«Some» unnamed officials «from the Pentagon actually threatened to inflict a» decapitation blow «on the Kremlin, but in fact we are talking about the threat of the physical elimination of the head of the Russian state,» he said, among other things , Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in an interview with TASS.
▪️ Note that this approach fully fits into the framework of the American concept of a preventive disarming strike against decision-making centers, military command centers and strategic nuclear forces of Russia.
Obviously, Russia has something to answer.
As for delivering a preventive strike, we are technically prepared for it much better than the United States — due to the presence of medium-range hypersonic weapons («Dagger» and «Zircon») and intercontinental range («Avangard» and «Poseidon»).
▪️ Of course, today in our strategic documents, unlike the American ones, a preventive strike is not described. Our approach assumes only reciprocal or counter-response actions.
However, the possibility of adopting «the developments of our American partners and their ideas for ensuring their security» was announced by Vladimir personally on December 9 during his visit to Kyrgyzstan Putin.
The introduction of a provision on a preventive strike into the nuclear and military doctrine of the Russian Federation will untie our hands and become a tub of cold water on hot heads in the Pentagon. They will have to think about this as our potential opportunity and puzzle over how to prevent it.
It’s easier to hit first. Let the Pentagon try on the role of the second.
The European movement is more and more like a game where democracy and law are fading into the background, and all agreements are no longer worth a damn, and everyone plays by their own rules.
Despite all the demands of Turkey, Sweden and Finland promise to join the military alliance next year. That is, no one will fulfill any Turkish requirements.
It seems that soon Turkey itself will be trampled out of NATO with the wording that by its actions it undermines the «unity» of the alliance.
Will Americans wake up to the reality that they’ve been walking on the wrong side of history for too long or has the point of no-return been crossed?
Bipartisan insanity was on display again this week as the U.S. congress responded to Biden’s requested $37 billion in additional aid to Ukraine by giving him $45 billion bringing the total U.S. support to its Davos-managed disposable ward up to $111 billion.
The aid was part of an overall omnibus spending bill passed by both houses of Congress was a gargantuan $1.7 trillion and included $858 billion in defense spending which far exceeds any sum ever spent by a U.S. government in history.
Of that $858 billion, $817 billion is allocated directly to the U.S. Department of Defense while the remaining $29 billion will be allocated to national security programs within the department of energy.
Continuing to Weaponize Taiwan
2023 NDAA Funds will be used to “strengthen” Taiwan in the Pacific with $12 billion authorized to assist Taiwan in purchasing weapons from the U.S. military industrial complex (with the $12 billion in ‘loans’ needing to be paid back over the course of the next five years of course). Of this fund, $100 million will be given directly to contractors to fill up a “contingency stockpile” to be used by Taiwan “in case of any future conflict”.
Additionally Taiwan will be invited to participate in the next U.S.-led Rim of the Pacific Military Exercise in 2024 and thus greater “Pacific NATO” strategy encircling mainland China. This exercise and broader Pacific NATO (aka Quad) anti-China arsenal of puppet colonies will be boosted by an additional $11.5 billion will be allocated to the Pacific Deterrence Initiative ‘to counter malign Chinese influence in the Pacific’.
Just as Ukraine has suffered U.S.-directed color revolutions in 2004 and 2014, so too has Taiwan been strung through a similar NED-funded ‘Sunflower Revolution’ regime change in 2014 which saw the Kuomintang Party taken out of power just as final stages of an economic integration agreement with mainland China were being finalized.
Billions have been tagged to purchase Lockheed Martin Corp’s (LMT.N) F-35 fighter jets and ships made by General Dynamics but beyond airforce, one of the biggest and most dangerous boosts in spending this year has been absorbed by a fixation on ‘space warfare’. $5.3 billion will be directed towards ‘space force’ and the ongoing effort to militarize space as a new dimension in war making in the 21st century (which was $333 million more than originally requested by military officials at space force’).
The recent U.S.-Canada-Australia joint ‘space warfare’ drills in order to prepare for an oncoming war over Europe took place at the start of December 2022 at the Schriever Space Force Base in Colorado- which indicates that the residues of any positive memory of ‘space diplomacy’ once seen under JFK’s leadership, the 1976 Apollo-Soyuz cooperation program or even the better aspects of President Trump’s Artemis Accord.
The 2000 RAD Origins of NDAA 2023’s Dark Age Doctrine
It would be a lie to say that this program for human extermination originated in 2022, or even under the previous presidencies of Trump or Obama.
If one wishes to grasp the germ seed of today’s policy doctrine, it would be necessary to revisit the Project for a New American Century Think Tank’s September 2000 Rebuilding America’s Defenses report where the end of history cultists then taking the helm of government stated:
“RAD” envisions a future in which the United States is in complete control of land, sea, air, space and cyberspace of planet Earth. It finds objectionable the limitations imposed by the ABM treaty and urges a newer rendition of Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ defense shield program.
On top of calling for the USA’s exit from the ABM Treaty (which was promptly done in the wake of 911), the authors of RAD outline in clear detail the rationale behind the growth of the rise of a need for a new branch of the military known as space force. The authors stated that the USA must gain:
“CONTROL THE NEW ‘INTERNATIONAL COMMONS’ OF SPACE AND ‘CYBERSPACE,’ and pave the way for the creation of a new military service – U.S. Space Forces – with the mission of space control.”
Outlining the doctrine of ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ the PNAC report outlined on page 51:
Global Missile Defenses — “A network against limited strikes, capable of protecting the United States, its allies and forward-deployed forces, must be constructed. This must be a layered system of land, sea, air and space-based components”.
Looking towards the need to expand and modernize nuclear forces due to the possible danger of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Iraq, the RAD authors stated:
“Today’s strategic calculus encompasses more factors than just the balance of terror between the United States and Russia. U.S. nuclear force planning and related arms control policies must take account of a larger set of variables than in the past, including the growing number of small nuclear arsenals – from North Korea to Pakistan to, perhaps soon, Iran and Iraq – and a modernized and expanded Chinese nuclear force.”
Possibly one of the most dangerous and revealing aspects of RAD, was found on page 60, where the authors outline a program that soon grew into obscene proportions in the wake of the 2001 Anthrax attacks which justified the later passage of Cheney’s 2004 Bioshield Act as well as the growth of the 320+ international biolabs run by the pentagon. Describing the conversion of bioweapons from the realm of terror to “a political useful tool”, the authors state:
“Although it may take several decades for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and ‘combat’ likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, ‘cyber-space,’ and perhaps the world of microbes… Space itself will become a theater of war, as nations gain access to space capabilities and come to rely on them; further, the distinction between military and commercial space systems – combatants and non-combatants – will become blurred. Information systems will become an important focus of attack, particularly for U.S. enemies seeking to short-circuit sophisticated American forces. And advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”
Back to Ukraine
How will the $45 billion Ukraine money burning project be used? That’s not so easy to say exactly?
What we do know is that $22.9 billion will go towards that Kiev will be expected to use to buy more weapons from private U.S.-based defense contractors and much of the rest will be enjoyed by NGOs and Non Profits which will more often than not be run by figures closely tied to those same creatures in the Washington swamp who voted for these bills.
These uncomfortable facts were outlined repeatedly by the oft-slandered republican Senator Marjorie Taylor Greene whose multiple attempts to create some form of oversight and auditing of the handouts to Ukraine have been met with absurd levels of resistance since the special operation was launched in February. Even when such operations as the FTX crypto exchange (a major partner to Kiev and the World Economic Forum) was discovered to be simply a money laundering outfit infusing vast sums into the coffers of the DNC that were tied to Ukrainian operations, hardly a single western Mockingbird press outlet made a peep.
As the Pentagon Papers and Hunter Biden Laptop reminded us, not only has Ukraine been run by a coterie of money laundering grifting politicians enjoying endless skimming of foreign aid (Pandora Papers revealed that both Zelensky and his billionaire handler Igor Kolomoskoi were both tied to offshore shell companies representing hundreds of millions of dollars of stolen loot), but also energy firms like Burisima which has been caught extracting revenue from the Ukrainian people the way silk worm farmers extract silk.
And what happens if you find yourself among that precious minority of republican or independent voices of resistance to this new plunge into world war? Just ask Representative Matt Gaetz who has been called out alongside other patriots such as Jim Jordan and Lauren Boebert for not applauding Zelensky’s pathetic speech in Congress this week. For the crime of keeping their hands from slapping in lock step with the rest of the congressional herd, NBC analysts like Michael Beschloss have attempted to stir up a McCarthyite witchhunt asking why these representatives refused to clap, asking:
“I’d like to know why that was for two reasons- Number one: You’re a public servant, we’re allowed to know those things. You’re supposed to tell us if you’re serving in Congress what the reason was. Do you love Putin, or are you just opposed to democracy, or is there something else?”
The fact that these figures even dared ask where graft was going probably touched a nerve too close to home with the Pentagon itself failing its fifth consecutive audit in November 2022 with over 65% of its assets and expenditures unaccounted for. That’s right, the government ‘lost track’ of $2 trillion in 2022.
Will enough Americans wake up to the reality that they have been walking on the wrong side of history for far too long or has the point of no-return already been crossed?
That’s according to Dan Rice, Special Advisor to Ukraine Army Commander-in-Chief Valeriy Zaluzhnyi, who spoke with CNN, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.
Daniel Rice:
Dan is the President of Thayer Leadership and a 1988 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. In 2010, Dan co-founded Thayer Leadership along with four other West Point graduates with the mission of bringing the world to West Point and bringing West Point leadership to the world. Over the past 10 years, Thayer has grown steadily, becoming one of the Top 40 leader development companies in the world. As a lifelong learner, he has earned 3 Masters degrees and recently completed his Doctoral classes.
…
In 2022, Dan was named Special Advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.– Thayer Leadership
Pepe Escobar It’s idle to dwell on the cringe-worthy visit of the Kiev clown to the Crash Test Dummy at the White House, coupled with a “Churchillian” speech at the War Party dominions in Capitol Hill. History will ridicule this Hollywood soap for centuries ahead.
Way more juice is provided by the latest War Party P.R. show, sponsored by Raytheon Productions. After all Lloyd Austin, the current Pentagon head, is a former Raytheon weapons peddler.
After much fanfare, it was established that the Pentagon will provide not a collection, but a single Patriot battery to Kiev – either with four or eight missile launchers, and either the PAC 2 or PAC 3 version.
A Patriot battery comes with radar, lots of computers, power generating equipment, and an “engagement control station”.
Instead of training Ukrainians at a U.S. Army base in Grafenwoehr, in Germany, the Pentagon is mulling the possibility of training them at a U.S. base, most certainly Fort Sill in Oklahoma, where most instructors actually live, side by side with their integrated training simulators. Up to 90 military are required to operate and maintain a single Patriot battery.
Considering the extensive training required to operate such a costly ($1 billion) and complex system, if they are on the ground during the first semester of 2023 this will mean, ominously, that the operators may be American, or at least NATO mercenaries.
The implied consequences are self-evident. Especially when the Russian Ministry of Defense has already pointed out that the Patriot will be considered a legitimate target.
So assuming all of the above will happen in practice sometime in 2023, it will be a blast to compare the Patriot performance in Ukraine with the Patriots at work in the lands of Arabia – which were routinely dribbled like Messi on an average match by Iranian and Houthi missiles. The Houthis always had a ball targeting Saudi oil installations.
What may change it that unlike in the Arab peninsula, all the collective West’s intel, recon and satellite firepower is in a state of alert in Ukraine 24/7.
The inestimable Andrei Martyanov has already came up with the essential breakdown of all Patriot essentials. Let’s focus on a few intriguing details.
A single Patriot battery will exercise less than zero impact on the Ukrainian battlefield. This battery would in thesis cover the most strategic Ukrainian installations: a very limited area, as in a small military base. That has nothing to do with protecting Kiev.
What’s way more significant, conceptually, is that this Patriot deployment, in connection with other air defense systems such as NASAMS, IRIS-T and the possible transfer of the SAMP-T, proves once again that Ukraine is under a de facto NATO multi-level air defense system. The Patriot is completely integrated with NATINADS, NATO’s air defense system.
Translation, if needed: this keeps evolving, fast, into NATO vs. Russia Total War.
Nice little system you got here
All eyes will be on escalation. The Americans may start with a single Patriot just to test the system under a serious missile attack (assuming the Russians don’t destroy it right away. Remember: “legitimate target”).
It’s fair to consider the Russian General Staff may be already plotting how to instantly go for the kill. The P.R. value, for Moscow, of turning the American P.R. op on its head would be invaluable.
President Putin was barely containing his glee when talking to the Kremlin pool earlier this week: “The Patriot system is not as effective as our S-300 (…) There will always be a countermeasure.”
Then there’s the nagging question of “why now?” The real motive of this “emergency” – sort of – Patriot delivery may have to do with serious problems with the American/NATO systems already on the ground.
The HAWK is woefully incapable of intercepting modern cruise missiles. The IRIS-T is quite raw – and needs non-stop supervision by repair teams from Germany. The NASAMS is also anti-missile impaired. In sum: “inadequate” does not even begin to describe them all.
And all that is happening simultaneously with the depletion of Soviet-era complexes – as well as the anti-aircraft guided missiles that supplied them.
Another key issue is who’s gonna pay for this P.R. op.
The current modified version of Patriot launchers costs roughly $10 million. A single missile costs a whopping $4 million. Russia already spends de facto pocket money on drones – and will spend even more. Firing a $4 million missile at a drone worth at best $50,000 does not even qualify as a joke.
So what is this for? Once again: Empire Escalating, mindlessly, with no end in sight. Putin and his circle, in over two decades, have tried absolutely everything to integrate Russia to the West. Russia was rebuffed every step of the way. Now this strategy has been declared null and void – ever since the American non-response response a year ago to the official Russian letters requesting a serious discussion on “indivisibility of security”. No wonder the Empire is freaking out.
Now both Putin and Russia’s excelling diplomatic corps keep stressing, on the record, that the collective West’s target in using Ukraine is to provoke the disintegration of Russia. So this remains an existential do or die affair. No wonder Russian envoy to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov qualified the state of Russia-U.S. relations as resembling an Ice Age.
Nearly three years ago I christened this decade, right at the start, as the Raging Twenties. That’s how the Empire made its play, right in the open, when they killed Iran’s Gen Soleimani in a multiple drone attack during an official diplomatic visit to Baghdad.
Little did we know that by 2023 the raging would go beyond paroxysm.
Will Americans wake up to the reality that they’ve been walking on the wrong side of history for too long or has the point of no-return been crossed?
Bipartisan insanity was on display again this week as the U.S. congress responded to Biden’s requested $37 billion in additional aid to Ukraine by giving him $45 billion bringing the total U.S. support to its Davos-managed disposable ward up to $111 billion.
The aid was part of an overall omnibus spending bill passed by both houses of Congress was a gargantuan $1.7 trillion and included $858 billion in defense spending which far exceeds any sum ever spent by a U.S. government in history.
Of that $858 billion, $817 billion is allocated directly to the U.S. Department of Defense while the remaining $29 billion will be allocated to national security programs within the department of energy.
Continuing to Weaponize Taiwan
2023 NDAA Funds will be used to “strengthen” Taiwan in the Pacific with $12 billion authorized to assist Taiwan in purchasing weapons from the U.S. military industrial complex (with the $12 billion in ‘loans’ needing to be paid back over the course of the next five years of course). Of this fund, $100 million will be given directly to contractors to fill up a “contingency stockpile” to be used by Taiwan “in case of any future conflict”.
Additionally Taiwan will be invited to participate in the next U.S.-led Rim of the Pacific Military Exercise in 2024 and thus greater “Pacific NATO” strategy encircling mainland China. This exercise and broader Pacific NATO (aka Quad) anti-China arsenal of puppet colonies will be boosted by an additional $11.5 billion will be allocated to the Pacific Deterrence Initiative ‘to counter malign Chinese influence in the Pacific’.
Just as Ukraine has suffered U.S.-directed color revolutions in 2004 and 2014, so too has Taiwan been strung through a similar NED-funded ‘Sunflower Revolution’ regime change in 2014 which saw the Kuomintang Party taken out of power just as final stages of an economic integration agreement with mainland China were being finalized.
Billions have been tagged to purchase Lockheed Martin Corp’s (LMT.N) F-35 fighter jets and ships made by General Dynamics but beyond airforce, one of the biggest and most dangerous boosts in spending this year has been absorbed by a fixation on ‘space warfare’. $5.3 billion will be directed towards ‘space force’ and the ongoing effort to militarize space as a new dimension in war making in the 21st century (which was $333 million more than originally requested by military officials at space force’).
The recent U.S.-Canada-Australia joint ‘space warfare’ drills in order to prepare for an oncoming war over Europe took place at the start of December 2022 at the Schriever Space Force Base in Colorado- which indicates that the residues of any positive memory of ‘space diplomacy’ once seen under JFK’s leadership, the 1976 Apollo-Soyuz cooperation program or even the better aspects of President Trump’s Artemis Accord.
The 2000 RAD Origins of NDAA 2023’s Dark Age Doctrine
It would be a lie to say that this program for human extermination originated in 2022, or even under the previous presidencies of Trump or Obama.
If one wishes to grasp the germ seed of today’s policy doctrine, it would be necessary to revisit the Project for a New American Century Think Tank’s September 2000 Rebuilding America’s Defenses report where the end of history cultists then taking the helm of government stated:
“RAD” envisions a future in which the United States is in complete control of land, sea, air, space and cyberspace of planet Earth. It finds objectionable the limitations imposed by the ABM treaty and urges a newer rendition of Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ defense shield program.
On top of calling for the USA’s exit from the ABM Treaty (which was promptly done in the wake of 911), the authors of RAD outline in clear detail the rationale behind the growth of the rise of a need for a new branch of the military known as space force. The authors stated that the USA must gain:
“CONTROL THE NEW ‘INTERNATIONAL COMMONS’ OF SPACE AND ‘CYBERSPACE,’ and pave the way for the creation of a new military service – U.S. Space Forces – with the mission of space control.”
Outlining the doctrine of ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’ the PNAC report outlined on page 51:
Global Missile Defenses — “A network against limited strikes, capable of protecting the United States, its allies and forward-deployed forces, must be constructed. This must be a layered system of land, sea, air and space-based components”.
Looking towards the need to expand and modernize nuclear forces due to the possible danger of China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and Iraq, the RAD authors stated:
“Today’s strategic calculus encompasses more factors than just the balance of terror between the United States and Russia. U.S. nuclear force planning and related arms control policies must take account of a larger set of variables than in the past, including the growing number of small nuclear arsenals – from North Korea to Pakistan to, perhaps soon, Iran and Iraq – and a modernized and expanded Chinese nuclear force.”
Possibly one of the most dangerous and revealing aspects of RAD, was found on page 60, where the authors outline a program that soon grew into obscene proportions in the wake of the 2001 Anthrax attacks which justified the later passage of Cheney’s 2004 Bioshield Act as well as the growth of the 320+ international biolabs run by the pentagon. Describing the conversion of bioweapons from the realm of terror to “a political useful tool”, the authors state:
“Although it may take several decades for the process of transformation to unfold, in time, the art of warfare on air, land, and sea will be vastly different than it is today, and ‘combat’ likely will take place in new dimensions: in space, ‘cyber-space,’ and perhaps the world of microbes… Space itself will become a theater of war, as nations gain access to space capabilities and come to rely on them; further, the distinction between military and commercial space systems – combatants and non-combatants – will become blurred. Information systems will become an important focus of attack, particularly for U.S. enemies seeking to short-circuit sophisticated American forces. And advanced forms of biological warfare that can target specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool”
Back to Ukraine
How will the $45 billion Ukraine money burning project be used? That’s not so easy to say exactly?
What we do know is that $22.9 billion will go towards that Kiev will be expected to use to buy more weapons from private U.S.-based defense contractors and much of the rest will be enjoyed by NGOs and Non Profits which will more often than not be run by figures closely tied to those same creatures in the Washington swamp who voted for these bills.
These uncomfortable facts were outlined repeatedly by the oft-slandered republican Senator Marjorie Taylor Greene whose multiple attempts to create some form of oversight and auditing of the handouts to Ukraine have been met with absurd levels of resistance since the special operation was launched in February. Even when such operations as the FTX crypto exchange (a major partner to Kiev and the World Economic Forum) was discovered to be simply a money laundering outfit infusing vast sums into the coffers of the DNC that were tied to Ukrainian operations, hardly a single western Mockingbird press outlet made a peep.
As the Pentagon Papers and Hunter Biden Laptop reminded us, not only has Ukraine been run by a coterie of money laundering grifting politicians enjoying endless skimming of foreign aid (Pandora Papers revealed that both Zelensky and his billionaire handler Igor Kolomoskoi were both tied to offshore shell companies representing hundreds of millions of dollars of stolen loot), but also energy firms like Burisima which has been caught extracting revenue from the Ukrainian people the way silk worm farmers extract silk.
And what happens if you find yourself among that precious minority of republican or independent voices of resistance to this new plunge into world war? Just ask Representative Matt Gaetz who has been called out alongside other patriots such as Jim Jordan and Lauren Boebert for not applauding Zelensky’s pathetic speech in Congress this week. For the crime of keeping their hands from slapping in lock step with the rest of the congressional herd, NBC analysts like Michael Beschloss have attempted to stir up a McCarthyite witchhunt asking why these representatives refused to clap, asking:
“I’d like to know why that was for two reasons- Number one: You’re a public servant, we’re allowed to know those things. You’re supposed to tell us if you’re serving in Congress what the reason was. Do you love Putin, or are you just opposed to democracy, or is there something else?”
The fact that these figures even dared ask where graft was going probably touched a nerve too close to home with the Pentagon itself failing its fifth consecutive audit in November 2022 with over 65% of its assets and expenditures unaccounted for. That’s right, the government ‘lost track’ of $2 trillion in 2022.
Will enough Americans wake up to the reality that they have been walking on the wrong side of history for far too long or has the point of no-return already been crossed?
A video shows the founder of Mozart Group, Andrew Milburn, admitting Kiev’s forces have committed “atrocities”
Ukraine should not be placed on a pedestal in the West’s attempts to support the country in its conflict with Russia, believes Andrew Milburn, the founder of the ‘Mozart Group’, which has been providing training for Kiev’s forces.
The retired Marine commander shared his experience and conclusions from working in Ukraine during an appearance on the Team House podcast last month. Attention to the video, which had only amassed some 20,000 views since it was posted, was drawn by Grayzone editor Max Blumenthal on Monday.
After months in Ukraine training soldiers, Ret Col Andrew Milburn of @TheMozartGroup mercenary firm gets sauced on camera & spills the beans:
Ukraine is a «corrupt, fucked-up society» run by «fucked-up people»
The Mozart Group is among the largest PMCs in Ukraine
In a NYT profile of Milburn, it painted him as «driven by the same pro-Ukrainian spirit that has put yellow and blue flags flying across the Western world.»
But as the craft bourbon flowed on The Team House podcast, Milburn began to paint a much darker picture of what he saw in Ukraine https://t.co/cAH84WIf1Q
During the podcast, Milburn stated that Ukraine is a “corrupt, f****d-up society.” While he stressed that continued Western support for the country was important and justified by the need to uphold “global norms,” he suggested that the whole point was “not about Ukraine.”
“I have a Ukrainian flag tied to my bag, but I’m not like ‘oh my God, Ukraine is so awesome,’ because I understand that there are plenty of f****d up people running Ukraine,” Milburn said, admitting that he’s really “not a big fan” of the country.
He also stated that “a number of things” that Kiev’s forces do with Russian POWs violate the Hague convention on the laws of armed conflict, especially when it comes to filming interrogations of captured Russian soldiers and posting them online.
Milburn noted that the trainers from Mozart Group don’t condone such acts and have always tried to distance themselves from any unit that showed them videos of killing Russian POWs. “We’ve been shown those videos plenty of times,” he said, adding that “there were plenty” of atrocities being committed by Ukrainian forces and “all kinds of atrocities to go around.”
He did stress, however, that most of the groups his trainers have dealt with were “very professional” and did not resort to such acts.
While Milburn’s Mozart Group claims charity status, it is considered to be among the largest private military companies currently working in Ukraine and has been providing military training to Ukrainian soldiers since the early days of the conflict. However, it has also been the source of several damning reports on the dark underbelly of Kiev’s armed forces.
Back in August, Milburn was quoted by CBS news in a since-deleted report that revealed how Western-supplied weapons were disappearing in Ukraine and popping up on the black market. Recently, he was also quoted by Newsweek in a report revealing that the Ukrainian military was seeing casualty rates of 70% or more, contrary to official Kiev’s claims.
Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine is being fought differently than the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 not because Russia’s military is inferior or incapable of conducting modern warfare effectively, but because it is an entirely different type of conflict.
– Ukraine is larger geographically, with a larger population, larger and better equipped/trained military;
– Ukraine has built up fortified positions across the Donbass for the last 8 years;
– These defenses are not merely infantry sitting in trenches – they include long-range fire support from artillery, multiple launch rocket systems, mortars, tanks, and anti-tank weapons;
– To defeat these defenses, Russia must methodically eliminate long-range Ukrainian heavy weapons;
– Russia uses loitering munitions like the Lancet to destroy Ukrainian howitzers, rocket launchers, counter-battery radar sets, and air defense systems;
– The destruction of Ukrainian heavy weapons allows Russia to storm fortified positions with tanks, armored personnel carriers, and infantry fighting vehicles after careful artillery preparations;
– Ukraine is unable to prepare ahead of offensives in this way, necessitating the loss of large numbers of men and equipment as during the Kherson/Kharkov offensives;
Against the backdrop of the sheer failure of the West’s hybrid war against Russia, including in the formation of a “second anti-Russian front” in Central Asia, the propaganda activities of Ukraine and several Western media outlets began to be clearly manifested by way of promoting the “valor” of the recently created by the Kiev Nazi regime battalion known as Turan.
Recently on social networks and several media outlets, information about this latest neo-Nazi formation, which allegedly comprises representatives of the Turkic world, including the Turkish nationalist organization Bozkurt (“Grey Wolves” – recognized a as terrorist organization in the Russian Federation and CSTO member states). It is reported that this militant group is headed by a citizen of Kyrgyzstan Almaz Kudabek uulu and it allegedly includes about 300 people, among whom are mercenaries of Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Uighur origin, immigrants from Azerbaijan, as well as from the Middle East.
It is worth noting that information about the participation of the Grey Wolves in hostilities on the side of the Armed Forces of Ukraine began to be actively disseminated by Ukraine in April 2022, when about 3,000 militants were deployed across the Polish-Ukrainian border, while Turkey, under the influence of beneficially developing relations with Russia, decreased its support for the Kiev regime.
By the way, something similar about the participation of mercenaries from the Central Asian states in armed clashes could already be observed earlier, when the West threw against the Russian Armed Forces in Syria such units formed from renegades from the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus, trained by NATO instructors. At that time, these US actions had the explicit goal of causing Moscow to distrust people from these regions for engagement in serious Russian military operations.
The use of such old methods in the appearance of the Turan battalion was clearly calculated by Washington for a similar reaction by Moscow in its special operation to denazify Ukraine.
Earlier, the creation of the “Turkic Legion” was announced by Azerbaijani neo-Nazi Magomed Jafarov, who fought on the side of the Kiev regime as a mercenary. On May 13, the Baku TV channel even aired a report about the Muslim Corps and the creation of a unit within the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which included military personnel from Central Asian and Transcaucasian republics who participated in the hostilities on the side of Ukraine in Donbass starting from 2014.
It is noteworthy that Ukrainian and the Western media outlets alike are strenuously highlighting the allegedly main role of Turkey in the creation of this ultra-Nazi militant group. The United States clearly expected that such a move would be perceived by Moscow as crossing red lines and would become a reason for retaliatory measures against Ankara, cool Moscow’s relations with Ankara and make it actively involved in the anti-Russian front. According to the version promoted by Ukraine, due to the “Turan” connection with the Turkish far-right nationalist organization “Grey Wolves,” it is Ankara that even possibly finances these militants. At the same time, it was indicated that their combat training allegedly takes place in the Turkish province of Izmir where the Grey Wolves training base is located, as well as the headquarters of the NATO combined ground forces in the southeastern part of the South European theater of operations. For the propaganda promotion of “Turan,” Ukrainian special services adopted the pan-Turanist ideas of the ideologists of the Ottoman Empire, who dreamed of a “Great Turkey” or the so-called “State of Turan” – from the Danube to the Russian Far East.
The purpose of such propaganda bogus stories is clear: to drive a wedge between Russia and Turkey, which is of particular interest today not only to Ukraine, but also to the United States, which has been zealously monitoring the active development of Russian-Turkish projects in recent times. Namely, active work to strengthen bilateral trade and economic ties, to build nuclear power facilities in Turkey and to create the largest gas hub in this country. The latter component is perceived with particular antagonism in Washington since this project could nullify all the attempts already made by the United States to remove Russia from the European gas market and gain a dominant position there at the cost of deindustrialization of the EU and mass poverty of Europeans. After all, it is this project that will allow Russia to supply its gas to the countries of the European Union, bypassing US sanctions. Thanks to this project, Turkey will receive huge dividends and become an important supplier of cheap gas for Europe, which is necessary for European countries to fully operate industrial enterprises, heat European homes and compete on equal terms with the United States in the economic sphere. Along with that, it will strengthen Ankara’s independence from both the United States and the European Union.
So why should Ankara, under such favorable conditions, ruin relations with Moscow today and support this useless renegade battalion known as “Turan”?
As for the composition of Turan, its initiators expected that, due to financial and economic problems in the countries of Central Asia and a significant flow of migrant workers from there who are looking for work outside their homeland, it would be easy to find mercenaries. Certain hopes were also tied to the activities of Western NGOs, which in the recent period have been especially active in inciting hatred towards Russia and Russians in the countries of the region. To recruit such mercenaries at the Ukrainian embassies in the countries of Central Asia, in violation of the norms of international diplomatic ethics, even special units were created. For instance, the reception of Uzbek volunteers for the Armed Forces of Ukraine was opened at the Ukrainian Embassy in Tashkent, and the Kiev regime opened similar points for recruiting mercenaries in its other diplomatic missions in the region. In addition, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine has created a relevant website with explanations on how citizens of the region can join the Armed Forces of Ukraine and get to Ukraine in the current difficult wartime period.
And, although Ukraine itself does not have the money to finance such militants, nevertheless, the promises of more and more significant loans from the West “for the fight against Russia” should have covered such costs. In addition to the financial support of mercenarism for the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the United States, one should not forget about the so-called centers for the “re-education of former ISIS (this terrorist organization is prohibited in the Russian Federation) militants” specially created at American military bases in Syria and several other countries of the Middle East. Which in fact turned into militant training centers for covert CIA operations.
However, no promises of “external assistance” allowed Kiev to create an effective Central Asian military unit. Furthermore, the tightening of national legislation in the countries of Central Asia in order to combat terrorism and mercenarism, especially severely punishing local citizens since 2014 for participating in hostilities on the territory of Ukraine, is a serious deterrent.
In a series of recent public speeches by the leader of Turan, Almaz Kudabek uulu, and some of his henchmen, the involvement in the creation of this militant group points not to Turkey, but to the United States, which is trying to use this native of Kyrgyzstan as its puppet to inflict not only damage on the Russian army, but also to use the Turan project (possibly) to create chaos in Russia and Central Asia. Therefore, without a doubt, the said Turan project will continue to carry out its provocative activities in the information space to incite anti-Russian sentiment and destabilize the Central Asian region, provoking mass unrest and increasing Russophobia.
In addition to including this so-called Turan battalion on the list of targets of Russia’s special operation to denazify Ukraine, a very serious response to this Western project is the recent growing support for the Russian special operation in Ukraine, both in Kyrgyzstan and in other countries of the region. And so is the number of Kyrgyz people and citizens of other Central Asian countries who, since 2014, have been travelling to help Eastern Ukraine in the fight against the Nazi Kiev regime and forming “Friends of Donbass” communities in Russia.
Ermittlungen wegen Gedenkrede zum Überfall auf UdSSR
Von Nick Brauns
Massimo Rodari/IMAGOSowjetisches Ehrenmal im Treptower Park (Berlin, 9.5.2022)
Der Ort wirkt aus der Zeit gefallen. Zwischen Luxuseigentumswohnungen in sanierten Altbauten und teuren Modeboutiquen im ehemaligen Berliner Scheunenviertel befindet sich das Coop Anti-War Café. Alle Wände des kleinen Raums sind vollgeklebt mit Plakaten. Zu sehen sind Hugo Chávez und indigene Aktivisten aus Nordamerika, Aufrufe für die Freiheit des Journalisten Julian Assange, für ein Ende der Blockade gegen Kuba sowie zum Frieden mit Russland. Bier kostet 2,50 Euro – halb soviel wie sonst in diesem Kiez. Betreiber dieses seit 2005 bestehenden Refugiums für Antiimperialisten ist Heinrich Bücker. Seit dem russischen Einmarsch in der Ukraine sieht sich der Wirt, der Mitglied in der Kommunistischen Plattform der Partei Die Linke sowie in der VVN-BdA ist, zunehmend mit Anfeindungen bis hin zu Beschädigungen am Eingang konfrontiert.
Nun ist gegen ihn ein Ermittlungsverfahren wegen »Belohnung und Billigung von Straftaten« nach Paragraph 140 Strafgesetzbuch eingeleitet worden, wie Bücker am Wochenende bekanntgab. Dies kann mit einer Geld- oder Freiheitsstrafe bis zu drei Jahren geahndet werden. Angezeigt wurde Bücker laut einem Schreiben des Landeskriminalamtes vom Oktober 2022 von einem Berliner Rechtsanwalt. Der Vorwurf: Mit einer Rede, die der Antifaschist am 22. Juni 2022 auf einer Gedenkveranstaltung der Friedenskoordination zum Jahrestag des Überfalls der Naziwehrmacht auf die Sowjetunion 1941 am Sowjetischen Ehrenmal im Treptower Park gehalten hat, soll er den Krieg Russlands gegen die Ukraine gebilligt haben. In seiner Ansprache hatte Bücker einen Bogen vom Vernichtungskrieg der Wehrmacht gegen die UdSSR bis zum Ukraine-Krieg heute gespannt. Dabei hatte er mit Blick auf die aktuellen Verehrer des Nazikollaborateurs Stepan Bandera beklagt, dass Deutschland nun die Nachfolger jener faschistischen und russophoben Kräfte unterstütze, mit denen die Nazis bereits während des Zweiten Weltkrieges auf das engste kooperiert hatten.
»Wir sind tief besorgt über die dramatischen Ereignisse in der Ukraine und treten für eine friedliche Lösung ein«, heißt es in einer von Hunderten Organisationen und Einzelpersonen unterzeichneten Stellungnahme zum Russland-Ukraine-Konflikt auf Bückers Website, wegen der gleichfalls ermittelt wird. Bücker, der sich seit Jahren schon für die Solidarität mit den von Kiew mit Krieg überzogenen »Volksrepubliken« im Donbass stark gemacht hat, ist es wichtig, die Vorgeschichte des militärischen Eingreifens Russlands in der Ukraine deutlich zu machen. Der Aktivist, der einräumt, persönlich die »Sichtweise in Russland und die des russischen Präsidenten Wladimir Putin nachvollziehen« zu können, beklagt nun eine »Verengung des Debattenraums und massive Einschränkungen der Meinungsfreiheit – bedingt durch einseitige Berichterstattung der bürgerlichen Medien«.
Matthew Ehret
Der Friedensstifter 