight.” 

This report comes shortly after an article by The New York Times titled “From Allies and Advisers, Pressure Grows on Biden to Allow Attacks on Russian Territory,” in which David E Sanger accurately forecast that “Biden is edging toward what may prove to be one of his most consequential decisions in the war for Ukraine: whether to reverse his ban on shooting American weapons into Russian territory.”

Politico reports that the approval for these attacks is limited to “solely near the area of Kharkiv,” but, again, these escalations were once unthinkable even for this administration, and every time a new escalation is authorized the warmongers are already well on their way to pushing for a further one. We will surely see increasing calls for Biden to authorize US-backed strikes deeper into Russian territory in the coming weeks.

This new development comes just after we learned that Ukraine has been repeatedly attacking Russia’s early warning systems for incoming nuclear strikes, with Ukrainian drones targeting Russian radar sites hundreds of miles from Ukrainian-controlled territory. 

Just a few years ago if I had told you that a NATO proxy would soon be attacking Russia’s nuclear defense infrastructure, you’d probably have assumed we’d be pretty close to another Cuban Missile Crisis-level nuclear standoff, and that it would be receiving high levels of alarm and attention. But this report is barely in the news, and hardly anyone in the west even knows it’s happening.

This also comes as Reuters reports that France is preparing to send “several hundred” troops to Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces, which of course means we may soon be seeing the armed forces of a NATO power getting killed by the Russian military.

Any of these three new developments has the potential to lead to unpredictable events which spiral out of control into a nuclear war between NATO and the Russian Federation, which would be the single worst thing that could possibly happen on planet Earth. There is no excuse for anyone to be playing around anywhere remotely close to such a precipice, and yet here we are.

As we discussed last year, the terrifying thing about the west’s pattern of continually escalating against Russia every time it doesn’t get a nuclear ICBM in the kisser for the last escalation naturally incentivizes Russia to attack NATO directly in order to re-establish its credibility for deterrence. So far Russia has been content to respond to NATO’s escalations by just tearing into Ukraine with greater and greater ferocity, but if the western empire keeps interpreting every time Russia doesn’t attack NATO forces directly as a sign that it’s safe to keep escalating, at some point Russia’s going to have to hit NATO.

It is not sane or acceptable that any of this is happening. The empire knowingly provoked this war, and now it’s getting more and more casual about risking the life of everyone on this planet as its proxy runs out of lives to throw into its gears. 

And it’s so hard to draw attention to this, because there are so many other horrible things happening in the world which the western empire is also directly responsible for. The empire is increasingly acting like a wounded, cornered animal as China rises and the US slowly sinks into post-primacy, the only major difference being that wounded, cornered animals have teeth and claws instead of weapons of armageddon.

June 2, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war | 1 Comment

U.S. concerned about Ukraine strikes on Russian nuclear radar stations

Washington conveyed to Kyiv that attacks on Russian early-warning systems could be destabilizing.

By Ellen Nakashima and Isabelle Khurshudyan, May 29, 2024  https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2024/05/29/us-ukraine-nuclear-warning-strikes/

The United States fears that recent Ukrainian drone strikes targeting Russian nuclear early–warning systems could dangerously unsettle Moscow at a time when the Biden administration is weighing whether to lift restrictions on Ukraine using U.S.-supplied weapons in cross-border attacks.

“The United States is concerned about Ukraine’s recent strikes against Russian ballistic missile early-warning sites,” said a U.S. official, who spoke on thecondition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

Washington has conveyed its concerns to Kyiv about two attempted attacks over the last week against radar stations that provide conventional air defense as well as warning of nuclear launches by the West. At least one strike in Armavir, in Russia’s southeastern Krasnodar region, appeared to have caused some damage.

“These sites have not been involved in supporting Russia’s war against Ukraine,” the U.S. official said. “But they are sensitive locations because Russia could perceive that its strategic deterrent capabilities are being targeted, which could undermine Russia’s ability to maintain nuclear deterrence against the United States.”

A Ukrainian official familiar with the matter, however, said that Russia has used the radar sites to monitor the Ukrainian military’s activities, particularly Kyiv’s use of aerial weaponry, such as drones and missiles. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive security matter, confirmed that Ukraine’s Military Intelligence Directorate, known by its initials as GUR, was responsible for the strikes.

Ukraine is facing a continuing threat to its existence from a Russian enemy force — which boasts the world’s largest nuclear arsenal — that has gained ground of late, in part due to its sophisticated radar and weapons-jamming technology, which has rendered virtually useless some U.S.-provided guided missiles and artillery shells. This capability has also enhanced Moscow’s ability to track British and U.S.-provided longer-range weaponry and drones, which have caused serious damage to Russia’s Black Sea fleet and military installations in Crimea, the southern peninsula illegally seized from Ukraine in 2014.

The Ukrainian official said the goal of the strikes was to diminish Russia’s ability to track the Ukrainian military’s activities in southern Ukraine. The drone that targeted the radar station near Orsk, in Russia’s Orenburg region along Kazakhstan’s northern border, traveled more than 1,100 miles, making it one of the deepest attempted strikes into Russian territory. The Ukrainian official declined to say whether the strike, on May 26, caused any damage.

U.S. officials said they are sympathetic to Ukraine’s plight — administration officials are actively weighing whether to lift restraints on the use of U.S.-provided weapons to strike inside Russia. But were Russia’s early-warning capabilities to be blinded by Ukrainian attacks, even in part, that could hurt strategic stability between Washington and Moscow, the U.S. official said.

The perception issue is likely fueled by “an erroneous conviction that Ukraine’s targeting is directed by Washington,” said Dmitri Alperovitch, security analyst and chairman of Silverado think tank. “But that means attacks by Kyiv on Russian nuclear deterrence infrastructure has potential to trigger a perilous escalation with the West. At the end of the day, nuclear command and control and early-warning sites should be off-limits.”

Some analysts were puzzled at the targets: While Krasnodar is close enough to Ukraine to track missiles and drones, the radar station near Orsk is focused on the Middle East and China, they said.

Asked why they would target a site so far away, the Ukrainian official asserted that Russia “switched all of its capabilities for war against Ukraine.”

Following Ukraine’s disappointing counteroffensive last year, Russia has regained the initiative on the battlefield in recent months, advancing in the eastern Donetsk region and recently launching a new assault in the northeastern Kharkiv region along the border. Kyiv, meanwhile, has with increasing frequency targeted sites deep in Russia — a capability many doubted was possible without Western support and sign-off.

About three weeks ago, shortly after Russia began its assault on Kharkiv, Ukraine asked the United States to ease long-standing restrictions on using U.S.-provided weapons to attack targets inside Russia. Some senior officials favor such a move, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who has urged President Biden to agree to lift the restraints. The White House is considering such a proposal, but no action has been taken yet, officials say.

At a news conference Wednesday in Moldova, Blinken said the United States has “not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine, but Ukraine, as I’ve said before, has to make its own decisions about the best way to effectively defend itself.”

Blinken added that the United States has “adapted and adjusted” to changing conditions on the battlefield and that as Russia pursues new tactics of “aggression” and “escalation,” was “confident that we’ll continue to do that.”

There is no restriction on Ukraine using U.S.-supplied air defenses to shoot down Russian missiles or fighter jets over Russian territory “if they pose a threat to Ukraine,” the U.S. official said.

But U.S. officials have previously expressed concern to Ukrainian officials over Kyiv’s attacks on Russian soil, sometimes even intervening during the planning stage. Ahead of the one-year mark of the war, theGUR was planning attacks on Moscow, according to a leaked classified report from the U.S. National Security Agency that was later confirmed by two senior Ukrainian military officials.

Days before the attack, U.S. officials asked Kyiv to scrub their plans, fearing it could provoke an aggressive response from the Kremlin; the Ukrainians complied, according to the leaked U.S. documents and the senior Ukrainian officials.

In a more recent example, Washington took exception to Ukrainian drones targeting oil refineries inside Russia — a request that came directly from Vice President Harris to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Munich Security Conference in February, according to officials familiar with the matter. U.S. officials believed the strikes would raise global energy prices and invite more aggressive Russian retaliation inside Ukraine.

Amid growing concern over Russia’s battlefield advances, Washington is facing pressure from NATO and several key European allies to allow Ukraine to use the full force and range of U.S.-provided weapons.

If you cannot attack the Russian forces on the other side of the front line because they are on the other side of the border, then of course you really reduce the ability of the Ukrainian forces to defend themselves,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance’s top political official, said during a visit to Bulgaria on Monday.

Khurshudyan reported from Kyiv. Siobhán O’Grady in Kyiv and Alex Horton in Washington contributed to this report.

May 31, 2024 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment