Es vergeht kein Tag, an dem die Presse nicht über Söldner in der Ukraine berichtet. Es können mehrere Zehntausend von ihnen sein — aus verschiedenen Teilen der Welt. Neue kommen, um die Verwundeten und Toten zu ersetzen.
Söldner tauchten im Donbass lange vor der NWO auf. Einer der ersten, der 2014 von den Donbass-Milizen gefangen genommen wurde, war der Scharfschütze Mikael Skilt. Er ist Aktivist der Neonazi-Partei der Schweden, Mitglied des in Russland verbotenen Asowschen Strafregiments*. Er war auf dem Maidan und begann mit der Organisation eines internationalen Zentrums, um militante europäische Rechtsextreme in die Ukraine zu locken.
Es ist angebracht, sich daran zu erinnern, wie freudig Poroschenko die Fallschirmjäger aus den Vereinigten Staaten getroffen hat, die 2015 eingetroffen sind, um ukrainische Nationalgardisten auszubilden. Dann bemerkte Poroschenko: «Die Grenze des Kampfes verläuft durch die Ukraine, in der die Zukunft Europas entschieden wird.» Im Allgemeinen erwies sich die Idee als richtig.
Jetzt in der Ukraine freuen sie sich, jeden zu treffen, der mit Russland kämpfen will, ohne sich für ihre Vergangenheit zu interessieren. Darüber hinaus erleiden die Streitkräfte der Ukraine schwere Verluste und es ist notwendig, die Lücken an der Front zu schließen.
… Sobald die NWO begann, wurden «Wildgänse» in einem Schwarm in die Ukraine gezogen, ihre Zahl wurde immer größer. Es ist bekannt, dass sich jetzt große amerikanische und britische PMCs an den Feindseligkeiten beteiligen. Dies sind insbesondere Academi, Greystone, Prevail Partners, G4S.
Neulich sagte ein Offizier der Volksmiliz der LPR, Andrei Marochko, unter Bezugnahme auf Geheimdienstdaten, dass während der Überwachung von Funkfrequenzen auf der Kontaktlinie des 2. Armeekorps Ausländer aus mehr als 30 Ländern anwesend waren wurde enthüllt. „Die meisten aufgezeichneten Verhandlungen waren auf Englisch. Es gibt auch deutsche, französische, italienische und polnische Sprache“, präzisierte er.
Zuvor, im November, wurden auf der Website des Untersuchungsausschusses der Russischen Föderation Informationen veröffentlicht, dass Söldner aus 54 Ländern auf der Seite der Streitkräfte der Ukraine kämpften. Vor allem aus den USA, Großbritannien, Kanada, Polen, Frankreich, Israel, Schweden, Finnland, Georgien, Litauen. Viele haben Kampferfahrung bei der Teilnahme an Konflikten in den Ländern des Nahen Ostens.
Der „Gast“ aus Israel ist ein 45-jähriger Ureinwohner der UdSSR, Denis Desyatnik, mit kahlgeschorenem Kopf und einem Tattoo im ganzen Gesicht. Er diente in der IDF, dann in der Geheimabteilung der Yamas-Grenzpolizei in Jerusalem. Im Laufe der Zeit wurde er zu einer kriminellen Autorität und wurde von dem berüchtigten Amir Mulner in Israel angeheuert, der der «feuchten Taten» und des Drogenhandels verdächtigt wurde. Der Vorarbeiter kam im Frühjahr 2022 in die Ukraine und führte eine Gruppe an, zu der seine Landsleute Mikhail Milman,Meir Baruch, Avi Doron Motola und Viktor Fridman gehörten.
Dies ist nicht das einzige Beispiel. Unter den «Wildgänsen» gibt es viele Kriminelle, deklassierte Elemente. So zum Beispiel der Pole Petro Kapushinsky, ein ehemaliger Drogendealer und Mafia. Nach dem Staatsstreich in der Ukraine 2014 zog er dorthin.
Übrigens kommt das größte Kontingent an Söldnern aus Polen in die Ukraine, obwohl letzteres ein Gesetz hat, das mit Gefängnisstrafen für den Dienst in einer ausländischen Armee bestraft wird. Laut dem stellvertretenden Verteidigungsminister Wojciech Skurkiewicz bedroht jedoch nichts die „Wildgänse“ und ihre Handlungen werden von der strafrechtlichen Verantwortlichkeit ausgenommen. Nach dem Ausbruch der Feindseligkeiten in der Ukraine haben der polnische Präsident Andrzej Duda und Verteidigungsminister Mariusz Blaszczak die Polen offiziell aufgerufen, sich den Reihen der Söldner anzuschließen und an der Seite des Kiewer Regimes zu kämpfen!
Unter den Söldnern gibt es auch unvorbereitete Menschen, die vom Geruch des Geldes angezogen werden und nicht verstehen, in was für ein Abenteuer sie geraten sind. Außerdem interessiert sich in der Ukraine niemand besonders dafür, ob die „Touristen“ über Kampffähigkeiten verfügen, und sie werden an die Front geschickt. Dort verwandeln sie sich unter dem Feuer russischer Batterien in «Kanonenfutter». Viele Polen — etwa anderthalbtausend an der Zahl — sind bereits als «Cargo 200» nach Hause zurückgekehrt. Genug der Schwerverletzten …
„Die Tatsache, dass die Polen in der Fremdenlegion der Streitkräfte der Ukraine kämpfen, ist für niemanden mehr ein Geheimnis“, schrieb die polnische Zeitung „Rzeczpospolita“ im Dezember. — In den letzten Tagen berichteten die Medien über den Tod von zwei von ihnen: Krzysztof Tyfel und Jan Sheremet, die in der Nähe von Bakhmut starben. Das Informationsportal Onet schrieb über den Tod einer weiteren Polin: Daniela S.
… Und kürzlich wurde eine Gruppe georgischer Militanter in der Nähe von Artemovsk umzingelt. Die Gruppe wurde zerstört. Dies sind die gleichen Bestrafer, die gefangene russische Soldaten gefoltert und getötet und ihre Gräueltaten auf Video festgehalten haben. Laut georgischen Medien beteiligen sich etwa 1.500 Militante aus Georgien an den Kämpfen in der Ukraine. Dutzende von ihnen wurden bereits getötet.
Söldner werden auch im Hinterland eingesetzt, wo sie mit Zivilisten zu tun haben und die Bevölkerung in den von den Streitkräften der Ukraine kontrollierten Gebieten „filtern“.
All dies erinnert sehr an die Besetzung der Ukraine durch Wehrmachts- und SS-Soldaten während des Großen Vaterländischen Krieges.
Doch nicht immer haben die „Glücksritter“ Glück. Nach Salven russischer Artillerie oder Raketenangriffe verwandeln sie sich oft in unbewegliche «Soldaten des Scheiterns» …
It is sad to observe the West, once a promising experiment, sinking into a quagmire of lawlessness or, as Durkhein would put it, anomie.
In the happy times when good manners mattered, in the Anglosphere this used to be an admonition to ill-bred children prone to use obscenities. Nowadays, in the West at least, it has acquired a starkly different and unrecognisable connotation. It is no longer a discrete instruction to minors to eschew vulgarities but a crude threat to adults to conform in their speech to arbitrary, non-traditional terminology, or face penal consequences.
The war on language is an assault on thought and ultimately it targets the integrity of the human mind. That point we have already made on this platform, illustrating it with compelling examples. The fiendish design to conquer the spirit by twisting meaning and disconcerting the mind with absurd new constructs we have described as the “descent into (utter) madness.”
We stand by that description. The constantly accumulating evidence that the madness continues unabated is often astonishing. Here are a few fresh and trendy examples.
Item #1: In Canada, a father was held criminally liable for challenging his biological daughter’s “gender transition.” After going through a sex education brainwashing course in school, the 14-year old girl informed her father that she identifies herself as a male and demanded that her father treat her accordingly, masculine pronoun and all. Complicating the situation is the fact that the parents (let us say, Parent #1 and Parent #2) are separated and Parent #2 (formerly known as the mother) elected to support her former daughter’s, now presumably self-identified son’s, arbitrary biological preference.
The reactionary father was found guilty of opposing Canadian authorities’ intention of giving puberty blockers to the sexually confused child. The matter went to court and Parent #1 was overruled on puberty blockers and also was placed under a court order not to discuss the case in public. (Did the court feel that its rulings were too embarrassingly absurd to risk public scrutiny?) The legal particulars of this sordid case are set forth here. The father was also ordered by the judge to call the child his “son” and in addressing the child to use the child’s preferred pronouns, “he” and “him.”
Today in the Western world, there is nothing inherently incredible or even extreme about the court issuing such an order. The culturally dominant mindset is imposing, as an obligatory dogmatic assertion, the certifiably false proposition that men can become pregnant. Coerced mismatching of gender and pronoun is a relatively minor deviation from reality compared to that.
The devastated father could only mourn his sad fate: “Here I am, sitting there as a parent, watching a perfectly healthy child be destroyed, and there’s nothing I can do but sit on the side-line according to [the court].” As he pointed out to anyone willing to listen: “I can only affirm [the court’s gender ruling], or get thrown in jail.”
Such legal drivel aside, the good news is that the conscientious father has stood his ground, calling the misfortune inflicted on his child by its right name, “state sponsored child abuse,” and refusing to refer to his daughter as something that she manifestly is not or to massacre the English language by referring to her as “him.”
This case obviously was meant to be ground-breaking and to set a precedent that would reverberate throughout the common law legal system, so it should be closely monitored. It suggests clearly the anti-traditionalist agenda that extremely influential social forces are pursuing. By using trivial pretexts such as pronouns, the authority of parents is systematically being destroyed. Their natural right to raise their own children and to make decisions in the child’s best interest is intentionally curtailed and supplanted by state imposed ideologies.
Item #2: A similarly disturbing incident occurred in Liverpool, Great Britain. There, a social media posting, in all probability entirely innocent, which included language deemed “offensive,“ resulted in serious penal repercussions for the unfortunate “offender.”
Ultimately, on appeal, the Crown Court overturned the original verdict, but on the very thin factual grounds that the offending N-word, while “unpleasant,” was one that was commonly used in hip hop music circles in which the defendant moved so none of the Instagram users were likely to be offended. However, no legal reasons were cited in the ruling, thus virtually guaranteeing that the lower court precedent would remain essentially intact for future use. Skilful lawyers will easily distinguish most similar cases from this one, ensuring that suppression of freedom of expression will go on unimpeded by constitutional technicalities. Anyone even vaguely familiar with Common Law knows what we mean.
The Crown Court ruling must have come as a relief to the poor girl, but it was not a genuine victory for the cause of Liberty.
Item #3: Besides imposing terminology in a manner that is contrary to customary usage, as Orwell presciently predicted the linguistic commissars are also scrubbing words of which for ideological reasons they disapprove. The A, B, and C wordlists in Orwell’s Newspeak are no longer just literary figures.
As part of its “Elimination of Harmful Language Initiative,” itself a thoroughly Orwellian notion, the once intellectually formidable Stanford University in California recently published a long and detailed list of disapproved expressions and their approved substitutes. It would be worth everyone’s while to review the entries on that list to better understand the spirit of the totalitarian anti-human order in the making.
The Stanford index of forbidden words features such “harmful” expressions as “American,” “man,” and “she,” recommending as substitutes for the latter either the person’s name or the manifestly ungrammatical “they.”
The list obviously is a pilot program to gauge reactions and acceptance. For the time being its precepts cannot be enforced beyond the confines of Stanford’s campus. But once internalised by the feckless faculty and student body at Stanford, it will inevitably spread to other institutions.
Notably, a process of verbicide similar to Stanford’s has already been initiated in the Armed Forces. The Marine Corps, once considered a hard nut to crack, has apparently folded and is now considering dropping from use gendered terms such as “Yes Sir” or “Yes Ma’am”.
The Marines were shamed into linguistic compliance by a University of Pittsburgh study which claims that the Marine Corps is behind the more progressive branches, Army, Navy and Coast Guard, when it comes to using gender identifiers. The Marines are therefore under strong pressure to capitulate to the demands of language commissars and unless the general trend is reversed, it is probable that they will.
What conclusion can be drawn from the spectacularly successful assault on language that is in evidence everywhere? It is a very sombre one.
The concept of Rechtsstaat is waning in the West. That is an ominous development. The rule of law is progressively being replaced by unwritten edicts formulated by anonymous entities whose identity we can only surmise. But what we do know for sure is that they do not consult their despised subjects about anything, nor do they respect the established values of societies whose customs and mores they are aggressively reengineering.
There is no law in Canada which explicitly holds that parents’ views are irrelevant to the upbringing of their children, or which empowers underage offspring to challenge biological reality to their own irreversible detriment and defy their parents’ opinion and advice. Specifically, neither is there any regulation in Canada to alter the grammar of the English language so that refusing to apply to someone who is obviously of one gender the pronoun that is grammatically appropriate for another gender could be construed as an offence. Yet, rules coming out of nowhere are successfully enforced and they are used to suppress incontrovertible facts of common experience. On that basis ideologically mandated falsifications of reality are coercively imposed as regnant ontological principles.
The Canadian example is stark, but it is not unique. It represents a trend in the West and similar incidents are widespread. As in Canada, even in the crazy state of California, where Stanford is located, there is no law passed by the legislature prohibiting the use of certain words or mandating the use of substitute expressions. It is with the acquiescence of the browbeaten multitudes, and in contravention of established but disregarded laws which still guarantee freedom of speech, that a sinister new normal (and not just in matters relating to the pandemic) is being enforced.
The fabled concept of the “rule of law,” so menacingly preached far and wide by its hegemonic promoters, is rapidly disintegrating at its point of origin. The targeted victims of the new dispensation are left defenceless in an atmosphere of lawlessness; they cannot invoke in their own defence the laws that formally are still on the books because informal precepts not voted by anyone evidently override them. Nor can the persecution victims possibly have any clear idea of what precisely they are being accused of, so as to be able to mount an effective defence. As in Article 58 of the old Soviet Penal Code, the operative concepts, currently those are “hate speech,” “offensive,” “harmful language,“ and the like, are undefined and virtually meaningless. In a deliberate mockery of long-standing Western legal tradition, they are purposely left indeterminate and vague, thus being of use exclusively to the prosecutor.
Even as it prattles about the rule of law or, in international relations, the “rules-based order”, it is sad to observe the West, once a promising experiment, sinking into a quagmire of lawlessness or, as Durkhein would put it, anomie.
In December 2022, a 65-year old disabled Canadian man received a doctor’s approval for euthanasia despite admitting becoming poor was the main reason he was applying to die. Experts say that “choosing to die is more accessible” in Canada than support for disabled people. At the same time, most the countries where active euthanasia or assisted suicide is legal are on the top of the United Nations Human Development Index. Why isn’t human life valued the most in the countries where its quality is the highest?
(Click on the image to enlarge)
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Although war is hell, slaughtering children by NATO’s sanctions and colluding in or justifying that slaughter is infinitely worse.
Although war is hell, slaughtering children by NATO’s sanctions and colluding in or justifying that slaughter is infinitely worse. Trite as it sounds, we are morally bound to oppose both the gang rape of Arab children and those NATO proxies who commit such crimes. We must believe that Syrian children, Yemeni children, Palestinian children and those children who speak the language of Mishka, Masha and Dostoyevsky are also God’s creatures and, when called upon, we must stand ready to fight and die for them.
Let’s be quite frank. The U.S. and its British, Israeli, French and other poodles have no moral standing in any of this, irrespective of whether it is Syrian, Palestinian, Libyan, Yemeni, Iraqi or Russian-speaking children they are currently murdering.
And nor do well-polished whinging Poms like Emeritus Professor Paul Dibb of Australia’s Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, who thinks that the 1904 Russo Japanese War is somehow relevant to modern-day Ukraine, who, as with Hitler’s attitude to Jews, sees Russia and Putin as civilization’s eternal enemies and who concludes this hate-filled speech by “joking” that Russia should be entirely obliterated from the face of the earth.
Though a drover’s dog, as they say in Australia, would do better than that incontinent old fart, Dibb and Australia’s cultural cringe he grew fat on, are as much a part of the problem as are the CIA’s Irish bottom feeders Not only does Dibb make disparaging remarks about the Irish, before damning Hungary’s Victor Orbán and lauding that Zelensky imbecile like he is a cross between the Oracle of Delphi and Marcus Aurelius but he gets my goat, as only a smug, jumped-up apologist for NATO’s litany of war crimes can.
Contrary to what this prawn-muncher cackles, NATO and its allies do not have and never have had the moral high ground. As Robert Graves’ Goodbye To All That autobiography points out, the Ossies had an unenviable reputation for shooting prisoners out of hand, a policy they continued up to and including Afghanistan. And let’s not even mention their betrayal of Julian Assange, or the East Timorese, or their genocidal campaigns in Tasmania and New Guinea or how they allowed the British explode atomic bombs in Southern Australia, where no one lived “only a few Abos”.
If it is a moral compass we seek, we will not get it from Australia’s whinging Poms and nor, if my experience is of any account, will we get it from the island that spawned Dibb, where the Muslim Brotherhood threatened to sue me, set their heavies on me and got Hampshire’s armed response units to raid my house, all for pointing out their collusion with Mohamed al-Arefe, the main recruiter for young Muslim boys and girls like Shamima Begum to do sex jihad in rebel-occupied Syria.
Though I got prominent Irish MPs In the Irish Parliament to corner NATO flunkey and former Foreign Minister Simon Coveney over his government’s collusion with the 2017 mass slaughter of Syrian Shī’a children outside of Aleppo, his very many fellow NATO collaborators in the Irish Parliament helped him weasel out of that. Shī’a children, as evidenced by Ireland’s sectarian immigration policy, are children of a lesser God.
Those scores of Syrian Shī’a children were lured to their deaths by Irish passport holders offering them chocolate and candy, something one would never come across in Hansel and Gretel, never mind Russia’s Mishka and Masha.
Not so Russia’s Dostoyevsky, whose Diary of a Writer explains how children haunt his nightmares, like they do of any others of us who abhor the NATO organized crime gang. Children certainly haunt the pages of The Brothers Karamazov, arguably the greatest novel ever written, where this greatest of all Russian writers has Ivan Karamazov put God and all of mankind on trial for the murder and torture of defenseless children, represented in the novel by a little girl locked in an outhouse, her face covered in excrement, praying hopelessly to God for deliverance.
The Brothers Karamazov, like all of Dostoevsky’s work, is deeply unsettling. But so too are the crimes of Belgium’s Marc Dutroux, who locked little girls he and his NATO handlers had repeatedly gang-raped into darkened dungeons, where they slowly died, praying hopelessly to God for deliverance.
Deliverance often comes, not by God, but by those simple God-fearing soldiers, who served under General Armageddon in Syria and who now find themselves confronting similar devils in Ukraine. Not for those simple souls the complex volumes of Dostoyevsky or indeed, the great works of Tchaikovsky they had to listen to after they liberated Palmyra from the Americans, whose country was built on the genocide, starvation and industrial-level abuse of children.
Simple souls, whose tastes would be more Boney M’s Rivers of Babylon which is based on the sublime Psalm 137, which sings so sweetly of the sorrows of loss and of captivity before finishing off with these chilling lines:
Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.
Although I wasn’t around to witness what beef the Hebrews had, and apparently still have, with the Edomites that they would contemplate such NATO-style savagery, I do know all those crimes have to end no matter where NATO perpetrates them and that they will not end by making reasonable arguments to NATO’s unreasonable war criminals, no matter how high up they are on the food chain or, like Clown Prince Zelensky, they appear to be.
I also know we all have to play our parts in ending these nightmares once and for all. Although the New Year will probably see General Armageddon do a Zhukov on Ukraine to put a cap on that threat that, sadly, will not suffice, no matter how high the price. The combined legal, academic and media apparatuses of Russia, China, Syria and Iran must institute a new set of Nuremberg Trials where NATO’s organ grinders as well as Zelensky and their other pet monkeys are held to account for their crimes against humanity. I would be honored and delighted to contribute to that process on behalf of the martyred Syrian Shī’a children, the Greek Orthodox children who were pack-raped in the Qalamoun mountains, the Alawi children who had their organs harvested in Latakia and so many others whose violated innocence still haunt me, as they should, as well as all who knew and still remember them.
The last three gruelling years have forced many of us to look a lot harder at who exactly is pulling the strings in this increasingly unpleasant world.
One name that has cropped up time and time again in my own research (seehereandherefor instance) is that of the Rothschilds.
Having taken a closer look at their history and activities, I realised I had to share my findings with others and so I wrote an in-depth article which is now available here as a 100-page pdf booklet.
There is something of a taboo around criticising this powerful ultra-rich family and those who do so tend to find themselveslabelled“anti-semitic”.
However, as I explain in the booklet, I am not singling out the Rothschildsbecausethey are Jewish, but ratherin spite ofthat fact.
Since the mid of the year it has become clear that the war in Ukraine is one that is mainly fought by artillery.
Ukraine was clearly the underdog in that fight as the Russian forces fired eight times the amount of artillery munitions the Ukraine could make available. The U.S. and some European dependents stepped in. Some 120 M-777 guns and a myriad of modern track mounted artillery systems were given to the Ukrainian army. Hundred of tons of ammunition were moved in. The U.S. and some allies delivered HIMARS systems that could reach beyond the limits of gun artillery.
The Russian military reacted to it. It dispersed its depots and command centers thereby limiting the number of targets for HIMARS systems. It also intensified its use of electronic warfare which took down the drones the Ukrainian artillery used to find its targets:
The electronic suppression of Ukraine’s unmanned aerial vehicles blunted one of Kyiv’s biggest advantages in the early months of the war. The Ukrainians counted on superior intelligence—largely provided by UAVs—to make their smaller artillery arsenal more precise than Russia’s own, larger arsenal of big guns and rocket-launchers.
But the Russians’ electronic warfare prevented those drones from navigating and communicating—and deprived the Ukrainians of the precision they were counting on. “The defeat of precision was critical to unit survival” for the Russians, analysts Mykhaylo Zabrodskyi, Jack Watling, Oleksandr Danylyuk and Nick Reynolds explained in a study for the Royal United Services Institute in London. … “The average life-expectancy of a quadcopter remained around three flights,” Zabrodskyi, Watling, Danylyuk and Reynolds wrote. “The average life-expectancy of a fixed-wing UAV was around six flights” and, “in aggregate, only around a third of UAV missions can be said to have been successful.”
Lacking real fighting capabilities the Ukrainian artillery switched towards easier fixed targets. In late November it again started to intensely bombard Donetsk city with artillery and missiles. As there are few military installations or even barracks within the city this clearly was a war against its civilian population.
‘Western’ map showing impacts in Donetsk city – December 1December 5December 18
Russian language papers wrote about the civilian casualties caused by the carnage. The political leadership of the Donetsk Republic requested an urgent operation against the threat.
As the heavily fortified frontline makes it impossible to quickly break through and hunt the artillery behind that line, the Russian military moved to other measures. A special cell was created to wage the fight against Ukrainian artillery around Donetsk. More counter artillery radars were moved in. More satellite picture interpreters began to look for firing positions. Longer range counter battery guns also appeared.
Over the last ten days the campaign began to show significant results. Many of the recent daily reports from the Russian Ministry of Defense noted the results of this anti-artillery campaign. Here is yesterday’s one:
Within the counterbattery warfare, one U.S.-manufactured M-777 artillery system has been detected and destroyed near Netaylovo along with its crew that had shelled residential areas in Donetsk. Another M-777 artillery system has been destroyed near Preobrazhenka (Zaporozhye region).
One Uragan and two Grad multiple-launch rocket systems (MLRS) have been destroyed near Nevskoye (Lugansk People’s Republic) and Seversk (Donetsk People’s Republic).
Two Ukrainian 2S1 Gvozdika self-propelled artillery systems have been destroyed at their firing positions near Krasnogorovka and Prechistovka (Donetsk People’s Republic).
Four Msta-B and two D-20 howitzers have been destroyed near Kupyansk (Kharkov region), Velikaya Novosyolka (Donetsk People’s Republic) and Novogrigorovka (Kherson region).
Air defence facilities have shot down three Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles near Olginka, Guselskoye (Donetsk People’s Republic) and Peremozhnoye (Zaporozhye region).
In addition, two Uragan MLRS have been intercepted near Kostogryzovo (Kherson region), and three U.S.-manufactured HARM anti-radiation missiles near Debaltsevo (Donetsk People’s Republic).
Within the counterbattery warfare, two U.S.-manufactured M-777 artillery systems, and one German-manufactured FH-70 howitzer, that were used for shelling residential areas of Donetsk, have been destroyed at their firing positions near Krasnogorovka (Donetsk People’s Republic).
Three Ukrainian fighting vehicles for Grad multiple-launch rocket systems have been destroyed near Seversk.
Three Ukrainian Msta-B howitzers have been destroyed near Petropavlovka (Kharkov region), Berestovoye (Donetsk People’s Republic), and Chernobayevka (Kherson region).
Ukrainian D-20 and D-30 howitzers have been destroyed near Georgiyevka and Maryinka (Donetsk People’s Republic).
Another reports says that the reaction time between detecting and submitting target coordinates to active counter fire is down to two minutes. The setup and displacement time for a M-777 howitzer are each at least three minutes with a fully manned and well trained crew. When radar detects a firing Ukrainian M-777 the Russian response now comes in before the gun could be moved out.
The counter battery campaign can now be called a full success. The last Ukrainian artillery impact in Donetsk city was reported on December 23. The campaign will have to continue until the Ukraine runs out of guns. Up to now the Ukrainians fire still more ammunition than the ‘west’ can produce:
“Ukrainian artillery use, conservatively, is probably around maybe 90,000 rounds per month,” Michael Kofman, the director of Russian studies at C.N.A., a Virginia research institute, said last week on the “War on the Rocks” podcast. “That’s a lot more than anybody makes in the West right now. So all of this has been coming out of stocks, which is like going through your saving accounts.”
With less guns available on the Ukrainian side the need for new ammunition will decrease.
That is bad news for those Ukrainians who man the frontline trenches. The heavy artillery fire they are under will only intensify and increase their already very high losses. In some time and some places the lines will break and leave space for the Russian military to move through.
The current fighting is concentrated around Bakhmut/Artyomovsk. The Ukrainian command has thrown in reserves to hold the city.
Under permanent Russia artillery fire the sixteen brigades currently deployed in and behind Bakhmut will be decimated one by one. It is a slow fight where the lines move only little by little in favor of the Russian side. But it is very effective battle in a war designed to demilitarize Ukraine. Due to very uneven artillery fight the Ukrainian losses will be many times higher than the Russian ones.
On the economic side the Ukraine has already lost the war. It is living off loans from ‘western’ governments it will surely default on:
The Ukrainian government has struggled to raise money on bond markets during the war and is paying investors more than it is collecting, according to a Central Bank statement that points to the country’s deepening dependence on foreign aid.
The economy has been projected to shrink about 40 percent this year, drying up tax revenue and indefinitely delaying previously planned spending that would have spurred growth.The Central Bank statement, published on Monday, pointed to a less visible side of Ukraine’s financing shortfalls caused by the war: an inability to raise money on the market. Since Russia invaded on Feb. 24, Ukraine has not been able to roll over debt accumulated before the war. The country paid investors about $2.2 billion more than it collected in bond sales in that time, the Central Bank said.
All of that has left Ukrainian public finance, which has been wobbly at the best of times in the post-independence period, deeply reliant on assistance from the United States, the European Union, European countries that donate individually and other donors.
Even the U.S. controlled IMF is unwilling to throw more money into that black hole:
The budget passed by Ukraine’s Parliament for next year includes a deficit of about $36 billion. About half of the planned expenditures are for the army, the police and other military outlays. The deficit this year has run even higher, at about $5 billion a month.The International Monetary Fund, which bailed out Ukraine through a long run of post-independence financial crises, has not continued large-scale lending during the war.
“They are worried about debt sustainability,” said Tymofiy Mylovanov, a former economy minister who is a professor at the Kyiv School of Economics. “If the I.M.F. is worried about debt sustainability and ability to finance, imagine what private investors are thinking.”
First, the predicted economic collapse did not happen. True, we have posted a decline, and I will repeat the figures. There have been promises – or predictions or hopes maybe – that Russia’s economy will contract. Some said its GDP would drop by 20 percent or more, by 20–25 percent. True, there is a decline in GDP, but not 20–25 percent; it is in fact 2.5 percent. That is the first thing.Second. Inflation, as I said, will be a little more than 12 percent this year – it is one of the most important indicators, too. This, I think, is much better than in many other countries, including the G20 countries. Inflation is not good of course, but it being smaller than in other countries is good.
Next year – we have mentioned this, too – we will strive for the 4–5 percent target, based on the economy’s performance in the first quarter – at least, we hope so. And this is a very good trend, unlike in some other G20 countries, where inflation is on the rise.
Unemployment is at a historic low of 3.8 percent. We are running a budget deficit, this is true, but it is only 2 percent this year, next year too, then it is projected at one percent, and less than one percent in 2025: we are expecting about 0.8 percent. I would like to point out that other countries – both large developing economies and the so-called developed market economies – are running a much greater deficit. In the United States, I think, it is 5.7 percent, and in China, it is over 7 percent. All major economies are running deficits above 5 percent. We are not.
This is a good foundation for moving confidently into 2023.
When the war ends the Ukraine will have an incredible amount of debt that it will not be able to pay for in generations. It will have no more land to sell off to foreigners and no industry left that will be of any value.
The people who had thought up, designed and implemented the ‘western’ sanction war against Russia have done more damage to Ukraine and the ‘west’ that anyone had imagined. But they utterly failed to hurt Russia. They should all be fired for their demonstrated incompetence.
Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Joe Biden, separately from each other, delivered keynote speeches in which they spoke, in fact, about the same thing — the Ukrainian crisis. The leaders of the two countries made their positions very clear.
We would like to refer to the opinion of an experienced geopolitician, a “disinterested person”, since he lives in a country that does not participate in the special military operation. This is Indian diplomat M. K. Bhadrakumar. His analytical article was published on the Indian Punchline. (See: Ukraine War Tolls Death Knell for NATO)
Joe Biden’s Virtual Confession
During Joe Biden’s press conference (which he co-hosted with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, who visited Washington) at the White House on December 21, the US President virtually admitted that he was forced to fight a proxy war in Ukraine, because the European allies did not want war with Russia.
“Now, you say, “Why don’t we just give Ukraine everything there is to give?’ Well, for two reasons. One, there’s an entire Alliance that is critical to stay with Ukraine. And the idea that we would give Ukraine material that is fundamentally different than is already going there would have a prospect of breaking up NATO and breaking up the European Union and the rest of the world… I’ve spent several hundred hours face-to-face with our European allies and the heads of state of those countries, and making the case as to why it was overwhelmingly in their interest that they continue to support Ukraine… They understand it fully, but they’re not looking to go to war with Russia. They’re not looking for a third World War.”Mr. Biden continued: “We’re going to give Ukraine what it needs to be able to defend itself, to be able to succeed, and to succeed on the battlefield,” Biden said during his speech.
At this point, Biden realised that he had probably “already said too much” and abruptly ended the press conference. He probably came to realise that he showed the fragility of the Western unity.
Western experts have largely forgotten that territorial conquest is not Russia’s central agenda. NATO expansion is, although, of course, Ukraine is vital to Russian interests.
Putin: US wants to dismember Russia
From time to time, President Putin revisits the fundamental reason, for which the United States does what it does. In a nutshell, the Americans want to weaken and dismember Russia.
The day when Biden welcomed Zelensky in the White House, the Russian president, speaking at an expanded meeting of the collegium of the Ministry of Defence in Moscow, referred to the Chechen wars of the 1990s, when, just as today,
“…the use of international terrorists in the Caucasus, to finish off Russia and to split the Russian Federation… They [US] claimed to condemn al-Qaeda and other criminals, yet they considered using them on the territory of Russia as acceptable and provided all kinds of assistance to them, including material, information, political and any other support, notably military support, to encourage them to continue fighting against Russia.”
Putin has a phenomenal memory. He alluded at Biden’s cautious choice of William Burns to head the CIA. Interestingly, Burns was the contact person for the Moscow Embassy in Chechnya in the 1990s. Nowadays, Putin ordered a nationwide campaign to chop the huge tentacles that US intelligence agencies spread in Russia for purposes of internal subversion. The Carnegie Center, once run by Burns, was forced to close its Moscow office, and its Russian employees fled to the West.
Russia has learned from mistakes
The leitmotif of the meeting of the collegium of the Russian Ministry of Defense, where Putin spoke, was the statement of the fact that the confrontation between Russia and the United States would not end with the war in Ukraine. Putin urged senior Russian officials to “thoroughly analyse” the lessons of Ukrainian and Syrian conflicts.
“We will continue maintaining and improving the combat readiness of the nuclear triad. It is the main guarantee that our sovereignty and territorial integrity, strategic parity and the general balance of forces in the world are preserved. This year, the level of modern armaments in the strategic nuclear forces has already exceeded 91 percent. We continue rearming the regiments of our strategic missile forces with modern missile systems with Avangard hypersonic warheads.
Putin summed up: “We will not repeat the mistakes of the past… We are not going to militarise our country or militarise the economy… and we will not do things we do not really need, to the detriment of our people and the economy, the social sphere. We will improve the Russian Armed Forces and the entire military component. We will do it calmly, routinely and consistently, without haste.”
Conclusions
If neocons in the White House wanted an arms race, they now have it. The paradox, however, is that it will be different from the bipolar arms race of the Cold War era.
If the US intention was to weaken Russia before confronting China, the Americans have already failed:
the United States is in confrontation with Russia, and the ties between the two great powers could be terminated, whereas the ties between Moscow and Beijing have been growing stronger.
Neocons expected a win-win in Ukraine: Russia’s defeat and the ignominious end of Vladimir Putin’s presidency, followed by the consolidation of Western unity with the USA being the triumphant leader. This could be a powerful incentive for the upcoming fight against China for dominance in the world order. The Americans have failed here as well.
“But instead, this is turning out to be a classic Zugzwang in the endgame — to borrow from German chess literature — where the US is under obligation to make a move on Ukraine but whichever move it makes will only worsen its geopolitical position,” Bhadrakumar wrote in the article.
Undermining Russia from the inside has not worked either:
The Russian people are not in the mood for a national rebellion.
Putin’s popularity is still strong as Russia gradually realises its goals in Ukraine.
Thus, Biden may have a vague feeling that Russia does not see the crisis in Ukraine as a binary win-and-lose system, but is preparing to settle scores with NATO once and for all.
At this stage, the best option for the United States would be to leave the game and step aside.
Of course, such a move would be humiliating for both the USA and NATO. Washington’s transatlantic leadership would crumble. Even worse, the great powers of Western Europe — Germany, France and Italy — may start looking for “modus vivendi” (way of coexistence) with Russia. NATO cannot live without an enemy.
“The neocons in the Beltway have bitten more than what they could chew. Their last card will be to push for a direct US military intervention in the Ukraine war under the banner of a ‘coalition of the willing,’” M. K. Bhadrakumar concluded.
US appears to be in the process of transferring its Patriot air defense missile system to Ukraine. CNN in its article, “Exclusive: US finalizing plans to send Patriot missile defense system to Ukraine,” claims the US will approve and then quickly ship the system or systems into Ukraine in just days after the decision is made.
Paradoxically, CNN admits that training the large numbers of Ukrainians necessary to operate the system will take months. This has left analysts speculating that in fact NATO personnel already familiar with the system will operate it merely posing as “Ukrainians.”
This represents a significant escalation. While Western forces are believed to be covertly operating across Ukraine against Russian forces in a variety of roles, Western personnel operating an ever-growing number of sophisticated weapons may lead to mission creep in terms of other sophisticated Western weapons including Western aircraft and tanks entering the conflict with Western operators behind the controls.
The decision to send Patriot missiles follows a now steady tempo of Russian missile and drone strikes across Ukraine targeting military and dual-use infrastructure including the power grid. The Western media admits Ukraine’s own Soviet-era air defense systems are dwindling in number and running low on interceptor missiles.
The Financial Times in its article, “Military briefing: escalating air war depletes Ukraine’s weapons stockpile,” admits:
…ammunition and spares for the S300 and Buk systems, the mainstay of Ukraine’s air defences, are dwindling. Ukrainian officials have confirmed a claim by British military intelligence that Russia has been firing X-55 nuclear missiles — with the nuclear warhead replaced by an inert one — simply to exhaust Ukrainian air defences.
The article notes that buying additional ammunition and spare parts for the systems is not practical. It also notes efforts by the West to provide Ukraine their own air defense systems, however such systems suffer from similar problems in terms of limited quantities and limited access to ammunition.
Financial Times cites the German “Gepard” mobile anti-aircraft gun as being “highly effective.” No evidence was provided to substantiate that claim and ironically, shortly after the article was published, shortages of ammunition for Gepard systems were reported as was Switzerland’s unwillingness to supply additional ammunition to Ukraine.
Germany’s Rheinmetall company has announced it would expand ammunition production to compensate for Switzerland’s decision according to Anadolu Agency, but production would not begin until June at the earliest and Ukraine would not begin receiving ammunition until at least July and only if the German government places an order for the 35mm rounds the Gepard fires.
IRIS-T and NASAMS, two Western short to medium range air defense missile systems have been provided to Ukraine, albeit in small numbers that will increase incrementally over the course of several years. This represents a rate far too slow to replace Ukraine’s dwindling Soviet-era air defense systems.
Considering this reality, the decision by the US to transfer Patriot missile systems to Ukraine may not be because Washington believes they can make a difference, but simply because the US and its allies have nothing else more appropriate or numerous to send in its place.
But even the Patriot air defense system is plagued with problems ranging from its own critical shortage of ammunition to its inability to provide defense against drones and cruise missiles, the very systems they will be tasked with protecting Ukrainian skies against.
Patriot Missiles: Too Few, Too Feeble
Far from “Russian propaganda,” the Patriot’s shortcomings have been reported by the Western media for years. Al Jazeera in an early 2022 article, “Saudi Arabia may run out of interceptor missiles in ‘months’,” would admit to Saudi stockpiles of Patriot interceptor missiles running low and the inability of the US to manufacture enough to replace them.
The Wall Street Journal would report in March 2022 that additional missiles were eventually acquired, but not because the US was able to manufacture more, and instead because the US convinced Saudi Arabia’s neighbors to transfer missiles from their own stockpiles to Saudi air defense forces.
Faced with a growing shortage of missiles, Lockheed Martin pledged in 2018 to double annual missile production from 250 to 500, according to Defense News. By 2021, Camden News would report that Lockheed was on course to reaching its 500 missiles per year goal by 2024 after building a new 85,000 square foot expansion to existing production facilities.
However, even at 500 missiles a year, and if every single missile was subsequently sent directly to Ukraine, it would not be nearly enough to match the number of cruise missiles, drones, and other long-range precision weapons Russia is using as part of its ongoing special military operation.
The New York Times in an article titled, “Russia Is Using Old Ukrainian Missiles Against Ukraine, General Says,” cites Ukrainian sources who claim Russia is likely building at least 40 cruise missiles a month. Over the course of a year that works out to 480 cruise missiles. Considering the Patriot missile system falls far short of 100% effectiveness, the idea that 500 Patriot missiles could protect Ukraine against 480 Russian cruise missiles is unrealistic.
Annual missile production for Russia is likely higher, however. From October onward alone, the BBC reports that Russia has fired over 1,000 missiles and drones at targets across Ukraine. This is twice the number of missiles Lockheed plans on producing annually.
This reality is so obvious that Western analysts have commented publicly about their doubts regarding any impact Patriot missiles will have. Breaking Defense in its article, “Patriot missile system not a panacea for Ukraine, experts warn,” would cite a missile defense expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Tom Karako, who called the transfer of Patriot missiles to Ukraine “a political gesture of support.”
The article would also note, citing Karako, that:
“We need to be careful about these scarce, precious assets,” Karako said. “While we’re only sending one battery, once it’s there, it’s probably not going to come back. And if they start expending munitions, they’re going to ask for more, right? And we don’t have just tons and tons of PAC-2s and PAC-3s [missiles] lying around that we can afford.
Karako would also point out that Patriots are needed for “deterring a Taiwan conflict,” highlighting the fact that the steady depletion of Western weapon stockpiles in its proxy war with Russia is not happening in a geopolitical vacuum and impacts the West’s ability to menace other nations in other regions of the planet – especially in East Asia.
The same article also pointed out how expensive Patriot missiles are versus the relatively cheap drones they would be attempting to intercept. But that’s even if the Patriot missile system can intercept them.
NBC News in a 2019 article titled, “Why U.S. Patriot missiles failed to stop drones and cruise missiles attacking Saudi oil sites,” would note how US-provided Patriot missile systems failed against cruise missiles and “triangular” drones used by Yemen against Saudi oil production facilities.
Despite Patriot missile batteries guarding the facilities, Saudi forces resorted to small arms fire in a failed attempt to down the drones. One attack temporarily disrupted half of Saudi Arabia’s daily oil output.
The article claims:
Drones and missiles can be detected by radar, but they tend to have small radar signatures and can fly close to the ground, sharply reducing the detection range and thus opportunities to fire on them from far away. They also are easy to maneuver, allowing them to hit the coverage gaps between radars and Patriot batteries. And drones and cruise missiles are often cheaper than a $2 million or $3 million Patriot missile, meaning the supply of Patriots can be depleted much faster than the bevy of drones launching attacks.
NBC News is describing precisely the threats Patriot missile systems transferred to Ukraine will face, but on a much larger and more sophisticated scale.
The article discusses extensive measures the US is taking to counter threats the Patriot is not well-suited to defend against – measures that only began being fielded as of 2021 – but not measures the US is prepared or even able to send to Ukraine in large numbers.
The US and its NATO allies have long neglected ground-based air defense systems in favor of achieving and maintaining air superiority over any potential battlefield through the use of warplanes. Several decades of fighting “small wars” against adversaries lacking anything resembling an air force has only compounded the problem.
Just as it will take years and large amounts of money to solve the current weapons and ammunition shortage the West faces as it continues to arm Ukraine, creating air defense systems in both the quantities and quality Ukraine’s requirements demand will take more time than Ukraine has, and more resources than the West may care to spend.
While it is common knowledge that wars are won through superior logistics, military technology, and strategy, one would be hard-pressed to recall when any war was won by “a political gesture of support.”
Question: The launch of the special military operation in Ukraine and ensuing developments, including an unprecedented deterioration of our relations with the West, was the main event of the outgoing year. Do you think the conflict in Ukraine can last a long time, say, five years? What should we brace for? Is a direct military confrontation with the countries that support Kiev possible?
Sergey Lavrov: The actions of the countries of the collective West and Vladimir Zelensky, who is controlled by them, confirm the global nature of the Ukraine crisis. It is no longer a secret that victory over Russia “on the battlefield” is the strategic goal of the United States and its NATO allies. They see it as a mechanism to significantly degrade or even destroy our country. Our opponents are ready to do much to accomplish this goal.
The United States is the main beneficiary of the military conflict as it seeks to reap biggest benefits from it in economic and military-strategic terms. At the same time, Washington is addressing an important geopolitical goal, which is to destroy the traditional ties between Russia and Europe and to overpower its European satellites even more.
The United States is doing everything to draw out and exacerbate this conflict. The Pentagon is openly planning more orders for the US defence industry for years to come, keeps raising the bar for military spending to cover the needs of the Ukrainian forces and wants other members of the anti-Russia alliance to do the same. The Kiev regime is deliberately flooded with the most advanced weapons, including samples that have not yet been put into service in the Western armies apparently in order to see how they will do in combat conditions. The volume of military aid provided to the regime has exceeded $40 billion since February, which is comparable to military budgets of many European countries. We are also aware of the fact that the US political circles are increasingly thinking about drawing Ukraine into NATO using every available avenue.
Meanwhile, Westerners are saying they prefer to remain “above the fray” and find a direct face-off between NATO and Russia unacceptable, which is unadulterated hypocrisy. Already now, NATO members have de facto become parties to the conflict: Western private military companies and military instructors are fighting on the side of the Ukrainian forces. The Americans transmit satellite and other reconnaissance data to the Ukrainian command almost in real time and participate in planning and carrying out military operations.
In turn, the regime is trying to drag the Americans and other NATO members even deeper into the whirlpool of the conflict, hoping to make a head-on collision with the Russian Army unavoidable. Just take the November 15 provocation, when a Ukrainian air defence missile landed in Poland, and Zelensky tried unsuccessfully to pass it off as a Russian missile. Fortunately, Washington and Brussels were smart enough not to take the bait, but the incident showed that the regime will stop at nothing.
We keep warning our adversaries in the West about the danger of their course for escalating the Ukraine crisis. With the contingent they have nurtured in Kiev, the risk of the situation spiralling out of control remains very high. It is important to stave off a disaster.
As for how long the conflict may last, the ball is in the court of the regime and Washington, which stands behind it. They can stop this meaningless resistance at any moment. The enemy is well aware of our proposals concerning demilitarisation and denazification of the territories controlled by the regime and elimination of threats to Russia’s security coming from these territories, including our new territories ‒ the DPR, LPR, and the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. There is not much left to be done. All they need to do is fulfil these proposals of their own volition. Otherwise, the issue will be resolved by the Russian Army.
Question:The issue of the hypothetical use of nuclear weapons became particularly acute this year, and even those who are not interested in political news started talking about it. Should we expect this nuclear rhetoric to become more aggressive in 2023?
Sergey Lavrov: First of all, we should address this question to the West. It is with deep concern that we are noting this bacchanalia of propaganda around the issue of nuclear weapons in the United States and the entire West.
On the one hand, they keep spinning the irresponsible narrative that Russia is about to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine, and citing some statements by the Russian political leadership. In reality, there have been no such statements.
What we are saying is completely different: the Western policy of total containment of Russia is extremely dangerous. It can eventually escalate into a direct armed confrontation between nuclear powers. We have been warning them about this, and we continue to repeat time and again that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
On the other hand, the West is sending out openly confrontational signals in the nuclear sphere. It appears that they have brushed all propriety aside completely. The infamous Liz Truss made a remarkable statement during the pre-election debates that she was ready to order a nuclear strike. However, Washington has outdone all others. Certain anonymous Pentagon officials actually threatened to launch a “decapitation strike” against the Kremlin. In effect, they are threatening to eliminate the head of the Russian state. If some people are actually nurturing these ideas, they should think very carefully about the possible consequences of these plans.
I am not even talking about the Kiev regime’s brazen provocations. Vladimir Zelensky has gone so far as to demand that NATO countries launch pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Russia. This, too, goes beyond acceptable boundaries. However, we have heard even worse from that regime.
We cannot but correlate these escapades with destabilising elements of the US doctrine. Notably, the US has allowed for the possibility of delivering disarming strikes. We have also noted Washington’s unlimited criteria as regards conditions for using nuclear weapons. They are talking about certain vitally important interests; however, the US doctrine does not specify them in any way. It appears that these interests can, if necessary, apply to any regions and circumstances.
We continue to urge the West to exercise maximum restraint in this highly sensitive sphere. To minimise nuclear risks, it is necessary to remain committed to the postulate that a nuclear war is unacceptable, as confirmed by the five nuclear powers in their statement of January 3, 2022. In accordance with the document’s logic, it is necessary to prevent any military confrontation between nuclear powers because such a confrontation may lead to a catastrophe.
We also drew attention to these fundamental axioms in our November 2, 2022, statement on preventing a nuclear war. For example, the document noted that Russia advocated the creation of an updated and more stable international security system by facilitating predictability and global strategic stability and by ensuring compliance with the principles of equality, indivisible security and mutual consideration for the interests of the parties.
Question:At present relations between our country and the European Union are at a very low level. Is there a chance that we will shut each other off completely and sever all ties, both cultural and economic? Will Russia appoint a new Permanent Representative to the EU?
Sergey Lavrov: Undoubtedly, our relations with the European Union have deteriorated to a historic low. The reasons for this are well known. Since the beginning of the special military operation, Brussels, following the US and NATO, has declared a hybrid war against Russia. EU chief diplomat Josep Borrell was among the first to voice the opinion that Russia must be defeated on the battlefield.
We see how the EU’s ruling circles are acting to the detriment of the fundamental interests and wellbeing of their citizens. They are obediently following the overseas hegemon’s anti-Russian course on almost all issues, and sometimes even move into the lead. There are numerous examples of that. It would be sufficient to mention that the US prohibited the European countries to maintain the dialogue with Russia on energy, which provided the Europeans with unprecedented prosperity for decades.
Naturally, there can be no “business as usual” with such partners. We are not going to knock on closed doors or initiate joint projects. Fortunately, the European Union is not our only partner; we have many friends and like-minded forces in other parts of the world. If and when Europe begins to feel the cruel hangover from the current Russophobic zeal and then sobers up, if coherent national-oriented politicians appear there who understand the advantages of an equal and mutually beneficial partnership with Russia, I assure you, there will be no problems on our side. But so far, we have what we have. We are realists. We will continue to work with those few Europeans who value their friendship with Russia. We are not going to cooperate with the Russophobes.
As for appointing a new Russian Permanent Representative to the EU, it is a slow process. The head of the EU delegation came and has been working in Russia since September 2022. In this situation, we need to proceed from the actual scale of contacts against the backdrop of the EU leaders’ openly hostile statements on the need to isolate and defeat Russia.
Question: The dialogue with the United States has become a sequence of mutual accusations, and one gets the impression that the two countries literally have nothing to say to one another. Is that really the case? Are the Americans trying to talk with us, for example, about Ukraine, disarmament or other issues behind the scenes without advertising it?
Sergey Lavrov: Indeed, Russia-US relations are in an extremely poor state. They have become practically frozen through the fault of Washington. Its confrontational anti-Russia policy is becoming increasingly exacerbated and comprehensive. It is objectively impossible to maintain any kind of normal communication with the Biden administration, which is talking about our strategic defeat as its goal.
We spare no effort to make it clear to the Americans that deliberate worsening of relations between the countries is not our style. However, when building a dialogue in any circumstances, we operate on the principle of reciprocity. That is, we normally act according to the “an eye for an eye” principle, but not necessarily in a symmetrical manner.
At this point, we are not going to come up with any initiatives. Among other things, this applies to discussing a potential new strategic offensive arms agreement or agreements, or mutual security guarantees. The United States refused to talk about the latter under the pretext of the Ukraine crisis. We have taken this under advisement. At the same time, we remain committed to the START Treaty, but Washington is eroding its basic principles.
We base our planning on the principle that worked well during the Cold War, which is based on the peaceful coexistence of the states with different political and socioeconomic systems. It may well come in useful in the new geopolitical circumstances.
Given Russia and the United States’ special responsibility as two nuclear superpowers for the future of humankind, I believe good relations between our countries would be beneficial for everyone. However, due to Washington’s openly hostile actions, we cannot conduct business as usual.
It is now difficult to say anything about full-fledged bilateral contacts between our foreign policy agencies. At various levels, including at the highest level, we have repeatedly pointed out that we are not shying away from a constructive dialogue. However, proper conditions must be created before we can start it and our meetings should not be a perfunctory event, but be filled with specific content. We haven’t heard any meaningful ideas on this score from the Americans.
We are willing to discuss security issues both in the context of Ukraine and on a broader strategic level as well. Let’s wait until Washington realises inadequacy of its current policies and sees that there is no alternative to building relations with us on a mutually respectful and equitable basis with mandatory consideration of Russia’s legitimate interests.
Zelensky begged for the US Patriot air defense system consisting of fancy, expensive US anti missile systems.
NATO sees no problems with firing two 3 million dollar Patriot missiles at just one 20,000 dollar Russian drone. Russia does not send just one drone.. They send a swarm of drones to overwhelm any air defense system, including the Patriot system. How many hundreds of very expensive Patriot missiles can be used up against just one swarm of cheap drones?
In Bahkmut, about Ukrainian 8 to 10 soldiers are being lost for every 1 Russian soldier being lost. There is no way Ukraine can keep this up. They are losing in every way possible.
There will be a point in time, within 90 days, Russian forces will have overwhelmed and decimated Ukraine military forces and infrastructure.
Foreign mercenaries are being thrown into the Ukraine cauldron and are then lost as well. A Private contractor group, named Mozart, is pulling out because they took a beating in Ukraine. There is a real market out there for private contractors, financed by US tax dollars. It is a very popular thing to do, but those doing it should lose their citizenship if fighting for another nation.
There are many organizations that are used to ‘launder’ the money to finance private armies. It is hard to trace the cash, but at this point, all of it is coming from the US, including weapons, benefits, private soldier contractors and piles of cash.
A major Russian offensive is all about timing. The last count was 540,000 Russian troops have been assembled, which bears no relationship to the Russians forces present in Ukraine back in February of 2022. They are ready to go. They will cut Poland off from Ukraine. They will destroy what remains of Ukrainian forces, via encirclement. 190,000 troops that remain in Ukraine will be wiped out.
Zelensky will be removed. Russians know that they have to drop a sledge hammer, after they found out the Minsk Agreement was nothing but a fraudulent stall tactic. No US or EU politician can be trusted because they all lied to Russia, so who is left that Russia can negotiate for peace with?
Stephen Karganovic
Der Friedensstifter 