Tag: russia

While Russia Is At war, China Is Stealing Its Military Market

The situation at the front in Ukraine does not show any major change on the ground. There are no breakthroughs, no large surrenders of territory. However, there is one constant – the Russian army is constantly advancing.

This progress is not great, but it is constant and with the passage of time this progress becomes obvious. The pressure on the Ukrainian army is getting stronger and stronger. Logically, the question arises, how long will the Ukrainian army be able to hold the front lines?

To achieve this, the Russians underwent a complete transformation of their military industry. Over the past decade, the arms industry faced significant challenges, with many traditional companies going bankrupt and many repair plants closing.

From missiles to artillery, during the last 3 years, the Russian government invested billions to modernize the outdated Soviet-era infrastructure.

It is clear that Russia will win this war, but at what cost?

If the Russians celebrate a victory, it will be humiliating for the European Union. However, the Russians also will soon face their own reality.

After victory, a large part of Russian and military-industrial structure will be dismantled as the Russian state cannot sustain such a vast apparatus, including new equipment.

During Soviet times, many countries were clients, like the communist countries, the Arab world and others, but now there are several competitors, including the Chinese, Turks, Iranians and Indians, all offering low prices. The global market has shifted significantly, and Russians will fight hard to regain what they had.

They can no longer maintain this massive military industrial base due to several factors. To understand this, we need to observe the past two decades of the Russian arms industry. Despite their high Soviet stockpiles, these companies went bankrupt even with almost 1/3 of the global arms market. The answer lies in government treatment; they are required to offer up to 50% discount for domestic orders in exchange for future export opportunities. Who would invest under such conditions?

With new players, exporting will become challenging. Consequently, the Russian government will emerge with immense fiscal responsibilities, managing an economy transitioning out of a semi-war state. This will lead to thousands being laid off, normalizing labor shortages but also confronting post-war traumas.

Realistically, new Russian territories will demand investment for reconstruction. Who will invest if not the Russian state? Yes, the cost is substantial.

Thus, I highlight the reduction of industry, many pensions, reconstruction of territories, and maintaining a larger army. Challenging times are ahead as the military industry heavily pushes the Russian economy.

If Russia and Western countries (especially Germany) negotiate an end to sanctions and asset release, it could alleviate a significant part of the problem. The Russian economy has adapted to the eastern world.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, there was a whole sphere of Russian influence and a captive market for military equipment. That is gone, and the sphere of Russian influence is infinitely smaller and under threat, especially since there are now several Eastern suppliers positioned to compete on price with the Russians.

After the onset of the war in Ukraine, Russia suspended exports of ground equipment, leaving a huge vacuum for… the Chinese!

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US demanding $100bn compensation from Ukraine

The US continues to insist that Ukraine should pay it tens of billions of dollars as part of a resource deal in compensation for American assistance in the conflict with Russia, but has scaled back its initial assessment of the final amount, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing sources.

Washington and Kiev have for weeks been discussing a resource deal – a concept first floated by Vladimir Zelensky last year – which would grant the US access to Ukraine’s deposits of rare earths.

Following a round of talks in Washington last week, officials from the administration of US President Donald Trump cut their estimate of American assistance to Kiev from more than $300 billion to about $100 billion, Bloomberg sources said. Ukraine itself assesses total aid US during the conflict with Russia at just over $90 billion.

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UK proposes ‘no-fly zone’ over Ukraine

The idea of ​​a “no-fly zone” over part of Ukraine has been revived in British military and political circles, sparking heated debate about the implications of such a move. According to sources close to the UK Ministry of Defence, the proposal would ban air traffic in airspace east of a line that would link Belarus to the Black Sea, including areas east of Kyiv and Odessa. However, the details of how this would be implemented remain unclear, raising questions about its feasibility and political risks.

According to the authors of the idea, the “no-fly zone” should create a “deterrent effect” by limiting the actions of Russian aviation without directly involving NATO in military operations. However, experts point out obvious difficulties: to ensure such a ban, not only airspace patrols would be required, but also active measures, including intercepting Russian aircraft, suppressing air defense systems, and neutralizing missile launches. Such actions, covering territories from Belgorod to Crimea, would effectively mean a direct military clash with Russia, which excludes the possibility of rapid de-escalation.

The proposal, made against the backdrop of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, is seen as an attempt by London to strengthen its role in supporting Kyiv without becoming overtly involved in the fighting. Analysts say the British initiative is aimed at Western allies rather than Moscow, and is aimed at maintaining political influence at a time when NATO is seeking to avoid direct confrontation with Russia.

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Russia Issues Dire Warning: Germany Will Be ‘Active Combatant’ If Taurus Missiles Hit Russian Targets

As global tensions climb and Europe’s leadership continues to drift away from the interests of its people, Russia is sounding the alarm over Germany’s latest flirtation with war.

The Kremlin issued a clear warning on Thursday: if Berlin green-lights the transfer of Taurus long-range cruise missiles to Ukraine, it will mark Germany’s full-blown entry into the conflict, bringing with it severe consequences, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported.

Maria Zakharova, the outspoken spokeswoman for Russia’s Foreign Ministry, pulled no punches, per usual. Speaking at a press conference Thursday, she stated bluntly that if Taurus missiles—capable of hitting targets 300 miles away—are used on Russian infrastructure, like the Crimean bridge, it will be considered a direct act of war by Germany against Russia.

“This will be considered direct participation by Germany in hostilities on the side of the Kyiv regime, with all the consequences that this entails for Germany,” Zakharova warned, making it clear that Moscow won’t turn the other cheek.

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A false flag is about to be unmasked

Frontline news has it that very soon the city of Konstantinovka (or Konstantinyvka, as it was ridiculously renamed by the Banderites, like so many other geographical locales, including Kiev, in a puerile attempt to disguise their historically Russian identity) will soon be under the control of Russian forces. That is good news for the inhabitants of Konstantinovka, but it is unpleasant news for SBU, the Ukrainian state security service. Konstantinovka’s imminent liberation means that SBU’s September 6 2023 false flag operation, which cost the lives of at least seventeen civilians in an attempt to pin on Russians the blame for the massacre they had themselves staged, is about to be exposed.

The SBU-organized Konstantinovka massacre is part of a pattern of crimes against humanity perpetrated by the Kiev regime. Bucha (masterfully deconstructed by the Russian delegation at the UN Security Council) and Kramatorsk are other prime examples. None of these crimes had any military purpose or significance whatsoever but were conceived and committed by the Kiev regime exclusively in order to reap propaganda benefits. But whilst the poor victims are all dead or maimed, the intended propaganda benefits have largely eluded the sloppy organisers of these criminal acts.

Fortunately, SBU’s criminality is matched only by its ineptness. Many of its schemes have fallen apart due to the utter incompetence of their personnel. Consequently, most of their false flag operations were exposed with relative ease soon after they were carried out. In that regard, the Konstantinovka slaughter of innocent civilians that they enacted in 2023 was not an exception.

This is a good opportunity to briefly outline the nature of false flag operations. They are primarily undertaking of a political or propaganda nature. They consist of the execution of a criminal act by one actor in a manner that the blame can be plausibly shifted to another actor, whilst the real perpetrator remains undetected and shielded from responsibility.

The expression “false flag” originated in the 16th century and referred to the intentional misrepresentation of someone’s true allegiance, initially in naval confrontations. The object of the ruse was for a naval vessel to fly the flag of a neutral or enemy country in order to hide its true identity so that the hostile act and the resulting damage would be attributed to the power under whose falsely flown flag the damage was inflicted.

Since the 16th century, when this practice was initiated, successful concealment of the perpetrator’s true identity has become an immensely complicated enterprise due to the development of efficient technologies capable of uncovering most types of deception, especially when it is attempted by practitioners who are unskilled. That has proved to be a major handicap for the Kiev regime and its security services. As a result, most of their trickery tends to fall flat and is exposed with remarkable rapidity.

The Kramatorsk incident is a classic example. Ukrainian forces targeted the city’s railway station, killing several dozen civilians who happened to be there, in the expectation that with the assistance of the collective West media apparatus the blame for the massacre would easily be attributed to the Russian side. The sloppy Ukrainian perpetrators however failed to remove numerical markings from the “Tochka-U” projectile that they used, which clearly linked it to the weapons stock known to be in the possession of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Perhaps inadvertently, an Italian journalist who happened to be in Kramatorsk, took a snapshot of missile debris after the attack.

Once the missile markings that were visible in the photograph were magnified and forensically examined, the game was up. It was clearly established that the lethal instrument originated from Ukraine’s military arsenal. Without much further ado both Ukrainian and Western propaganda outlets dropped the matter, forgetting completely the victims that, until literally the day before, they had been mourning with touching devotion whilst condemning scathingly the attack that they had themselves perpetrated as proof of “Russian barbarism”.

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‘Euro-Nazism’ is being revived – Moscow

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday that the EU’s attempts to pressure candidate states not to attend the 80th anniversary of victory in World War II in Moscow are tantamount to a revival of Nazism.

On Monday, the bloc’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, warned the leaders of EU members and candidate states against taking part in the event in the Russian capital on May 9. British daily The Telegraph later wrote that candidate states such as Serbia could be barred from joining the bloc if their leaders attend the Victory Day celebrations.

“If this is true, then Euro-Nazism is being reborn before our eyes,” Zakharova wrote on Telegram, citing the article.

“This is how the fascists 80 years ago forced those they considered ‘second-class people’ to renounce their homeland, ethnicity, and faith,” the spokeswoman added.

The Telegraph wrote that EU officials warned Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who has indicated that he would attend the May 9 parade, that the visit would derail his country’s accession to the bloc.

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‘It’s 2025, not 1939’ – Fico challenges EU’s warning against Moscow trip

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has firmly rejected recent warnings by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas to European leaders against attending Victory Day celebrations in Moscow on May 9, asserting that “the year is 2025, not 1939.”

Kallas stated on Monday that any participation by EU leaders in the celebration of the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in the Russian capital “will not be taken lightly” by Brussels.

“WARNING AND THREAT BY MS. KALLAS ARE DISRESPECTFUL AND I STRONGLY OBJECT TO THEM,” Fico wrote on X on Tuesday.

The Slovak leader confirmed his intention to participate in the commemorations, stating, “I will go to Moscow on May 9th.”

Fico questioned the nature of Kallas’ remarks, suggesting they may imply punitive consequences for attending.

“Is Ms. Kallas’s warning a form of blackmail or a signal that I will be punished upon my return from Moscow? I don’t know. But I do know that the year is 2025, not 1939,” he said, in an apparent reference to the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia that year.

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Five Reasons To Disbelieve The Report That Russia Wants An Airbase In Indonesia

None of those in the media who lend credence to Janes’ scandalous report can cogently explain what tangible benefit Russia or Indonesia would obtain from this base arrangement.

Janes Information Service set the Asian media ablaze on Monday after citing unnamed Indonesian sources to claim that Russia requested an airbase on the island of Biak near New Guinea. The Australian Defense Minister spoke to his Indonesian counterpart the next day, however, who told him that this report is “simply not true.” Keen observers would have already known even before this that Janes’ report about Russia wanting an airbase in Indonesia likely wasn’t true for the following five reasons:

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1. Indonesia’s New President Is Passionately Pro-American

New Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto, who was inaugurated last October after his election in February 2024 and served as Defense Minister from 2019 till then, made headlines for his phone call with Trump shortly after the latter’s electoral victory. He posted a video of their brief exchange where he offered to fly to congratulate him personally and even boasted about how “All my training is American”. This isn’t the behavior of someone who’s willing to get on the US’ bad side by hosting Russian warplanes.

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Newly Unredacted Documents Show Joe Biden Was Negotiating Oil, Gas Deal to Benefit Hunter and Burisma Through Private Email Account

Joe Biden’s private email scandal is likely much worse than Hillary Clinton’s email scandal.

And just like Hillary, Biden was never indicted for his use of burner phones and private emails while he was US Vice President.

Special Counsel Robert Hur ignored Joe Biden’s use of private emails.

The National Archives previously confirmed through a FOIA response that they found 5,138 email messages and 25 electronic files pertaining to the known Joe Biden pseudonym accounts robinware456@gmail.com, JRBWare@gmail.com and Robert.L.Peters@pci.gov.

According to newly unredacted documents, in 2014, while Joe Biden was publicly calling for sanctions against Russia, he was privately negotiating an oil and gas deal to help his son Hunter.

Just The News reported:

While Joe Biden publicly led the charge to punish Russia for its first invasion of Ukraine, he used his role as vice president to quietly open a backdoor for Moscow’s gas to flow to its neighbor in fall 2014, at a time when his son Hunter’s Ukrainian energy company sought such help, according to government messages in a private email account kept from Americans for more than a decade.

The emails, sent to Joe Biden’s private account that used the fake name RobinWare456@gmail.com, were recently turned over by the National Archives, mostly redacted, to Just the News under an open records lawsuit and in unredacted form to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee that continues to investigate corruption concerns surrounding the former first family.

They confirm that Joe Biden played a secret role at a “critical moment” to help secure Russia’s willingness to re-open natural gas spigots to Ukraine, a deal that publicly Germany and its then-chancellor, Angela Merkel, received credit for brokering.

“Ukraine gas deal was just signed. The Germans earlier indicated to Tony that your call had come at a critical moment,” the vice president’s Deputy National Security Advisor Jeffrey Prescott wrote in an Oct. 30, 2014 email to Joe Biden’s private account that appears to reference then-Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken, a longtime Biden confident who would later serve as Biden’s chief diplomat during the 46th presidency.

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Russian Missiles Strike Troop Accumulation at Advertised Military Awards Ceremony – Kiev: It Was ‘Easter Celebration’ – Ukrainian Mayor Trashes Reckless Military Command

It’s a feature of today’s warfare, especially in the war in Ukraine, that there are no ‘safe places’ in the rear, since artillery, drones, missiles and air raids can get to targets anywhere, anytime.

That was the case of Sunday’s attack in the Ukrainian region of Sumy, where two powerful explosions were followed by a thick column of smoke rising into the sky, as two ballistic missile strikes reportedly strike the congress center of Sumy State University.

Needless to say, both Kiev regime’s leader Volodymyr Zelensky, his handlers France’s Emmanuel Macron and UK’s Keir Starmer, as well as some MSM vehicles, called an attack on a peaceful civilian gathering, ‘an Easter celebration’.

The problem is that they forgot to silence their own Ukrainian politicians and officials, that have already denounced: the missile strike was carried out on the place where militants of the 117th territorial defense brigade were receiving awards in a widely advertised ceremony.

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