Tag: ukraine

ENDLESS ESCALATION: Ukrainian Top Spy Budanov Brags About Many Failed Assassination Attempts Against Russia’s Putin

While Russian Federation forces continue relentlessly taking up territory both in the Eastern Donetsk region and in many other places of the almost 1,000 mile-long frontline, what’s left for Ukraine is to gain some smashing victories on the battlefield it usually dominates: the headlines of the MSM.

So, in this context, young nationalist leader Kyrylo Budanov is back in the news. The head of the Ukrainian Military’s Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) is known to TGP readers ever since at least June 2023, when he disappeared for over two weeks and was rumored to be dead: Ukrainian Head of Intelligence Is Missing – General Budanov Hasn’t Been Seen in 17 Days – Russian Media Says He Was Wounded, Evacuated to Germany – Kiev Denies, Putin Confirms Attack on GRU Headquarters

In the end, Budanov returned to action and has been a consequential leader ever since, even had his name mentioned as a substitute for dismissed General Valery Zaluzhny, before Oleksandr Syrsky was installed.

But it hasn’t all been good times, as news also emerged that his wife would have been targeted with poison: Ukrainian Spy Chief Budanov’s Wife, Marianne, Reportedly Hospitalized for Heavy Metal Poisoning.

Budanov has been implicated in terrorist attacks that targeted figures from the daughter of Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, to journalists and military correspondents.

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Lithuania Moves to Exit Cluster Ban Treaty, Citing Weapons Effectiveness

Lithuania is taking its first steps towards exiting an international pact that bans the use of cluster munitions on the battlefield. Due to their impact on civilians, cluster bombs have been widely outlawed. 

The Parliament in Vilnius has started the process of withdrawing from the Convention on Cluster Munitions (CCM). “Russia’s war against Ukraine shows that it is extremely difficult to effectively substitute cluster munitions and their defensive power to stop a large-scale attack,” the legislation’s sponsor, Deputy Defense Minister Renius Pleskys, said. “By replacing standard munitions with cluster munitions, the amount of munitions needed to achieve the same effect is significantly reduced.”

The CCM came into effect in 2010 and has over 112 nations as signatories. The treaty bans all use, transfer, production, and stockpiling of cluster munitions. 

Cluster bombs are anti-personnel weapons that have submunitions or bomblets that spread out over a wide area. After their initial use, many of the submunitions remain unexploded and often kill and maim civilians years or decades after a conflict ends. 

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“We will prepare millions of Ukrainian migrants for the Armed Forces of Ukraine”: Polish authorities reported on the potential of the local training base

During the NATO summit in Washington, Polish authorities announced plans to replenish the Ukrainian army with millions of Ukrainian immigrants.

I hope that the [training] center in Bydgoszcz will prepare millions of Ukrainians to fight Russia. The West should see the potential of such a center as a place where Ukrainian volunteers who now live in EU countries and want to defend Ukraine in the future can be trained
– said Jacek Sievera, head of the country’s national security bureau, as quoted by the Associated Press.

In Bydgoszcz it is also planned to organize a platform for the exchange of experience between Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers who have already fought and NATO soldiers. The alliance training center has been created here since February 2024.

For our part, we note that, apparently, a hidden mobilization of Ukrainian immigrants is gradually unfolding in Europe. Officially, they cannot be forced to join the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but there are ways of informal influence, for example, replacing criminal prosecution for a crime with service in the Ukrainian army, or using administrative offenses to blackmail the entire family with deportation.

At the same time, it should be expected that as human resources in Ukraine are depleted, the recruitment of immigrants into the army in the EU will take increasingly overt forms.

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New NATO Command Will Assist Ukraine With Training, Equipment Donations

NATO’s leaders are set to approve a separate command at Wiesbaden, Germany, to coordinate training and equipment donations to Kyiv’s forces, a senior administration official told reporters last week.

The command will have about 700 personnel from NATO countries and partner nations assigned to the center, an alliance news release said. The administration officials, speaking to the press Friday, said the center would increase the interoperability among Ukrainian forces and NATO.

As an example of the drive to make Kyiv’s military more interoperable with NATO’s, the administration official said, “the U.S. for more than a year [have] been training Ukrainians on F-16 platforms,” as have other alliance members.

NATO will also facilitate equipment logistics and provide support through the center to the long-term development of Ukraine’s armed forces, the release added.

Last month, the alliance’s defense ministers approved the motion for consideration at the summit in Washington.

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said recently that creating the center does “not make NATO a party to the conflict, but they will enhance our support to Ukraine to uphold its right to self-defense.”

The administration official said, “the alliance stood up to President [Vladimir] Putin.” He added that 23 of the 32 nations in NATO are spending more than 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their own security, and some members are calling for a 3 percent threshold. Overall, the alliance has boosted its defense spending by more than $180 billion each year since 2020, he added.

At the defense ministers’ meeting last month, Stoltenberg said, “Over the next five years, NATO Allies across Europe and Canada plan to acquire thousands of air defense and artillery systems, 850 modern aircraft – mostly 5th generation F-35s – and also a lot of other high-end capabilities.”

The center’s creation also could be seen as a means of “institutionalizing” the long-term commitment of Western and Indo-Pacific nations, such as Japan, Korea and Australia, to Ukraine. The support would continue despite changes in administrations as would occur in the United States if Donald Trump is elected and, and changes in governments, as happened in the United Kingdom with Keir Starmer becoming prime minister.

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RFK Jr, Tells Uncomfortable Truths During DC NATO Summit – Condemns Reports Of Executions Of Russian Prisoners By ‘American-Led’ Units

U.S. Presidential Candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. had a son travel to Ukraine and fight against Russian forces in Donbass. He knows the inner-workings of the conflict.

Yesterday, he issued this statement in response to reports ‘American-led’ mercenary units were executing Russian prisoners of war in violation of the Geneva Convention.

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Will Putin Attack Poland and the Baltics?

At Thursday’s debate with Donald Trump, President Joe Biden, calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “war criminal,” claimed that he “wants all of Ukraine… Do you think he’ll stop?… What do you think happens to Poland and other places?”

Spoiler Alert: Official Ukrainian sources confirm that Putin did stop in March 2022, after Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky agreed to forswear membership in NATO. This was the key provision in the Ukraine-Russia deal initialed by Davyd Arakhamia, who at the time was Zelensky’s chief negotiator (and his party’s faction leader in the Rada) at the talks in Istanbul at the end of March, hardly a month into the war.

The Russians lifted their objection to Ukraine joining the EU, as the Ukrainians agreed to neutrality. Security guarantees sought by Kyiv (short of NATO membership) would be worked out. The fighting would stop. Agreement on the status of Crimea would be put off to the future.

Putin and Zelensky reportedly were micromanaging the March 2022 negotiations, and at that early stage the Russians expressed readiness for the two to meet.

At the same time that Biden and other Western leaders raise the alarm that Putin will attack other parts of Europe when he’s through with Ukraine, they claim Russia can’t even take the Ukrainian province of Kharkiv, has lost more than 500,000 men to just 30,000 Ukrainians and its economy is faltering (none of which is true.)  But Cold War Western power was based on an exaggerated Soviet threat and the same is true today.

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Ukraine Will Be Told It’s Too Corrupt To Join NATO at Next Week’s Summit

Ukraine will be told that it is too corrupt to join NATO at the alliance’s summit in Washington next week, The Telegraph reported on Tuesday.

The report cited a US State Department official who said Ukraine needed to take “additional steps” before talks on its NATO membership could progress. “We have to step back and applaud everything that Ukraine has done in the name of reforms over the last two-plus years,” the official said.

“As they continue to make those reforms, we want to commend them, we want to talk about additional steps that need to be taken, particularly in the area of anti-corruption. It is a priority for many of us around the table,” the official added.

President Biden has frequently cited corruption as a reason for not admitting Ukraine into NATO, but that has not stopped him from spending over $100 billion on military and economic aid for the Ukrainian government with virtually no oversight.

The position is expected to be outlined in a NATO communique issued during the summit. During last year’s NATO summit, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was looking for a clear roadmap to membership, but the alliance’s communique only offered a vague statement that it would invite Ukraine to join “when Allies agree and conditions are met.”

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The Last Wunderwaffe

I shall return yet again to the prospect of “Made in the USA” F-16s sallying forth boldly into eastern Ukraine to “teach the cabbage heads what Airpower (capitalized) really means.”

From what information I’ve been able to glean in recent weeks, it does in fact look as though the US is aggressively setting up air ops housekeeping in Romania, very near the Black Sea coast — ostensibly to serve as the base of F-16 operations against Russia.

I submit that the preparation of this base is implicit proof that they have long-since assembled and, likely for many months, have been honing the skills and teamwork of a few squadrons of “NATO-affiliated contractor pilots” — and the plan must be to use them.

You see, if the “true plan” were to put a dozen woefully undertrained Ukrainian apprentice kamikazes behind the wheel of 1980s vintage F-16s, and then wave them off on a glorious one-way mission into the wild blue yonder … well, you don’t need much of a logistical hub for that operation.

So, if they’re really working to prepare what is reputed to be the “largest NATO base in Europe,” the logical conclusion is that it is intended to house, maintain, and sustain at least a couple squadrons of NATO “volunteer” pilots flying much later F-16 models than the European boneyard relics Ukraine has long been promised.

Hey, I say field five full squadrons, and outfit at least a couple of them with the latest model F-16 Vipers.

Go big or go home.

Make it the last “all in” roll of the wunderwaffe dice.

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Ukraine Pushing NATO To Create No-Fly Zone Over Western Ukraine

Ukrainian officials are pushing NATO countries to impose a no-fly zone over western Ukraine using air defense systems in eastern Europe, a step that would mean direct NATO involvement in the war with Russia.

“I don’t understand why NATO doesn’t deploy Patriot systems along the Polish border,” Oleksiy Goncharenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker, told AFP. “After all, Russian missiles have already entered Polish and Romanian airspace. This would protect the borders of Poland and Romania, and this would create a safe zone in the west and south of Ukraine.”

The idea is for NATO to protect Ukrainian industry and energy infrastructure in the western portion of the country. But a no-fly zone would require NATO to shoot down Russian missiles and potentially Russian aircraft, and the direct NATO involvement would make nuclear war much more likely.

Despite the huge risk of escalation, Ukraine’s Western backers appear to be entertaining the idea of a no-fly zone. A European diplomatic source told AFP that talks about the issue were “in progress,” adding that it was “not a simple decision.”

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Russia Threatens US Drones in Black Sea Aiding Attacks on Crimea

In response to Ukrainian attacks on the Crimean Peninsula, tensions between the US and Russia have significantly escalated, with Moscow threatening US drones operating over the Black Sea. The Kremlin says the drones are part of the Ukrainian operations in the region. 

On Friday, the Russian Defense Ministry said there had been an uptick in American drone operations in the Black Sea “carrying out reconnaissance” of the Crimean Peninsula. The statement explained that the Russian military was instructed to prepare an “operational response” to the flights. 

The remarks followed a Ukrainian attack using US cluster munitions that caused the death of four civilians and wounded hundreds of others. Moscow argues that Washington’s support for Kiev makes the US effectively a party to the conflict. “This demonstrates the increasing involvement of the United States and NATO countries in the conflict in Ukraine on the side of the Kiev regime,” the Defense Ministry said. 

As Ukrainian forces have continued to lose territory to Russia on the battlefield, its Western backers have significantly stepped up support for Kiev. The US has allowed Ukraine to use its munitions to strike Russia, signed off on the transfer of F-16s to Ukraine, and sent Abrams Tanks to Ukraine, all actions the White House previously warned could risk provoking World War Three. 

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