Tag: ukraine

America’s Shame: It’s Sunday And We’re At War With The World

I know “the right side of history” is a goofy leftist trope—as if “history” were an entity, an organism of some sort, a knowable whole—but you do have to wonder what a future generation will think about what America has been doing to the world. I’ll let readers decide when we started downhill, who—or what ideologies—was/were responsible, and so forth. Interestingly, some GOPers are adopting that trope—leftist readers take note!

Michael Tracey @mtracey

Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly dropped to his knees in prayer for guidance on how to handle the Ukraine matter. Always fascinating when the voice of God becomes interchangeable with the voice of the National Security State

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Ukraine Gets Their Billions Despite CIA Director Reportedly Warning Zelenksy To Stop Stealing So Much Money

Democrats cheered and waved Ukrainian flags, chanting “Ukraine, Ukraine!” in some pavlovian response to Congress passing a bill that will send (another) $61 billion to Ukraine with no questions asked

Ukrainian president Zelenskyy was very pleased, personally thinking Speaker Johnson

I am grateful to the United States House of Representatives, both parties, and personally Speaker Mike Johnson for the decision that keeps history on the right track.

Democracy and freedom will always have global significance and will never fail as long as America helps to protect it.

The vital U.S. aid bill passed today by the House will keep the war from expanding, save thousands and thousands of lives, and help both of our nations to become stronger. Just peace and security can only be attained through strength.

We hope that bills will be supported in the Senate and sent to President Biden’s desk. Thank you, America!

‘War is Peace’, America!

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Unhinged Democrat Rep. Gerald Connolly Declares ‘the Ukrainian-Russian Border Is OUR Border’

Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, a Democrat, declared on the House floor that “the Ukrainian-Russian border is OUR border” during an unhinged speech.

Connolly was raging at Republicans opposing the aid package to Ukraine before Saturday’s vote.

“Some say, well, we have to deal with our border first,” Connolly claimed. “The Ukrainian-Russian border is our border! It’s the border between depraved autocracy and freedom-loving people seeking our democratic way of life! Do we have a stake in that outcome? Yes. Undeniably, yes.”

Connolly echoed the sentiment in a post on X, writing, “The border between Russia and Ukraine is the border between depravity and democracy. Between autocracy and freedom. We undeniably have a stake in that outcome of that fight.”

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The Polish President Revealed That Foreign Companies Own Most Of Ukraine’s Industrial Agriculture

The Oakland Institute published a detailed report in February 2023 titled “War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land”, which exposed how foreign firms have clandestinely taken control of a significant share of Ukrainian farmland by exploiting a liberal law in collusion with local oligarchs. Their findings made waves around the world at the time but eventually receded from the public’s attention over half a year later once Western outlets like the USA Today misleadingly “fact-checked” it.

They took advantage of social media users conflating indirect ownership through stakes with direct control to discredit the institution’s report, after which it largely faded from the general discourse. Few could have expected that it would be none other than Polish President Andrzej Duda who just breathed new life into it during his interview with Lithuanian National Radio and Television. He was explaining Poland’s problem with Ukrainian agricultural imports when he dropped the following bombshell:

“I would like to draw particular attention to industrial agriculture, which is not really run by Ukrainians, it is run by big companies from Western Europe, from the USA. If we look today at the owners of most of the land, they are not Ukrainian companies. This is a paradoxical situation, and no wonder that farmers are defending themselves, because they have invested in their farms in Poland […] and cheap agricultural produce coming from Ukraine is dramatically destructive to them.”

Duda represents what’s widely considered to be one of the most pro-American and anti-Russian governments at any time in history so he can’t credibly be accused of “pushing Kremlin propaganda”.

He therefore wouldn’t have confirmed the dramatic claim of majority-foreign ownership of Ukraine’s industrial agriculture, albeit indirectly through stakes in national companies that exploit a liberal law in collusion with local oligarchs, if he didn’t have the facts provided to him by Polish experts to back it up.

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Ukraine’s Opposition To The Assimilation Of Its Refugees Is Extremely Hypocritical

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmitry Kuleba warned on Friday that “It has become clear that assimilation would be extremely fast if we do not change our policy towards Ukrainians abroad”, calling on these refugees to “remain Ukrainian” with the innuendo that they shouldn’t plant roots in the West.

He didn’t explicitly say so, but it’s strongly hinted that he hopes that those millions who’ve fled the latest phase of the Ukrainian Conflict over the past two years will eventually return home to their country.

Kiev-based economist Alexey Kushch said in an interview with Ukrainian journalist Yury Romanenko last week that “I estimate that [after the conflict is over] Ukraine’s demographic profile <…> will be made up of 25 million people, including ten million senior citizens, five million children and two to three million disabled persons and veterans receiving social benefits. About seven to eight million working adults will make up the core of the economy.”

These two developments coincided with Ukraine’s passing of a new conscription law that doesn’t include a demobilization clause, which the media reported has left troops feeling “betrayed” while a member of the Rada described it as a “point of no return” in terms of turning citizens against the government. Kuleba obviously hopes that unassimilated Ukrainians will feel so unwelcome in the West that they’ll return home to risk their lives in the meatgrinder and then rebuild their country when the conflict ends.

Basically, he’s manipulating them on a faux “patriotic” pretext into creating problems for themselves abroad so that they’ll consider moving back to Ukraine, but his rhetoric is extremely hypocritical since it’s the opposite of how Kiev itself treats minorities.

It was observed that “The West Would Never Talk About Its Minorities The Way That Ukraine Talks About Its Russian One” after Rada speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk denied their very existence and associated rights last fall.

In other words, Kuleba wants Ukrainian refugees not to assimilate into their host societies, with a wink and a nod that they should exploit the liberal–globalist West’s related legislation and socio-cultural norms to preserve their culture as much as possible.

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Russia’s Military Is Bigger Than Before Invasion

A top US general told Congress last week that Russia’s military is 15% bigger today than it was before the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, an acknowledgment that the goal of “weakening” Russia has failed.

“The army is actually now larger — by 15% — than it was when it invaded Ukraine,” Gen. Christopher Cavoli, the head of US European Command, told a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.

Cavoli said that over the past year, Russia had increased its “front-line troop strength from 360,000 to 470,000,” which he said was due to Russia raising the maximum age of conscription from 27 to 30.

He described that this means Russia will have the ability to elarge “the pool of available military conscripts by 2 million for years to come.”

“In sum, Russia is on track to command the largest military on the continent,” he said. “Regardless of the outcome of the war in Ukraine, Russia will be larger, more lethal, and angrier with the West than when it invaded.”

Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell recently made similar comments, saying the US had “assessed over the course of the last couple of months that Russia has almost completely reconstituted militarily.”

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Ukraine parliament passes mobilisation bill to boost troop numbers

Ukraine’s parliament has passed a bill to overhaul how the military drafts civilians in an attempt to boost its number of soldiers more than two years since Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The bill, which dropped a set of draconian draft-dodging penalties that sparked public outrage, was backed by the armed forces.

Before the bill’s passage on Thursday, a general told parliament that Russia has up to 10 times more soldiers than Ukraine on battlefields in the east.

“Pass this law and the Ukrainian armed forces will not let down you or the Ukrainian people,” General Yuriy Sodol told lawmakers.

“We are maintaining our defences with our last strength,” he said as lawmakers stood up and applauded more than a dozen commanders who attended the session.

Military analysts have said Ukraine’s armed forces need to address acute problems with manpower and their artillery shell shortage as better-equipped Russian forces make advances in the east.

“The enemy outnumbers us by seven to 10 times. We lack manpower,” said Sodol, who commands Ukrainian forces in the Kharkiv, Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine.

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Ukraine at “Serious Risk” of Losing War, Warns Top Ex-General

Ukraine is at “serious risk” of having to admit defeat to Russia this year, according to the former commander of the UK’s Joint Forces Command.

General Sir Richard Barrons, the former head of Strategic Command (StratCom), issued the warning during an interview with the BBC.

Barrons said that pessimism is starting to set in amongst the population, generating a general malaise and a feeling that Ukraine “can’t win.”

“And when it gets to that point, why will people want to fight and die any longer, just to defend the indefensible?” Barrons asked.

Despite deploying massive resources and manpower to try to seize back territory, Ukraine has been largely unsuccessful, and an expected Russian summer offensive could mark the beginning of the end, according to Barrons.

“At some point this summer, we expect to see a major Russian offensive, with the intent of doing more than smash forward with small gains to perhaps try and break through the Ukrainian lines,” he asserted.

The former general warned that Russia has a five to one advantage in terms of artillery and ammunition, as well as superior troop numbers who are ensuring the Ukrainian frontline in the east of the country is being “battered away.”

“And if that happens we would run the risk of Russian forces breaking through and then exploiting into areas of Ukraine where the Ukrainian armed forces cannot stop them,” said Barrons.

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US Helps Pro-Ukraine Media Run A Fog Machine Of War

Ukraine’s American-backed fight against Russia is being waged not only in the blood-soaked trenches of the Donbas region but also on what military planners call the cognitive battlefield – to win hearts and minds.

A sprawling constellation of media outlets organized with substantial funding and direction from the U.S. government has not just worked to counter Russian propaganda but has supported strong censorship laws and shutdowns of dissident outlets, disseminated disinformation of its own, and sought to silence critics of the war, including many American citizens.

Economist Jeffrey Sachs, commentator Tucker Carlson, journalist Glenn Greenwald, and University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer are among the critics on both the left and the right who have been cast as part of a “network of Russian propaganda.”

But the figures targeted by the Ukrainian watchdog groups are hardly Kremlin agents. They simply have forcefully criticized dominant narratives about the war.

Sachs is a highly respected international development expert who has angered Ukrainian officials over his repeated calls for a diplomatic solution to the current military conflict. Last November, he gave a speech at the United Nations calling for a negotiated peace.

Mearsheimer has written extensively on international relations and is a skeptic of NATO expansion. He predicted that Western efforts to militarize Ukraine would lead to a Russian invasion.

Greenwald is a Pulitzer Prize-winning independent journalist who has criticized not just war coverage but media dynamics that suppress voices that run counter to U.S. narratives.

“What they mean when they demand censorship of ‘pro-Russia propaganda’ is anything that questions the US/EU role in the Ukraine war or who dissents from their narratives,” Greenwald has observed.

There’s no evidence of Kremlin influence over their viewpoints, but their comments alone are enough for a network of U.S.-backed Ukrainian media groups to tarnish these experts as Russian propagandists.  

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Meet Centuria, Ukraine’s Western-trained neo-Nazi army

Centuria, an ultra-violent Ukrainian Neo-Nazi faction, has cemented itself in six cities across Germany, and is seeking to expand its local presence. According to Junge Welt, a Berlin-based Marxist daily, the Nazi organization’s growth has been “unhindered by local security services.”

Junge Welt traces Centuria’s origins to an August 2020 Neo-Nazi summit “at the edge of a forest near Kiev.” There, an ultranationalist named Igor “Tcherkas” Mikhailenko demanded the “hundreds of mostly masked vigilante fighters present,” who were members Kiev’s fascistic National Militia, “make sacrifices for the idea of ‘Greater Ukraine.’” As the former head of the Neo-Nazi Patriot of Ukraine’s Kharkiv division, and commander of the state sponsored Azov Battalion from 2014 to 2015, Mikhailenko has professed a desire to “destroy everything anti-Ukrainian.”

Junge Welt reports that since 2017, the National Militia “had been practicing brutal vigilante justice” throughout Ukraine, including “tyrannizing the LGBTQ scene.” Centuria was subsequently blamed for a terrifying November 2021 attack on a gay nightclub in Kiev, in which its operatives assaulted revelers with truncheons and pepper spray.

Now the same Neo-Nazi sect “has an offshoot in Germany,” Junge Welt revealed. On August 24 2023, the 32nd anniversary of Ukraine’s independence, Centuria convened a “nationalist rally” in the central city of Magdeburg, “unmolested by Antifa and critical media reporting.”

Participants proudly posed with the flag of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) founded by World War II-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. Centuria boasted at the time on Telegram, “although Ukrainian youth are not in their homeland, they are starting to unite.” Meanwhile, they threatened the “enemies” of their country with “hellish storm,” pledging that “Ukrainian emigrants” would not “forget their national identity for a few hundred euros.”

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