#comparison with Russian-controlled Ukrainian territory

[in-sightjournal]

Ask A Genius 1093: Kursk Oblast Incursion

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your assessment of the Kursk Oblast incursion by Ukrainian forces into Russian Federation territory? Rick Rosner: It appears that they have seized approximately 400 square miles of Russian land, which is relatively minor given the vast expanse of Russia, the largest country in the world. The territories captured hold no significant strategic value. However, the…

[mariacallous]

Ukrainian drones hit a munitions depot in the Russian region of Voronezh overnight, a Ukrainian security source said on Saturday, adding that Ukraine believed the depot was being used to transfer munitions and equipment to Ukraine.

The source, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said the operation was conducted by the SBU, Ukraine’s internal security service.

“At this moment, there are still four pockets of a powerful fire observed at the site, as well as the unceasing detonation of munitions,” the source said.

The source said the facility was in the village of Soldatskoe, some 130 kilometers from the nearest Ukraine-controlled territory.

Ukraine, which is restricted by some of its Western allies from using their missiles on Russian territory, has built up a stock of domestically produced long-range drones, some capable of hitting targets over 1,000 kilometers away, or even further, if Ukrainian military’s spy chief is to be believed.

Russian crime, Ukrainian punishment

Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s military intelligence (HUR) said that Ukraine’s leading specialists have developed drones capable of striking military targets as deep as 1,800 kilometers inside Russian territory. “Military airfields, a source of constant threat to Ukrainian cities, shudder from air attacks. Russia’s entire infrastructure contributing to their war effort has suffered and will suffer losses,” Budanov said on social media, adding that “After all, instead of defending what’s theirs, Russia chose the wrong path of an unprovoked war and an attack on the lands of a sovereign state.” For months now, Kyiv has been pummelling Russian energy infrastructure, oil refineries, and other targets critical to the Kremlin’s war effort.

September 7 marks the Day of Military Intelligence in Ukraine. One of the chief achievements of his organization named by Budanov was forcing Russia to withdraw its Black Sea Fleet from its bases in occupied Crimea. He said: “We forced the enemy to move their fleet to a ‘safer’ distance,” at the same time adding that “this is only an illusion of control. “After all, having unleashed a large-scale aggression against Ukraine, there is no safe place for the Russian occupation army and its structures. The punishment may be postponed, but never canceled.” The head of HUR also said that his organization has successfully conducted dozens of cyberattacks against the Russian military’s IT infrastructure, obtaining valuable intelligence that is being used in Ukraine’s military operations against the invading forces. And, as he stated, this is not Kyiv’s last word. He said: “Russia’s statehood, built on fear and brutality, has an expiration date. Therefore, the expansion of the network of loyal supporters, as well as sabotage stunts deep inside Russia, will proceed.”

[salvo-love]

Lula DA Silva Narendra Modi CyrilRamaphosa Cyril Ramaphosa is President 习近平 Xi Jinping

UN Security Council United Nations Organization ⬇️⬇️⬇️

UN Security Council United Nations Organization #BRICS2023 #BRICSSummit #BRICS

Change of world order = new world order = new dominating powers = new lawless empires = no respect for international law = better said creation of a new world disorder. An absolute disappointment that will lead the world to the third world war!

AbdelFattah Elsisi - عبد الفتاح السيسي

Alberto Fernández Abyiahmed,Ali Abyiahmed,Ali Abyi Ahmed Ali Mohammad Bin Salman Al-Saud Ebrahim Raisi Ebrahim Raisi #EbrahimRaisi Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan Abiy Ahmed Ali Lula DA Silva Narendra Modi Cyril Ramaphosa for President Ramaphosaa Cyril Ramaphosa is President Cyril Ramaphosa Grant Fund Xi.Jinping

习近平 Xi Jinping 習近平 Xi Jinping XI Jinping - A governança da China #HosseinAmirAbdollahian

Dear Prime Ministers, to you who say you are neutral and not aligned with Putin's Russia; to you who say together with the Russian federation that you want a new world order, I would like to remind you that Russia has no justification regarding its aggression and occupation of territories legitimately belonging to Ukraine (see and read the different UN solutions on Russian aggression) .

I would also like to remind you that if Russia were to gain the upper hand and annex other Ukrainian territories, its war of invasion and modern imperialism would not only not stop, but with Putin ambitious and conquering it would spread to all of Europe, to Asia and in Africa where Wagner's Russian brigades already control seven/eight states with arms, the last of which is Niger, with the support of coups d'état, which erase democracy and establish bloody dictatorships in these countries. The Russian federation wants to carry out and complete an imperialist and dictatorial conquest of the largest number of independent states possible, in order to dominate and subject them and therefore have the role of command and control of the whole world, precisely changing the world order.

I would also like to remind you that in this context, China, India and other populous and economically and militarily powerful states that support Putin will also be subjugated and forced to accept Moscow's impositions and decisions. In short, Russia, having had the primacy of the most militarily powerful state in the whole world, it will decide and do whatever it likes in the world, in short, good and bad times. And this supremacy of her will also subject China and India. Does it seem normal to you that Russia, with a territory that occupies 1/3rd of the globe and with a multi-ethnic population of 144 million inhabitants, should dictate the law, decisions and control 8 billion people in the world??

I invite you to read and study the history of the birth of Russia up to the present day, passing through the Soviet Union; surely you will get an idea, not beautiful nor acceptable, let's say very bad and horrendous, of all the leaders, the tsars, the criminal presidents, the autocratic, dictatorial, anti-democratic, repressive and imperialist governments of the Russias and their propensity for bloody and terrible conquests military. By comparison, the Roman Empire and the Romans were Discalced Carmelite friars.

With this I want to invite you to share, accept and enforce the legitimate decisions of the UN, voted almost unanimously, on the territorial integrity of Ukraine and on respect for international law. Remember that if Russia were to win the war with Ukraine, in addition to creating a precedent for new wars, China, India and other powers would already be in the hands and under the control of the Russians !!

Signed The independent sociologist and superpartes of the whole world.

[baitdragon]

'Terrible toll': Russia's invasion of Ukraine in numbers

Ukrainian soldiers often use the term "cannon fodder" to describe the Russians sent to their death along the frontline.

When Russia's President Vladimir Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, he started a war that has killed tens of thousands of people, ravaged cities, and pummelled the country's economy.

A year on, here is the cost of the conflict:

Military losses  According to the latest estimates from Norway, the conflict has wounded or killed 180,000 Russian soldiers and 100,000 Ukrainian troops.

Other Western sources estimate the war has caused 150,000 casualties on each side. In comparison, some 15,000 Soviet soldiers were killed in a whole decade of fighting in Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989.

Ukrainian soldiers often use the term "cannon fodder" to describe the Russians sent to their death along the frontline.

They are often poorly trained conscripts who stand little chance against Ukrainian forces determined to defend their country.

Others are convicts recruited in Russian jails to swell the ranks of Russian paramilitary group Wagner, who Kyiv and its allies say are deployed on near-impossible missions with the equivalent of a gun pointed to their head.

The onslaught has also taken its toll on the Ukrainian side, as shown by the endless blue and yellow national flags fluttering above cemeteries across the embattled country.

Civilian losses By the time Moscow's forces seized control of Mariupol in late May after three months of heavy bombardment, the southern port city had been reduced to a sea of rubble strewn with dead bodies.

Kyiv said at least 20,000 Ukrainian civilians had been killed.

In total, some 30,000 to 40,000 civilians have lost their lives nationwide in the conflict, Western sources say.

In late January, the United Nations estimated that 18,000 civilians had been killed or wounded in the fighting, but said the real figure was likely much higher.

Ukrainian authorities say at least 400 children have been killed.

The United Nations says most of the killed civilians lost their lives during Russian bombardment.

Long term, landmines will also be a huge threat to civilians.

Kyiv says 30 percent of Ukrainian territory has been contaminated, while Human Rights Watch accuses Ukrainian troops of having planted banned anti-personnel landmines in the eastern region of Izyum.

Experts warn demining could take decades.

War crimes  Several images have come to symbolise the war's devastating impact on ordinary Ukrainians.

When AFP journalists entered the Kyiv suburb of Bucha on April 2, 2022, they found one street littered with the bodies of civilians.

One man had fallen onto his bike, another still had a shopping bag in his hand. Yet another had his hands tied behind his back.

Days later, a child's toy lay bloodied at a train station in the eastern city of Kramatorsk, after a Russian missile hit as thousands of civilians waited for a train to flee the violence. At least 57 civilians were killed.

The previous month, people around the world saw the photograph of a heavily pregnant woman on a stretcher being evacuated from a Mariupol hospital after it was bombed. Neither she nor her baby survived.

Around 65,000 suspected war crimes have been reported throughout the war, the European Union's justice commissioner Didier Reynders says.

UN investigators have accused Russia of committing war crimes on a "massive scale" in Ukraine -- bombings, executions, torture and horrific sexual violence.

Kyiv alleges Moscow has forcibly deported more than 16,000 children to Russia or areas controlled by Moscow-backed separatists.

Several NGOs have condemned Ukraine, meanwhile, for violating the rights of Russian prisoners of war, but on a much smaller scale.

The International Criminal Court launched an investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity last year.

But it cannot prosecute either country for any possible war crimes since neither Russia nor Ukraine are members of the Hague-based court.

Kyiv is instead pressing for a special tribunal to be set up to prosecute Moscow for the crime of aggression because it sees this as a way to achieve faster justice and more easily target the Kremlin's top officials.

1,500-km frontline On the eastern battlefront, entire villages and towns lie in ruins, and the earth is dotted with huge craters.

Exhausted soldiers lie in wait at the bottom of muddy trenches, while the dull thud of artillery fire booms overhead.

The "active" frontline runs north to south along 1,500 km (900 miles) of territory, according to Valery Zaluzhny, the commander in chief of Ukraine's armed forces.

Among the hotspots is the town of Bakhmut, dubbed "hell on earth" by many Ukrainian soldiers, where Russian soldiers and Wagner mercenaries have been steadily inching forward in recent weeks.

A few thousand civilians still live in the town, hunkering in cellars without running water or electricity, taking great risks when they venture out for fresh air, food, water and fuel.

Moscow's troops occupy almost a fifth of Ukraine, according to figures from the US-based Institute for the Study of War.

But Zaluzhny says Ukrainian forces have managed to wrest back some 40 percent of territory occupied after the invasion last year.

Battered economy Fighting has been concentrated in the east of Ukraine since Russian forces withdrew from the north of the country a month into the war, following their failure to capture Kyiv.

In these areas, homes, businesses and factories have been ravaged.

Nationwide, Russia has repeatedly targeted key energy infrastructure in recent months, causing blackouts and leaving millions without heating this winter.

The World Bank in October said it expected the country's economy to contract by 35 percent in 2022.

The Kyiv School of Economics in January estimated it would cost $138 billion to replace all the infrastructure ravaged by war.

In a country famed for its cereal and sunflower oil exports, the war has caused more than $34 billion in economic losses in the agricultural sector, it said in November.

Some 3,000 schools and 239 cultural sites have been affected by the fighting, the UN cultural fund says.

Rebuilding Ukraine following the invasion would cost an estimated $349 billion, a joint assessment by the Ukrainian government, the European Commission and the World Bank found in September.

"The Russian invasion of Ukraine continues to exact a terrible toll," the World Bank's Anna Bjerde said at the time.

Millions of refugees More than eight million Ukrainians have been forced to flee Ukraine since the war broke out, the UN refugee agency says, the largest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II.

Neighbouring Poland hosts the largest share of these refugees, with more than 1.5 million of them.

More than five million people have been displaced inside the country.

Moscow says another five million people have sought refuge in Russia, though Kyiv has accused the Russians of conducting "forced evacuations".

Western military aid  When Russia invaded, the Ukrainian armed forces mostly had outdated, Soviet-era era military equipment to defend themselves.

Kyiv has repeatedly urged its Western allies to send it modern weaponry, from air defences systems to heavy tanks.

The West was initially reluctant to becoming too involved in order to avoid any more direct confrontation between it and nuclear-armed Russia, but little by little it has ceded to most demands.

But President Volodymyr Zelensky's request for F-16 fighter jets has so far gone unheeded.

Among the aid, the United States dispatched Himars precision rocket launchers, with a range of 80 km (50 miles) far superior to that of Russian equipment, that analysts say helped turn the tide this autumn in the battle against the Russians in the Kharkiv region in the northeast and Kherson region in the south.

By November, Kyiv's allies had pledged more than 37 billion euros ($40 billion) in military aid, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

That figure does not include the latest announcements in January that the United States, Canada and several European countries will send Ukraine modern battle tanks.

[opedguy]

Russia Pulls Out of Kherson

TLOS ANGELES (OnlineColumnist.com), Nov. 10, 2022.--outing 70-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin’s retreat from the Kherson region as the biggest Russian defeat since the collapse of the 1991 Soviet Union, former Putin adviser Sergei Markov called the defeat catastrophic for Putin.  “The surrender of Kherson is the largest geopolitical defeat of Russia since the collapse of the USSR,” said Markov, a pro-Kremlin analyst and former adviser to Putin.  Markov said nothing about the supply line problems Russia faced heading into a cold winter, something that could jeopardize thousands of Russian troops.  While Putin took Kherson in March, there’s no strategic reason to maintain control over Kherson, when Putin’s stated mission of the Feb. 24 invasion was to protect Russian speakers in the Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea regions of Ukraine.  Kherson was militarily insignificant to the overall mission, yet demonstrating Kremlin power.

Putin’s strategy heading into the winter months is to avoid major confrontations with Ukraine’s counteroffensive which attempt to reclaim sovereign land lost to the Kremlin over the last eight months of war.  Western leaders, especially Kiev, want to sell the withdrawal as a major collapse of the Russian military.  But the operative cliché involves Putin picking his battles wisely, something Ukraine would like to control  Putin knows that Kherson’s importance in the scheme of things pales in comparison to securing Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea.  When the war started Feb. 24, Putin’s aim was to de-fang the Ukrainian military, supplied lethal weapons by the U.S. and NATO.  When the conflict began, Putin said it was more about holding the line about NATO encroachment on the Russian Federation than anything else.  Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed that NATO impinged on Russian national security.

White House and Kiev officials said Putin was trying to conquer Ukraine in the early days of the war, something Putin refuted.  Putin offered Zelensky a way out of the war by accepting the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk and recognizing Crimea as a sovereign Russian territory.  Zelensky rejected Putin’s terms, saying he expects to reclaim every inch of Ukraine’s sovereign territory.  President Joe Biden agreed with Zelensky’s plan, funding a proxy war using Ukrainian troops to battle the Russian Federation.  Biden has support of the EU and NATO but China, India and a host of other countries don’t agree with Biden’s proxy war.  Putin decided to surrender Kherson may be the strongest signal to date that he’s willing to go to the peace table and find an equitable end to the war.  Zelensky said recently he would not negotiate with Russia until Putin’s removed from power.

Zelensky only recently retracted his position on negotiating with Putin but only after 45-year-old National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan traveled to Kiev to change his mind.  Whether admitted to or not, the White House has more clout in deciding which direction the war takes.  If Biden wants to ever get WNBA start Brittney Griner out of a Russian penal colony, he needs to move the conflict from the battlefield to the peace table.  Biden and Zelensky have said they want to reclaim more lost Ukraine territory before going to the peace table with Putin.  “The political consequences of this huge defeat will be really big,” Markov said, hinting that the Kremlin may remove Putin from power.  Markov has no secret information to suggest that but gives the Western view of Putin’s retreat from Kherson.  Markov rejects the idea that the retreat is strategic to protect Russian troops.

Zelensky had no choice but to accept the billions in U.S. aid, now exceeding $70 billion, knowing his Kiev government was bankrupt.  Biden agreed to supply Ukraine unlimited cash-and-lethal weapons as long as Ukrainian forces continued to battle the Russian Federation.  Leaving Kherson shows that Putin knows how to pick his battles, realizing that the territory does Russia no good, other than occupying a large region of Ukraine.  But Putin knows that time nears when the conflict will enter the peace process, requiring both sides to make compromises.  Leaving Kherson sends a loud signal to Biden and Zelensky that the time draws near to start ceasefire and peace talks.  Putin announced Sept. 30 Russian sovereign control over Kherson, Donetsk, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.  Putin decision to surrender Kherson is both strategic and a signal that it’s time for ceasefire and peace talks.

Western officials and Kiev presents Putin’s Kherson withdrawal as a major Kremlin defeat because half the battle for Kiev is to humiliate the Russian military. Putin has the resources to stay in Kherson, if he wanted to continue to fall into Ukraine’s military trap.  He’s wanted to get out of Kherson to deny the Ukraine military its counteroffensive in the region.  However Zelensky views Putin’s Kherson withdrawal, it shows that the war cannot go on indefinitely.  Zelensky wants to continue the fighting as long as the U.S. foots the bill to the Kiev government and the war.  Biden must decide whether the time is right to let U.N. peacekeepers do their jobs and bring the Ukraine War to an end.  Biden will fall short in his mission to topple Putin from power.  But there’s already so much damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure that it will take years to rebuild the country.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

[xtruss]

Our New Survey Shows a Divided Nation! Is Ukraine Caught Between Europe and Russia? We Asked Ukrainians This Important Question.

Neutrality Is Popular in Ukraine, More so Than NATO (North Atlantic Terrorist Organization) Membership

Many in the Wast Would Not Mind "Military Cooperation" With Russia

— The Washington Post | By Gerard Toal | Friday January 14, 2022

People pose on T-72 battle tank during a Defender of the Fatherland Day celebration Feb. 23 at a former airport in Luhansk, Ukraine. (Dave Mustaine/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)

Text is From February 2020.

Although support for NATO among most Ukrainian political elites appears solid, our recent survey shows that people in Ukraine (excluding Crimea and separatist-controlled parts of the Donbas) have mixed feelings about NATO and Russia. Where Ukrainians see their country depends on where Ukrainians live. Crucially, despite the Russian seizure of Crimea and years of war in the Donbas, most Ukrainians want their country to be neutral, not militarily aligned with Russia or NATO.

Good Relations? Yes. Foreign Bases? No.

For a survey of 2,212 respondents, conducted for us by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS), we created a three-point scale to measure the intensity and reach of respondent attitudes to both Russia and NATO as potential military partners. This means that instead of the normal one or two binary questions, we asked six questions in all.

The first set of questions asked simply whether respondents agreed that their country should develop good and positive relations with Russia (or NATO). The second asked whether respondents agreed that their country should engage in military cooperation with Russia (or join NATO). The final set asked whether respondents agreed that their country should allow the stationing of Russian (or NATO) “troops and bases on your national territory?” This assessed the degree to which respondents agreed with the implications of their country belonging to a military alliance.

Here’s What We Found

Our results show that Ukrainians want good relations with NATO and Russia. Joining a military alliance with either is a minority position, but only slightly so for NATO, as shown in the figure below. Similarly, most Ukrainians do not agree that their country should host foreign troops and military bases. On this last point, Ukrainians we surveyed have a stronger aversion to Russian troops and bases, an understandable position given that Russia annexed Crimea and actively shapes the military standoff in the Donbas. [An understandable position given that the 4 million in rebel Donbass were not asked.]

The survey results clearly indicate a divided Ukraine. Only a plurality of Ukrainian adults (44 percent) support NATO membership, and only a quarter want to allow NATO troops and bases on Ukrainian territory. By comparison, 26 percent want military cooperation with Russia — but only 4 percent would allow Russian troops and bases.

Many academics and pundits have concentrated on differences in attitudes between citizens of Ukrainian and Russian nationality — our survey sample includes 9 percent who identify as Russian — but we found that Ukraine’s macro-regional differences were much more noticeable. Our results show that the regional differences in Russian and NATO military cooperation and doubts about the full implications of such cooperation are remarkably consistent in both the west and east regions.

Survey participants in the east and south regions are more skeptical about NATO membership, while the west and center (including the capital, Kyiv) are about three times (60 percent vs. 20 percent in the other regions) more positive about NATO ties. A similar regional divide is evident in responses about Russian military cooperation — and even about allowing NATO troops and bases.

Neutrality or Alliance?

Results from other geopolitical questions in the survey amplify these findings. On the proposition “It is best for our country to take a neutral position, not to join any military alliance,” a slight majority (50.4 percent) of respondents agreed, 32.6 percent said no and 17 percent did not provide an answer.

We also noticed a 10-point gap on multiple questions between people of Ukrainian and Russian nationality — so 49 percent to 58 percent, respectively, on support for the proposition of neutrality. But there was a much wider regional gap on this question: From the west (30 percent) to center/Kyiv (42 percent) to east (62 percent) and south (72 percent), Ukrainians held widely divergent views on this question about neutrality.

Ukraine continues to be a backdrop for U.S. domestic political dramas, a cockpit for scandal-mongering or a divine mission for “freedom’s front line.” Lost in this fracas are the internal complexities of this large European country. Most Ukrainians refuse the either/or terms of the Russia-West antagonism. Despite losing people and territory to Russia, Ukraine’s geographic divergences endure. And most of its citizens demonstrate an aspiration to get along with both Russia and the West.

— Source: The Washington Post

[mariacallous]

In Russia’s ideological fog, only one label has real staying power: fascist. In the Russian context, the word conjures the armies that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler sent to invade the Soviet Union and has taken on the meaning of a monstrous enemy hellbent on annihilation. That’s why many Russians barely noticed as Putin’s Russia became more and more fascistic because Russians, by definition, could not be fascists—only their worst adversaries could.

The Kremlin’s branding of Ukrainians as fascists sounds absurd to Westerners because it so blatantly contradicts reality: The Ukrainian far right consistently performs much worse electorally than nationalists in established European democracies; Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a Jew whose family suffered in—and resisted—the Nazi invasion of Soviet Ukraine; and, perhaps most significantly, Ukraine holds regular, competitive elections with often unpredictable outcomes. But Putin’s use of the word “neo-Nazi” for Ukrainians is intended for a domestic audience that understands its Soviet context. Ukrainians are one people with Russians, according to Putin, except for the “traitors” who are turning Ukraine into an “anti-Russia.”

Ukraine is, in fact, losing any resemblance to Russia. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Russia and Ukraine remained closely bound through family ties and friendships as well as supply chains and pipelines. But even as older Ukrainians could look back on a common Soviet past with Russia, a new generation began to see Ukraine’s future as a European democracy. The country’s strong regional centers and competing oligarchs prevented the rise of an omnipotent ruler as in Russia. In comparison to Russians, Ukrainians were poor but free. The Kremlin had no problem with Ukraine being a nominally independent country as long as its government could be bought with cheap energy. But when a Kremlin-backed president fled anti-government protests in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, in 2014, Putin started seizing territory to stop Ukraine from slipping out of his control. The violence he unleashed on the country made Ukrainians turn against Russia and view NATO as a potential protector.

Ukraine’s success as a democracy is a danger to Putin’s regime because of the example it sets for Russians. Independent Ukraine started in a very similar place as Russia and has struggled with many of the same challenges: widespread corruption, an archaic judicial system, and overbearing security services. What has distinguished Ukraine from Russia is the development of a strong civil society, forged during two pro-democracy street revolutions. In their belated process of de-Sovietization, Ukrainians became citizens of their own country, while in Russia, Russians remained subjects of their ruler.

Ukrainian independence and Ukraine’s democracy are tantamount to a rebellion against the empire that Putin believes he must resurrect and lead. Putin’s rule, as eternal as it may seem, will also come to an end. But there are scant grounds to believe that his successor will be more conciliatory or democratically inclined. Even if a new Kremlin leadership agrees to end the fighting, grievances among Russian hard-liners may arise: that Putin was not violent enough or that the West prevented Russia from winning. It is hard to imagine a future Russian government voluntarily returning Ukrainian territory that Putin annexed.

The fundamental problem is that there is little prospect that Russians will come to terms with their country’s misdeeds in the same way Germans did after World War II. Even in democratic West Germany, it took four decades for the public to accept Nazi Germany’s capitulation as a liberation rather than a defeat. But an honest reckoning with the past was crucial for postwar Germans to overcome their imperialist legacy, reconcile with former enemies, and build a successful democracy.

For Russians of the future, the burden of the past will weigh doubly. If they are to find any closure, they will have to account not only for Putin’s crimes in Ukraine but also for more distant atrocities committed by his Soviet predecessors. During perestroika, Russians began to uncover the true scope of Stalin’s crimes. But in recent years, the Russian authorities hindered that painful work before making it all but impossible. What matters to Putin about Stalin is his “great victory” in World War II and the transformation of the Soviet Union into a superpower that rivaled the United States. For Putin, the last Russian empire has nothing to apologize for—and its ignominious collapse is a defeat worth vindicating.

If Russia is ever to become a democracy, it will depend on Russians unblinkingly examining their recent history and abandoning their imperial delusions. Only a Russia that owns up to the crimes committed in the name of empire can hope to begin to reconcile with its neighbors and earn their trust. Imperial thinking implies domination over others, competition with neighbors, and rule by an emperor. Democratic thinking means minority rights, international cooperation, and rule by the people. But as long as Russians do not see themselves as citizens of their own country—and instead as subjects of their ruler—Russia’s democratization cannot take place.

The challenges facing a post-Putin Russia appear even more daunting than those that the country faced after the collapse of communism. It is difficult to see what could move Russians to kill the empire in their heads and take the first steps to transform their country from a broken empire into a multiethnic democracy.

Russia had two chances at democracy in the 20th century: first in 1917, in the months before the Bolshevik Revolution began, and again in 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Only Russians can decide if their next chance at democracy will be more successful.

Why Isn’t Russia a Democracy?

[cyberbenb]

How Ukraine has pushed back and held the line against Russia for 3 years

Elon Musk on Feb. 21 questioned why Ukraine was still actively defending itself amid the ongoing Russian full-scale invasion, suggesting the country’s fight against the Kremlin’s imperialist ambitions was, in fact, a giant money-making scam.

“What are they dying for? What exactly are they dying for? The line of engagement has barely moved for two years. People are dead in trenches, and for what?" Musk said at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).

Without providing evidence and repeating unfounded claims, he added: “I’ll tell you what for, for the biggest graft machine I’ve ever seen in my life."

Three years ago, on Feb. 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion against Ukraine in an attempt to wipe out the country and its people. Moscow’s brutal invasion killed tens of thousands of Ukrainians, who have died defending their country’s right to exist as a sovereign and democratic nation.

On April 7, 2022, as Russia was pushed out of Kyiv’s outskirts, Pentagon spokesperson Major General Pat Ryder said Russian President Vladimir Putin had “achieved exactly zero of his objectives inside Ukraine."

“He didn’t take Kyiv. He didn’t topple the government. He didn’t remove Ukraine as a nation state,” he added.

Three years on and this statement still holds true. In fact, Russia occupies less Ukrainian territory than it did when Ryder spoke.

Before the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia occupied 7.1 percent of Ukrainian territory, according to U.S. intelligence assessments, consisting of the whole Crimean peninsula and around one-third of both Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts.

According to data from Ukrainian data journalism website Texty, the peak of Russian-occupied territory in Ukraine was in March 2022. On the 31st of that month, Moscow’s forces controlled 167,223 square kilometers of Ukraine, just under 28% of the country’s total land mass of 603,628 square kilometers.

A comparison of occupied Ukrainian territory — at its peak in March 2022 vs. February 2025 (Nizar al-Rifai/The Kyiv Independent)

Due to the fast moving nature of Russian advances in February 2022, there is no reliable data for how much land Moscow’s forces fully controlled in the first few days of the full-scale invasion.

Russia had advanced in the north, south, and east of Ukraine, with the northern push aiming to take the capital of Kyiv.

Due to fierce Ukrainian resistance, this advance quickly stalled, and Russia was forced into a humiliating retreat at the beginning of April 2022, giving up around 40% of the land taken since Feb. 24, and exposing the myth of Russia’s military superpower status.

Moscow’s initial advances in the south and east saw large parts of Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Kharkiv, and Luhansk oblasts fall under Russian control.

But lightning Ukrainian counteroffensives launched in late summer 2022, saw Kyiv retake control of great swathes of land including the cities of Kherson.

As Russian losses in Ukraine mount, Putin faces ‘devastating’ demographic timebomb

Russian losses in Ukraine are helping fuel a demographic timebomb that could see the country’s population reduced by half by the end of the century, experts have told the Kyiv Independent. “The impact on Russian society is devastating,” said Harley Balzer, emeritus professor of government and inter…

The Kyiv IndependentChris York

Russia illegally annexed Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk oblasts on Sept. 30, 2022, despite controlling none of the regions in full.

At the beginning of 2023, Russia occupied 108,928 sq kilometers, or just over 18.04% of Ukrainian territory, according to the DeepState monitoring group.

A long-anticipated Ukrainian counteroffensive launched in June 2023 stalled, and since then, the war in Ukraine has settled largely into one of attrition as Kyiv holds the line against Moscow’s forces.

Russian losses vs. Ukrainian land occupied. (The Kyiv Independent)

One notable exception was Ukraine’s surprise cross-border incursion into Kursk Oblast in August 2024. According to Russian General Staff officer Sergei Rudsky, Ukrainian soldiers are in control of about 500 square kilometers (193 square miles) out of 1,268 square kilometers (490 square miles) initially seized by Kyiv.

As of Feb. 23, 2025, Russia occupies 112,333 sq kilometers, 18.61% of Ukrainian territory, with the small gains made in grinding advances in eastern Ukraine, taken at huge cost.

According to Ukraine’s General Staff, Russia has lost 868,230 troops in Ukraine since the beginning of its full-scale invasion.

The figures do not specify killed or wounded, though the overall consensus is that it includes dead, wounded, missing, and captured. They are broadly in line with estimates from Western nations.

Around 165,000 Russian troops have been killed since the launch of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to a report by Meduza and Mediazona, independent Russian media outlets, on Feb. 24.

Russia’s rate of advance has slowed over the last three months, and according to the Institute for the Study of War (ISW), at this speed, it would take Russia more than 83 years to capture the rest of Ukraine.

“Assuming that they can sustain massive personnel losses indefinitely,” it added.

Three years of war have also cost Ukraine dearly — more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed on the battlefield since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, and 380,000 have been injured, President Volodymyr Zelensky said in an interview with NBC published on Feb. 16.

Three years of Russia’s full-scale war: a conversation with Rob Lee

The Kyiv Independent’s Francis Farrell sits down with Rob Lee, former U.S. marine infantry officer and senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program. They discuss the evolving battlefield realities as Russia’s war on Ukraine enters its 4th year and why peace negotiations a…

The Kyiv IndependentFrancis Farrell

[salvo-love]

Lula DA Silva Narendra Modi CyrilRamaphosa Cyril Ramaphosa is President 习近平 Xi Jinping

UN Security Council United Nations Organization ⬇️⬇️⬇️

UN Security Council United Nations Organization #BRICS2023 #BRICSSummit #BRICS

Change of world order = new world order = new dominating powers = new lawless empires = no respect for international law = better said creation of a new world disorder. An absolute disappointment that will lead the world to the third world war!

AbdelFattah Elsisi - عبد الفتاح السيسي

Alberto Fernández Abyiahmed,Ali Abyiahmed,Ali Abyi Ahmed Ali Mohammad Bin Salman Al-Saud Ebrahim Raisi Ebrahim Raisi #EbrahimRaisi Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan Abiy Ahmed Ali Lula DA Silva Narendra Modi Cyril Ramaphosa for President Ramaphosaa Cyril Ramaphosa is President Cyril Ramaphosa Grant Fund Xi.Jinping

习近平 Xi Jinping 習近平 Xi Jinping XI Jinping - A governança da China #HosseinAmirAbdollahian

Dear Prime Ministers, to you who say you are neutral and not aligned with Putin's Russia; to you who say together with the Russian federation that you want a new world order, I would like to remind you that Russia has no justification regarding its aggression and occupation of territories legitimately belonging to Ukraine (see and read the different UN solutions on Russian aggression) .

I would also like to remind you that if Russia were to gain the upper hand and annex other Ukrainian territories, its war of invasion and modern imperialism would not only not stop, but with Putin ambitious and conquering it would spread to all of Europe, to Asia and in Africa where Wagner's Russian brigades already control seven/eight states with arms, the last of which is Niger, with the support of coups d'état, which erase democracy and establish bloody dictatorships in these countries. The Russian federation wants to carry out and complete an imperialist and dictatorial conquest of the largest number of independent states possible, in order to dominate and subject them and therefore have the role of command and control of the whole world, precisely changing the world order.

I would also like to remind you that in this context, China, India and other populous and economically and militarily powerful states that support Putin will also be subjugated and forced to accept Moscow's impositions and decisions. In short, Russia, having had the primacy of the most militarily powerful state in the whole world, it will decide and do whatever it likes in the world, in short, good and bad times. And this supremacy of her will also subject China and India. Does it seem normal to you that Russia, with a territory that occupies 1/3rd of the globe and with a multi-ethnic population of 144 million inhabitants, should dictate the law, decisions and control 8 billion people in the world??

I invite you to read and study the history of the birth of Russia up to the present day, passing through the Soviet Union; surely you will get an idea, not beautiful nor acceptable, let's say very bad and horrendous, of all the leaders, the tsars, the criminal presidents, the autocratic, dictatorial, anti-democratic, repressive and imperialist governments of the Russias and their propensity for bloody and terrible conquests military. By comparison, the Roman Empire and the Romans were Discalced Carmelite friars.

With this I want to invite you to share, accept and enforce the legitimate decisions of the UN, voted almost unanimously, on the territorial integrity of Ukraine and on respect for international law. Remember that if Russia were to win the war with Ukraine, in addition to creating a precedent for new wars, China, India and other powers would already be in the hands and under the control of the Russians !!

Signed The independent sociologist and superpartes of the whole world.

[courtneytincher]

First Bout With Putin Puts Ukraine’s New Leader Under Spotlight

(Bloomberg) -- President Volodymyr Zelenskiy rose to lead Ukraine as a political novice and questions still surround his plans, especially regarding his nation’s relations with Russia. As he closes in on solidifying his control at home, some answers are starting to emerge.With less than a week to go until parliamentary elections and his upstart party firmly in the lead, Zelenskiy is immersed in his first negotiation with President Vladimir Putin. The talks are focused on the fate of Ukrainian sailors detained by Russia and a potential prisoner exchange between the neighbors locked in a deadly conflict for half a decade. Zelenskiy also proposed a new format for peace talks.The engagement he’s waded into has flummoxed even the world’s craftiest politicians. How we deals with Putin, an existential issue for Ukraine, could define Zelenskiy’s presidency and freeing the 24 sailors may give his party a boost at the polls. A swap won’t necessarily signal the start of a detente -- his predecessor has negotiated several -- as painful pressure points remain from Crimea to the eastern conflict region of Donbas and gas supplies.“He wants to do this as fast as possible,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta research institute in Kiev. “Zelenskiy wants to speed up talks, he’s trying to push this process.”Zelenskiy and Putin spoke by phone last week about the release of the sailors. They were captured in late 2018 during a naval skirmish near the bridge spanning the Kerch strait that separates Russia from Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014. More than a hundred other Ukrainians have been held in Russia since the armed conflict started in 2014.The U.S. has thrown its support behind Zelenskiy’s drive.“I sincerely hope Moscow agrees to this prisoner exchange,” Kurt Volker, the U.S. envoy for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, wrote on Twitter. “If successful, it will be the result of direct engagement between Presidents Zelenskiy and Putin.”Stopping the war along the eastern border is a priority of the highest order for 65% of Ukrainians, according to a survey by the polling company Rating Group conducted this month. All other issues pale in comparison, with 39% of respondents naming the economy as one of the three most urgent tasks and corruption at 33%.But navigating the relations with Ukraine’s Soviet-era master has been treacherous for Zelenskiy’s predecessors, some of whom came with decades of experience in politics and business.Complicated talks over financing, natural gas supplies, territorial disputes, relations with NATO and the European Union and most recently the peace talks have been on the top of the agenda for generations of Ukrainian leaders. Results have been mixed, and it was partly the frustration with Petro Poroshenko’s inability to make more headway that convinced Ukrainians to replace him with an untested entertainer.In a disappointment to the Zelenskiy camp, a court in Moscow on Wednesday extended the detention of the sailors as a preventive measure. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters no talks were under way about the exchange. Putin also signed a decree which will allow residents of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions to obtain Russian citizenship.There’s a risk that Zelenskiy will be lured into a lopsided deal because of his eagerness to deliver a result, according to Oleksiy Melnyk, co-director of the foreign policy and international security program at the Razumkov research center in Kiev.“It is absolutely clear that Putin isn’t going to give the sailors away just for nothing,” Melnyk said. The negotiation is a “very dangerous political trap.”(Updates with Russia’s decree on citizenship in 11th paragraph.)To contact the reporters on this story: Kateryna Choursina in Kiev at kchoursina@bloomberg.net;Yulia Surkova in Kiev at ysurkova@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Scott Rose at rrose10@bloomberg.net, ;Anton Doroshev at adoroshev@bloomberg.net, Balazs Penz, Michael WinfreyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

(Bloomberg) -- President Volodymyr Zelenskiy rose to lead Ukraine as a political novice and questions still surround his plans, especially regarding his nation’s relations with Russia. As he closes in on solidifying his control at home, some answers are starting to emerge.With less than a week to go until parliamentary elections and his upstart party firmly in the lead, Zelenskiy is immersed in his first negotiation with President Vladimir Putin. The talks are focused on the fate of Ukrainian sailors detained by Russia and a potential prisoner exchange between the neighbors locked in a deadly conflict for half a decade. Zelenskiy also proposed a new format for peace talks.The engagement he’s waded into has flummoxed even the world’s craftiest politicians. How we deals with Putin, an existential issue for Ukraine, could define Zelenskiy’s presidency and freeing the 24 sailors may give his party a boost at the polls. A swap won’t necessarily signal the start of a detente -- his predecessor has negotiated several -- as painful pressure points remain from Crimea to the eastern conflict region of Donbas and gas supplies.“He wants to do this as fast as possible,” said Volodymyr Fesenko, head of the Penta research institute in Kiev. “Zelenskiy wants to speed up talks, he’s trying to push this process.”Zelenskiy and Putin spoke by phone last week about the release of the sailors. They were captured in late 2018 during a naval skirmish near the bridge spanning the Kerch strait that separates Russia from Crimea, the peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014. More than a hundred other Ukrainians have been held in Russia since the armed conflict started in 2014.The U.S. has thrown its support behind Zelenskiy’s drive.“I sincerely hope Moscow agrees to this prisoner exchange,” Kurt Volker, the U.S. envoy for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, wrote on Twitter. “If successful, it will be the result of direct engagement between Presidents Zelenskiy and Putin.”Stopping the war along the eastern border is a priority of the highest order for 65% of Ukrainians, according to a survey by the polling company Rating Group conducted this month. All other issues pale in comparison, with 39% of respondents naming the economy as one of the three most urgent tasks and corruption at 33%.But navigating the relations with Ukraine’s Soviet-era master has been treacherous for Zelenskiy’s predecessors, some of whom came with decades of experience in politics and business.Complicated talks over financing, natural gas supplies, territorial disputes, relations with NATO and the European Union and most recently the peace talks have been on the top of the agenda for generations of Ukrainian leaders. Results have been mixed, and it was partly the frustration with Petro Poroshenko’s inability to make more headway that convinced Ukrainians to replace him with an untested entertainer.In a disappointment to the Zelenskiy camp, a court in Moscow on Wednesday extended the detention of the sailors as a preventive measure. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters no talks were under way about the exchange. Putin also signed a decree which will allow residents of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions to obtain Russian citizenship.There’s a risk that Zelenskiy will be lured into a lopsided deal because of his eagerness to deliver a result, according to Oleksiy Melnyk, co-director of the foreign policy and international security program at the Razumkov research center in Kiev.“It is absolutely clear that Putin isn’t going to give the sailors away just for nothing,” Melnyk said. The negotiation is a “very dangerous political trap.”(Updates with Russia’s decree on citizenship in 11th paragraph.)To contact the reporters on this story: Kateryna Choursina in Kiev at kchoursina@bloomberg.net;Yulia Surkova in Kiev at ysurkova@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Scott Rose at rrose10@bloomberg.net, ;Anton Doroshev at adoroshev@bloomberg.net, Balazs Penz, Michael WinfreyFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

July 17, 2019 at 06:35PM via IFTTT

[global-news-station]

KIEV: A comedian with a popular anti-corruption message but no political experience took the lead in the first round of Ukraine’s presidential election on Sunday, early exit polls showed.

Volodymyr Zelenskiy, 41, who plays a fictional president in a TV show, had consistently led opinion polls in a three-horse race against incumbent Petro Poroshenko and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

According to a preliminary exit poll based on ballots cast by 1800 (1500 GMT), two hours before voting closed, Zelenskiy had secured 30.4 percent of votes compared to Poroshenko’s 17.8 percent.

At stake is the leadership of a country on the front line of the West’s standoff with Russia after the 2014 Maidan street protests ejected Poroshenko’s Kremlin-friendly predecessor and Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula.

Investors are watching to see if the next president will push reforms required to keep the country in an International Monetary Fund bailout program that has supported Ukraine through war, sharp recession and a currency plunge.

No candidate is expected to receive more than half the votes, meaning the election would go to a run-off on April 21. Out of a crowded field of 39 candidates, none of the likely winners wants to move Ukraine back into Russia’s orbit.

“I would like to say ‘thank you’ to all the Ukrainians who did not vote just for fun,” Zelenskiy told his cheering supporters on Sunday evening. “It is only the beginning, we will not relax.”

In keeping with the relaxed style of his campaign, Zelenskiy’s election night venue provided a bar with free alcohol, table football and table tennis games.

Poroshenko called the result a “severe lesson”, especially from younger voters and appealed for their support in the second round.

“You see changes in the country, but want them to be quicker, deeper, and of higher quality. I have understood the motives behind your protest,” he said after the exit poll.

Poroshenko, who said the elections had been fair and in line with international standards, sought to portray Zelenskiy as unfit to represent Ukraine abroad, especially in taking on Russian President Vladimir Putin in international talks.

“We must preserve sanctions as they are a powerful tool for making sure Russia also takes part in these discussions. And Russia won’t be represented by (Russian TV comedians) Maxim Galkin or Evgeniy Petrosyan, but actually, just so you know, Russia will be represented by Putin.”

He also played on a suspicion that Zelenskiy’s campaign was masterminded by Ihor Kolomoisky, a tycoon whose channel airs Zelenskiy’s shows. The two men deny being in cahoots.

“Fate decided to put me up against that Kolomoisky puppet in the second round. We won’t give Kolomoisky any chance,” Poroshenko said.

Tymoshenko, who had won 14.2 percent of the votes, immediately challenged the accuracy of the result, saying her internal polling put her in second place behind Zelenskiy. She said at a press conference that she might contest the final result.

Poroshenko has fought to integrate the country with the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) while strengthening the military which is fighting Kremlin-backed separatists in the east of the country.

Voting around the country offered a snapshot of Ukraine’s recent history. Soldiers lined up to vote in makeshift polling stations in the east.

Voters formed long lines outside polling stations in neighbouring EU member Poland, where between one and two million Ukrainians have moved, many in search of jobs and higher wages.

Pushing the use of the Ukrainian language and instrumental in establishing a new independent Orthodox church, confectionary magnate Poroshenko, 53, has cast himself as the man to prevent Ukraine again becoming a Russian vassal state.

But reforms crucial to keep foreign aid flowing have been patchy. Conflict in the eastern Donbass region has killed 13,000 people in five years and rumbles on despite Poroshenko’s promise to end it within weeks. Frustration over low living standards and pervasive corruption has left the door open for Zelenskiy.

The majority of voters in separatist-held eastern Ukraine and Crimea were unlikely to take part in the election as they need to undergo a special registration process on Ukraine-controlled territory.

But Crimean residents who kept their Ukrainian citizenship after the Russian annexation five years ago crossed the land border to mainland Ukraine, from where buses took them to the nearest polling stations.

Anti-establishment

Just 9 percent of Ukrainians have confidence in their national government, the lowest of any electorate in the world, a Gallup poll published in March showed.

Zelenskiy has tapped into this anti-establishment mood, though his inexperience makes Western officials and foreign investors wary and sceptics question his fitness to be a wartime commander-in-chief.

Inviting comparisons with US President Donald Trump and Italy’s Five-Star movement, his campaign has relied heavily on social media and comedy gigs of jokes, sketches and song-and-dance routines that poke fun at his political rivals.

“This is a battle to change the country, to change the political system. It has completely discredited itself and is not supported by Ukraine’s citizens or by its Western partners,” Zelenskiy’s political consultant, Dmitry Razumkov, told Reuters.

“After five years of fighting corruption we have returned to where we started.”

Zelenskiy’s campaign blurred the line between reality and the TV series in which he plays a scrupulously honest history teacher who accidentally becomes president.

In series three, which began airing in March, his character is flung into prison and the country falls under the control of oligarchs, populists and ultranationalists, and eventually gets broken up into 28 states. Thinly disguised characters resembling Poroshenko and Tymoshenko come to power.

“He embodies the perceived need for ‘new faces’ in politics and could sway the young, pro-reform electorate to his side,” said Economist Intelligence Unit analyst Agnese Ortolani.

  The post Comedian takes early lead in Ukraine presidential vote appeared first on ARYNEWS.

https://ift.tt/2UoxgFt

[roguenewsdao]

Putin Tells Valdai Conference He Fears Srebrenica-Type Massacre If Russia Abandons Donbass

Playing his favorite card against Washington, the charge of hypocrisy (what U.S./EU Russophobes deride as 'whataboutism') Putin declared that Russia would not tolerate a massacre in the former  eastern Ukraine of the type NATO used at Srebrenica to justify American intervention and imposition of the Dayton accords peace settlement during the Yugoslavia wars of the 1990s. Putin's remarks at the annual Valdai forum in the company of legendary Chinese investor Jack Ma and former Afghan President Hamid Karzai represented a double slap at both Washington and Kiev. Putin blames Washington for its hypocritical arrogation to itself of the sole right to legitimately intervene wherever it sees fit, and is warning against Kiev's fantasies about 'solving' the Donbass 'separatist problem' by expelling tens to hundreds of thousands opposed to the Ukrainian Nazi collaborator glorifying, post-Maidan coup regime to Russia.

Along with the recent dedication of a public monument in Russia's Rostov on Don region honoring Russian volunteers (not as of yet, any Russian Army 'vacationers') who fought alongside the Donbass militia, Putin's remarks are the clearest indication that Moscow won't surrender its humanitarian and unofficial materiel/intelligence aid to the Donbass for some empty promises from Washington. The comparison implied in Putin's remarks between the Bosnian Muslim enclave that United Nations peacekeepers failed to protect and Donetsk and Lugansk also hints that while Moscow is ready to accept some OSCE inspectors protecting United Nations peacekeeping contingent along the line of contact, an idea Kiev had long promoted, but only along the border with Russia. However, Moscow remains the ultimate guarantor against Kiev reneging on the Minsk Agreements in a Washington-aided, illusory pursuit of a 'military solution' -- one that would meet Russian steel in response. On a conciliatory note, Putin also declared that neither Russian nor Ukrainian nationalists would like his statement, that Russians and Ukrainians have historically been one people, sharing language and culture (including the Orthodox Christian faith) separated only by Soviet drawn borders. Putin expressed his hope that 'common sense would prevail', clearly disavowing any long term military solution to the externally provoked Ukraine conflict. From this long term perspective, Russia's refusal to overtly intervene to crush the Ukrainian Army in the Donbass and destroy the Kiev government's armaments industries from the air and ground -- something the Russian armed forces are more than capable of doing -- makes much more sense. That is, irrespective of the so-called 'Sixth Column' (dubbed by Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin's) cries for Putin to have sent the tanks to Kiev many times over the last nearly four years, thus handing Washington's neocons and fake liberal Russophobes dream scenario of a Slavic Afghanistan in which to bleed the Russian Bear.

From the common viewpoint of millions in Russia, who share Great Patriotic War heritage or living relatives with the people in Ukraine, that would mark the unnecessary escalation of an already tragic, fratricidal war. A war which began not when Russian 'polite people' moved to secure key points on the Crimean peninsula, but weeks earlier when blood was shed via paid provocateurs and a carefully engineered Berkut riot police reaction on the Maidan. A war which has benefited only a handful of oligarchs, neo-Nazis and outside powers -- certainly not ordinary Russians or Ukrainians. -- JWS See also: full transcript of Putin's Valdai conference remarks translated into English from Kremlin.ru  

Putin Fears Srebrenica-Type Massacre in Ukraine

Oct. 22, 2017 (EIRNS)—During the extensive question-and-answer session that followed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s presentation to the Valdai Discussion Club conference on Oct. 19 in Sochi, he took a question on the current situation in Ukraine in which he expressed Russia’s fears of what could happen in the Donbas region should Russia close its border with the two breakaway republics as the Kiev regime has been demanding. In his response, he stressed that the crisis began with the U.S. and European Union-backed violent overthrow of the elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych, who, according to Putin, only wanted to reconsider some of the language of the EU Association Agreement. "The current situation is the result of the unconstitutional armed seizure of power in Ukraine, and Europe is to blame, because it backed it," Putin said.

Putin went on to reiterate that it is the Kiev regime that is failing to implement the Minsk agreements, even though Russia is constantly blamed for this, but then he got to the meat of the matter.

"If they fail to adopt the amnesty law prior to resolving political issues and providing these territories with a special status in accordance with the law adopted by the Rada and extended for another year recently, then closing the border between Russia and the breakaway republics will lead to a situation similar to Srebrenica. There will be a bloodbath. We cannot let this happen."

Although Putin refrained from saying it, the whole point is that Nazis control the current Ukraine government, as Lyndon LaRouche has repeatedly pointed out.

The Srebenica massacre occurred in 1995 during the Bosnian war in the former Yugoslavia, when 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred by Bosnia Serb troops despite being under the nominal protection of UN peacekeepers. China, Russia Warn Europe and U.S.: Your Anti-Nation State Policies Are Coming Back to Haunt You

Oct. 23, 2017 (EIRNS)—As expected, the long-festering separatist drive of the Basque region of Spain has now been piled onto the Catalonia crisis. Inigo Urkullu, president of the Basque Autonomous Community, writing in the London Guardian today, called upon the European Union to move in to oversee negotiations on a new Spanish "plurinational" nation, in the name of "self-determination" and "democracy." Like the Catalan separatists, Urkullu swore allegiance to the supranational project of the dying EU paradigm.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had warned in his speech to the Valdai Forum last week, that "the situation in Spain clearly shows how fragile stability can be even in a prosperous and established state," pointing to the deliberate decision after the collapse of the Soviet Union to let "the genie of European internal division" out of the bottle as a driving force in today’s crisis.

"In the case of Catalonia, we saw the European Union and a number of other states unanimously condemn the supporters of independence.... [M]ore thought should have gone into this earlier. What, no one was aware of these centuries-old disagreements in Europe? They knew, did they not? However, at one time they basically welcomed the disintegration of a number of states in Europe, without hiding their joy on this matter,"

citing Kosovo, in particular. Putin warned that such double standards "pose serious danger to the stable development of Europe and other continents, and to the advancement of integration processes across the world."

Similarly, in an editorial statement today, China’s Global Times, which reflects official policy, pointed to the role of the West’s "democracy" double-standards in creating the Catalan separatist crisis, and calls on Europe to "wake up:"

"The West’s extravagant explanation over democracy, freedom and human rights over a long period of time is the fundamental reason this time, which provides the Catalan separatist movement a moral high ground it’s not supposed to have. Leaders requiring ‘democracy’ in Catalonia are more confident on the strength of their righteousness than those in the Spanish government who are preparing to file a lawsuit against them.

"There have been signs of the emergence of separatism in the West, but in prosperous old days, sufficient bread and butter helped dissolve the problem. However, the situation has changed. The Catalan independence movement is revealing a real danger....

"A state is still an effective and basic unit for human society and in maintaining world order. But during the decades after the Cold War, the West had destroyed some countries it does not like, supported almost every single anti-government activity in those nations and backed most of the separatist movements there, making people believe that democracy is above everything. Yet what happened in Catalonia may be a turning point.

"The Catalan independence movement sets off alarm bells for Europe to adjust. Europeans are addicted to their previous glory. But the continent is now facing various challenges. It’s time for them to wake up."

[clubofinfo]

Expert: Let’s be honest. The only reason anyone in the West, perhaps with the exception of Germans, is interested in the Ukraine is because since the current state was carved out of the Russian Empire, the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Poland following the Great War, it has been the focus of attacks on the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation. The number of states or countries where political instability is aggravated by ethnic, religious or nationality conflicts is great. The number of places that draw attention or better said are targeted for mass media attention is far smaller. This is certainly not a question of just dessert. It would do well to remember that the most notorious interest in the Ukraine as a territory was that of the German Empire under the rule of Adolph Hitler and National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP aka Nazis). Not only did the NSDAP recruit an enormous following during its reign, but the Ukraine also provided division strength Waffen SS units with which war against Jews, Communists, nationalists and the Soviet Union was waged. In fact, the British Empire adopted some 7,000 members of the Ukrainian 14th Volunteer Division SS Galizia who had surrendered in the wake of Soviet victory on 10 May 1945 and shipped them to Britain to become citizens and where they were to wait as silent reserves for the covert war to be fought subsequently against the Soviet Union. When people in Britain became aware of this fact the intervention of the US secret services prevented all but one or two of these war criminals from being indicted or tried as such. I say “war criminals” because one of the outcomes of the Nuremberg trials was to declare inter alia the NSDAP and the SS (Schutzstaffel) criminal organisations. Hence the Waffen SS, the paramilitary part of the SS attached to the German regular army (Wehrmacht), was prima facie a criminal organisation and not treated as a regular military branch of the German armed forces.1 This was so obvious that even the renowned German liberal author, Gunter Grass, felt compelled to conceal his youthful inspiration to join this outfit—not unlike many Americans who for generations have been impressed by the smart uniforms and elite reputation of the US Marine Corps.2 Leaving the individual guilt or innocence of those who spent their “national service” in this esteemed combat formation aside, there can be no doubt that much of the legacy of what we call war crimes, as opposed to simply being on the losing side, is based on the historically unique decisions taken by the International Tribunal constituted in London to dispense what US chief prosecutor Robert Jackson insisted ought not to go down in history as mere victors’ justice.3 So when a coup d’etat in Kiev led to the domination of the Ukraine government by members of parties whose acknowledged hero was the Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, anyone who had the least recollection of Ukrainian Nazis was bound to be disturbed—assuming they were of the anti-Nazi or anti-fascist persuasion.4 At the same time given the historical record of Western support for Nazis, the pretence that this event was merely a result of conflicts over potential alliance between the Kiev government and the EU/NATO is absurd on its face. However, instead of this history and continuous policy of the forces that have driven NATO since its founding, the focus of attention to the Ukraine crisis has been the question of whether an independent Ukraine is entitled to combine with the European Union and its armed wing or compelled by history or nature to remain in what 19th century-style geo-politicians (across the entire political spectrum) would call the Russian sphere of influence. The issues are even further clouded by the unstated but deeply held belief—here again across virtually the entire Western political spectrum—that to oppose Russia’s interest in the Ukraine is nothing less than defending freedom itself. The principal domestic issues for the Ukraine—aside from the question of who controls the country and its resources—is not much different from those that plague all countries who were “freed” from the Soviet Union in 1989-90 after its political and economic collapse. These include the targeting of their cheap labour, their agricultural potential, and the overall capacity for super-exploitation by a European Union, especially Germany, in search of higher profit rates. The rapacious investment practices which have plundered the Baltic States, turned the state-owned—albeit bureaucratic fiefdoms—of the former Soviet Union, and more importantly the population of Europe east of the Oder-Neisse border into a freebooter’s paradise, have forced many of the people inhabiting the “East” into paupers beyond what they had experienced in the worst years of the war and the Soviet reconstruction period.5 This has led to massive emigration—where possible—and the creation of islands where those highly skilled professionals remaining provide services to Westerners for pennies.6 The obvious counter-argument to this indictment is that the Russian Federation offers no alternative whether because it is still saturated with the remains of the moribund Soviet system under Vladimir Putin or it is dominated by corrupt oligarchies who are ultimately to blame for this poverty. There is no doubt that neither the Soviet Union nor its successor, the Russian Federation, can defend, either ideologically or practically, claims to being socialist, let alone communist. So to the extent one feels compelled to defend Russia and its policies in comparison to the system the EU/NATO propagates and defends, this defence must be based on real political conditions. Perhaps it is necessary to contemplate—for the sake of argument—some long forgotten Enlightenment philosophy. Let us suppose that the really great and the less great powers compete among each other to offer the best possible conditions of human existence. This competition would be free but amicable. The objective would be to solve all the problems an economy and a polity could face in a manner to produce human happiness. Just for the sake of argument we might take the utilitarian model of the greatest good for the greatest number and given that almost no one pretends to believe in communism this objective is possible under what is called “capitalism”—or to take the US euphemism, “free enterprise”. This is a very generous supposition indeed but let us take its advocates at their word. The NATO founded in 1949 to defend the US regime’s claim to 60+% of the world’s resources is the American “happiness team”. It would like to win the Ukraine to its side because the team has the best solutions for the happiness of the world’s latent Americans, also those Ukrainians who are just waiting to become American, at least in principle. The cause of the Ukrainian crisis is therefore the Russian refusal to let all these Ukrainians manifest their innately American souls. The reader may laugh. However, he, she or they (assuming a gender role has yet to be fixed) will certainly believe that the Western team is ultimately the one to which everyone should belong, if only to avoid disputes between teams. The great inconvenience lies in the residual idea held by many people; e.g., Russians, Chinese or Koreans, that they are satisfied being Russian, Chinese or Korean. This is incomprehensible even to much of the Left in the West since most believe that with all its faults, the US has only been fighting wars for the past century to free a world crying to become American. Big countries with strange alphabets, heretical religions and histories longer than that of the USA insist on obstructing the march to the Promised Land or at least consumption of the fantasy that one has arrived there. The basic conflict therefore is between those who believe that everyone—at least in Europe (and white)– ought to be American in spirit or through membership in the EU vicariously sweat through the nightmare on the Potomac. Now add to this the political-economic reality that the EU’s armed wing in its subordination to the US “happiness team” is anything but benignly competitive. Nor is it in the least interested in human happiness for Ukrainians or its own citizens. Together we have a fundamental environmental condition within which any sane discussion of the Ukraine since 1989 must be conducted. Anything else is simply ridiculous. Chris Kaspar de Ploeg is a journalist, not a historian. That is not a disparagement. It simply means that Ukraine in the Crossfire is an account of current events by someone whose metier is the daily reporting of events, analysis and opinion, as it is presented in mass media. The challenge facing any serious journalist is to render quickly unfolding events intelligible to readers, viewers and listeners. A good journalist not only knows how to produce intelligible reporting but ought to be able to appraise the work of others doing the same job. That is what makes de Ploeg’s book interesting reading. The mass media is, despite its open access, a very opaque institution. There are several reasons for this. One is that there is a fundamental conflict between the witness to events and the organisational structure through which such witness is transmitted. Major mass media in the West is historically private property. Prior to the great fascist era, roughly from the 1840s until the 1930s, there was an important segment of the mass media owned and operated by political movements; e.g., workers’ associations and parties. These were subjected to heavy censorship but were mainly financed by members of those movements and organisations. They competed with the commercially-owned media and the organs of the Church. By the end of the 19th century such media was largely subdued in North America by a combination of repression and professionalization. Pulitzer, the US newspaper magnate, founded the first journalism school in the US and stimulated the idea that the only credible journalism was professional—people trained (and later hired by commercial ventures) to produce “objective” news free from any ostensible political interest. In Europe the State intervened to suppress partisan media. This led to the creation of the dubiously renowned BBC in the British Empire and with the rise of fascism on the Continent the violent persecution of competition with the corporate and State-owned media. The State-owned journalist was slowly endowed with a quasi-civil service status giving job security. Under regimes where the commercial media was viewed by the State as insufficiently reliable, it was subjected to all sorts of restrictions some of which were tantamount to censorship or prior restraint. As a result the independent journalist has actually become quite rare. Either such journalists have developed celebrity status, which insulates them from much official control or they have learned to write in such ways that their product does not directly offend those in power. Throughout the some two hundred years of popular literacy upon which mass print journalism and journalists have been able to thrive there have always been propagandists. These writers or reporters have either officially or unofficially generated product for interest groups who preferred anonymity in order to benefit from the appearance of independence by the journalist. Journalists have worked as spies—and often been treated as such in the countries where they go to report. Journalists have also served as witting and unwitting conduits for official (State and commercial) propaganda. This was the significance of the notorious CIA Operation Mockingbird but also the testimony by CIA director William Colby in which he said the agency maintained close relationships with many in the major media.7 The best a reader and a good and truly independent journalist can do is read multiple outlets and sources, preferably in more than one language. Here it is worth noting that even a common reference source today—Wikipedia—has entries that vary in content from one language to the next on the same subject. This may be a luxury for the average person in search of reliable information but it is one of the tasks that a well-versed and honest journalist can do; namely, analysing the foreign language media when reporting to the target readership/audience. De Ploeg shows that he understands this. Ukraine in the Crossfire does not rely solely upon the English language coverage. Judging by his references he has spent considerable time reading and analysing the Russian and Ukrainian media. Those who know either language will find reference to those sources, too. He also explicitly tackles the conflicting reports of the same events by partisan media, calling attention to discrepancies as well as convergences. Common sense—if that means anything—will tell the reader that where two violent opponents admit the same facts a higher degree of credibility ought to be attached when drawing conclusions. Nevertheless as in all current events in highly charged conflicts it is unlikely that anyone has the whole picture—even of his or her own side. Ukraine in the Crossfire comprises twenty-one chapters, a glossary and an index. The chapters are roughly chronological reflecting the beginning of the crisis as it was reported and continuing through different stages and theatres of conflict. He starts with the perception, widely held and disputed, that the crisis arose from a breach of faith by the West (US/ NATO) when as a condition for the peaceful dissolution of the barriers that created the German Democratic Republic and the subsequent withdrawal of the Red Army from Germany, there would be no advances of NATO to the Soviet (now Russian) border. He then briefly explains the composition of the current Republic of the Ukraine and how the mixture of Russians and Ukrainians posed conflict potential within the Ukrainian polity. Then he moves onto the domestic developments, the decline in the economy and the decision of Ukrainian governments to seek economic aid from the US-dominated Bretton Woods institutions (IMF/World Bank). The foreseeable result (austerity doctrine has been a cornerstone of IMF/World Bank policy since de-colonisation began) aggravated tensions between the ethnically Ukrainian part of the country which is one of Europe’s breadbaskets and the industrialised Russian part with its historical integration into the Soviet/Russian economy. Corruption is then a central theme. With not even the façade of an operating market economy the system of trade and industry was unable to serve the legitimate needs of the people already strained by drastically declining income and living standards. It is at this point that the economic conflict becomes salient. Industry is concentrated in the Russophone Eastern Ukraine. Its production had been directed to supplying Russia. Western Ukraine exported foodstuffs; e.g., grain to the West. Cheap grain from the Ukraine has enabled more expensive agricultural production in the EU (especially Germany to shift to the non-food sector, like tax-subsidised maize for bio-fuel). Ukrainian manufactured goods were undesired competition in the EU. Hence the emerging policy from the new Kiev regime was to turn as much of the economy toward the West as possible, to the disadvantage of East Ukrainian factories. Moreover a long-standing policy to weaken Russia has been to deny it access to markets. By spoiling Ukrainian industry Russia would be deprived of another traditional trading partner. The final third of De Ploeg’s book is devoted to the foreign policy objectives of the West (US/NATO) of which subordinating Russia remains a high priority. The Western policy toward Russia is largely governed by the Anglo-American imperial elite. The Russian Empire was almost entirely agricultural until the 1930s when the Soviet Union completed an industrialisation process in approximately 20 years equivalent to what Britain, Germany and the US had taken over a century to accomplish.8 Thus the Soviet Union had become a virtually autarchic economy by the time Germany invaded in 1940. Like industrialisation in the West, the process of restructuring a huge landmass where some 80% of the population were peasants into the second largest industrial economy in the world was accomplished at tremendous human cost—adding to that a civil war prolonged by Western intervention and a world war in which between 20-30 million of the country’s population were killed and its European half burned to the ground.9 The potential for a country like the Soviet Union—never mind its official ideology—to compete with Britain and the US in the world marketplace was the single greatest fear driving the elite in London, New York and Washington. Unlike the new nations emerging as a result of de-colonisation, the Soviet Union/Russia had all the raw materials they needed and the technical capability to develop on their own. Worse than that they could defend themselves from invasion or colonisation and they were able and within their material limits willing to help with arms and technical support precisely those countries the West hoped to dominate despite reluctant grants of independence. All this went under the euphemism “Cold War”—a term intended to deceive citizens in the West about the real nature of US foreign policy since 1945. The “Cold War” was announced to have ended in 1989 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Hence most of the debate about the NATO–Russia policy is couched in the new euphemism of “a new cold war”.10 De Ploeg did not invent this confusion but it is one serious problem that his book among many have when trying to explain Russia’s role in the world and the position of NATO—which by all rights should have been abolished in 1989 (if the stated policy of the US were the same as the unstated one). There are two problems with De Ploeg’s book. One is the limit of the journalistic format in which it is written. The chapters contain a lot of useful information from a variety of sources and thus the book can be seen as a reference for further study. Yet the book lacks an overall framework in which the reader can interpret what De Ploeg has written. In his professional attempt to keep a kind of neutrality of interpretation he fails to offer sufficient structure for the reader to find either a chronology or lines of argument that tie the separate issues together from beginning to end. Thus one has the impression of reading the daily press clippings without any summary of the important facts as they acquire significance later in the period under examination. He attempts to overcome this by drawing on the theoretical approach of one Associate Professor Gordon M. Hahn.11 Hahn is cited four times in the index but it is not quite clear why De Ploeg considers him an authority. The analyses offered about Russia—at least the US sources, rely much on articles that appeared in the US weekly journal, The Nation, as such they often have the archaic sound of that establishment journal’s liberal “Sovietology”, contributing more heat than light when it comes to understanding the Russian Federation.12 One incident that has caused substantial controversy, even among those who are ostensibly sympathetic to Russia’s legitimate interests, is the Crimea. Many who are willing to accept Russia’s interest in protecting Ukrainians of Russian descent or origin stop abruptly when the referendum on the Black Sea peninsula is discussed. It is asserted that Russia had no right to “annex” the Crimea. Mr Putin challenged this interpretation rhetorically with considerable poignancy when he demanded to know why it was considered perfectly legitimate for Kosovo to declare its independence from Serbia and then affirm this with a referendum but NOT legitimate for the inhabitants of the Crimean peninsula to decide their territory should be governed as Russian13—as it had been before Nikita Khrushchev detached the peninsula and assigned it to Ukrainian rule in February 1954—without asking anyone.14 One might add that the US regime has always been a master of annexation. Russia is accused of using its military presence (the Black Sea naval station) to unduly influence the vote. Yet the fact was that the majority of those living in the Crimea are ethnic Russians. If the US were to be taken seriously, then it would be time to re-examine its Mexican immigrant policy—not from the point of view of permissible migrant labour but from the illegal annexation of Texas by white settlers from the US and the Indian and Mexican wars fought to seize approximately 1/3 of Mexican territory and declare its inhabitants foreigners.15 The seizure of most of the US was accomplished by such settler-colonialism schemes (from whom white South Africans in the NP readily acknowledged their heritage). No Mexicans were allowed to vote to keep Texas in their country. Instead paramilitary brigands together with support from the US regime in Washington helped these invited settlers to overthrow their adopted government and steal nearly a third of the landmass of the continental US. Voting is considered by the UN to be adequate display of the citizens’ will, US opinion not withstanding. The referendum held in Crimea and the reintegration of the peninsula region into the Russian Federation has certainly more legitimacy on its face than the naked use of armed force characteristic of Western practice. The term “annexation” is another case of deliberately deceptive language. It is the same kind of deception that presented the US war against Korea as “an act of unprovoked aggression” when, in fact, Koreans north of the border drawn by the US regime had engaged in a struggle to remove that artificial border and reunite their country.16 Neither Koreans nor Russians were “annexing” themselves. De Ploeg takes a clear position against the US intervention in the Ukraine. He also gives reasons for his position. However, he does not err on the other side by maintaining an uncritical view of Russia’s policies, to the extent they may benefit ordinary Ukrainians. It is fair to say that no understanding can be gained by a blanket apology for Russian policies. But then a book about the Ukraine should try to tell the reader as much about what happens in that country and not be an alibi for dissecting Putin. Ukraine in the Crossfire is an attempt to tell as much as can be learned from the Media in a comprehensive way for those who cannot read all the relevant sources (e.g. for language reasons). He attempts to assess the impact of the new POTUS on US policy toward Russia. For the first time since the frenzies of the 1950s, associated with US Senator Joseph McCarthy, it seems a tenant in the White House is being accused of working with (or for) the Russians or at least with them against the interests of the US regime. More concern has been raised about alleged election manipulation in 2016 than in either Bush election although no reasonable observer doubts that the little Bush—who had much better relations with Mr Putin if photographs say anything—manipulated election results in key southern states—maybe with Saudi help. It is by no means clear that a change in the tenant of No. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will change US regime policy toward Russia, except in its manner of presentation to the public. The struggles within the regime’s corporate and government bureaucracies remain largely invisible to the ordinary citizen while the change of faces creates an illusion of change among people focused on celebrity and not political processes. The US “happiness team” with its armed forces swarming about the globe is on the one hand driven by the insatiability of US capitalism/white supremacy to the extent it is the nation’s business model. On the other hand as long as the affairs of other nations are evaluated primarily in terms of “where we go right or wrong” we will continue to miss the point; namely, the responsibility for the conduct of governments and the survival of the regimes of which they are a part belongs foremost to its own subjects/citizenry. All the handwringing about the Ukraine notwithstanding, the real problem for citizens of the EU and US is their inability to control their own ruling class. That inability is then exacerbated when the wars and political terror are allowed to expand beyond the recognised territorial boundaries of states. It is well and good to critique how Ukrainians with or without foreign allies or support operate their State and economy. However, there is no evidence that anyone in the “West” has the track record of disciplining the ruling class, which might constitute added value in the Ukrainian struggles. It would help enormously if at least the ordinary citizens of the West would learn to apply their common sense respect for neighbours at home to those abroad—by minding their own business. There is no great “freedom machine” and the US/EU does not run a “happiness team”. If Ukraine were in the Congo basin, no one in the West other than military and primary resource bandits, would care who rules the country or by what means. Putting the Ukraine situation in perspective for the non-Ukrainian requires open discussion and knowledge of the facts: facts about the NATO, what it is and does; facts about the relationship between the European and Bretton Woods financial bureaucracy and how this corps of suited felons organises wealth extraction throughout the world; facts about the various forms of overt and covert violence organised to enforce the financial regime; e.g., covert action agencies, military missions and mercenary cut-outs. Mr De Ploeg is not the only journalist trying to make sense out of the traces. The compilation of articles he offers is a reasonable attempt to manage a very difficult and sensitive subject. The reader is left to himself to frame the data presented. The missing structure is certainly based on the author’s wish to stay as objective as possible. As argued above this is a conceptual weakness of all modern journalism. To that extent it would be unfair to fault him for it in particular. Any sequence of events reported involves a construction by the reporter. The reporter helps the reader by explaining why an event is presented in a certain sequence. This is essential to good reporting and good history because our purported knowledge base is already thoroughly corrupted. The dictum “he who controls the past, controls the future” has been enhanced by the corollary, “there is neither a past nor a future” but like the never-aging faces in TV and film—we live in an eternal present, punctuated by orgasms and remote-control assassinations. * An exception to the classification of members of the Nazi apparatus as “criminal” was made for those persons conscripted into the Waffen SS. This finding by the International Military Tribunal arises in part from the doctrine of “criminal conspiracy” in Anglo-American jurisprudence, whereby planning and attempting a crime is deemed punishable and that the offense extends to the corporate forms such planning and attempts may take. Since the planning as well as the prosecution of the invasions commencing WWII were held to be criminal, those entities directly involved—essentially the NSDAP regime—were deemed, per se, criminal organisations. (A British documentary film covers the action to move the members of SS Galizia to Britain.) Thus the SS formations in the Ukraine constituted criminal organisations too. The doctrine of “conspiracy” constitutes an extremely controversial aspect of criminal law since it contradicts the principle that a person may only be punished for a crime actually committed. Nonetheless, conspiracy remains an important weapon of the State. The US regime applies its so-called RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act 18 USC §§ 1961-1968) both for ostensible crime control as well as for political repression. * Günter Grass (1927–2015) reveals “Ich war Mitglied der Waffen-SS”, Interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Germany, (August 11, 2006). Grass confessed that he had lied about his wartime history. But explained that what drew him to National Socialism was its “anti-bourgeois attitude”. * Judge Robert H. Jackson, US Chief Prosecutor at Nuremberg, opening remarks to the IMT proceedings: “That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgement of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to reason… We must never forget that the record on which we judge these defendants today is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well. We must summon such detachment and intellectual integrity to our task that this trial will commend itself to posterity as fulfilling humanity’s aspirations to do justice.” See also the website of The Jackson Center. * Stepan Andriyovych Bandera (1909-1959). Although there is no doubt that Bandera collaborated with the Nazis, this collaboration is often depicted as patriotic and justifiable since it was anti-Soviet nationalism. After the war Bandera worked with the successor organisation to Nazi foreign intelligence service, the Gehlen Organisation (today the BND), restored by the US CIA. He was assassinated in Munich in 1959. * The so-called Oder – Neisse border is the border between the Federal Republic of Germany and Poland. It was agreed between Poland and the government that became the GDR as the final demarcation between the two countries. For decades the FRG refused to recognise this agreement, maintaining claims to territory in Poland that had been part of Prussia and the German Empire. Recognition of the Oder – Neisse border was tacitly given under FRG chancellor Willy Brandt but only became official with the dissolution of the GDR its absorption into the FRG, also known as reunification. * See the extensive work by economist Michael Hudson on this topic, especially with regard to the Baltics. * References to Operation Mockingbird inevitably imply that since it has been exposed it is no longer a program of other government agencies (e.g. CIA). The concept is analogous to money laundering. Propaganda is released to foreign media for dissemination. These reports are then recycled to the target country as “foreign news”—concealing both the original sources and avoiding suspicions that they constitute official lying or manipulation. In the German Wiki article about Mockingbird it is attributed to the US State Department, but under Frank Wisner (head of the Office of Policy Coordination, not explicitly named in the entry), whose department was, in fact, a part of the CIA. The English Wiki article refers to “allegedly a large-scale program of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that began in the early 1950s…” * In fact, the Soviet Union effectively completed two massive industrialisation processes between 1917 and Stalin’s death. The second was occasioned by the West’s war led by Germany, which destroyed most of the infrastructure built in the European part of Russia. A massive relocation of industrial plant to the country’s Asian interior enabled it to continue to produce up to 80% of its war materiel until Germany’s defeat. After the war, deprived of reparations pledged at Yalta, the Soviet Union rebuilt its entire economy. Together the Soviet Union and China suffered more death and destruction than all the other belligerents in between 1939–1945. It is impossible for anyone to say how the Soviet Union would have developed without 70 years of Western aggression, even allowing for the enormous Tsarist legacy with which the country was burdened. The Ukraine was swept up in these processes. Any attempt to treat Ukraine – Soviet relations as if they were conditioned solely by the cultural, religious or political conflicts of the Russian Empire or “Soviet imperialism” is at best an oversimplification. * For a sober history and analysis of the Soviet system, especially its political-economy from the time of the October Revolution 1917, see Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century (2005) and The Making of the Soviet System (1985). V. I. Lenin’s Left-wing Communism—An Infantile Disorder shows just how much Lewin’s history reflects the rational perceptions and critique of those who founded the Soviet Union. One of the principal obstacles to intelligent debate about events in the former COMECON countries is the appalling and wilful ignorance of USSR history in the West. * See “Is a New “Cold War” Coming? You can’t be serious”, Dissident Voice (19 May 2014). * A CV attributed to Gordon M. Hahn identifies him as senior researcher, Monterey Terrorism Research and Education Program, and Visiting Assistant Professor, Graduate School of International Policy Studies, Monterey Institute for International Studies. Among his previous appointments were as non-resident academic fellow of the Open Society Institute from 2005–2006 in Russia and numerous visiting scholar and fellowships at the Hoover Institute. * Stephen F. Cohen (1938- ) professor emeritus in politics and Russian studies, advisor to other government agencies in the US and spouse of The Nation publisher and OSS diaper baby Katrina vanden Heuvel, during the so-called Cold War Cohen published a regular column in that journal called Sovietology. * Putin: Crimea similar to Kosovo, West is rewriting its own rule book, RT, (18 March 2014). “Our Western partners created the Kosovo precedent with their own hands. In a situation absolutely the same as the one in Crimea, they recognised Kosovo’s secession from Serbia as legitimate while arguing that no permission from a country’s central authority for a unilateral declaration of independence was necessary.” Putin added that the UN International Court of Justice agreed: “That’s what they wrote, that’s what they trumpeted all over the world, coerced everyone into it—and now they are complaining. Why is that?” * Various reasons are given for this low key decision by the Presidium: one was that Khrushchev was pursuing a policy of slow decentralisation and considered Crimea to be part of the Ukraine geographically. Another argument was the underlying status of disputes within the USSR as a result of the deportation of the Crimean Tartars in the wake of WWII. Nazi occupation reached to the gates of Sevastopol. Stalin took a very dim view of any group that was not unambiguously loyal to the Soviet Union and the implication that Tartar units had collaborated with the Nazi occupation just as Ukrainians did was a plausible motivation—if not a justification for such a policy. As a result, however, the region became dominated by ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking Ukrainians. * In 1845 the Republic of Texas was annexed by the US. Previously the Mexican government had invited people to immigrate and settle in the sparsely populated country. The white settlers from the US declared their independence in 1836, independence (and secret annexation) the Mexican government refused to recognise until the US declared war in 1846 and imposed the Treaty of Guadalupe–Hidalgo in 1848. * For a brief comment on this point see the author’s review of I F Stone’s The Hidden History of the Korean War. For more detailed information see The Origins of the Korean War, 2 Vols. by Bruce Cumings. http://clubof.info/

[salvo-love]

Lula DA Silva Narendra Modi CyrilRamaphosa Cyril Ramaphosa is President 习近平 Xi Jinping

UN Security Council United Nations Organization ⬇️⬇️⬇️

UN Security Council United Nations Organization #BRICS2023 #BRICSSummit #BRICS

Change of world order = new world order = new dominating powers = new lawless empires = no respect for international law = better said creation of a new world disorder. An absolute disappointment that will lead the world to the third world war!

AbdelFattah Elsisi - عبد الفتاح السيسي

Alberto Fernández Abyiahmed,Ali Abyiahmed,Ali Abyi Ahmed Ali Mohammad Bin Salman Al-Saud Ebrahim Raisi Ebrahim Raisi #EbrahimRaisi Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan Abiy Ahmed Ali Lula DA Silva Narendra Modi Cyril Ramaphosa for President Ramaphosaa Cyril Ramaphosa is President Cyril Ramaphosa Grant Fund Xi.Jinping

习近平 Xi Jinping 習近平 Xi Jinping XI Jinping - A governança da China #HosseinAmirAbdollahian

Dear Prime Ministers, to you who say you are neutral and not aligned with Putin's Russia; to you who say together with the Russian federation that you want a new world order, I would like to remind you that Russia has no justification regarding its aggression and occupation of territories legitimately belonging to Ukraine (see and read the different UN solutions on Russian aggression) .

I would also like to remind you that if Russia were to gain the upper hand and annex other Ukrainian territories, its war of invasion and modern imperialism would not only not stop, but with Putin ambitious and conquering it would spread to all of Europe, to Asia and in Africa where Wagner's Russian brigades already control seven/eight states with arms, the last of which is Niger, with the support of coups d'état, which erase democracy and establish bloody dictatorships in these countries. The Russian federation wants to carry out and complete an imperialist and dictatorial conquest of the largest number of independent states possible, in order to dominate and subject them and therefore have the role of command and control of the whole world, precisely changing the world order.

I would also like to remind you that in this context, China, India and other populous and economically and militarily powerful states that support Putin will also be subjugated and forced to accept Moscow's impositions and decisions. In short, Russia, having had the primacy of the most militarily powerful state in the whole world, it will decide and do whatever it likes in the world, in short, good and bad times. And this supremacy of her will also subject China and India. Does it seem normal to you that Russia, with a territory that occupies 1/3rd of the globe and with a multi-ethnic population of 144 million inhabitants, should dictate the law, decisions and control 8 billion people in the world??

I invite you to read and study the history of the birth of Russia up to the present day, passing through the Soviet Union; surely you will get an idea, not beautiful nor acceptable, let's say very bad and horrendous, of all the leaders, the tsars, the criminal presidents, the autocratic, dictatorial, anti-democratic, repressive and imperialist governments of the Russias and their propensity for bloody and terrible conquests military. By comparison, the Roman Empire and the Romans were Discalced Carmelite friars.

With this I want to invite you to share, accept and enforce the legitimate decisions of the UN, voted almost unanimously, on the territorial integrity of Ukraine and on respect for international law. Remember that if Russia were to win the war with Ukraine, in addition to creating a precedent for new wars, China, India and other powers would already be in the hands and under the control of the Russians !!

Signed The independent sociologist and superpartes of the whole world.

[salvo-love]

➡️➡️ Lula DA Silva Lula da Silva Narendra Modi Xi.Jinping 习近平 Xi Jinping 習近平 Xi Jinping Cyril Ramaphosa for President Cyril Ramaphosa is President Cyril Ramaphosa Education Trust Liqiang Tan 李謙國��幸福中安里 Dong Liqiang CGTN CGTN Arabic CGTN Africa CGTN America CGTN-Français China Daily Theglobaltimes Theglobaltimes NPR News Diário da Região O Globo Diario catarinense Folha de Boa Vista THE STANDARD CapeTimes The Mercury Newspaper Emirati Arabi Uniti United Nations Bahamas United Nations United Nations Human Rights United States of Africa United States Of Africa United States of Africa "u.s.a"" United States of Africa António Guterres united nation secretary general

Dear Prime Ministers, to you who say you are neutral and not aligned with Putin's Russia; to you who say together with the Russian federation that you want a new world order, I would like to remind you that Russia has no justification regarding its aggression and occupation of territories legitimately belonging to Ukraine (see and read the different UN solutions on Russian aggression) .

I would also like to remind you that if Russia were to gain the upper hand and annex other Ukrainian territories, its war of invasion and modern imperialism would not only not stop, but with Putin ambitious and conquering it would spread to all of Europe, to Asia and in Africa where Wagner's Russian brigades already control seven/eight states with arms, the last of which is Niger, with the support of coups d'état, which erase democracy and establish bloody dictatorships in these countries. The Russian federation wants to carry out and complete an imperialist and dictatorial conquest of the largest number of independent states possible, in order to dominate and subject them and therefore have the role of command and control of the whole world, precisely changing the world order.

I would also like to remind you that in this context, China, India and other populous and economically and militarily powerful states that support Putin will also be subjugated and forced to accept Moscow's impositions and decisions. In short, Russia, having had the primacy of the most militarily powerful state in the whole world, it will decide and do whatever it likes in the world, in short, good and bad times. And this supremacy of her will also subject China and India. Does it seem normal to you that Russia, with a territory that occupies 1/3rd of the globe and with a multi-ethnic population of 144 million inhabitants, should dictate the law, decisions and control 8 billion people in the world??

I invite you to read and study the history of the birth of Russia up to the present day, passing through the Soviet Union; surely you will get an idea, not beautiful nor acceptable, let's say very bad and horrendous, of all the leaders, the tsars, the criminal presidents, the autocratic, dictatorial, anti-democratic, repressive and imperialist governments of the Russias and their propensity for bloody and terrible conquests military. By comparison, the Roman Empire and the Romans were Discalced Carmelite friars.

With this I want to invite you to share, accept and enforce the legitimate decisions of the UN, voted almost unanimously, on the territorial integrity of Ukraine and on respect for international law. Remember that if Russia were to win the war with Ukraine, in addition to creating a precedent for new wars, China, India and other powers would already be in the hands and under the control of the Russians !!

Signed The independent sociologist and superpartes of the whole world

Yomiuri Shinbun - Rio de Janeiro

読売テレビ(ytv) Osakahonsha Yomiurishinbun