Tag: nato

NATO ‘OK’ With Cluster Bombs After Biden Approves For Ukraine: Stoltenberg

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg doesn’t see a problem with internationally banned cluster munitions… only when the US or its allies deploy them, apparently.

Without doubt if cluster bombs were being deployed by Russia or official US enemies, NATO would condemn it (and has in the past). But with the Biden administration now reportedly moving forward with sending cluster munitions to Ukraine, Stoltenberg has said that “Nato does not have a position on them” as some allies have signed up to prohibit their use and some haven’t.

He was specifically asked by a reporter about the wisdom of allowing them to be sent to the Ukrainians. He had further added in response, “This will be for governments to decide, not for Nato to decide.”

“We are facing a brutal war, and we have to remember this brutality is reflected, that every day we see casualties, and that cluster munitions are used by both sides,” he sought to justify and explain.  “And Russia used cluster munitions to invade another country. Ukraine is using cluster munitions to defend itself.”

The Associated Press first reported Thursday that the White House has decided to arm Ukraine with cluster bombs after many weeks of intense internal discussion and debate over the controversial munitions. The cluster bombs are expected to be announced as part of the next $800 million arms package. 

On the very same day it was widely reported the US administration is ready to pull the trigger on sending the bombs, Human Rights Watch (HRW) issued a scathing report. It concluded: 

  • Ukrainian forces have used cluster munitions that caused deaths and serious injuries to civilians. Russian forces have extensively used cluster munitions, causing many civilian deaths and serious injuries. 
  • Cluster munitions used by Russia and Ukraine are harming civilians now and will leave bomblets behind that will continue to do so for many years.
  • Both sides should immediately stop using cluster munitions and not seek to obtain more of these indiscriminate weapons. The US should not transfer cluster munitions to Ukraine.

Other groups and activists have warned it marks an escalation which is to provide greater dangers to civilians now and in the future. 

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NATO Chief Says Russia Must Lose in Ukraine to Send Message to China

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg met with President Biden in Washington on Tuesday and said Russia must lose in Ukraine to send a message to China as the Western alliance increasingly has its eyes on the Asia Pacific.

“President Putin must not win this war, because that will not only be a tragedy for Ukrainians, but also make the world more dangerous,” Stoltenberg said at the White House before a meeting with Biden.

“It will send a message to authoritarian leaders all over the world, also in China, that when they use military force, they get what they want, and we will then become more vulnerable. So it’s our security interest to support Ukraine,” he added.

Stoltenberg’s comments come as NATO is planning to boost ties with countries in the Asia Pacific. According to a report from Nikkei Asia, the alliance is preparing documents to increase relations with its four main partners in the region, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea.

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The Anglo-American Hand Behind The Rise Of Fascism Then And Now

This May 9th, the world will celebrate Victory Day.

For those who have not closed their eyes to the integration of leading unreconstructed Nazis, Italian Fascist, and Japanese fascists into the Anglo-American intelligence complex after World War Two this celebration is bitter sweet to say the least.

In West Germany, the head of Nazi intelligence, Reinhardt Gehlen, was given a new job by Allan Dulles as the head of West German intelligence under CIA control.

As Cynthia Chung demonstrated in her book The Empire on Which the Black Sun Never Set, between 1958-1973, every single head of NATO’s central European command were former Nazi SS officers. And as Swiss historian Daniele Ganser demonstrated in his NATO’s Secret Armies, the Cold War served as the excuse to build a vast paramilitary complex using fascists from Italy, France, Spain, Belgium, and Germany in order to carry out a multi-faceted war on the people of Europe through the organization of terrorist organizations like The Red Brigade and the targeting assassinations of nationalist leaders unwilling to adapt to a new depopulation-oriented world order.

Sadly, this devil’s pact was not something that simply occurred in the wild days of the Cold War, but continues virulently to this day on a number of levels.

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NATO allies ‘agree Ukraine will become member’

All NATO allies have agreed that Ukraine will become a member, says secretary general Jens Stoltenberg.

Speaking ahead of a meeting of the Ukraine defence contact group at Ramstein air base in Germany, he also told reporters that, once the war in Ukraine ends, Kyiv must have “the deterrence to prevent new attacks”.

He said that the main focus is now to ensure the country prevails against Russia.

It comes after Mr Stoltenberg yesterday pledged continued support for the country during his first visit to Kyiv since Russia’s invasion just over a year ago.

“Let me be clear, Ukraine’s rightful place is in the Euro-Atlantic family,” he told a news conference.

“Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO.”

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Leaked Document Appears to Show NATO Special Operations Forces are in Ukraine

A Pentagon document that has appeared on the internet as part of a trove of leaks shows the number of NATO special operations forces that are inside Ukraine, according to The Guardian.

The Guardian report reads: “One slide suggested that a small contingent of less than a hundred special operations personnel from NATO members France, America, Britain, and Latvia were already active in Ukraine.”

According to a copy of the document circulating on Twitter, the authenticity of which has not been verified, there are 97 NATO special operations soldiers inside Ukraine, including 14 Americans.

The French government denied on Saturday that its forces were inside Ukraine. “There are no French forces engaged in operation in Ukraine. The documents cited do not come from the French armies. We do not comment on documents whose source is uncertain,” a spokesman for the minister of France’s armed forces said.

The New York Times first reported on Thursday on the leaked documents that appeared online. The documents show US planning for a Ukrainian counteroffensive and appear to be authentic as the Biden administration is scrambling and the Justice Department launched an investigation into the leak.

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Leaked documents expose US-NATO Ukraine war plans

The New York Times has reported “a significant breach of American intelligence in the effort to aid Ukraine” through the leak of classified documents which have been shared on social media. It correspondents cited “senior Biden administration officials” who apparently tipped the outlet off to the story. Documents circulating on Telegram which closely resemble those referred to by the Times are reproduced at the end of this article.

The Times writes, “Military analysts said the documents appear to have been modified in certain parts from their original format, overstating American estimates of Ukrainian war dead and understating estimates of Russian troops killed. The modifications could point to an effort of disinformation by Moscow, the analysts said… The analysts warned that documents released by Russian sources could be selectively altered to present the Kremlin’s disinformation.”

Neither the New York Times nor the “military analysts” it cited explain how the documents were altered, or why they have the appearance of tampering. However, because the leaked documents have arrived in the form of photographs of printed documents, rather than original files, the possibility of forgery or alteration must be considered.

The leaked documents claim that Russia has sustained troop losses ranging from 16,000 to 17,500 while Ukrainian losses amount to as many as 71,500 – a staggering differential that stands at odds with the triumphalist narrative projected by Kiev. They are dated March 1 2023 and appear to be part of an ongoing briefing effort to analyze the war’s progress and plan a Ukrainian counteroffensive.

The Grayzone obtained the documents from a public Telegram channel. Though they resemble those described by the Times, we can not confirm their authenticity.

According to the New York Times, the Pentagon is investigating the leak while the White House is “working to get them deleted.” Twitter owner Elon Musk appears to have confirmed the pressure campaign, sarcastically commenting, “Yeah, you can totally delete things from the Internet – that works perfectly and doesn’t draw attention to whatever you were trying to hide at all.”

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NATO Criticised For Tweet Comparing Ukraine Conflict To Harry Potter

NATO has been criticised for a bizarre tweet comparing the Ukraine conflict to Harry Potter and Star Wars.

The tweet sent via NATO’s official Twitter account is a quote claimed to be from a soldier in the Ukrainian army.

It reads, “This war will shape the continent. It will set rules and draw frontiers. Books will be written and studies done on the reality we face today. We are Harry Potter and William Wallace, the Na’vi and Han Solo. We’re escaping from Shawshank and blowing up the Death Star. We are fighting with the Harkonnens and challenging Thanos. Ukraine is hosting one of the great epics of this century.”

Critics pointed out that it’s incredibly frivolous to highlight a comparison of a war to nerd fiction.

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A panicked Empire tries to make Russia an ‘offer it can’t refuse’

The Washington Post’s old school Moscow-based correspondent John Helmer has provided an important service, offering the full text of Blinken’s offer, of course extensively edited to include fantasist notions such as “US weapons help pulverize Putin’s invasion force” and a cringe-worthy explanation: “In other words, Russia should not be ready to rest, regroup and attack.”

The message from Washington may, at first glance, give the impression that the US would admit Russian control over Crimea, Donbass, Zaporozhye, and Kherson – “the land bridge that connects Crimea and Russia” – as a fait accompli.

Ukraine would have a demilitarized status, and the deployment of HIMARS missiles and Leopard and Abrams tanks would be confined to western Ukraine, kept as a “deterrent against further Russian attacks.”

What may have been offered, in quite hazy terms, is in fact a partition of Ukraine, demilitarized zone included, in exchange for the Russian General Staff cancelling its yet-unknown 2023 offensive, which may be as devastating as cutting off Kiev’s access to the Black Sea and/or cutting off the supply of NATO weapons across the Polish border.

The US offer defines itself as the path towards a “just and durable peace that upholds Ukraine’s territorial integrity.” Well, not really. It just won’t be a rump Ukraine, and Kiev might even retain those western lands that Poland is dying to gobble up.

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Former UK Defense Minister Says NATO May Need To Send Ground Forces To Ukraine

The “domino theory” was once used to great effect in order to manipulate the American public into supporting the Vietnam War, but will the same narrative work to get the west to support World War III with Russia? 

Former UK Defense Minister Sir Gerald Howarth seems to think so as he uses this exact claim to justify NATO boots on the ground in Ukraine. 

It should be noted that a large percentage of the American populace and most of Europe have no interest whatsoever in engaging with Russia and possibly its allies in all out war, but the establishment appears intent on forcing the issue anyway.  The delivery of NATO tanks and the possibility of longer range missiles will no doubt trigger a wider response from Russia, which will then be used by NATO as a reason to escalate further. 

At the very least, Howarth does admit what many in the alternative media have been saying for some time – That Ukraine’s efforts have ground to a halt without further support from NATO troops.  The deliveries of money and weapons are nothing more than a stop-gap; wars are won by men. 

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NATO Chief Voices Fear Of War With Russia While US Greenlights Drone Strikes On Russian Territory

In what Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp describes as “a rare acknowledgment of the dangers of backing Ukraine,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg acknowledged a fear of something going “horribly wrong” and leading to a hot war between the nuclear-armed alliance and Russia.

In an article titled “‘I fear a full-blown war between the West and Russia’, Nato chief warns,” The Telegraph writes the following:

“I fear that the war in Ukraine will get out of control, and spread into a major war between Nato and Russia,” said Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, responding to a question about his greatest fears for the winter in an interview.

He told Norwegian broadcaster NRK on Friday that he was confident such a scenario could be avoided but that the threat was there.

“If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong,” he added.

And things absolutely can go horribly wrong when dealing with an increasingly aggressive standoff between nuclear superpowers, as we have seen from history. The last cold war saw many nuclear close calls as a result of technical malfunctions and misunderstandings, including an incident during the Cuban Missile Crisis when the only thing which prevented a nuclear-armed Soviet submarine from deploying its weapon on the US military was one officer refusing to go along with two others who were giving the orders to fire.

We got a taste of this horror once again last month in the long minutes following erroneous reports that Russia had launched missiles at NATO member Poland. The fact that cooler heads have prevailed up until this point does not mean that nuclear brinkmanship is safe, anymore than a game of Russian roulette not ending after the first couple of trigger pulls would mean that Russian roulette is safe to play.

So Stoltenberg is correct to be afraid. There absolutely are too many things that can go horribly wrong in such a standoff, and there are simply too many unpredictable moving parts for anyone to feel confident that this will not happen.

And it’s pretty crazy to hear Stoltenberg voice these concerns even while the Pentagon gives the go-ahead for Ukraine to begin launching long-range attacks on targets inside Russia in its war that is being backed by the United States, because those two positions would seem to be pretty strongly at odds with each other.

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