Tag: russia

Citizens Rally Outside Artillery Factory in President Biden’s Hometown that Produces Parts of Cluster Bombs Destined To Kill Eastern Ukrainians and Russians

One of President Joe Biden’s biographers, David Hagan, author of No Ordinary Joe, tells the story of a 10-year-old Joe Biden taking a $5 bet to climb a burning coal pile in his hometown of Scranton. Young Joe took the bet and scampered up the mountainous mound of fiery fissures and won the bet. Biden had the $5 bill framed and it hung in his Senate office for decades.

As a boy, Joe Biden was a risk-taker of his own life. Now, President of the United States and leader of NATO, he has taken all of us to the fiery brink of nuclear war. 

Just off Interstate 81 near Scranton, Pennsylvania, Biden’s hometown, is Exit 185 to what is now called the President Biden Expressway.

On July 22, multiple peace and justice organizers went to Scranton to focus on what the Ukrainians and the President of the United States say is the most important weapons needed: artillery shells, and now the added dimension of putting bomblets inside artillery shells for use as cluster bombs.

Drive down the steep slope of the President Biden Expressway to find the #4 Merchant of Death in the U.S., General Dynamics, operating the Army Ammunition Plant just a chip-shot away from the central shopping center of downtown Scranton.

During the Vietnam War students from the nearby University of Scranton protested outside the 155 mm artillery slaughterhouse. There is no record of any protests at the General Dynamics facility in decades. That changed on Saturday, July 22, when anti-war activists drove to Scranton from Vermont, Virginia, New Jersey, Long Island and New York City, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pittsburgh and upstate New York.

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Pentagon To Send Ukrainian Pilots For F-16 Training To Texas & Arizona

A US official has informed The New York Times on Thursday that the Pentagon plans to begin training Ukrainian pilots on F-16 fighter jets inside the US, as part of a program which could start as early as September.

Already a program has been kicked off in the Netherlands and Denmark, which Kiev has complained has been too slow to get off the ground, also given it only includes six Ukrainian pilots. At this rate, the expected date that Ukraine could be piloting the US-made jets in battle keeps getting pushed back – from estimates of next summer to now perhaps end of 2024.

“[We’re] open to training existing pilots if capacity is reached in Europe,” a Pentagon spokesperson had initially previewed days ago, on Monday.

“That’s the condition. So, if Denmark and the Netherlands are taking the lead on training, if they just do not have the capacity … to train as many pilots as Ukraine wants to send or plans to send, then we will… help train stateside,” the earlier statement added.

But on Thursday more details have come out, apparently with a fuller US commitment, which will see training locations which includes Texas and Arizona.

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Wagner Decries ‘Murder’ Of Prigozhin Amid Reports Anti-Air Missile Struck Plane

At this point it’s looking like the entire top command of Russian mercenary outfit Wagner Group was aboard the private plane that was downed northwest of Moscow hours ago. Wagner itself is confirming Yvgeny Prigozhin’s death, with Wagner-affiliated Telegram channel Grey Zone calling it a “murder”. 

“The murder/assassination of Prigozhin will have catastrophic consequences. The people who gave the order do not understand the mood in the army and morale at all. Let this be a lesson to all. You always have to go to the end,” the Wagner channel statement reads.

The bodies of Prigozhin and his second-in-command Dmitry Utkin, have reportedly been identified, according to statements which have been quick to come out of Russian media. Russian news agency TASS has also made it official: “Evgeny Prigozhin and Dmitry Utkin were on board the crashed Embraer plane, the Federal Air Transport Agency reported.”

Russian authorities have said eight bodies have been recovered thus far. FT has summarized the following details of emerging Wagner statements:

A post by Grey Zone, a Wagner-connected social media channel, claimed Russian anti-aircraft defences had shot down the plane. It said that residents heard “two bursts of characteristic air defense fire” before the crash. “This is confirmed by inversion traces in the sky in one of the videos,” it added. Mash, a news outlet on social media app Telegram, said locals had heard two loud bangs before the crash.

The same report cited a Western official to say it was an anti-aircraft missile that struck the private jet: 

A western official said they had been told the plane had been brought down by a Russian anti-aircraft missile system but could not confirm whether Prigozhin was on board, adding: “Putin doesn’t take prisoners.”

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Warmongering Neocons To Spend $2 Million On Ads For Ukraine War

With Republican support for the proxy war in Ukraine continuing to erode, Bill Kristol and fellow warmongering, neocon colleagues have launched a $2 million campaign to rally GOP voters and legislators to the lost cause — and specifically, to Biden’s request that Congress approve another $20.6 billion in Ukraine war funding.

While top congressional leaders are expected to back Biden’s request, more and more Republican legislators are saying “enough is enough.” 

Kristol routinely spawns new political entities to advance the neocon agenda. In this case, a group called Defending Democracy Together — an anti-Trump 501(c)(3) of which Kristol is president — has itself spun out an entity called Republicans for Ukraine. It’s a textbook example of astroturfing — the term that describes a political drive that fosters the illusion of widespread grassroots support for a particular political position. 

Both organizations are led by Kristol and Sarah Longwell, a Never Trumper who is also the publisher The Bulwark, a neocon website she cofounded in 2018 with Charlie Sykes and — there he is again — Bill Kristol. Defending Democracy Together’s other projects include “Republicans Against Trump,” “Republicans For Voting Rights,” “Republicans For The Rule Of Law,” as well as a pro-immigration entity and another that promotes alarmism about Russian tweets. 

Kristol and Longwell’s hopeless effort to materially change the Ukraine poll numbers centers on a collection of video testimonials from self-identified Republicans who want the US government to redistribute even more wealth to Raytheon, General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman in the name of fighting Russia — as if American security had anything at all to do with which government controls the Donbas region.  

The ad campaign will be delivered on television, billboards and online. A TV spot will run during the first Republican presidential debate on Wednesday, August 23. 

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Antony Blinken “Figured Out US Will Not Win War” After CIA Told Him “Ukraine Offense Not Going to Work”

The CIA warned US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that “the Ukrainian offense was not going to work,“ reports veteran journalist Seymour Hersh. The end of the Biden Regime’s “murderous and failing war policy in Ukraine” is near, Hersh wrote.

Hersh cites an unnamed intel official who said that SecState Antony Blinken “has figured out that the United States” and Ukraine “will not win the war” against Russia. On Thursday, the Washington Post reported the U.S. intel community realizes the Ukrainian offensive will fail to achieve its key goal of taking the southeastern city of Melitopol, a strategic Russian logistics hub.

“The word was getting to (Blinken) through the Agency that the Ukrainian offense was not going to work. It was a show by Zelensky and there were some in the administration who believed his bullshit,“ Hersh’s source said.

“Blinken wanted to broker a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine as Kissinger did in Paris to end the Vietnam war,” according to the official.

Hersh’s source said that the recent peace conference in Saudia Arabia was National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s “baby,” planned as a crowning achievement after a successful Ukrainian counter-offensive. Instead, the Jeddah Peace Conference without Russian attendance fizzled.

Sullivan “planned it to be Biden’s equivalent of (President Woodrow) Wilson’s Versailles. The grand alliance of the free world meeting in a victory celebration after the humiliating defeat of the hated foe to determine the shape of nations for the next generation. Fame and Glory. Promotion and re-election. The jewel in the crown was to be Zelensky’s achievement of Putin’s unconditional surrender after the lightning spring offensive. They were even planning a Nuremberg type trial at the world court, with Jake as our representative. Just one more fuck-up, but who is counting?”

The CIA had warned SecState Blinken that the Spring counter-offensive “was going to be a big lose,” Hersh writes. “Blinken found himself way over his skis. But he does not want to go down as the court jester.”

When war hawk Blinken was “suddenly having doubts,” CIA director Bill Burns “made his move to join the sinking ship,” Hersh writes. Burns may have been jockeying to replace “a disillusioned Blinken,”  according to Hersh, but only got “a token promotion: an appointment to Biden’s cabinet.”

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‘Fight Russia to the Last Ukrainian’ Is Official White House Policy

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has dragged on with no end in sight. The fighting has ground to a near standstill, with thousands of lives being traded for miles of territory. The situation has delighted the political establishment in Washington, who see throwing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers into the meatgrinder as a cost-effective method for weakening Russia.

Over the past 18 months, the White House policy has become clear: provide Ukraine with just enough arms and money to keep Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky from negotiating with Russia.

Prior to the war and within the first two months of the Russian invasion, Washington and Kiev had four opportunities to negotiate with Moscow and end the war on terms that would, today, be considered favorable to Ukraine. At each opportunity, the White House refused to engage in meaningful diplomacy with Moscow and encouraged Kiev to follow Washington’s lead.

Two months into the conflict, The Washington Post frankly reported that Washington and its Western allies preferred war instead of peace in Ukraine. “Even a Ukrainian vow not to join NATO could be a concern to some neighbors,” the outlet reported. “That leads to an awkward reality: For some in NATO, it’s better for the Ukrainians to keep fighting, and dying, than to achieve a peace that comes too early or at too high a cost to Kyiv and the rest of Europe.”

Joe Biden administration official Derek Chollett, Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Ukrainian Pravada and Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglul have all independently confirmed that the White House was a barrier to meaningful peace talks that could have prevented the war or brought it to a swift conclusion.

In April 2022, then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Ukraine and delivered a message to Zelensky from NATO; even if Kiev is ready to make a deal with Moscow, the West is not. At the same time, leaders of NATO nations announced they would provide “new and heavier” arms to Kiev. That month, Washington would approve over $1.6 billion in weapons transfers to Ukraine.

In the grueling days since talks ended in March 2022, the West has dumped tens of billions in weapons onto the Ukrainian battlefield. Like the NATO-trained Ukrainian conscripts, those weapons have met their fate within days or hours of reaching the frontline.

Throughout the war, Kiev has sought long-range missiles, advanced aircraft, and tanks, and officials in Washington have repeated the catchphrase that Ukraine would be given all of the “weapons it needs” to win the war.

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Zelensky holds court with Ukraine’s most notorious neo-Nazi

Western media has dismissed evidence of neo-Nazi influence in Ukraine by citing President Zelensky’s Jewish heritage. But new footage published by Zelensky shows the leader openly collaborating with a fascist ideologue who once pledged to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen.”

Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky has uploaded a video to his Telegram channel showing him holding court with one of the most notorious neo-Nazis in modern Ukrainian history: Azov Battalion founder Andriy Biletsky.

On August 14, just over an hour after Secretary of State Anthony Blinken announced another $200 million in military aid to Kiev, Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky published the video depicting what he called an “open conversation” with Ukraine’s 3rd Separate Assault Brigade.

“I am grateful to everyone who defends our country and people, who brings our victory closer,” Zelensky wrote, following his encounter with the unit on the outskirts of Bakhmut.

While casual Western observers might not have realized it, the brigade Zelensky was addressing is actually the newest iteration of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. 

“The 3rd separate assault brigade, excellent fighters,” Zelensky wrote days after the consultation, in a Twitter post which also alluded to a separate meeting with the Aidar Battalion, another neo-fascist outfit that has been accused of war crimes by Amnesty International. “They have stopped the enemy from advancing towards Kostiantynivka and pushed the occupiers back up to 8 kilometers.”

But the group’s origins are no secret. Describing their most recent rebrand in a YouTube video released in January, the unit explained: “Today we officially announce that the SSO AZOV is expanding to a brigade. From now on, we are the 3rd separate assault brigade of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

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Western press fetishizes Ukrainian amputees as limb loss epidemic grows

With Ukrainian forces reportedly suffering a level of amputations reminiscent of WWI, a New York Times proxy war propagandist is spinning amputees as sex symbols and painting their gruesome injuries as “magical.”

After 18 months of devastating proxy warfare, the scale of the depletion of the Ukrainian military is so extensive that even mainstream sources have been forced to concede the cruel reality. On August 1, The Wall Street Journal reported that “between 20,000 and 50,000 Ukrainians” have “lost one or more limbs since the start of the war.” What’s more, the outlet notes, “the actual figure could be higher” because “it takes time to register patients after they undergo the procedure.”

By comparison, around 67,000 Germans and 41,000 Britons underwent amputations during the entire four-year span of the First World War. The publication quotes the head of a group of former military surgeons who train Ukrainian military medics who maintained that “Western military surgeons haven’t seen injuries on this scale since World War II.”

While the implications of the Journal’s report have largely been studiously ignored by Western media, at least one mainstream journalist has displayed a keen interest in Kiev’s amputees. The New York Times’ columnist and ardent liberal interventionist Nicholas Kristof practically fetishized the mass disfigurement of Ukrainian combat veterans in the name of Washington’s war du jour. 

In a July 8 op-ed titled “They’re Ready to Fight Again, on Artificial Legs,” Kristof insisted that rather than resenting being used as cannon fodder, Ukraine’s newly-disabled veterans “carry their stumps with pride.”

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Biden Admin Sanctions Don’t Apply Again to Russian Oligarchs Who Paid Biden Family

President Joe Biden’s administration spared Hunter Biden’s Russian billionaire business associates from a sanctions list recently issued by the State Department.

Late Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s wife, Yelena Baturina — who dined with then-Vice President Biden in April 2014 — and oligarch Vladimir Yevtushenkov — who arranged at least two meetings with Hunter Biden while his father was vice president — again escaped the crushing sanctions from the Biden administration levied on the Russian elites as a result of the Ukrainian war.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken stated Friday that the United States added four more Russian oligarchs to its sanction list. Despite their qualifications of resembling fellow Russian oligarchs, Baturina and Yevtushenkov were kept off the list.

“[T]he United States is imposing sanctions on four prominent members of Russia’s financial elite who have served on the supervisory board of the Alfa Group Consortium, one of the largest financial and investment conglomerates in Russia,” Blinken wrote:

We are also imposing sanctions on the Russian Association of Employers the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP), a Russian business organization involved in the technology sector of the Russian Federation economy. The organization has promoted import substitution and convened meetings to promote responses to sanctions.

The United States will continue to take all appropriate action to hold accountable those who enable and profit from Russia’s war against Ukraine.

According to the Atlantic Council, the U.S. has more than 2,700 sanctions against Russia. Since the Ukrainian war began last year, the Biden administration imposed approximately 1,500 new and 750 amended sanctions and export controls against Russia.

Russian oligarchs Baturina and Yevtushenkov, however, are somehow immune to sanctions.

In March, they were also left off a list of sanctioned Russians, as Breitbart News reported. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to answer why the Biden administration refused to sanction the Russian oligarchs.

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Russia heads back to the Moon with Luna 25

Russia’s space agency successfully launched a robotic spacecraft Thursday on a journey to the Moon, the country’s first lunar explorer since the Soviet Union’s Luna 24 sample return mission in 1976.

The Luna 25 mission lifted off from the Vostochny Cosmodrome, located in Russia’s Far East, at 7:10 pm ET (23:10 UTC). Heading east, a Soyuz-2.1b rocket propelled Luna 25 through an overcast cloud deck and into the stratosphere, then shed its four first-stage boosters about two minutes into the flight. A core stage engine fired a few minutes longer, and the Soyuz rocket jettisoned its payload shroud.

A third-stage engine fired next, then gave way to a Fregat upper-stage to place Luna 25 in orbit around Earth. The Fregat engine fired a second time to send the nearly 4,000-pound (1.8-metric ton) lunar probe on a roughly five-day trip toward the Moon. Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, declared the launch a success less than 90 minutes after liftoff, shortly after the Luna 25 spacecraft separated from the Fregat upper stage.

This is historic for Russia’s space program. Russia hasn’t launched a lunar mission in nearly 50 years and hasn’t had a mission successfully fly to any other planetary body since 1988, despite several attempts. Thursday’s launch was a major moment for Luna 25, but its departure from Earth on a reliable and proven Soyuz rocket was not the riskiest part of the mission. That will come in a couple of weeks when Luna 25 begins its powered descent toward the lunar surface.

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