Tag: russia

2 Very Ominous Events That Are Going To Happen This Week

You only practice for something if you think that there is a decent chance that it will actually happen.  This week, two “tests” will be conducted that sound rather ominous.  The first of these “tests” will happen in Russia on Tuesday.  Vladimir Putin has ordered the very first “nationwide nuclear attack exercise” in the entire history of his country, and that is making headlines all over the globe…

Russia will stage its first nationwide nuclear attack exercise across 11 time zones in preparation for potential nuclear war.

It is scheduled to take place on October 3 and will see Vladimir Putin’s regime present the West as a nuclear aggressor.

If Vladimir Putin was entirely convinced that there is zero chance that a nuclear war will happen, he would not have ordered these drills.

Obviously he believes that there is at least a remote possibility that the conflict in Ukraine could spark a nuclear war.

It is being reported that this exercise will assume “that martial law has been introduced in Russia” and that a nuclear attack by the Western powers would destroy “up to 70% of Russian housing”…

The one-day nuclear attack exercise, which has only ever been done region by region, will include preparation for the destruction of up to 70% of Russian housing stock and life support facilities.

It will assume the scenario that martial law has been introduced in Russia and that is has gone through full mobilisation.

But that doesn’t mean that most of the Russian population would die during such an attack.

Russia has more than 16,000 nuclear shelters, and some of them can hold vast numbers of people.

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The Mad Propaganda Push To Normalize War-Profiteering In Ukraine

There’s been an astonishingly brazen propaganda push to normalize war profiteering in Ukraine as Kyiv coordinates with the arms industry and western governments to convert the war-ravaged nation into a major domestic weapons manufacturer, thereby turning Ukrainians into proxies of the military industrial complex as well as the Pentagon.

At an event in Kyiv which hosted 250 “defense” industry corporations from 30 different countries on Friday, President Zelensky gave a speech urging war profiteers to open factories in Ukraine to cut out the middleman of securing and delivering so many weapons from abroad. This is an investment that the arms industry would ostensibly have plenty of time to set up, given that western officials are now going out of their way to communicate to the public that this war will stretch on for many more years to come.

Zelensky’s speech twice made use of the phrase “defense-industrial complex”, and used the phrase “arsenal of the free world” no fewer than three times.

“Ukraine is developing a special economic regime for the defense-industrial complex,” Zelensky said. “To give all the opportunities to realize their potential to every company that works for the sake of defense — in Ukraine and with Ukraine or that wants to come to Ukraine.”

“Right now, the most powerful military-industrial complexes are being determined, as are their priorities and the global standard of defense. All of this is being determined in Ukraine,” Zelensky tweeted with photos from the event.

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Bipartisan House Amendment To Ban US Cluster Bomb Exports Fails

The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday rejected a bipartisan amendment to the 2024 military spending bill that would have prohibited the transfer of cluster munitions – which are banned under a treaty ratified by more than 100 nations but not the United States – to any country.

The House voted 160-269 on the amendment to next year’s National Defense Authorization Act co-sponsored by Reps. Sarah Jacobs (D-Calif.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fl.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.). Seventy-five Democrats voted for the measure, while 137 voted “no”; 85 GOP lawmakers approved the amendment while 132 opposed it.

The vote took place less than a week after U.S. President Joe Biden said the United States would send more cluster munitions to Ukraine.

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‘I was afraid of it’: the Ukrainians dodging conscription and fleeing the country

In Ukraine, Russia’s invasion triggered a patriotic impulse, but some Ukrainians are refusing to fight despite societal pressures and warnings from authorities cracking down on draft evaders amid a difficult counteroffensive.

Ivan Ishchenko volunteered to fight against invading Russian troops, but after a month of combat, he was willing to pay thousands of euros and risk prison to flee the front.

“Before I went to war, I thought I was a superhero. But all heroism ends when people see [war] with their own eyes and realise that they don’t belong there,” Ishchenko said.

“I saw someone being shot near his spleen; the pain was crazy. Then I saw a severed head. It all built up… I didn’t want to see anything else.”

So, one day Ishchenko abandoned his position without warning anyone except his mother and fled Ukraine. 

He managed to leave the country despite a ban on the departure of all men aged between 18 and 60.

The 30-year-old paid €4,600 ($5000) for a government-plated car to escort him to a forest on the border with Hungary.

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Ukraine Situation Report: Black Sea Fleet Commander Reappears After Kyiv Declared Him Dead

Aday after Ukrainian Special Operations Command (SSO) claimed that Russian Adm. Viktor Sokolov was among dozens of officers killed in the Sept. 22 cruise missile attack on the headquarters building of the Black Sea Fleet (BSF) in Sevastopol, the BSF commander was seen apparently very much alive Tuesday during a meeting held by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu. The SSO said it is now clarifying its original report, without stating it was in error.

As Shoigu talked about the current status of the war in Ukraine, Sokolov appeared to be seen on a video feed during a meeting of the Russian Defense Ministry Board Session held in Moscow. In this image below, published on the Russian Defense Ministry (MoD) Telegram channel, Sokolov is seen on the bottom left on the large screen, just under Shoigu.

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This War Wasn’t Just Provoked — It Was Provoked Deliberately

In an interesting speech about the way US imperial aggression provokes violence around the world, antiwar commentator Scott Horton made reference to an April 2022 article from Yahoo News that had previously escaped my attention.

The article is titled “In closer ties to Ukraine, U.S. officials long saw promise and peril,” and it features named and unnamed veterans of the US intelligence cartel saying that long before the February 2022 invasion they were fully aware that the US had “provoked” Russia in Ukraine and created a powderkeg situation that would likely lead to war.

“By last summer [meaning the summer of 2021], the baseline view of most U.S. intelligence community analysts was that Russia felt sufficiently provoked over Ukraine that some unknown trigger could set off an attack by Moscow,” a former CIA official told Yahoo News’ Zach Dorfman, who adds, “(The CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.)”

Dorfman writes that initial support provided to Ukraine during the Obama administration had been “calibrated to avoid aggravating Moscow,” but that “partially spurred by Congress, as well as the Trump administration, which was more willing to be aggressive on weapon transfers to Kyiv, overt U.S. military support for Ukraine grew over time — and with it the risk of a deadly Russian response, some CIA officials believed at the time.”

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New York Times Admits Kiev’s Counteroffensive Has Failed

According to a recent report in the New York Times, the Pentagon are no longer pushing the idea that Ukraine’s much vaunted counteroffensive is succeeding. In fact, their tacit admissions are a damning indictment of the entire ‘counteroffensive’ narrative. 

Things are so bad now that Ukrainian armed forces have admitted that they will need to ‘pause’ for weeks, or even months, in order to ‘restock and recover’ from a disastrous  summer military campaign, according to sources cited.

Their capitulation, combined with the ambiguous statements coming out of Washington and NATO top brass, demonstrate a real schism between the regime in Kiev and its American paymasters who believe Ukraine should be focusing more on the southern regions. According to sources, American officials believe that “the fight in Bakhmut has become something of an obsession for Mr. Zelensky and his military leaders.”

Incredibly, President Volodymyr Zelensky has declared during his latest fundraising tour of Washington – that his Armed Forces would somehow liberate the town of Bakhmut ‘by the end of the year’ – a specious idea which seems directly at odds with US war planners.

Moreover, officials in Washington believe that Ukrainian forces won’t be able to sever Russia’s land bridge from Donbas to Crimea by reaching the Sea of Azov in Russia’s Zaporozhye Region – a reality which alternative media have been reporting since last spring.

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US Can’t Deal with Defeat

One could say that it is facing defeat — or, more starkly, that it is staring defeat in the face. Neither formulation is appropriate, though. The U.S. doesn’t look reality squarely in the eye. It prefers to look at the world through the distorted lenses of its fantasies. It plunges forward on whatever path it’s chosen while averting its eyes from the topography it is trying to traverse.  Its sole guiding light is the glow of a distant mirage. That is its lodestone.

It is not that America is a stranger to defeat. It is very well acquainted with it: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria — in strategic terms if not always military terms. To this broad category, we might add Venezuela, Cuba and Niger. That rich experience in frustrated ambition has failed to liberate Washington from the deeply rooted habit of eliding defeat. Indeed, the U.S. has acquired a large inventory of methods for doing so.

Defining & Determining Defeat 

Before examining them, let us specify what we mean by “defeat.” Simply put, defeat is a failure to meet objectives — at tolerable cost. The term also encompasses unintended, adverse second-order consequences.

No. 1. What were Washington’s objectives in sabotaging the Minsk peace plan and cold-shouldering subsequent Russian proposals, provoking Russia by crossing a clearly demarcated red line, pressing for Ukraine’s membership in NATO, installing missile batteries in Poland and Rumania, transforming the Ukrainian army into a potent military force deployed on the line-of-contact in the Donbass ready to invade or goad Moscow into preemptive action? 

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Next Arms Package For Ukraine Includes More Internationally-Banned Cluster Bombs

President Biden’s expected new weapons package being announced when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visits Washington on Thursday is expected to have more internationally-banned munitions, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

Sources told Reuters that the package will be worth $325 million and is expected to include the second tranche of widely-banned cluster bombs in the form of 155mm artillery shells. The US began providing Ukraine with cluster munitions in July despite their history of killing and maiming civilians.

The cluster munitions the US is providing Ukraine are packed with 72 submunitions, known as bomblets, that are scattered over a large area.

Cluster bombs are so hazardous to civilians because many of the submunitions do not explode on impact, and can be found years or decades later. Due to their indiscriminate nature, cluster bombs are banned by over 100 countries by the Convention on Cluster Munitions, but the US, Ukraine, and Russia are not signatories to the treaty.

A US official also told Reuters that the new weapons package will not include Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which can be fired from the HIMARS rocket systems and have a range of up to 190 miles.

ATACMS have been long sought by Ukraine, and recent media reports said they could be soon on their way, but the White House said this week no decision has been made.

Providing ATACMS would mark a significant escalation of US support for Ukraine as they could potentially hit targets inside Russia. When asked earlier this month about Ukraine using ATACMS to target Russian territory, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said targeting decisions are up to Ukraine.

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Evidence suggests errant Ukrainian missile hit busy market

Evidence suggests a deadly explosion at a busy market in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostiantynivka this month was caused by an errant missile fired by Ukraine, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

Ukraine has said the Sept. 6 blast, which killed at least 16 people, was caused by a Russian missile.

“Evidence collected and analyzed by The New York Times, including missile fragments, satellite imagery, witness accounts and social media posts, strongly suggests the catastrophic strike was the result of an errant Ukrainian air defense missile fired by a Buk launch system,” the newspaper reported.

Reuters could not independently verify the report.

The press service of Ukraine’s SBU security service, asked about the report, said that according to an investigation still underway, the Russians were responsible for the strike, which it said had involved a Russian S-300 missile system.

“This is evidenced, in particular, by the identified missile fragments recovered at the scene of the tragedy,” it said, adding that the investigation was also examining other materials that pointed to Russian involvement in the shelling.

Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak said the circumstances were being studied by law enforcement agencies and that “the legal truth will be established”.

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