Tag: ukraine

The Fantasy of Fanaticism

For a moment in time, it looked as if reality had managed to finally carve its way through the dense fog of propaganda-driven misinformation that had dominated Western media coverage of Russia’s “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine.

In a stunning admission, Oleksandr Danylyuk, a former senior adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense and Intelligence Services, noted that the optimism that existed in Ukraine following Russia’s decision to terminate “Phase One” of the SMO (a major military feint toward Kiev), and begin “Phase Two” (the liberation of the Donbass), was no longer warranted. “The strategies and tactics of the Russians are completely different right now,” Danylyuk noted. “They are being much more successful. They have more resources than us and they are not in a rush.”

“There’s much less space for optimism right now,” Danylyuk concluded.

In short, Russia was winning.

Danylyuk’s conclusions were not derived from some esoteric analysis drawn from Sun Tzu or Clausewitz, but rather basic military math. In a war that had become increasingly dominated by the role of artillery, Russia simply was able to bring to bear on the battlefield more firepower than Ukraine.

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G7 Commits To “Indefinite” Military & Financial Support To Ukraine

Just as the G7 was underway for its first day of meetings on Sunday in the five-star hotel Schloss Elmau in the Bavarian Alps of Germany, Russia’s military pounded Kiev with a series of missile attacks, which President Joe Biden – who is attending in person – condemned as “more of their barbarism.”

Biden was asked by reporters whether he views the relatively rare Russian strikes on Ukraine’s capital as deliberately timed due to the summit, which he didn’t answer. Ukrainian officials say one person died and six were injured as a result of the attack.

“We have to stay together, because Putin has been counting on, from the beginning, that somehow NATO and the G-7 would splinter, but we haven’t and we’re not going to,” Biden said in remarks during a pre-summit meeting with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

As The Guardian previews of what’s expected to be tackled between now and Tuesday, “A price cap on Russian oil, deferral of climate change commitments, a potential famine in Africa and the further supply of weapons to Ukraine are to crowd into a meeting of G7 world leaders over the next three days held against the backdrop of the biggest geopolitical crisis since 1945.” Further, CNN’s audience has been told “Putin will be watching if they fail.”

Going into the summit, the UK’s Boris Johnson urged a united front on Ukraine amid what he called a growing war “fatigue” among the Western populace. The G7 countries which include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and United States have Ukraine and global economic fallout from the war as top of the agenda.

“Now is not the time to give up on Ukraine, they need the support and resolve of the G7 more than ever,” Johnson stated on Twitter. “The UK will continue to back Ukraine every step of the way because we know that their security is our security, and their freedom is our freedom.”

And Biden stated: “Together, the G7 will announce that we will ban the import of Russian gold, a major export that rakes in tens of billions of dollars for Russia,” he announced on Twitter.

But it was EU chief Ursula von der Leyen who pledged indefinite G7 and European support to Ukraine:

“We will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes. The negative global impact of Russia’s war will be front and center of our exchanges at the G7.”

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Western Officials Admit Ukraine Is Crawling With CIA Personnel

In an article titled “Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say,” anonymous western officials inform us of the following through their stenographers at The New York Times:

As Russian troops press ahead with a grinding campaign to seize eastern Ukraine, the nation’s ability to resist the onslaught depends more than ever on help from the United States and its allies — including a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training, according to U.S. and European officials.

Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the massive amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials.

At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine.

The revelation that the CIA and US special forces are conducting military operations in Ukraine does indeed make a lie of the Biden administration’s insistence at the start of the war that there would be no American boots on the ground in Ukraine, and the admission that NATO powers are so involved in operations against a nuclear superpower means we are closer to seeing a nuclear exchange than anyone should be comfortable with.

This news should surprise no one who knows anything about the usual behavior of the US intelligence cartel, but interestingly it contradicts something we were told by the same New York Times not three weeks ago.

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$150-million movie halted over Ukrainian ‘bad-guys’

The release of Guy Ritchie’s £125-million ($150-million) spy comedy Operation Fortune has been delayed a second time in order to remove the villains’ Ukrainian nationalities, the Daily Mail reported on Wednesday. Initially set to be released last January, the film is now scheduled for release later this year.

The offending characters are a group of Ukrainian gangsters who have purchased a deadly weapon, which the film’s heroes have to retrieve to foil their evil scheme. Sources told the Mail the gangsters’ characters have been edited so that they are no longer Ukrainian.

While there are “many bad guys in the film” and “the antagonists come from all over the world,” a source close to the production told the Mail that “out of sensitivity to the ongoing war in Ukraine it was decided some of these should no longer be identified as Ukrainian.”

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Ukraine Unveils Mini “Terminator” Ground Robot Equipped With Machine Gun

The latest war machine headed to Ukraine’s front lines isn’t a flying drone but a miniature 4×4 ground-based robot — equipped with a machine gun.

According to Forbes, Ukrainian forces are set to receive an uncrewed ground vehicle (UGV) called “GNOM” that is no bigger than a standard microwave and weighs around 110lbs.

GNOM isn’t radio-controlled and has a 2,000 meter (1.25 mile) spool of fiber-optic cable mounted on the rear that offers operators a jam-proof way to control it on the modern battlefield without being detected or signal jammed by Russian electronic warfare equipment.

“Control of GNOM is possible in the most aggressive environment during the operation of the enemy’s electronic warfare equipment.

“The operator doesn’t deploy a control station with an antenna, and does not unmask his position. The cable is not visible, and it also does not create thermal radiation that could be seen by a thermal imager,” said Eduard Trotsenko, CEO and owner of Temerland, the maker of the GNOM.

“While it is usually operated by remote control, GNOM clearly has some onboard intelligence and is capable of autonomous navigation. Previous Temerland designs have included advanced neural network and machine learning hardware and software providing a high degree of autonomy, so the company seems to have experience,” Forbes said.

The 7.62mm machinegun mounted on top of the “Terminator-style” robot will provide fire support for Ukrainian forces in dangerous areas. The UGV can also transport ammunition or other supplies to the front lines and even evacuate wounded soldiers with a special trailer.

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Ukraine Bans Main Opposition Party, Seizes All Its Assets

Ukrainian authorities have banned the country’s main opposition party and seized all its assets, once again undermining the narrative that President Zelensky is presiding over a beacon of democracy.

The country’s Ministry of Justice announced the move via Facebook, revealing that the Opposition Platform — For Life had been shut down and its assets, money and property transferred to the state.

The party had previously had its operations suspended in March after it was accused of being complicit with Russia and being “anti-Ukrainian.”

The ban means that Zelensky’s main political opposition has been eliminated. The OPPL was the second largest party in the country and its popularity surpassed that of Zelensky’s Servant of the People party last year.

Its leader Viktor Medvedchuk, who claims he is merely looking out for the interests of the Ukrainian people by seeking better relations with Russia, was placed under house arrest last month.

The announcement said the party was suspected of acting to “undermine the sovereignty” of Ukraine, with authorities have already banned 10 other political opposition parties for the same reason.

Last month, President Zelensky signed a bill into law that gave the green light to ban any party that challenged the government’s policy on the Russian invasion, empowering courts to seize assets without the right to appeal.

While opposition parties are being obliterated, Ukrainians who engage in dissent are also being rounded up and arrested by armed men from the Ukraine Security Service.

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British security state collaborator Paul Mason’s war on ‘rogue academics’ exposed

In his covert assault on antiwar scholars, “left-wing” journalist and security state collaborator Paul Mason enlisted an academic snitch who knew his targets well.

In the latest installment of The Grayzone’s ongoing investigation into the anti-democratic, security state-influenced activities of Paul Mason, we look at how one of Britain’s most prominent alleged left-wing journalists and an ever-expanding cast of covert helpers targeted scholars who dared challenge establishment narratives on the conflict in Ukraine.

Amidst his campaign to neutralize the UK antiwar left, Paul Mason declared in an email to several academics willing to inform on and undermine their own colleagues: “the far left rogue academics is who I’m after… The important task is to quarantine their ‘soft’ influencers and expose/stigmatise the hard ideologists.”

Mason’s fishing expedition was conducted in apparent coordination with Andy Pryce, a senior British intelligence official involved in a series of malign information warfare and censorship initiatives.

The journalist’s key academic enabler, self-styled counter-disinformation researcher Emma Briant, not only helped further his campaign to target antiwar figures, but furnished bogus claims about one individual which appears to have inspired a BBC smear piece on academic critics of the established narrative about killings of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha. Many of those she snitched on considered her a colleague and even a comrade.

Rather than own up to the activities exposed by the leaked emails, Briant has engaged in lawfare, threatening The Grayzone with a formal “cease and desist” demand. Sent by her lawyer on June 10th, the filing falsely charged that Kit Klarenberg, one of the authors of this article, played a direct role in the “misappropriation” of private communications.

Briant’s legal counsel went on to threaten that his client would seek a “prohibitory injunction” to prevent further reporting on the leaked material, if not launch a claim for compensation due to “damage to her career and reputation,” if this outlet failed to comply with the demand.

Briant’s attempt to muzzle The Grayzone is understandable, for as we will see, she has a lot to hide. 

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British Army’s New Top General Tells Troops to Prepare to ‘Fight in Europe Again’, ‘Defeat Russia’

Russia and the UK haven’t engaged one another directly in battle since the Crimean War of 1853-1856. It was that conflict which became the subject of Lord Alfred Tennyson’s famous poem ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’, the disastrous cavalry charge against Russian troops during the 1854 Battle of Balaklava which nearly wiped out British forces.

Britain must prepare to return to continental Europe to fight and win a conflict against Russia, General Sir Patrick Sanders, the new Chief of the General Staff of the British Army, has said.

“There is now a burning imperative to forge an Army capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle. We are the generation that must prepare the Army to fight in Europe once again,” Sanders wrote in a letter to the troops after taking over from his predecessor, Gen. Sir Mark Carleton-Smith earlier this week.

Sanders emphasized that he was the first British chief of general staff “since 1941 to take command of the Army in the shadow of a land war in Europe involving a continental power,” carefully wording his comment to avoid mentioning NATO involvement in the 1990s Yugoslav Wars, including the 78-day-long bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.

The general suggested that the crisis in Ukraine highlighted the Army’s “core purpose” of protecting Britain “by being ready to fight and win wars on land.”

Sir Patrick’s sentiments have been echoed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who wrote in an article for The Sunday Times that the UK and its allies must “steel” themselves for a “long” slog in Ukraine, and that the West needs “to enlist time on Ukraine’s side.”

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Blogger claims she is being probed in Germany over Donbass coverage

A blogger with tens of thousands of subscribers has said she is being probed in Germany over her coverage of the Ukraine conflict. German media confirmed the activist is the subject of an investigation by a local prosecutor’s office.

In an interview aired on Friday on Russia’s Channel One, Alina Lipp said she was being “persecuted” in particular for a post from February 24, the day when Russia launched its offensive against Ukraine. Back then she wrote that “denazification” had started, while also accusing Ukraine of killing civilians for years.

“Secondly, I am being prosecuted for the fact that on March 12 I published a video on my Telegram channel where I said that Ukraine is carrying out genocide in the Donbass,” Lipp revealed.

According to the German news website t-online, law enforcement suspects Lipp of “constantly showing her solidarity with Russia’s war against Ukraine,” of fomenting a split in German society and of spreading hatred through “distorted, partially false” reporting.

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