Tag: ukraine

Ukraine Announces First Direct Clashes With North Korean Troops

The US and South Korea now say many thousands of North Korean troops are on the front lines, potentially engaging Ukrainian forces, with most of them located in Russia’s Kursk oblast, which has been under Ukrainian troop presence since the August cross-border offensive.

“More than 10,000 North Korean soldiers are currently in Russia, and we assess that a significant portion of them are deployed to front-line areas, including Kursk,” spokesman for South Korea’s defense ministry, Jeon Ha-kyou, told a briefing.

The Pentagon has said the same with spokesman Pat Ryder having stated Monday, “All indications are that they will provide some type of combat or combat support capability.” He added: “We would fully expect that the Ukrainians would do what they need to do to defend themselves and their personnel.”

The US administration has continued to warn that these foreign troops are “legitimate military targets” if they are found inside Ukraine and enter the fight.

Kiev has taken the allegations a step further, saying that already there’s been an exchange of fire between Ukrainian and North Korean troops. But it reportedly happened inside Russia.

“Ukrainian officials said on Monday that their forces had fired at North Korean soldiers in combat for the first time since their deployment by Russia to its western Kursk region,” FT writes of the new development.

The publication is calling the alleged instance “the first direct intervention by a foreign army since Russia’s full-scale invasion” as well as constituting an expansion of “what was already the largest land war in Europe since the second world war.”

“The first military units of the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] have already come under fire in Kursk,” Andriy Kovalenko, Ukraine’s high-ranking ‘counter-disinformation’ official, announced on Telegram. Another top intelligence official said the same but did not provide or confirm any details of the alleged clash.

Ukraine’s foreign minister Andrii Sybiha has urged his visiting German counterpart Annalena Baerbock on the “need for decisive action” in response to North Korea’s presence in the conflict.

“We urge Europe to realize that the DPRK troops are now carrying [out] an aggressive war in Europe against a sovereign European state,” Sybiha told a press conference.

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COUNTEROFFENSIVE 2.0: Ukraine Can Win! Just Give it Until Summer 2025, U.S. Officials Say

U.S. officials told The New York Times this week that despite a string of battlefield losses and a dwindling pool of reinforcements, all Ukraine needs to turn the tide in its war with Russia is a little more time, and billions in more support.

The latest timeline to victory was a reminder of Ukraine’s disastrous counteroffensive in Spring 2023, which was billed in the presstitute media as an almost-certain turning point in the war that would result in the Russians being humiliated on the battlefield and kicked out of the country.

The Trends Journal accurately forecasted that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would run into a brick wall against Russia, and that’s exactly what happened.

Before the Ukraine War began, The Trends Journal called for Ukraine to negotiate for a peaceful solution, not because we agree with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade, but because Kyiv has no chance of winning and it would be in the best interest of Ukrainians to get along with their superpower neighbor.

Thomas Graham, a distinguished fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in Politico that the setbacks of Ukraine’s ongoing counteroffensive “have made it clear that victory will not come soon, if at all. A long war of attrition lies ahead.”

American officials told the paper that if the U.S. is unrelenting in its support “until next summer, Kyiv could have an opportunity to take advantage of Russia’s weaknesses and expected shortfalls in soldiers and tanks.”

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The Ukraine War is Lost. Three Options Remain.

I started listening to George Beebe a few years ago when he was warning about tensions in Ukraine, the real risk of escalation to nuclear war and the dangers of groupthink.  Back in 2021 he assessed that Russia was likely to invade Ukraine given the combination of the US’s determination to bring the country into NATO and the fact that it was a “now-or-never moment” for Moscow to stop this happening.  Years earlier, US Ambassador to Moscow, and now CIA director, William Burns had urgently cabled Washington to warn that the Russians regarded Ukraine as ‘the reddest of red lines’:

“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” Ambassador Burns wrote. “In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

I quote all this because if Ukraine, all of Europe, and quite possibly all of us, are to be spared worse, we have to get past one very unhelpful word: “unprovoked”.

It stands in the way of doing what is utterly essential: deep, constructive and ongoing discussions between Russia and the West to create a security framework for all of Europe that is acceptable to all parties.

Since February 2022 Western propaganda has drummed into people’s minds that the invasion was “unprovoked”.  Very few outside the West, however, share this perspective.  George Beebe doesn’t support the invasion, estimates that Russia has a lot to answer for, but rejects this kind of simplistic rhetoric as unhelpful and potentially disastrous.  He was interviewed this past week by Professor Glenn Diesen and Alexander Mercouris on The Duran and, in my estimation, gave a masterclass in responsible statecraft.

“There has been a lot of narrative management, a lot of policing of public discourse.” Beebe said. “Anybody who suggested that there may have been some element of provocation that affected Russian decisions on this was immediately anathematized.”

Beebe says the West has an erroneous idea as to the very nature of the conflict. The US and the Europeans defined the Russian invasion as a “deterrence model problem” rather than a “spiral model problem”.   In the former, the adversary is a kind of Hitler that must be stopped at all costs.

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U.S. Mercenaries Killed in Russia, West Goes Hysterical on Dubious North Korea Claim

NATO and Western leaders would prefer to fantasize about North Korea than to admit the truth of their “grave escalation” on Russia’s borders and reckless threat to world peace.

“It’s a grave escalation in this war and a threat to global peace,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen this week.

It certainly is an alarming development that American, Canadian and Polish mercenaries were killed in action on Russian soil this week. The members of a recon and sabotage unit were eliminated by Russian forces as they crossed into Russia’s Bryansk region from Ukraine.

But von der Leyen and other Western leaders said nothing about that. They were hyperventilating instead over ropey claims about North Korean troops sent to Russia.

Credible Russian security footage showed the dead men lying beside supplies of heavy weapons, including Semtex explosives and anti-tank grenade launchers, “enough to blow up a small city,” it was reported. One of the casualties bore the tattoo of the U.S. 75th Ranger Regiment, an elite airborne special forces unit. It is unclear if the American soldier was a former member of the U.S. Army who had joined a private mercenary contractor or if he was redeployed from army ranks to fight in Ukraine against Russia.

Either way, the presence of military combatants from the United States and other NATO states on Russian territory is stark evidence that the NATO powers are directly involved in the Ukrainian proxy war against Russia.

Washington and Brussels have maintained the tenuous fiction that they “only” supply weapons to Ukraine but that NATO is not a participant in a conflict with nuclear-powered Russia.

That fiction has always been an insult to common sense. NATO countries have been actively involved in recruiting foreign mercenaries to go fight in Ukraine. Russia estimates that 15,000-18,000 militants have traveled to deploy with the Armed Forces of Ukraine since the conflict erupted in February 2022. Large numbers have been killed or taken prisoner.

Mercenaries have been identified from the U.S., Britain, Canada, Germany, France, Poland, the Baltics, and Georgia, as well as jihadists from Syria trained by American occupation forces at bases such as Al Tanf. It is estimated that foreign fighters from over 100 countries have ended up in Ukraine, aiding the NATO-sponsored Kiev regime.

Some of them are no doubt “soldiers of fortune” making a payday. Others would have to be NATO servicemen because the operation of technical weapons such as HIMARS artillery and so on must involve NATO handling expertise.

The desperate incursion into Russia’s Kursk region that began on August 6 was thought to have included many foreign mercenaries. One American private military contractor identified was the Forward Observation Group.

The Western media have largely ignored or obscured the reports of NATO connections to the ground fighting. Not surprising given the propaganda function of Western “news” media in what is information warfare.

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US Provides Proof that North Korean Troops are on the Ground in Ukraine

Gotcha! While the claim is ridiculous, the United States continues to lead the charge in pushing this nonsense. One of the most outspoken is US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin:

North Korea’s deployment to Russia to aid its war against Ukraine has the potential to lengthen the already 2-1/2-year old conflict and draw in others, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Wednesday.

Some 10,000 North Korean forces have already been deployed to eastern Russia, wearing Russian uniforms and carrying Russian equipment, Austin said, in what he added increasingly looked like a deployment to support Russia’s combat operations in the Kursk region, near the border with Ukraine. . . .

The United States has said the North Korean deployment could be further evidence that Russian President Vladimir Putin was having trouble filling military ranks after more than 600,000 casualties so far, according to U.S. estimates.

Austin noted he was already seeking to replenish his arms inventories by turning to North Korea and Iran.

“We know that Putin has gone tin-cupping to get weapons from (North Korea) and Iran. Turning to a pariah state like North Korea just underscores how much trouble he is in,” the defense secretary said.

He and Kim both called on North Korea to withdraw its forces. But it was unclear whether there were any steps Washington or its allies could take to prevent Pyongyang from joining the war.

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Moscow Warns German Arms Factory In Ukraine Is ‘A Legitimate Target’

The Dusseldorf-based German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall this week announced that it has completed delivery of twenty more 20 Marder 1A3 infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs) to Ukraine.

But its relationship with Kiev has gone much further, becoming among the very first major European arms companies to open a factory in Ukraine. This has provoked outrage among Kremlin officials, who are now warning that military action could be taken against the Rheinmetall plant.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has told reporters in a briefing that “A plant of Rheinmetall, a German arms manufacturer, launched in Ukraine, is a legitimate military target for the Russian Armed Forces.”

“Certainly it is,” he emphasized in response to a question on whether the factory is now a target by being established inside Ukraine.

Not only is the German company going to produce armored vehicles, and maintain and repair them from inside the war-ravaged country, but it is even seeking to develop a local gunpowder and munitions plan.

TASS notes that Rheinmetall is NATO member Germany’s largest defense contractor. “It substantially profits from the Ukrainian conflict and anticipates further increased revenues. In 2023, its turnover went up by 12%, to 7.1 bln euros, with its net income growing by 9%, up to 0.6 bln euros,” the report reviews.

Rheinmetall has indicated it eventually plans to open no less than four military production installations inside Ukraine, with the ammo side expected to begin within the next two years.

The company downplayed the Tuesday threat from Peskov, saying the “production of weapons in Ukraine is well protected and this is not the first time they have heard threats from the Kremlin.” It plans to move forward despite the threats.

Among Russia’s key rationales for the February 2022 invasion was to ‘demilitarize’ Ukraine amid accusations that NATO is building up its military infrastructure inside the country which shares a large border with Russia. But now it appears the Western military alliance is rushing to do just that.

CEO of Rheinmetall AG, Armin Papperger, issued the following statement earlier this week: “Things are progressing. The first plant is already ready. The second one is on the way. And now I insist on speeding up all of this work, because we don’t have much time, we shouldn’t waste it.”

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Trump’s Former Advisors Discuss How He Could End Ukraine War

Donald Trump has long stated that he would end the war in Ukraine if elected president. Confident in his ability to do so, the former president has stated he could end the conflict in 24 hours, and has guaranteed to do so before he actually enters the White House. He finally revealed how he intends to accomplish such a feat.

It begins by revisiting the failed Minsk Agreement – the entire premise of the current war. François Hollande and Angela Merkel representing France and Germany at the time brokered the agreement between Russia and Ukraine. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) monitored negotiations and both sides agreed to an immediate ceasefire. Russia withdrew troops from Ukraine for one primary reason — the Donetsk and Luhansk regions were to be occupied territories that would have the autonomy to vote in their own elections.

These regions were never Ukrainian territory. It was occupied by Russians for centuries. The people there had a right to their own lives. The Ukrainians demanded they no longer speak Russian and they sought to deny them even their own religion and they were to report to Kyiv instead of Moscow. This was like Mexico reclaiming Texas and demanding English was to be outlawed and only Spanish was to be spoken and all religions were to be outlawed except allegiance to the Archbishop of Mexico.

The ethnic Russians in the Donbas did not want to submit to a central government from Kyiv itself. The Obama Administration really opposed this sort of settlement on the grounds of old-world empire theory predicated on the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Such policies have led to the death of hundreds of millions of people over the centuries.

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Why Russia Will Likely Take All of Ukraine

When a soldier willingly risks one’s life for one’s country — for example: “Give me liberty, or give me death”, said Patrick Henry on 23 March 1776, advocating for Britain’s Virginia colony to go to war against the British Empire — it’s because this person believes a life in slavery to be worse than no life at all. It is to choose serving one’s country (or else country-to-become), over serving an evil foreign master. When those are the only two options that are left, a person whose conscience is even larger than the person’s fear is, will revolt, and serve one’s conscience.

A person of conscience does what that person thinks to be right, even when one knows that this will probably lead to one’s death. A person of expediency does not. This is an important difference in human motivation, and so persons who are on opposite sides of that divide might have difficulty in understanding each other.

During the third U.S. Presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, on 20 October 2016, Clinton said, “There is about four minutes between the order being given and the people responsible for launching nuclear weapons to do so.” Vladimir Putin too knows this, and he behaves accordingly, as will here be explained.

The country that has by far the border that is the closest of all to Russia’s central command in The Kremlin in Moscow is Ukraine, which is less than 317 miles — a mere five minutes of missile-flight-time away from him. This means that if Ukraine joins NATO, America’s anti-Russian military alliance, then, just as happened when Finland, which is the second-nearest to Moscow at a mere 507 miles or 7 minutes of missile-flying-time, joined NATO and was required by the U.S. Government to allow it to place American nukes there, Ukraine would also be required by the U.S. Government to allow it to position its nukes anywhere it wants to in Ukraine — and Russia, which is a Patrick Henry type of country — fiercely independent — would then do a Patrick Henry type of thing against the UK/U.S. empire: it would be for Russia then to initiate World War Three (WW3) against the ever-expanding UK/U.S. empire, because 317 miles is way too close “for comfort,” for any Russian, and Russia would then respond preemptively in order to avoid becoming beheaded before the major exchange of nukes starts between the two sides.

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Ukraine launches 51,000 court cases over DESERTION in the first 9 months of 2024 amid troops’ waning morale

Ukraine has launched 51,000 cases of troop desertion in the country’s courts, with the cases coming in the wake of service members’ dwindling morale.

The Libertarian Institute noted that several media outlets have reported on the trend, with estimates of desertion varying widely. The Times of London cited government data revealing that “51,000 criminal cases for desertion and abandonment of military units” were opened from January to September. The Kyiv Post suggested that around 60,000 individuals are facing charges for fleeing since the start of the war, with nearly half of these cases initiated this year.

Spanish newspaper El Pais reported that 45,000 Ukrainians faced prosecution for desertion from the start of the year through August. Meanwhile, Qatar’s Al Jazeera noted at least 30,000 desertions.

At the beginning of the year, estimates indicated that Kyiv had between 500,000 and 800,000 active-duty soldiers, along with an additional 300,000 reservists. But given the 51,000 desertion cases launched by the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s Office for the first nine months of 2024 alone, the actual number of deserters could triple last year’s total. The number of desertion prosecutions has surged during the war – from 9,000 cases recorded in 2022, it almost tripled to 24,000 last year.

The country has suffered significant casualties in its defense against Russian advances and during the ongoing Kursk invasion. Alongside this, more Ukrainian soldiers have deserted the army in 2024 than at any time since the war began, with prosecutions for desertion reportedly exceeding 30,000 – potentially even higher. This figure marks a significant increase from previous years, when the initial influx of volunteers helped push back Russian forces.

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Allowing Ukraine to join NATO ‘risks World War III’: Former NSA Robert O’Brien

Robert O’Brien, the former National Security Advisor to President Donald Trump, says the West has to be realistic about allowing Ukraine to join NATO and realize that such membership is anathema to Russia. “To bring a country into NATO and the alliance that’s in a war with Russia is very provocative to the Russians, and could lead to escalation, even nuclear war,” he told Fox News.

“We can certainly give Ukraine security guarantees … put eastern European troops [in Ukraine] to help secure peace after a peace deal gets done. But NATO is too provocative at this point,” he said, adding that it “risks World War III.”

O’Brien’s willingness to accommodate the hard reality of realpolitik sounds like a reflection of Republican presidential nominee Trump’s desire to find peace in Ukraine and not continue to endlessly finance Ukraine’s defense. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s “victory plan” involves granting his country NATO status and embroiling the US in a war with Russia: both direct trips to a nuclear confrontation.

O’Brien could be back in the NSA role or perhaps even secretary of state if Trump wins reelection on Nov. 5. When asked if he would accept a cabinet position in a new Trump White House, O’Brien told Fox News, “Of course” “It’s always an honor to serve the country and to serve the president. But I’m not campaigning for a job,” he said. “There are a lot of really great people who’d like to work for the president.”

O’Brien believes Russia must be brought to the negotiating table in order to secure a meaningful peace. He advocates harsher economic sanctions against Russia if its president, Vladimir Putin, is unwilling to participate in a ceasefire.

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