The New York-based Council on Foreign Relations held a videoconference on May 31 titled Russia’s War in Ukraine: How does it end? The president of the think tank Richard Haas chaired the panel of distinguished participants — Stephen Hadley, Prof. Charles Kupchan, Alina Polyakova and Lt. Gen. (Retd) Stephen Twitty. It was a great discussion dominated by the liberal internationalist stream that has so far guided President Biden’s national security team, which wants to help Ukraine fight a long war against Russia.
The striking thing about the discussion was the acknowledgement candidly articulated by an ex-general who had actually fought in wars that there is no way Russia can be defeated in Ukraine, and, therefore, there has to be some clarity as to the stated endgame to “weaken” Russia. The gloomy prognosis was that European unity apropos the war is no longer holding.
Third, one plausible scenario would be that Russia turns Ukraine into a “frozen conflict” once the current phase of the war reaches the administrative boundaries of Donbass, connects Donbas to Crimea and incorporates Kherson and a “strategic pause and a stalemate in the not-too-distant future” may open the door for diplomacy.
If the old narrative in Washington was about winning the war, the new narrative is daydreaming about “partisan activity aimed at Russian occupation forces.” Of course, this narrative is even less possible to verify independently than the tall claims previously.
It is in this twilight zone that President Putin situated his taunting remarks on June 9 drawing the historical analogy of Peter the Great’s 21-year long Great Northern War between 1700-1721 — Russia’s successful contestation of the supremacy of the Swedish Empire in Northern, Central and Eastern Europe. After attending a function marking the 350th birth anniversary of the iconic Russian emperor, Putin was chatting up an elite audience of the best and brightest young scientists in Moscow.
Putin said: “Peter the Great waged the Great Northern War for 21 years. On the face of it, he was at war with Sweden taking something away from it. He was not taking away anything, he was returning. This is how it was… He was returning and reinforcing, that is what he was doing…
everyone recognised it as part of Sweden. However, from time immemorial, the Slavs lived there along with the Finno-Ugric peoples, and this territory was under Russia’s control.”
“Clearly, it fell to our lot to return and reinforce as well. And if we operate on the premise that these basic values constitute the basis of our existence, we will certainly succeed in achieving our goals.”
Putin gave a complex message here about Russia’s total rejection of NATO supremacy. No matter what it takes, Russia will reclaim its heritage. That is first and foremost a promise to his countrymen, who rally behind Putin, whose poll rating today exceeds 80 percent (as compared to 33% for Biden.)
The point is, there are unspoken fault lines, too. It is no accident that Russian discourses freely use the expression “Anglo-Saxon” to refer to the challenge on the country’s western border. Demons have been unleashed there. Indeed, what was the meaning of the trip to the Vatican by the European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen for an audience with Pope Francis at this point?
The TRUTH just leaked out in Ukraine and it's worse than we thought
The United States is going to start sending regular payments of $1.5 billion to Ukraine from now on. This indicates that Congress won't pass any more large spending packages but instead will continue to fund the conflict in perpetuity.
What Putin Said Today in Case the Lie Machine Doesn’t Tell you
“The European Union has completely lost its political sovereignty, and its bureaucratic elites are dancing to someone else’s tune, accepting whatever they are told from above, causing harm to their own population and their own economy. . . . Such a detachment from reality, from the demands of society, will inevitably lead to a surge of populism and the growth of radical movements, to serious social and economic changes, to degradation, and in the near future, to a change of elites. . . . It is a mistake to suggest that the times of turbulent changes can be waited out and that things will return to normal; that everything will be as it was. It won’t. . . . The West’s elites cling to the shadows of the past. They believe that the dominance of the West in global politics and economy is a constant, eternal value, but nothing is eternal.” — Vladimir Putin, St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, June 17, 2022
“Our product, our rules. We don’t play by the rules we didn’t create. Russia will determine the contour of the new economic structure of the world.” — Gazprom
WAR IN UKRAINE DAY 114: DEFENSE OF KYIV’S FORCES TRAPPED IN SEVERODONETSK CRUMBLES
Remember, the Western Whore Media told you Ukraine is Winning
Update (1100ET): The Russian Foreign Ministry has responded to Lithuania's partial blockade of Kaliningrad, writing in a statement that they consider the "provocative measures" to be "openly hostile" and warning that the Kremlin may take action to "protect its national interests."
Kaliningrad is sandwiched between the EU and NATO members Poland and Lithuania. Supplies from Russia are delivered via rail and gas pipelines through Lithuania - which announced last week that it was banning the rail transit of goods subject to EU sanctions, which include coal, advanced technology, metals and construction materials.
"If in the near future cargo transit between the Kaliningrad region and the rest of the territory of the Russian Federation through Lithuania is not restored in full, then Russia reserves the right to take actions to protect its national interests," the statement reads.
They have demanded that Lithuania immediately lift the ban on a number of goods to the Kaliningrad region.
Earlier Monday, the Kremlin called Lithuania's announcement "unprecedented" and "in violation of everything there is."
"The situation is more than serious and it requires a very deep analysis before formulating any measures and decisions," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in a statement to the press.
Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said they were simply complying with sanctions imposed by the EU, and that they were taken after "consultation with the European Commission and under its guidelines."
"Sanctioned goods (will) no longer be allowed to transit Lithuanian territory," he added.
Kaliningrad governor Anton Alikhanov says that the ban, which was confirmed on Friday, affects roughly 50% of all imports. He urged citizens not to panic-buy...
Quite possibly the biggest Russia-West provocation of the entire four-month long war in Ukraine has occurred this weekend, but few in the media establishment seem to be taking notice of the singular event which has the potential to quickly spiral toward a WW3 scenario.
No kidding (regarding a provocation to start WW3).
Ben Fulford mentioned in his weekly report the "Baltic EU/NATO member Lithuania to ban all rail transit goods going to Russia’s far-western enclave of Kaliningrad."
He (Ben) also thinks he may have had an attempt on his life a few days ago when someone ran a stop sign causing serious injuries to himself and his wife. He also mentioned that three attempts have been made on the life of Gordon Duff (Veteran's Today) in the past few weeks. Apparently, reporting news that is true can be a dangerous job. Much thanks to the reporters.
MOSCOW, (Reuters) – Moscow’s foreign ministry on Friday blamed the United States for a Lithuanian ban on sanctioned goods crossing from the Russian mainland to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which has increased already high tensions between Moscow and the West.
“The so-called ‘collective West’, with the explicit instruction of the White House, imposed a ban on rail transit of a wide range of goods through the Kaliningrad region,” the Russian foreign ministry said in a statement published on Friday.
It said the move was part of a pattern of “increasingly hostile actions from the American side” towards Russia.
European Union member Lithuania last Saturday began blocking the transit of Russian goods that fall under EU sanctions after new restrictions took effect.
Moscow has slammed the move, calling it a “blockade” and pledged a tough response. Vilnius has said it is prepared if Russia disconnects Lithuania from a regional power grid.
Russian officials have variously estimated the ban will halt 30% or 50% of cargo traffic, but have also said the goods can quickly be rerouted onto ships crossing the Baltic Sea.
Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said on Wednesday that Russian claims of a blockade were false.
She said passenger transit continued uninterrupted, and that the goods affected amounted to only 1% of total Russian freight transit to Kaliningrad.
Moscow also said on Friday that Washington’s refusal to waive airspace sanctions allow a Russian plane to fly to the United States to collect Russian diplomats showed that its calls for continued dialogue were not genuine.
Given the deterioration of relations, Russia said it was “impossible” to hold expert level consultations with Washington on a number of bilateral issues that had been due to take place in the near future. It did not specify which issues it was referring to, or when talks were supposed to take place.
The fire on a Russian gas production platform in the Black Sea was so large two days after it was hit by a Ukrainian missile that it showed up as a bright white speck on pictures taken from a NASA satellite that monitors forest fires.
About 70 kilometers from Russian-annexed Crimea, the drilling rig was struck at 8:37 a.m. on Monday, according to Russian officials.
One of three gas production platforms targeted simultaneously by Ukraine, the attack resulted in serious injuries for three oil workers and seven more were declared missing.
Crimean Senator Olga Kovitidi said that the pipelines from the platforms were being drained to minimize the risk of fire and that production at the Odessa gas field was suspended.
The successful Ukrainian strike has again exposed Russia’s vulnerabilities in the Black Sea after a series of high-profile naval reversals that include the April sinking of the Moskva, Russia’s Black Sea flagship.
The damage to the production platforms – the first time offshore energy infrastructure has been targeted during the fighting in Ukraine – also raised doubts about the Kremlin’s ability to continue oil and gas production in the area.
“So long as part of the [Black Sea] coast remains in Ukrainian hands, the sea remains a contested space for Russia,” said naval expert Alessio Patalano at King’s College London.
The rigs were a legitimate target because they were being used by the Russian military, according to Sergiy Bratchuk from Odessa's regional military administration.
"On those towers, Russia had organized small garrisons and stored equipment for air defense, radar warfare and reconnaissance," Bratchuk told an online briefing Tuesday.
Despite the absence of a Ukrainian fleet, Kyiv’s military has used its arsenal of missiles – some manufactured in the West – to put pressure on Russia’s Navy as it attempts to continue with operations near the Ukrainian coast.
Fighting has been particularly fierce around Snake Island in the Danube delta, with satellite photographs released Wednesday appearing to show new damage to buildings.
Ukraine said earlier this week that it had carried out strikes on the Russia-controlled island, which is about 70 kilometers west from the damaged gas production platforms.
news [
In Photos: The Victims of Russia's Sunken Moskva Cruiser
In addition to the Moskva, which sank after it was targeted in a missile attack by the Ukrainian armed forces, at least 9 other Russian vessels have been destroyed in the Black Sea since the beginning of the war, according to Oryx, an intelligence blog that tracks Russia's military losses using open-source analysis.
Russian officials condemned Monday’s attack.
“This is a terrorist act,” said Georgy Muradov, the deputy chairman of the Crimean Council of Ministers, state-run news agency RIA Novosti reported.
The damaged gas production platforms are owned by Crimean-based energy company Chernomorneftogaz that extracts a total of about 1 billion cubic meters of gas a year, according to Igor Yushkov, an analyst at Russia’s National Energy Security Fund.
But experts said that there is unlikely to be any consequences in terms of the Crimean peninsula’s energy supply.
"The extraction in Crimea by illegally appropriated Chernomorneftegaz was declining in the last few years [anyway]," said Maria Shagina, an international sanctions and energy expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
The three damaged offshore platforms, known as the Boyko towers after a former Ukrainian energy minister, were seized from Ukraine by Russia in 2014 following Moscow’s annexation of Crimea. They were then floated from the Odessa shelf gas field into Crimean waters.
“Russia has again been surprised,” said Dmitry Gorenburg, a researcher on Russian security at the Virginia-based CNA think tank, about the attacks.
“[They] will know they can’t operate in the region as they did before.”
Dr. Volodymyr & Mr. Zelensky: the dark side of the Ukrainian president
by Guy Mettan
“Héros de la liberté”, “Hero of Our Time”, “Der Unbeugsame”, “The Unlikely Ukrainian Hero Who Defied Putin and United the World”, “Zelensky, Ukraine in blood”: the Western media and leaders no longer know what superlatives to use to sing the praises of the Ukrainian president, so fascinated are they by the “amazing resilience” of the comedian miraculously transformed into a “warlord” and “saviour of democracy”.
For the past three months, the Ukrainian head of state has been making the headlines, opening the news, inaugurating the Cannes Film Festival, haranguing parliaments, congratulating and admonishing his colleagues at the head of states ten times more powerful than he is, with a happiness and tactical sense that no film actor or political leader before him had ever known.
How can you not fall under the spell of this improbable Mr. Bean who, after conquering the public with his grimaces and extravagances (walking naked in a shop and mimicking a pianist playing with his sex, for example), was able to swap his antics and gravelly puns for a grey-green T-shirt, a week-long beard and words full of seriousness in order to galvanize his troops who were besieged by the evil Russian bear?
Since 24 February, Volodymyr Zelensky has unquestionably proved himself to be an exceptionally talented artist in international politics. Those who had followed his career as a comedian were not surprised because they knew his innate sense of improvisation, his mimetic abilities and his audacity in acting. The way he campaigned and defeated tough opponents like former president Poroshenko in a few weeks between 31 December 2018 and 21 April 2019, mobilising his production team and generous oligarch donors, had already proved the extent of his talents. But it remained to transform the trial. This has now been done.
TALENT FOR DOUBLE-DEALING
However, as is often the case, the front rarely looks like the backstage. The spotlight hides more than it shows. And here the picture is less than stellar: both his achievements as a head of state and his performance as a defender of democracy leave a lot to be desired.
Zelensky’s talent for double-dealing will be demonstrated as soon as he is elected. We recall that he was elected with a score of 73.2% of the votes, promising to put an end to corruption, to lead Ukraine on the path of progress and civilisation, and above all to make peace with the Russian-speaking Donbass. As soon as he was elected, he betrayed all his promises with such untimely zeal that his popularity rating fell to 23% in January 2022, to the point of being outdistanced by his two main opponents.
From May 2019, to satisfy his oligarch sponsors, the newly elected president is launching a massive land privatisation programme covering 40 million hectares of good agricultural land under the pretext that the moratorium on land sales would have cost the country’s GDP billions of dollars. In the wake of the “de-communisation“ and “de-Russification“ programmes begun since the pro-US coup of February 2014, he is launching a vast operation of privatisation of state assets, fiscal austerity, deregulation of labour laws and dismantling of trade unions, angering a majority of Ukrainians who had not understood what their candidate meant by “progress”, “westernisation” and “normalisation“ of the Ukrainian economy. In a country that, in 2020, had a per capita income of 3,726 dollars against 10,126 dollars for the Russian opponent, while in 1991 the average income of Ukraine exceeded that of Russia, the comparison is not flattering. And it is understandable that the Ukrainians did not applaud this umpteenth neoliberal reform.
As for the march towards civilisation, it will take the form of another decree which, on 19 May 2021, ensures the domination of the Ukrainian language and bans Russian from all spheres of public life, administrations, schools and businesses, much to the satisfaction of the nationalists and the astonishment of the Russian-speaking people in the south-east of the country.
A RUNAWAY SPONSOR
The record on corruption is no better. In 2015, the Guardian estimated that Ukraine was the most corrupt country in Europe. In 2021, Transparency International, a western NGO based in Berlin, ranked Ukraine 122nd in the world for corruption, close to the despised Russia (136th). Not brilliant for a country that passes for a paragon of virtue in the face of Russian barbarians. Corruption is everywhere, in ministries, administrations, public companies, parliament, the police, and even in the High Court of Anti-Corruption Justice according to the Kyiv Post! It is not uncommon to see judges driving around in Porsches, the newspapers observe.
Zelensky’s main sponsor, Ihor Kolomoïsky, who lives in Geneva where he has luxurious offices overlooking the harbour, is not the least of these oligarchs who profit from the prevailing corruption: on 5 March 2021, Anthony Blinken, who probably had no choice, announced that the State Department had frozen his assets and banned him from the United States because of “involvement in significant corruption“. It is true that Kolomoysky was accused of embezzling $5.5 billion from the state-owned Privatbank. Coincidentally, the good Ihor was also the main shareholder of the oil holding company Burisma, which employed Joe Biden’s son Hunter for a modest compensation of $50,000 a month and which is now under investigation by the Delaware prosecutor. A wise precaution: Kolomoisky, who has become persona non grata in Israel and is a refugee in Georgia according to some witnesses, is not likely to appear on the stand.
This is the same Kolomoïsky, who was a key figure in Ukraine’s progress, and who made Zelensky’s entire career as an actor and who is implicated in the Pandora Papers affair revealed by the press in October 2021. These papers revealed that since 2012, the TV channel 1+1 belonging to the sulphurous oligarch had paid no less than 40 million dollars to its star Zelensky and that the latter, shortly before being elected president and with the help of his close guard of Kryvyi Rih – the two Shefir brothers, one of whom is the author of Zelensky’s scripts and the other the head of the State Security Service, and the producer and owner of their joint production company Kvartal 95 – had prudently transferred considerable sums to offshore accounts opened in his wife’s name, while acquiring three undeclared flats in London for the sum of $7.5 million.
This taste of the “servant of the people“ (that’s the name of his TV series and his political party) for non-proletarian comfort is confirmed by a photo that briefly appeared on social networks and was immediately deleted by anti-complot fact-checkers, which showed him taking his ease in a tropical palace at a few tens of thousands of dollars a night when he was supposed to be spending his winter holidays in a modest ski resort in the Carpathians.
The art of tax optimisation and the assiduous association with controversial oligarchs do not argue in favour of an unconditional presidential commitment to fighting corruption. Nor does the fact that he tried to remove the troublesome president of the Constitutional Court, Oleksandr Tupytskyi, and appointed him prime minister after his predecessor, Oleksyi Goncharuk, left office due to scandal, an unknown man called Denys Chmynal, but who had the merit of running one of the factories of the richest man in the country, Rinat Akhmetov, owner of the famous Azovstal factory, the last refuge of the heroic freedom fighters of the Azov battalion. Fighters who sported tattoos on their arms, necks, backs or chests glorifying the Wolfsangel of the SS Das Reich Division, phrases from Adolf Hitler or swastikas, as seen on the countless videos released by the Russians after their surrender.
HOSTAGE OF AZOV BATTALIONS
For the rapprochement of the flamboyant Volodymyr with the most extreme representatives of the Ukrainian nationalist right is not the least of Dr. Zelensky’s oddities. This complicity was immediately denied with the greatest virulence by the Western press, which judged it scandalous because of the president’s suddenly rediscovered Jewish origins. How could a Jewish president sympathise with neo-Nazis, who are presented as a tiny minority of outsiders? One should not give credit to Vladimir Putin’s “denazification” operation...
And yet the facts are stubborn and far from trivial.
It is certain that Zelensky personally has never been close to neo-Nazi ideology or even to the Ukrainian nationalist far right. His Jewish ancestry, even if relatively remote and never claimed before February 2022, obviously excludes any antisemitism on his part. This rapprochement therefore does not betray an affinity but is a matter of banal raison d’état and a well-understood mixture of pragmatism and the instinct for physical and political survival.
One has to go back to October 2019 to understand the nature of the relationship between Zelensky and the far right. And you have to understand that these far-right formations, even if they only weigh 2% of the electorate, still represent nearly a million highly motivated and well-organised people who are spread across numerous groupings and movements, of which the Azov regiment (co-founded and financed as early as 2014 by Kolomoysky, still him!) is only the best known. To it must be added the organisations Aïdar, Dnipro, Safari, Svoboda, Pravy Sektor, C14 and National Corps to be complete.
C14, named after the number of words in the American neo-Nazi David Lane’s phrase (“We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children”), is one of the least known abroad but most feared for its racist violence in Ukraine. All of these groups were more or less merged into the Ukrainian army and national guard at the initiative of their leader, former interior minister Arsen Avakov, who ruled the Ukrainian security apparatus unchallenged from 2014 to 2021. They are the ones Zelensky calls “veterans” since autumn 2019.
A few months after his election, the young president went to Donbass to try to fulfil his election promise and enforce the Minsk agreements signed by his predecessor. The far-right forces, who have been shelling the cities of Donetsk and Lugansk since 2014 at the cost of ten thousand deaths, welcome him with the greatest circumspection because they are suspicious of this “pacifist” president. They are waging a merciless campaign against peace under the slogan “No surrender”. In one video, a pale Zelensky pleads with them: “I am the president of this country. I am 41 years old. I am not a loser. I’m coming to you and saying: take the guns out.” The video was released on social networks and Zelensky immediately became the target of a hate campaign. This will be the end of his desire for peace and the implementation of the Minsk agreements.
Shortly after this incident, a minor withdrawal of the extremist forces took place, and then the bombing resumed in earnest.
NATIONALIST CRUSADE
The problem is that not only has Zelensky given in to their blackmail but he is joining them in their nationalist crusade. After his failed expedition in November 2019, he receives several far-right leaders, including Yehven Taras, the leader of C14, while his prime minister stands by Andryi Medvedko, a neo-Nazi figure suspected of murder. He also supports the footballer Zolzulya against Spanish fans who accuse him of being a Nazi because of his proclaimed support for Stepan Bandera, the nationalist leader who collaborated with Nazi Germany during the war (and with the CIA after the war) and participated in the Jewish Holocaust.
Collaboration with nationalist radicals is well established. In November last year, Zelensky appointed the ultra-nationalist Pravy Sektor Dmytro Yarosh as special adviser to the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army and, since February 2022, as head of the Volunteer Army, which is waging terror in the rear. At the same time, he appointed Oleksander Poklad, nicknamed “the strangler” because of his taste for torture, as head of the SBU’s counter-intelligence unit. In December, two months before the war, it was the turn of another Pravy Sektor leader, Commander Dmytro Kotsuybaylo, to be rewarded with the title of “Hero of Ukraine” while, a week after the start of hostilities, Zelensky had the regional governor of Odessa replaced by Maksym Marchenko, commander of the ultranationalist Aïdar battalion, the very same one with whom Bernard-Henri Lévy would make a point of marching.
Desire to appease the far right by giving them positions? Shared ultra-patriotism? Or a simple convergence of interests between a neo-liberal, Atlanticist, pro-Western right and a nationalist far right that dreams of smashing Russians and “leading the white races of the world in a final crusade against the Untermenschen guided by the Semites”, in the words of former deputy Andryi Biletsky, leader of the National Corps? It is not clear, as no journalist has ventured to ask Zelensky this question.
What is not in doubt, however, is the increasingly authoritarian, even criminal, drift of the Ukrainian regime. So much so that its zealots should think twice before nominating their idol for the Nobel Peace Prize. While the media look the other way, a real campaign of intimidation, kidnappings and executions is underway against local and national elected officials suspected of being Russian agents or of connivance with the enemy because they want to avoid an escalation of the conflict.
“One less traitor in Ukraine! He was found killed and was tried by the people’s court!” This is how the adviser to the Interior Minister, Anton Gerashenko, announced on his Telegram account the murder of Volodymyr Strok, mayor and former deputy of the small town of Kremnina. Suspected of having collaborated with the Russians, he was kidnapped and tortured before being executed. On 7 March, the mayor of Gostomel was killed because he had tried to negotiate a humanitarian corridor with the Russian military. On 24 March, the mayor of Kupyansk asked Zelensky to release his daughter, who had been kidnapped by SBU agents. At the same time, one of the Ukrainian negotiators was found dead after being accused of treason by the nationalist media. No less than eleven mayors have been reported missing to date, including in regions never occupied by the Russians...
Ukraine Will Consider Legalizing Same-Sex Marriage After Petition Garners 28,000 Signatures
A petition urging the Ukrainian government to legalize same-sex marriage amid Russia’s invasion has amassed tens of thousands of signatures and has been sent to President Volodymyr Zelensky for consideration.
More than 28,000 people signed the petition, which argues that in war-torn Ukraine “every day can be the last,” and same-sex couples deserve the opportunity to “start a family and have an official document to prove it.”
Any petition in Ukraine that garners more than 25,000 signatures is automatically eligible for consideration by the president, who is required to respond within ten days.
CRUCIAL QUOTE
“At this time, every day can be the last,” wrote Anastasia Andriivna Sovenko, the listed author of the petition. “Let people of the same sex get the opportunity to start a family and have an official document to prove it. They need the same rights as traditional couples.”
TANGENT
It’s unclear if Zelenksy would support legalizing same-sex marriage in Ukraine. Zelensky said he didn’t want to say “anything negative” about Ukraine’s LGBTQ+ community in response to a homophobic heckler during a 2019 press conference. “We all live in an open society where each one can choose the language they speak, their ethnicity and orientation,” Zelensky said. “Leave those people alone, for God’s sake!” He has also come under fire from gay rights groups in Ukraine for not dismissing Oleksiy Arestovych, one of his closest advisors who last month said members of the LGBTQ+ community are “deviant.”
KEY BACKGROUND
Homosexuality has been legal in Ukraine since 1991, but same-sex partnerships are not lawfully recognized. While Ukraine’s anti-discrimination laws include protections for sexual orientation and gender identity, “negative societal attitudes impede the effect of laws in practice,” according to the UCL European Institute. In May, a study from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 38.2% of Ukrainians polled had a negative view of the LGBTQ+ community, down from 60.4% in 2016.
The Suicide Spectacular Summer Show, currently on screen across Europe, proceeds in full regalia, much to the astonishment of virtually the whole Global South: a trashy, woke Gotterdammerung remake, with Wagnerian grandeur replaced by twerking.
Decadent Roman Emperors at least exhibited some degree of pathos. Here we’re just faced by a toxic mix of hubris, abhorring mediocrity, delusion, crude ideological sheep-think and outright irrationality wallowing in white man’s burden racist/supremacist slush – all symptoms of a profound sickness of the soul.
To call it the Biden-Leyen-Blinken West or so would be too reductionist: after all these are puny politico/functionaries merely parroting orders. This is a historical process: physical, psychic and moral cognitive degeneration embedded in NATOstan’s manifest desperation in trying to contain Eurasia, allowing occasional tragicomic sketches such as a NATO summit proclaiming Woke War against virtually the whole non-West.
So when President Putin addresses the collective West in front of Duma leaders and heads of political parties, it does feel like a comet striking an inert planet. It’s not even a case of “lost in translation”. “They” simply aren’t equipped to get it.
The “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” part was at least formulated to be understood even by simpletons:
“Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield, well, what can I say, let them try. We have heard many times that the West wants to fight us to the last Ukrainian – this is a tragedy for the Ukrainian people. But it looks like it’s all coming to this. But everyone should know that, by and large, we haven’t really started anything yet.”
Fact. On Operation Z, Russia is using a fraction of its military potential, resources and state of the art weapons.
Then we come to the most probable path ahead in the war theater:
"...the Chinese Communist Party – which in a matter of a few decades improved the lives of more people than anyone, anytime in History – drives it completely nuts..."
is a commonly touted mindset here in hell.
Wonder how Father views that...?
Tend to believe that it is NOT how He would view it.
A Harpoon missile is launched from the Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser USS Shiloh (CG-67) during a live-fire exercise on Sept. 15, 2014. US Navy Photo
A Russian missile strike had destroyed a storage warehouse for Harpoon anti-ship missiles in the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced on July 17.
“A warehouse for Harpoon anti-ship missiles supplied to Ukraine by NATO countries was destroyed with [Russian] high-precision long-range missiles at an industrial site in Odessa,” the MoD’s spokesman Lieutenant General Igor Konashenkov said during his daily briefing.
The Harpoon is a sea-skimming anti-ship missile that is equipped a GPS-aided INS [inertial navigation system] and an active radar seeker. When launched from surface, the missile has a range of 124 to 280 kilometers depending on the version. It is armed with a 221 kg penetration high-explosive blast warhead.
Click to see full-size image.
The warehouse was reported targeted with Kh-101 stealth cruise missiles, which were launched from Tu-95 strategic bombers.
The Kh-101, which was developed by MKB Raduga, is said to has a maximum range of 4500–5500 kilometers. The missile guided by a GLONASS-aided INS [inertial navigation system]. It is reportedly re-targetable, and can be also equipped with a radar or optical seeker for terminal guidance. It is armed with a 400–450 kg conventional warhead.
In the last few months, Ukraine received Harpoon missiles from several of its Western allies. In late May 2022, Denmark sent Harpoon launchers and missiles to Ukraine, and shortly after, the Netherlands sent additional missiles. Later in mid-June 2022, the US announced that they would supply Ukraine with Harpoon launchers and missiles and the UK Defence Secretary said that they also were looking into supplying Ukraine with the missiles.
This was not the first Russian strike to target Ukraine’s newly-acquired Harpoon missiles. On July 8, a pinpoint missile strike on Odessa oblast wiped out two Harpoon anti-ship missile launchers which were recently supplied by the UK.
The US and its allies claimed that their move to supply Ukraine with Harpoon missiles is meant to “defeat Russia’s naval blockade”. Russia and Ukraine has already reached an agreement to end the blockade. Yet, Harpoons missiles are still apparently being sent to Ukraine. The real purpose of these missiles is to escalate the conflict in Ukraine.
