Tag: russia

War brings demographic catastrophe to Ukraine

One of the most tragic consequences of the war for Ukraine is the demographic crisis. On the one hand, more than 700,000 soldiers died or were seriously injured on the battlefield, while on the other, 12 million Ukrainians have emigrated, leaving about 20 million people in the country and creating a population deficit that will be difficult to overcome. At the same time, pressure from Western elites for Ukraine to open its borders to immigration is becoming increasingly strong, which is likely to create even more problems in the future.

Ukrainian demography will never be restored to the pre-war situation. No matter how hard the Kiev regime and its international supporters try to repatriate some of the millions of Ukrainian refugees around the world, it is extremely difficult for these measures to succeed. In order for Ukrainians who have emigrated to Europe and the US to return to Ukraine, authoritarian policies, such as arresting and expelling them from the country, may be implemented. This would make it impossible for these countries to continue maintaining their “democratic” mask. Furthermore, it is important to remember that most Ukrainians have fled to Russia itself, and are actual opponents to the Maidan junta.

In the meantime, the war machine does not seem to have an end. Zelensky has agreed to obey the Western plan to “fight to the last Ukrainian.” Even with more than 700,000 casualties on the battlefield, surrender is still not an option for the regime. Despite knowing that defeat is inevitable, Ukraine continues to recruit new soldiers every day. Elderly people, women, people with serious health problems and even teenagers are already being targeted by the draconian mobilization measures, making the future of the Ukrainian population even more critical.

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Russia Is Not Our Enemy

Given the ongoing war between the United States and Russia in Ukraine, it’s natural for Americans to conclude that Russia is our enemy. Not so. Our enemy is instead the US national-security establishment — i.e., the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA — the entity that is responsible for the war in Ukraine and that is destroying our lives, liberties, and well-being here at home.

Our American ancestors would have understood this phenomenon. If the Constitution had called into existence a national-security state form of government, our ancestors would never have accepted it. That would have meant that the United States would have continued operating under the Articles of Confederation, a type of governmental structure without a standing army.

Our American ancestors loathed standing armies, which was the term they used to describe what we call today a national-security state. They understood that big, permanent military establishments are always the enemies of the citizenry. They understood that standing armies or national-security states end up destroying the lives, liberties, and prosperity of the citizenry.

That’s why the Constitution called into existence a limited-government republic, one whose powers were few and limited and that had only a relatively small, basic army. That’s why America lived without a national-security state for more than 150 years.

Today, things are totally inverted. Americans love the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA, which is, in actuality, one great big military-intelligence entity that is divided into three wings. Americans don’t see this enormous permanent entity as their enemy or as a grave threat to their lives, liberties, and well-being, as Americans did at the nation’s founding and for the next 150 years. Today’s Americans see the national-security state as their friend, ally, and protector that keeps them safe from all those scary creatures in the world.

But what today’s Americans don’t realize is that it is their very own national-security state that gins up those scary creatures in order to have Americans view their national-security state as their friend and protector.

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WWIII: Zelenskiy Says Ukraine Will Soon Be Able To Attack “Anywhere In Russia” – Ukraine Uses Long-Range Thermobaric Drone Inside Russian Federation Overnight

A jet-based drone rocket called Palyanytsia was fired onto RF territory overnight.

This is a new rocket drone type developed in Ukraine, or given to Zelenskyiy, and will seriously escalate the situation.

It contains aluminum fog that when blown up creates a vacuum effect — thermobaric rocket drone, 1500 km range.

The drone rocket was launched during the night of Aug 24.

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US PMC involved in Kursk invasion

The US is directly involved in the Ukrainian invasion of Kursk – not only at the strategic level, but also at the tactical and operational sphere. Recent data confirm the participation of at least one US private military company (PMC), meaning that US troops are illegally operating within the 1991 Russian borders. This is likely to lead to a serious escalation of tensions between Moscow and Washington, with the Russian side already demanding formal explanations from US diplomats.

The presence of foreign mercenaries in Kursk is not new. The occurrence of foreigners among Ukrainian troops has been commonly reported, mainly Georgian, Polish and French citizens. However, so far, all reported mercenaries had been members of the Ukrainian Army’s “Foreign Legion”. It is now known that in addition to these individuals who have joined Kiev’s armed forces, there are also mercenary troops from at least one American PMC in Kursk, which represents a higher level of international aggression against Russia.

The American PMC Forward Observation Group (FOG) posted photos and videos on its Instagram showing some of its soldiers fighting on the Kursk front lines. In the photos, it is possible to see not only ordinary PMC members alongside Ukrainian soldiers, but also the founder of FOG himself, Derrick Bales – a well-known American mercenary who has participated in several conflicts. Bales is known for always using an M4A1 rifle in his operations, as well as for having a skull tattoo on his right arm. He has been in Ukraine since 2022, as FOG has been directly involved in training Ukrainian troops. However, this is the first time that a Western PMC has been reported inside the undisputed territory of Russia.

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EU states refuse Zelenky’s call to repatriate Ukrainian refugees for the frontline

European nations are rejecting calls from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy to repatriate fighting-age male refugees to their homeland to assist on the frontline.

Zelensky appealed to several EU countries to deport men of military age back to bolster military numbers both prior to and during Ukraine’s counter-offensive push into Russia this month.

The request was unanimously rejected by EU member states.

Ukrainian news site New Voice specifically referenced opposition from Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic because these countries have a shortage of workers. In Poland and the Czech Republic, for example, Ukrainians make up 30 percent of the workforce in the construction and transport sectors, and they would be reluctant to give up this labor.

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The Dangers of Ukraine’s Advance Into Russia

Should Americans regard Ukraine’s surprise incursion into Russia’s Kursk region as a turning point in the war, one that could bring Kyiv important new leverage in bargaining over a settlement, if not outright victory? As tempting as it is to believe that the Ukrainian military can aspire to more than stalemate and compromise, there is little about the Kursk offensive that justifies such hopes.

True, Ukraine’s attack seemed to blindside the Kremlin, leading rapidly to the capture of some 30 villages and forcing the evacuation of roughly 200,000 Russian citizens. Ukrainian officials claim to control more than 400 square miles of Russian territory. This initial success has generated an impressive volume of optimistic takes on Western opinion pages and talk shows, while showing increasingly discouraged Ukrainians that their beleaguered forces remain capable of seizing the initiative on the battlefield.

To shift the course of the war, however, Ukraine’s gambit must either divert significant numbers of Russian forces from the fighting in Ukraine itself, seize or destroy strategically important assets inside Russia, or hold territory over the longer term that can become a bargaining chip in negotiations over ending the conflict. None of that appears likely.

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Nuclear War Just Got Closer

For over two years, I’ve been warning about the dangers of escalation between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine.

Well, the U.S. and Russia have now climbed another rung on the escalation ladder that could possibly lead to nuclear war.

You probably know by now that Ukraine has invaded Russia in force. Up to six Ukrainian brigades totaling between 10,000-15,000 troops with armored personnel carriers and tanks invaded a lightly defended part of the Russian border.

They began to move toward a Russian nuclear power plant near the city of Kursk. The object was to capture the nuclear power plant and hold it hostage. The Russians would not attack to regain the plant because it’s too dangerous to stage a battle in proximity to a nuclear reactor.

A repetition of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster when a nuclear reactor in Ukraine near the Belarus border exploded in the worst nuclear accident in history could not be ruled out.

Control of a Russian reactor by Ukraine would give Ukraine leverage in forcing peace negotiations with Russia or even destabilizing the Putin regime.

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US, UK, Poland Took Part in Preparing Ukraine’s Operation in Kursk – Russian Foreign Intel

On August 6, Ukrainian forces launched an incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, which was slammed by President Vladimir Putin as a large-scale provocation. The Kiev regime planned the attack with the participation of the US and NATO, Russian presidential aide Nikolai Patrushev earlier said.

Ukraine’s operation in Russia’s Kursk region was prepared with the participation of the US, UK, and Polish intelligence services, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) said.

“According to available information, the operation of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the Kursk region was prepared with the participation of the US, British, and Polish intelligence services. The units involved in it underwent combat coordination in training centers in the UK and Germany. Military advisers from NATO countries are providing assistance in managing Ukraine’s units that have invaded Russian territory, and in using Western weapons and military equipment,” the agency told Russian media.

NATO countries are also providing the Ukrainian military with satellite reconnaissance data on the deployment of Russian troops in the area of ​​the operation, the SVR added.

As the situation on the front deteriorates for Ukrainian troops, Kiev’s Western handlers have been pushing it to move combat operations deep into Russian territory in recent months, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service said. One of the goals was to provoke an upsurge in anti-government sentiment and influence domestic policy in the country.

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Ukraine’s Two Wars

As the Russia–Ukraine conflict continues well into its third year, we naturally focus on the military struggle. A less visible but equally important battle is being waged within Ukraine’s religious communities. This conflict reveals the complex interplay between faith, nationalism, state power, and the ongoing war. 

Ukraine has historically been at the center of the Eastern European Orthodox world. It is on the banks of the Dnieper River in Kyiv that Eastern European Orthodoxy was born in 988 as a Slavic offshoot of Byzantium’s Greek Orthodoxy. It adopted Slavonic, a proto-Slavic tongue, as its liturgical language—a language the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC), the largest religious organization in the country, still uses. 

In 2019, the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) was founded in accordance with then President Petro Poroshenko’s “one nation, one church” vision. Poroshenko believed that an independent, national church was essential for national security, as opposed to the traditional UOC church, which was independent in governance but retained its legacy ecclesiastic connection with the Russian Orthodox Church based in Moscow. One way that the OCU displayed its nationalism was by replacing Slavonic with Ukrainian as its liturgical language. 

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, the Ukrainian government announced a series of measures identifying the UOC  with the Russian Orthodox Church and seeking repressive measures against it. On December 2, 2022, during his nightly address President Volodymyr Zelensky announced a decree that banned the activities of religious organizations “affiliated with centers of influence” in Russia and said that state services would examine the links between the UOC and the Russian church. 

If you were a Ukrainian patriot, President Zelensky signaled, the UOC could not possibly be your spiritual home. 

Shortly after Zelensky’s speech, I attended liturgy at the Russian church in Geneva, where I was visiting, hoping to better understand the overlay of the war and religious identity. There, I met both Russians and Ukrainians, including Ukrainians from the Russian-speaking east and ethnic Ukrainians from the west. I met a veteran of the Ukrainian special forces, the SBU, who shared that he fought in the Donbas in 2014 and later went to Russia on a spiritual visit. He was highly critical of what he claimed was the persecution by the Ukrainian government of his church at home, the UOC. Clearly, there was more to it than President Zelensky’s narrative portraying the UOC as a political fifth column—a narrative echoed by the media in Europe and the United States.  

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Ukrainian Forces Stopped Across All of Kursk Region, Main Forces Destroyed: Akhmat Commander

Ukraine’s NATO-backed military began a large-scale surprise offensive into Russia’s Kursk region in early August, sending crack troops, mercenaries, PMC fighters, and an array of Western equipment into the border region amid an accelerating Russian advance through Donbass and flagging Western support.

Attempts by Ukrainian forces to advance have been stopped across the entirety of the Kursk region, with the enemy’s main resources destroyed and Russian troops working to clear settlements of the enemy, Akhmat special forces commander Apti Alaudinov has announced.

“It’s worth nothing that from the moment our units entered…The first days we were busy stopping the enemy’s main forces, and we succeeded. The enemy was completely stopped along the entire perimeter,” Alaudinov said in an interview with Russian TV on Tuesday.

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