Tag: russia

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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Sabotage in Space: Russians Accuse Kiev of Targeting Civilian Satellites – Threaten ‘Appropriate Response’

From the bottom of the sea, high up to the Stratosphere: after the Nord Stream pipelines were destroyed in a deep sea op, Russians state that the next target for sabotage may be up in space.

TASS reported how the Russian Foreign Ministry pointed to Ukraine’s attempts to influence Russian civilian communications satellites.

Foreign Ministry statement:

“The Kiev regime, with the participation of specialists from a number of foreign states, is attempting to influence Russian civilian communications satellites.

This is an outrageous violation of international law. The Russian side has the right to respond appropriately. All the necessary opportunities are available for this.”

Moscow has not clarified which foreign states would be aiding Kiev in this effort, nor was it clear the precise way in which Kiev is trying to disrupt these craft. Satellites have indeed become a much debated topic in this war.

TASS: “Western governments and private companies have provided Ukraine with satellite coverage for months.

Most notably, the Starlink satellites operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX have become important tools for the Ukrainian troops in the ongoing conflict with Russia.”

Russian diplomats have warned that these satellites may end up becoming a legitimate military target.

This new spatial development comes just as it surfaces that SpaceX is further limiting Starlink service in Ukraine.

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Biden Administration Announces Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine

Today, the Department of Defense (DoD) announces critical new security assistance for Ukraine. This includes the authorization of a Presidential Drawdown of security assistance with more ammunition for U.S.-provided HIMARS, air defense interceptors, and artillery rounds that Ukraine is using to defend itself, as well as anti-armor systems, small arms, heavy equipment transport vehicles, and maintenance support essential to strengthening Ukraine’s defenders on the battlefield valued at up to $500 million. 

In addition, we are announcing a significant package of air defense capabilities, as well as artillery and tank ammunition, mortar systems, rockets, and anti-armor systems using $2.1 billion in Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) funds.

The Presidential Drawdown is the thirty-fifth such drawdown of equipment from DoD inventories for Ukraine that the Biden Administration has authorized since August 2021. 

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WSJ Reporter Arrested in Russia Sought Classified Information From Government Official

The Wall Street Journal reporter who was recently arrested in Russia for espionage sought classified information from a Russian government official in the period of time leading up to his arrest.

American-born Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, whose parents fled the Soviet Union due to rumors that Jewish citizens would be exiled to Siberia, formerly worked for The New York Times and The Moscow Times. He was arrested in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg on March 29th, prompting a massive outcry from American corporate media publications, which have accused Russia of waging war on the free press.

Despite the narrative being presented to the American People and the wider NATO world, Gershkovich wasn’t arrested for merely reporting the news, but for attempting to gain classified information regarding “military enterprises” from a Russian government official – something that Russia claims he was doing on behalf of the US government.

According to a Russian legislator who Gerschkovich was trying to extract information from under the guise of conducting an interview, the Wall Street Journal reporter was looking for details on the “military-industrial complex of Yekaterinburg,” and was even trying to gain information on the Wagner Group, the Russian private military company that’s conducting military operations in Ukraine, perhaps most notably in the besieged Donbass city of Bakhmut.

“What the employee of the American publication The Wall Street Journal was doing in Yekaterinburg had nothing to do with journalism,” Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova wrote in a statement defending the arrest that was published on her Telegram channel.

“Unfortunately, this is not the first time that the status of a ‘foreign correspondent’, a journalist visa, and accreditation have been used by foreign nationals in our country to cover up activities that are not journalism. This is not the first famous Western individual who has been caught red-handed,” Zakharova explained.

Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) echoed Zakharova’s claims in a public statement of its own, reporting that an investigation had “established that Gershkovich, acting as an agent for the American side, collected top-secret data about the activity of an enterprise of the Russian military-industrial complex.”

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Russian Journalist Killed by Hand-Delivered Explosive in St. Petersburg Cafe

Russian journalist Vladlen Tatarsky was killed today in a St. Petersburg cafe after opening what he thought was a packaged gift, which was hand-delivered to him by a young woman and turned out to be an improvised explosive device. Tatarsky, who has reported from the front lines in contested regions of Ukraine, was at the cafe as part of a public gathering in support of the Russian war effort and was slated to address the crowd as a guest speaker.

Vladlen Tatarsky, a Russian journalist with more than half a million followers on his Telegram channel, was killed in an explosion at a St. Petersburg cafe, where he was set to speak to a crowd of Russian patriots about the ongoing war effort in Ukraine and his time spent on the front lines and elsewhere, covering the conflict.

According to eyewitnesses to the explosive attack, a young woman with blonde hair hand-delivered a package, disguised as a gift and containing a small statue, to Tatarsky. The package though was a bomb, and the explosion that followed its opening ended Tatarsky’s life, and injured sixteen other people.

“At 6:13 PM on April 2, 2023, the police received information about a blast in Universitetsjaya Embankment 25. As a result, one person was killed. It was war correspondent Vladlen Tatarsky. Sixteen people were wounded,” Russia’s Interior Ministry revealed in a statement announcing the bomb attack.

Security footage taken from the cafe shows a young woman, who is suspected to be the attack culprit, carrying a box. Russian authorities are circulating the image in an effort to hunt her down.

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Russia Calls Out ‘Nuclear Weapons Hypocrisy’: US Has Tactical Nukes In 5 Non-Nuclear Weapon States

The Kremlin has blasted what a Russian official called the United States’ “vivid example of hypocrisy” as part of the latest war of words in the wake of President Putin’s announcing he has stationed tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus.

Russian Ambassador to the United States Anatoly Antonov on Tuesday called out Washington’s “extremely short memory” – given it “has long been systematically destroying the legal basis of bilateral relations in strategic sphere,” which is a reference to the collapse of multiple nuclear treaties of late, including ‘Open Skies’ and the INF Treaty in 2019. New START is also looking to come to an end at the rate things are going.

At the start of this week Western officials sounded the alarm over Putin’s fresh announcement, which many within NATO countries interpreted as but the latest ‘expansionist’ threat.

CBS recounts of what Putin said:

Russia has ratcheted up tensions with the West amid its ongoing war against Ukraine, with President Vladimir Putin saying Moscow will deploy “tactical nuclear weapons” in Belarus. The Russian leader said 10 fighter jets capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons — generally a reference to smaller weapons used for limited battlefield attacks, rather than larger, long-range “strategic” nuclear weapons — were already deployed in Belarus. Putin said Russia would also position nuclear-armed Iskander hypersonic missiles, with a range of around 300 miles, in Belarus.

In response, the US State Department condemned the Russian leader’s “irresponsible nuclear rhetoric,” and said that “no other country is inflicting such damage on arms control, nor seeking to undermine strategic stability in Europe.”

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MSNBC Pundit Goes To Fight In Ukraine, Acts Like A Disruptive Troll And Leaves

One year ago then-MSNBC analyst Malcolm Nance announced he had left the network to join the fight against Russia with the Ukrainian International Legion, telling MSNBC’s Joy Reid “I’m done talking” to much fanfare from the blue-and-yellow-flag-waving crowd.

A year later, The New York Times has published a report which would seem to indicate that Nance was not done talking after all.

In an article titled “Stolen Valor: The U.S. Volunteers in Ukraine Who Lie, Waste and Bicker,” the Times describes how foreign volunteer fighters “who lack the skills or discipline to assist effectively” are hindering the war effort, saying that “people who would not be allowed anywhere near the battlefield in a U.S.-led war are active on the Ukrainian front — often with unchecked access to weapons and military equipment.”

The New York Times’ Justin Scheck and Thomas Gibbons-Neff name several of these problematic volunteers who “lie, waste and bicker,” including well-known American volunteer fighter James Vasquez, whom they confront about lies they’ve discovered he told in order to get himself to the frontline in Ukraine. But like many articles in the mainstream media, the chewiest bits aren’t found until many paragraphs down.

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They’re Rebooting “Axis Of Evil” On The 20th Anniversary Of The Iraq Invasion

The western political/media class has suddenly resurrected the phrase “Axis of Evil” in recent days to refer to the increasing intimacy between Russia and China, just in time for the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

Famed Iraq War cheerleader Sean Hannity appears to have kicked things off last week, saying on his show that “a new Axis of evil is emerging” between China, Russia and Iran, a slogan that has since been echoed numerous times this week.

On Tuesday former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told Fox News that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are “two dictators that have said they are unlimited partners,” asserting that “This is the new Axis of Evil, with Iran being their junior partner.”

Also on Tuesday Representative Mike Lawler tweeted, “Xi’s meeting with Putin in Moscow is deeply concerning and highlights the growing threats posed by this new axis of evil,” and on Thursday he tweeted, “We are dealing with a new axis of evil and failure to stop Putin in Ukraine will have far-reaching implications as Russia pushes further into Eastern Europe and China moves against Taiwan.”

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Amnesty International Admits Ukraine is Using Children as Human Shields

Amnesty International has admitted that Ukraine is using children and other civilians as human shields in its war against Russia, launching attacks from populated areas and turning schools, hospitals, and homes into military outposts; all things that Amnesty International says constitute a violation of humanitarian law.

Amnesty International is frequently cited by the globalist class as the foremost organization on human rights and has been openly in favor of taking down Russia and its President, Vladimir Putin. However, a recent admission by the globally-operating NGO sheds light on the human shield tactics that Ukraine is using as the war with Russia drags on.

“Ukrainian forces have put civilians in harm’s way by establishing bases and operating weapons systems in populated residential areas, including in schools and hospitals, as they repelled the Russian invasion that began in February,” Amnesty International said in a statement that was released in August 2022 but received little media coverage.

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UK Sending Depleted Uranium Shells To Ukraine Tantamount To Using ‘Dirty Bomb’: Kremlin

The UK’s junior Defense Minister Annabel Goldie told Parliament on Tuesday, “Alongside our granting of a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, we will be providing ammunition including armor piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium.”

“Such rounds are highly effective in defeating modern tanks and armored vehicles.” News of Britain sending armor-piercing tank rounds for Challenger II tanks to Kiev triggered a fierce reaction from the Kremlin, with a strong-worded statement emphasizing that such a weapon will be treated as tantamount to using a nuclear dirty bomb.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova in words posted to Telegram highlighted the dangerous health effects of depleted uranium for all when introduced on the battlefield.

“Yugoslav scenario. These shells not only kill, but infect the environment and cause oncology in people living on these lands,” she said, in reference to cancer and other deadly ailments.

“By the way, it is naive to believe that only those against whom all this will be used will become victims. In Yugoslavia, NATO soldiers, in particular the Italians, were the first to suffer. Then they tried for a long time to get compensation from NATO for lost health. But their claims were denied,” she said.

Zakharova then added, “When will they wake up in Ukraine?… Their benefactors poison them.” During the US occupation of Iraq, use of depleted uranium by NATO allies was linked to cancer and birth defects among the Iraqi population.

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