The NGO Judicial Watch obtained access to documents revealing U.S. funding of anthrax laboratories in Ukraine
Before the start of Russia’s special military operation to protect the Dombas region, it was not entirely clear how dangerous the activities of U.S. laboratories in Ukraine were.
Now irrefutable evidence has emerged that their activities are military in nature and radically violate the obligations of the United States and cooperating countries under the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention (BTWC).
A new scandal has erupted on that issue. On November 10, Judicial Watch reported that it had received a 345-page set of records owned by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), a component of the U.S. Department of Defense.
The NGO was able to access the information thanks to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
The documents provide data from Black&Veatch, the U.S. contractor linked to these projects, involving funding for work with biosafety laboratories in Ukraine.
It should be noted that dozens of the pages provided by the Pentagon were redacted, in compliance with U.S. law.
Nevertheless, the information served to confirm that the United States implemented a pathogen control system in Ukraine and financed anthrax laboratories, all with funds of more than 11 million dollars.
What Judicial Watch specifically reveals are reports of the implementation of Pathogen Asset Control Systems (PACS) in Ukraine, conducted “on the ground,” i.e., in Ukrainian laboratories, in three stages.
PACS is a program developed by Black&Veatch in “close collaboration” with the Pentagon’s DTRA to “prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in former Soviet states,” the company’s website says.
The system records, manages and monitors biological agents in public and private laboratories. This allows the Pentagon to monitor the location and use of dangerous pathogens in countries bordering Russia that implement PACS.
Ukrainian laboratories’ training for working with the PACS program were held in 2018-2019. Participants in the training sessions include Black&Veatch employees and a full list of Ukrainian laboratory officials whose personal details have been removed, although the positions appear:
Leading veterinary laboratory in anacrobial infections.
Senior Researcher Laboratory of Animal Bacterial Diseases.
Head of Anthrax Laboratory.
Researcher Anthrax Laboratory.
Senior Research Scientist Mycotoxicology Laboratory.
Leading veterinary laboratory in mycotoxicology.
Junior Researcher Leptospirosis Laboratory.
Laboratory Assistant Laboratory of Neuroinfections Laboratory.
Scientific Researcher International Relations and Geoinformation Sector.
At the same time, as part of the training, on December 28, 2018, research activities were conducted in the Ukrainian anthrax laboratory, the details of which were not disclosed.
Judical Watch also reviewed a Black&Veatch report dated December 19-21, 2018, which stated that the company completed the final stage of PACS implementation at the Institute of Experimental and Clinical Veterinary Medicine of the National Academy of Agrarian Sciences of Ukraine.
The site was fully operational with all PACS functions.
Among the pages posted are ten reports titled “U.S. Government Asset Transfer Report” between DTRA and a name that appears removed, but is most likely Ukraine. Ukraine and other post-Soviet states have become a testing ground for biological weapons by the US and its NATO allies (Photo: Getty Images).
Documents published by Judicial Watch confirm once again the cooperation of Washington and Kiev in the military-biological sphere, as well as attempts to establish control over pathogens in Ukrainian laboratories through the application of PACS.
In addition, the financing of the activities of these laboratories and their endowment with “US government assets” has been proved once again. Large sums of money appear in the published reports, as well as names of dangerous diseases, names of laboratories and virological research institutes in Ukraine, the Pentagon, its agency DTRA and its contractor Black&Veatch.
The very fact that the documents have been carefully redacted and compromising information removed from them opens the imagination to any options about the objectives pursued by the White House in the course of work in biological laboratories in Ukraine.
The impressions of Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, lend more weight to the idea of experimentation with dangerous pathogens by the United States:
“These new documents shed much-needed light on U.S. involvement in the handling of pathogens in Ukrainian biolabs,” Fitton said.
Separately, the State Duma of the Russian Federation reported that there was a meeting of experts of the parliamentary commission investigating the work of US biolabs on Ukrainian soil. The co-chairwoman of the commission, Irina Yarovaya, declared:
“It is clear how a system of pathogen control has been methodically implemented in Ukraine with the help of military doctors. The financing of anthrax laboratories has been confirmed and the nomenclature of personnel who participated in the training has been revealed”.
The MP said that there is every reason to believe that Ukrainian laboratories “can be used to prepare and carry out biological sabotage and acts of biological terrorism.” She added that within the framework of the 9th conference of the BTWC signatory states, the Russian government will make every effort to draw the attention of the world community to this dangerous threat, “which is much more serious than any kind of weapons of mass destruction.”
The Pentagon’s official activities in Ukraine, which the institution describes as prevention of public health threats, are just a front for illegal biological and military research.
Thank you for responding to our invitation. We considered it important to discuss today problems of European and, hence, global security. In Europe, NATO’s members are increasingly claiming global domination. The alliance has already declared the Indo-Pacific region a zone of its responsibility. Events on our continent are of interest not only to the Europeans or residents of North America but also to representatives of all countries, primarily the developing nations who want to understand what initiatives the NATO states, which have declared their global ambitions, can draft for their regions.
Why did we decide to hold this news conference today? The event that used to be called the OSCE Ministerial Council opened in Lodz today. This is a good reason to see what role this organisation has played since its establishment.
The Helsinki Final Act was signed in 1975 and was qualified as the greatest achievement of diplomacy of the time, a harbinger of a new era in East-West relations. Nevertheless, the number of problems kept piling up. Now the OSCE has amassed a huge amount of problems. They have a deep historical projection that is rooted in the late Soviet period, the 1980s and 1990s when the number of missed opportunities exceeded all possible expectation of even the most pessimistic analysts.
Let’s recall the year 1990 – the anticipation of the end of the Cold War. Many even declared the end of it at that time. The world was expected to focus on universal values and receive “the dividends of peace.” A summit of the organisation that was called then the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) was also held that year. During that summit, the participants, including the NATO and Warsaw Treaty members, adopted a Charter of Paris for a New Europe that announced that “the era of confrontation and division of Europe has ended” and declared the elimination of barriers for building a truly common European home without dividing lines.
It was 1990. You would think if everyone had made such sound declarations, what was it that prevented them from delivering on them? The point is the West had no intention of taking any steps to put these nice words and obligations into life. It could be said with confidence that the West at the time supported this type of slogans as it reckoned that our country would never again regain its positions in Europe, let alone in the world. The Westerners believed that it was “the end of history”, as they said at the time. From then on, everyone would live by the rules of liberal democracy, so they could relax and promise anything. Those attractive slogans ended up hanging in the air.
Here’s an interesting fact from that period. In 1990, at the closing stage of the CSCE Summit in Paris, US Secretary of State James Baker warned the US President that the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe might pose a real threat to NATO. I understand him – this is really so. When the Cold War was over, many sensible and farsighted politicians and political scientists said it would make sense if not only the Warsaw Treaty, which had ceased to exist by that time, but also the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation was dissolved and if every effort was made to turn the CSCE into a genuine bridge between East and West, and into a single platform for achieving common objectives based on a balance of interests of all member countries.
This never happened. In reality, the West sought to maintain its dominance. Allowing the calls for equality and removing dividing lines and barriers, as well as for a genuine Common European Home to come true was seen by the Westerners as a threat to their position, which was to preserve the dominance of Washington and Brussels in all global affairs, primarily in Europe. This basic instinct that both the Americans and other NATO member countries never lost explains the policy of expanding NATO heedlessly, thereby eroding the main idea of the OSCE as a collective tool for ensuring equal and indivisible security, and makes all those beautiful documents that this organisation has approved since the 1990s worthless. It was of principal importance to the West to show who the master of the Common European Home was – a home that all [countries] had collectively undertaken to build. Essentially, this is where the notorious concept of a “rules-based order” is rooted. It was already at that time that the West regarded these “rules” as an indispensable element of its position in the world arena. This perception that the Western “rules” can resolve any problem without consulting anyone allowed the West to feel free to subject Yugoslavia to barbaric bombing for 80 days and to destroy its civilian infrastructure. Later, under a fictitious pretext, the Westerners invaded Iraq and bombed it destroying everything that civilians needed and that was essential for the life support system of the country. Next, Libya as a state was destroyed. Then followed many other risky ventures, which you know well.
We talk about the aggression against Yugoslavia because we can still feel its effects. It was a flagrant violation of the Helsinki principles. In March 1999, NATO, seeking to show that it can do whatever it wants, opened Pandora’s box by trampling underfoot the fundamentals of European security adopted by the OSCE.
Russia hoped that the Helsinki principles could be revived. We continued fighting for the OSCE. We proposed drafting a legally binding document, an OSCE Charter based on the Helsinki Final Act. The West did not accept our initiative.
Those who honestly believed that any issues should be settled on the basis of common European principles worked towards the adoption of a series of vital documents, including the Charter for European Security, in Istanbul in 1999. The Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) was adapted to the situation that developed after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. The CFE was drafted in the era of two military-political blocs, NATO and the Warsaw Treaty Organisation (WTO). When the latter was dissolved, the permissible number of the sides’ weapons coordinated in the context of the East-West confrontation no longer corresponded to reality, because many European countries were being drawn into NATO. After a series of difficult talks, the CFE was adapted, and the new text was signed in Istanbul in 1999. The adapted treaty was praised as the cornerstone of European security.
You know what happened to it. Trying to preserve the old document, the United States prohibited it allies from signing the adapted text, because the initial treaty provided legal grounds for NATO’s domination after the dissolution of the WTO. The United States subsequently pulled out of the ABM Treaty and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, as well as scrapped the Open Skies Treaty. The OSCE, although not completely indifferent to those changes, was unable to speak out in the treaties’ defence. The OSCE chairperson-in-office and secretary-general kept silent.
Another document adopted in Istanbul in 1999, the Charter for European Security, reads that no country should ensure its security at the expense of other states’ security. Nevertheless, NATO’s eastward expansion continued despite all the declarations adopted by all OSCE member states at the top level.
In 2010, Russia and other like-minded states, which did not lose hope of saving the organisation, adopted a declaration at the Astana summit, which said that security must be equal and indivisible, and that states should be free to choose alliances provided they do not try to strengthen their own security by weakening the security of others. The crucial formula is that no state or group of states have a right to claim pre-eminent responsibility for security in the Euro-Atlantic area.
If you have been following European developments in recent years, you will know that NATO has violated every one of its obligations. The alliance’s expansion created direct threats to the Russian Federation. The bloc’s military infrastructure moved closer to our borders, which ran counter to its commitments under the Istanbul Declaration of 1999. NATO stated unequivocally that the alliance alone could decide to whom it would provide legal security guarantees – that was also a direct violation of their Istanbul and Astana obligations.
We realised that NATO was simply ignoring those political declarations, thinking it was allowed to disregard them completely even though their presidents had signed those documents. In 2008, Russia proposed codifying those political declarations in order to make them legally binding. The proposal was declined, with the explanation that such legal guarantees in Europe could only be provided among NATO members. The alliance continued, absolutely consciously and knowingly, to pursue its thoughtless policy of artificial expansion with no real threats to NATO countries out there.
We remember the time when NATO was created. The first NATO Secretary General Hastings Ismay coined this formula: the purpose of NATO is “to keep the Soviet Union out [of Europe], the Americans in, and the Germans down.” What is happening now is nothing short of a return to the alliance’s conceptual priorities from 73 years ago. Nothing has changed. NATO is determined to keep the Russians “out,” while the Americans dream of keeping not only the Germans, but the whole of Europe “down” – and have in fact already enslaved the entire European Union. This philosophy of domination and unilateral advantages has not gone anywhere when the Cold War ended.
Over the time since the bloc was created, NATO has hardly been able to present a single real success story that would be to its credit. The Alliance brings devastation and suffering to those outside it. I have already mentioned its aggressions against Serbia and Libya, which led to the destruction of Libyan statehood; Iraq got added to the mix. Let’s also recall the latest example, Afghanistan, where the alliance unsuccessfully struggled to instil its version of democracy for 20 years. Security problems in the Serbian province of Kosovo have never been resolved, although NATO has been present there for more than two decades as well, and this fact is also telling.
Speaking of the US peacekeeping capabilities, look at how many decades the Americans have been trying to restore order in Haiti, which is a small country under their control. It is not Europe. There are numerous examples like this outside the European continent.
In 1991, NATO included 16 countries; now it has 30 members. Sweden and Finland are one step away from joining. The Alliance deploys its forces and military infrastructure ever closer to our borders, constantly building up its potential and capabilities, moving them towards Russia. They conduct manoeuvres and actually openly declare our country the adversary during exercises. NATO is intensifying its activities in the post-Soviet space. At the same time, it is laying claims to the Indo-Pacific region, and now also to Central Asia. All these aspirations to global domination are a direct and flagrant violation of the 2010 Lisbon Declaration, which was signed by all presidents and prime ministers of the North Atlantic bloc.
Until recently, we did everything in our power to prevent a further deterioration in the Euro-Atlantic Region. In December 2021, President Vladimir Putin made new proposals on security guarantees – a draft treaty between Russia and the US and a draft treaty between Russia and NATO. In this situation, seeing how determined the West was to drag Ukraine into NATO – it was an obvious red line for the Russian Federation, which the West had known about for years – we suggested that the Alliance stops expanding and wanted to reach an agreement on concrete, legally binding security guarantees for Ukraine, the Russian Federation, all European countries and all OSCE member states. The attempts to begin a discussion failed. We received the same response to all our calls to approach the situation in a comprehensive and creative way: that each country, and Ukraine first of all, has the right to join NATO and nobody can do anything about it. All components of a compromise formula about the indivisibility of security, that it should not be achieved at the expense of the security of other countries and that one organisation should not claim dominion in Europe, all of them were simply ignored.
In December 2021, Washington preferred not to take advantage of the opportunity for a de-escalation. And it was not only the United States, but also the OSCE, that could have facilitated a de-escalation of tensions if it had been able to settle the crisis in Ukraine based on the Minsk Package of Measures, which was agreed upon in February 2015 and unanimously approved by the UN Security Council resolution that same month. The executive structures of the organisation turned out to be completely subordinate to the US and Brussels, which set a course for comprehensive support of the Kiev regime’s policy of eradicating all things Russian: education, the media, the use of the Russian language in culture, the arts and everyday life. The Westerners also supported the Kiev regime when it sought to introduce the theory and practice of Nazism in its legislation: the relevant laws were adopted without any reaction from the “enlightened” capitals of Western democracies. Its efforts to turn Ukraine into a foothold for containing Russia, a territory of direct threats to our country also received support. These facts are well-known now. I want to note that the Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, which has made its contribution to discrediting the OSCE in a blatant violation of its mandate, did not react in any way to the regular violations of the Minsk agreements by the Ukrainian armed forces and nationalist battalions.
The mission de facto took the side of the Kiev regime. After its activity was suspended, unseemly cases came to light of the mission’s interaction with the Western special services, as well as the participation of allegedly neutral OSCE observers in adjusting fire against the DPR and the LPR, and collecting intelligence data in the interests of the Ukrainian armed forces and nationalist battalions. They received information from the mission’s surveillance cameras installed along the contact line.
The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine put a lid on all these glaring problems, many of which you brought to light and made public although your editorial offices did not always permit this. The SMM deliberately turned a blind eye to all the violations, including preparations for a military solution to the problem of Donbass, which the Kiev regime was planning while Poroshenko and later Zelensky openly refused to honour the Minsk agreements. The West silently played along with these unacceptable activities. In mid-February 2022, the number of artillery attacks at the territory of the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics, which had gone on for years, increased tenfold. There is statistics that cannot be denied. A vast number of refugees flooded into Russia. This inevitably led to the recognition of the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics and in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter begin, at their request, the special military operation to save the people of Donbass from the Nazis and to eliminate security threats to Russia coming from Ukraine.
I would like to say that there is an explanation for this objectionable policy of the OSCE. Taking advantage of its numerical superiority in the organisation, the West has been trying to dominate it for years, or more precisely, to take over the last remaining platform for regional dialogue. The Council of Europe had already been maimed by the West without any chance of recovery. Today the OSCE is the target. Its powers and competencies are being eroded and spread out among narrow non-inclusive formats.
The EU has been working to create parallel structures and conferences, such as the European Political Community. On October 6, 2022, this forum held its inaugural meeting in Prague. When preparing that event and announcing the initiative of creating the organisation, President of France Emmanuel Macron proudly stated that all countries apart from Russia and Belarus had been invited to join. Prominent foreign policy officials such as Josep Borrell and Annalena Baerbock immediately picked up the tune, saying that a [European] security order should not be built together with Russia but against it, contrary to what Angela Merkel and other European leaders had called for. Other platforms are being created to force confrontational methods on the other countries in the spirit of the colonial mentality, and to spread the OSCE agenda among narrow formats, platforms, initiatives and partnerships.
A few years ago, Germany and France launched the Alliance for Multilateralism, a group where they planned to invite whomever they wished, and that initiative stabbed the OSCE in the back. In a similar way, the United States selectively invites participants to what it calls the Summit for Democracy. We asked the Germans and the French why they wanted to create that alliance when Europe already had the OSCE, which is an inclusive platform. The United Nations played the same role in global affairs – can any new format offer even more multilateralism than those? We asked, and we were told that while those formats indeed included all countries, for effective multilateralism, a group of leaders would be more suitable than the OSCE or the UN because those two platforms also included “retrogrades” that would hinder the progress of effective multilateralism. So it was up to those progressive leaders to advance it, while others would have to conform and follow – a philosophy that also undermines every high principle the OSCE has ever relied upon.
As a result of all this, the security space in Europe became fragmented, and even the OSCE is becoming a marginal entity, to put it mildly. The recent Chairmanships-in-Office have shown no interest in reversing this negative trend – quite on the contrary.
The Swedes presided in the OSCE in 2021, and even during that period, they stopped acting as “honest brokers,” but became active participants in the Western policy to subordinate the OSCE to the interests of the United States and Brussels. In fact, the Swedes paved the way to the OSCE’s funeral.
Throughout this year, our Polish neighbours have been diligently digging a grave for the organisation, destroying whatever was left of its culture of consensus. The decision on the role of the OSCE Chairmanship-In-Office, adopted by the OSCE Ministerial Council at its meeting in Porto as far back as in 2002, says the Chairmanship-In-Office should ensure that its actions are not inconsistent with positions agreed by all the participating States and that the whole spectrum of opinions of participating States is taken into account, which amounts to consensus. On November 23 of this year, the foreign ministers of six CSTO countries approved a statement expressing their principled assessments of the outrageous actions by the Polish Chairmanship-In-Office. We know that a number of other OSCE countries share this approach. It is important to say that Poland’s “anti-Chairmanship” will one day be seen as the most unsightly period in the OSCE history. No one has ever done so much damage to the OSCE while being at the helm.
For many years, the Western countries directed every effort towards hampering the development of an equal and indivisible European security system, contrary to the mantras they always repeated as political declarations. We are now reaping the fruit of this short-sighted and misguided policy. The letter and the spirit of the basic OSCE documents have been trampled upon. That organisation was created for a pan-European dialogue. I have already cited the goals proposed by the West and by the OSCE Chairmanships-in-Office this year and last year. All of the above raises difficult questions about what our relations with the organisation will be like. More importantly, what is going to happen to the OSCE itself? I think that if – or when, at some point in time – our western neighbours (there’s no getting away from this, we are neighbours) and our former partners suddenly become interested in resuming the joint work on European security, it won’t happen. That would mean going back to what we had before, but there would be no business as usual.
When, or if, the West realises the benefits of being neighbours and relying on some kind of a mutually agreed framework, we will listen to what they have to offer. Will there be an opportunity for such interaction in the foreseeable future? I don’t know. It’s up to the West, which has been systematically destroying every principle underlying the functioning of the unique pan-European organisation called the OSCE, all these long decades.
Question: Russia is now cut off from European diplomacy since Russian representatives were banned from attending OSCE meetings or the Munich Security Conference. What can Moscow do? How can it adapt to the new circumstances? How important is the grain deal for Russia in this context?
Sergey Lavrov: I can add to the above the fact that this year our parliamentarians were denied entry visas to the UK and, not long ago, to Poland and hence were unable to attend the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly meetings. This shows how the “honest brokers” run this pan-European organisation.
To follow up on whether we are being cut off from European diplomacy, we must first look into whether European diplomacy is still there, and if so, what is it like these days. So far, what we are hearing the key European diplomats say are Josep Borrell-like statements which he keeps repeating like a mantra since the outset of the special military operation that this war must be won by Ukraine “on the battlefield.” This is what a European diplomat is saying.
When President of France Emmanuel Macron announced a meeting as part of the European Political Community that he is promoting, he said that Russia and Belarus would not be invited to join it. EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell and German Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs Annalena Baerbock put forward yet another new goal: to build European security not with Russia, but against it.
If such statements are what European diplomacy is all about, I don’t think we need to be part of it. We should wait for rational people to show up there. Being vocal about the importance of ensuring Ukraine’s victory, President of the European Council Charles Michel insists that this must be done because Ukraine is striving for European values, and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is claiming that it is already defending and promoting European values, freedom and democracy. Head of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen said something along these lines as well.
European diplomacy talking about the importance of helping Ukraine which upholds “European values” means only one thing: European diplomats are in the dark about multiple facts of what is really going on in Ukraine. They appear to be unaware of the fact that long before the special military operation began, the Russian Orthodox Church had been destroyed for years on end in violation of the rules of civilised life; ethnic minorities were unable to use their native languages in all aspects of everyday life without exception (later, European minorities were taken off that list, but Russian remained); Russian-language media was banned, and not only the media owned by Russian nationals and Russian organisations, but also Ukrainian-owned media outlets that broadcast in the Russian language; political opposition; political parties were banned; leaders of political organisations were arrested, and openly Nazi practices were enshrined in Ukrainian laws.
If, as it continues to use grand rhetoric to call upon everyone to defend Ukraine that is upholding European values, European diplomacy indeed is aware of what that country is in fact “promoting,” we do not want to be part of such diplomacy.
We will push to have this “diplomacy” end as soon as possible, and for the people who are pursuing hate-crazed policies in violation of the UN Charter, multiple conventions, and international humanitarian law to step down.
Numerous interviews with Vladimir Zelensky clearly show the kind of values the current Kiev regime is upholding. He never stops saying that “Russia must not be allowed to win.” Everyone applauds as if they are bound by a spell. In an interview, he said that if Russia were allowed to win (NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said it later as well), other large countries would feel they are within their right to attack smaller nations. Several large countries on different continents will reshape global geography. Vladimir Zelensky claims that he has a different scenario in mind where “every person on earth knows that no matter what country they live in and what kind of weapons they have, they enjoy the same rights and the same level of protection as everyone else around the world.”
None of the reporters who interviewed him got around to asking Mr Zelensky whether he remembered what he told the Ukrainians who felt they were part of the Russian culture to do. A year ago, in August 2021, he told them to “make off to Russia.” A person who is willing to protect the rights of every person in the world wanted to kick Russians out of his country only because they wanted to keep their language and culture. Perhaps, when he talked about everyone’s right to enjoy protection – “regardless of where they live”, the following public statement slipped his mind. In an interview in Kazakhstan, Ukrainian Ambassador to Kazakhstan Pyotr Vrublevsky said “We are going to kill as many of them as possible. The more Russians we kill now, the fewer will be left for our children to kill.” Not a single European diplomat commented on this statement, although we brought the untenable nature of this kind of conduct to their attention. This was an outright affront on the part of Zelensky’s regime to our Kazakh neighbours, who said it was unacceptable for the ambassador to make such statements. But this person spent a month in Kazakhstan after the incident before getting expelled. I pity European diplomacy which “swallows” this kind of approach to European values.
We issued multiple grain deal-related media releases. Since March 2022, our military have been announcing daily 12-hour humanitarian corridor windows for Ukrainian grain to be transported from Ukrainian ports. The only snag was that the ports were mined. Our Ukrainian colleagues were to navigate the ships through the minefields, while the Russian military were to guarantee safe delivery to the straits. Vladimir Zelensky claimed it was a “trap,” and that “Russians cannot be trusted.” Then we proposed guaranteeing freedom of passage across neutral waters in cooperation with our Turkish colleagues. They agreed. Zelensky started throwing tantrums again. The intervention of the UN Secretary-General made it possible to sign two documents in Istanbul on July 22. The first one clarifies the steps and guarantees that will apply when exporting Ukrainian grain from three Ukrainian ports. The second document is to the effect that the UN Secretary-General will strive to lift artificial barriers to Russian fertiliser and grain exports. A week ago, I heard someone from a European body say that the sanctions do not include restrictions on Russian fertiliser and grain exports, which is a blatant lie. There is no “fertilisers and food from Russia” segment in the sanctions lists. Banking transactions, primarily for our leading Rosselkhozbank, which has been cut off from SWIFT, are prohibited, though. Rosselkhozbank handles over 90 percent of our food supply-related transactions. Access to European ports for the Russian vessels and to Russian ports for foreign vessels, as well chartering or insuring them are prohibited as well. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres spoke about it openly at the G20 summit in Indonesia. He is in the process of having these barriers lifted. However, five months into the deal, the United States and the EU are responding woefully slowly. We have to work hard to obtain exceptions. We are supportive of what the Secretary-General is doing. However, the West is not showing much respect for his efforts. It’s their manner of letting everyone know who’s boss and who should be chasing whom and begging for things.
Question: What would European security look like without the Union State of Russia and Belarus? What is your forecast?
Sergey Lavrov: It is difficult to make any forecasts. I can only say for sure what the security of the Union State of Russia and Belarus will look like regardless of any future distortions of the OSCE foundation.
We know the worth of those who want to assume the OSCE chairmanship and promise to be an “honest broker,” the current leaders of the OSCE Secretariat who are not allowed to do anything outside the framework of their new concept. The Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was not set up in 1975 to force the member states to dance to any country’s tune and to accept a vision of the world and the security and cooperation goals formulated by our Western partners. The OSCE was established so that the voice of all countries would be heard, and no country would feel excluded from the common process. Everything has now been turned upside down. The West is doing what the OSCE was designed to prevent: it is digging dividing lines. But the ditches they are digging can also be used to bury somebody. I suspect that the target is the OSCE. All these initiatives, such as the European Political Community (all its member states apart from Russia and Belarus), an open invitation to destroy the OSCE and create in its place a Western hangout for promoting their projects, including illegal unilateral sanctions, and the creation of tribunals to confiscate other countries’ assets, all of this are the elements of a colonial mentality, which is still there. It is a desire and the striving to scavenge on others.
The United States is scavenging on Europe now. It will get richer off the economic and energy crises in Europe, sell its gas (at four times the price Europe paid for Russian gas), promote its own laws on combating inflation, and allocate hundreds of billions of dollars for its own industry to lure over investors from Europe. This will ultimately lead to Europe’s de-industrialisation.
The West is trying to create a security system without Russia or Belarus. They should start by coming to terms with each other. President of France Emmanuel Macron has flown to Washington to complain and demand. I don’t know what this will lead to, but we certainly do not need this form of security. Europe’s security amounts to total subordination to the United States. Several years ago, there were debates in Germany and France on the proposed “strategic autonomy” of the EU and the creation of an EU army. A US national security official said recently that Europe must abandon its dreams of an independent European army. Several years ago, such discussions led to the conclusion that Germany should rely on NATO to protect its security. Poland, the Baltics and several Central European states, which used to have a reasonable approach to the matter, now have ultra-radical Russophobic and anti-Europe governments.
As for Europe’s independence, discussions have been held on increasing the number of US troops for holding exercises near the borders of Russia and Belarus. When Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin was asked if the US troops would be deployed in Europe permanently or otherwise, he answered without a moment’s hesitation that Washington had not yet decided on the mode of its military presence in Europe. It never even crossed his mind to say that Washington would consult its European allies. We haven’t decided yet. This is their answer to the question about the form of security in Europe.
The Union State has military development plans. We also have a joint group of forces, which includes air and ground components. The presidents of Russia and Belarus are paying greater attention to this issue in the context of continuing Ukrainian provocations. We have taken the necessary measures to maintain our readiness for any turn of events. We will rely on the commendable capabilities of the Union State.
When Western Europe, NATO and the EU see the huge risks of their dead-end policies, we will look at what they can offer for negotiating with us.
Question: This month, NATO has held joint exercises in the Atlantic Ocean and in the Mediterranean Sea. It involved aircraft carriers from many countries, including the USS Gerald R. Ford, the lead ship of the US Navy, which took part in the drills for the first time. What is the United States’ role in NATO exercises? What is the goal of increased US military integration with Europe? What effect are NATO drills having on regional security in Europe?
Sergey Lavrov: Over the past decade, NATO exercises have become more intensive, frequent and openly aimed at containing Russia. They invent different legends and names to camouflage their anti-Russia drive. The drills are moving increasingly closer to the Russian border; they are held in the Baltic and Black seas, ground exercises are held in Poland and other actions are taken contrary to the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security signed between Russia and NATO in 1997, which sealed the principles of “robust partnership” between them. The key element was NATO’s commitment to refrain from “additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces” in new member states. This is a good political commitment, just as is the OSCE commitment not to strengthen their security at the expense of neighbours’ security made in 1999 and 2010. The Russia-NATO Founding Act includes a pledge not to deploy “substantial combat forces” in new bloc members. NATO made this “concession” in the context of our argument that it had expanded contrary to the promises made to the Soviet and Russian leaders.
It was a lie. Hoping naively to maintain a partnership with the bloc, we signed the Founding Act, which actually formalised Russia’s acceptance of the bloc’s expansion. In response, NATO pledged not to permanently deploy “substantial combat forces” in new bloc members. Awhile later, we proposed strengthening mutual trust by defining “substantial combat forces” and drafted a concrete legal agreement. The alliance categorically rejected the idea, saying it would provide a definition of “substantial combat forces,” itself, which they had pledged not to deploy permanently and adding that it does not include regular troop rotation. Contrary to its commitment, NATO is continuously deploying substantial forces under the formal pretext of rotation. Until recently, the bloc indulged in a great deal of breast-beating about the absence of any threat to the security of Russia or any other state, because NATO is a defensive alliance that protects the territory of its member state. At least it was clear against whom it planned to protect them in the Soviet and Warsaw Pact era.
The Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union are no more. Since then, NATO has moved its defence lines forward five times. By expanding its zone of responsibility, the “defence alliance” continued to protect itself, even though it was unclear who this was against.
In June 2022, the participants of the NATO summit in Madrid no longer said that NATO is a “defence alliance” protecting the territory of its member states. They openly claimed responsibility for global security, first of all, in the Indo-Pacific region. The have put forth the idea that “the security of the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific regions is indivisible.” In other words, NATO is moving its defence line further east, possibly to the South China Sea. Considering the rhetoric we hear in the EU, the United States, Australia, Canada and Britain, the South China Sea is a region where NATO is ready to whip up tensions just as they did in Ukraine.
We know that China takes a very serious attitude to such provocations, let alone Taiwan and the Taiwan Strait. We understand that NATO’s playing with fire in that region entails risks and threats to Russia. The region is located as closely to Russia as to China.
Russia and China are building up their military cooperation and hold joint exercises, including counterterrorism drills. We recently carried out a joint air patrol mission. For the first time ever, long-range Russian bombers landed at Chinese airfields and Chinese planes touched down in Russia. It is a security measure designed to show our readiness for any turn of events.
It is clear to everybody that US-led NATO is trying to create an explosive situation in the Indo-Pacific Region, just as it did in Europe. They wanted to draw India into their anti-China and anti-Russia alliances, but India refused to join any alliance that was formed as a military-political bloc. New Delhi is only taking part in economic projects offered in the context of Indo-Pacific strategies. After that, Washington decided to create an Anglo-Saxon military-political bloc, AUKUS, with Australia and the UK, and is trying to lure New Zealand, Japan and South Korea into it.
The United States and the EU are dismantling all the principles of OSCE cooperation in Ukraine and are promoting their unilateral approaches. On a larger scale, they are destroying the organisation itself, trying to replace it with all kinds of narrow, non-inclusive platforms like the European Political Community.
The West is acting likewise to erode ASEAN, a comprehensive cooperation platform with such formats as the ASEAN Regional Forum, East Asia Summit and ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting, which have been generally recognised as backbone mechanisms of cooperation in the fields of security, the economy and other areas. They are doing their best to undermine these platforms. Security issues have been removed from the ASEAN agenda. The United States is trying to involve half of the ASEAN nations in its plans, and the other half are keeping away because they are aware of the risks involved.
Washington is taking obviously destructive measures against the comprehensive mechanisms created in Europe and Asia Pacific to address security issues based on equality and a balance of interests. The United States is trying to create irritants and hot spots, hoping that this will not affect it because it is located far away from them. The more crises the Americans create, the more its rivals will weaken each other.
Europe is weakening itself by recklessly following in the US’s footsteps and upholding its Russophobic policy and the use of Ukraine as a weapon in the war against Russia.
Der WikiLeaks-Gründer Julian Assange ist wohl der bekannteste politische Häftling unserer Zeit. Er hat schreckliche Kriegsverbrechen aufgedeckt, wird dafür aber nicht gewürdigt, sondern verfolgt. Seit über einem Jahrzehnt befindet er sich auf der Flucht und muss derzeit in Großbritannien in Haft ausharren. Doch die USA lassen nicht locker und fordern weiterhin seine Auslieferung. Wenn sie das durchsetzen können, kommt der australische Investigativ-Journalist wohl nie mehr frei. Seine Angehörigen tun deshalb alles, damit das nicht passiert. Ihnen widmet sich der neue Film «Ithaka», der in unaufgeregten Bildern deren Einsatz darstellt und einen authentischen Eindruck davon vermittelt, welchen Strapazen sie ausgesetzt sind.
Im Mittelpunkt steht Assanges 76-jähriger Vater John Shipton, ein ruhiger und asketisch wirkender Mann, der von Melbourne nach Europa gekommen ist, um sich mit diversen Politikern, Medienvertretern und den Unterstützern seines Sohnes zu treffen. Der Film beginnt kurz vor der weltweiten Corona-Politik und endet mit dem vorläufigen Entschluss, Assange erst einmal nicht in die USA auszuliefern. In dieser Zeit schüttelt der schlaksige Shipton etliche Hände und spricht in sämtliche Mikrofone, die ihm Journalisten pausenlos entgegenhalten. Obwohl Assanges Vater sich stets um Beherrschung bemüht, dringt sehr schnell durch, wie unangenehm er sich in diesen Situationen fühlt. Aber er habe keine andere Wahl, sagt er mehrmals. Um seinen Sohn zu befreien, müsse er diese Unannehmlichkeiten auf sich nehmen.
Sie hören jedoch nicht auf mit den vielen Auftritten und Reisen, die Shipton durch Europa unternimmt. Sie gehen tiefer und durchdringen seine Psyche, wie einige Szenen verdeutlichen, wenn der alte Mann in manchen Momenten über sein Seelenleben spricht. Aufwühlend wirken insbesondere die seltenen persönlichen Treffen mit Assange, zumal die beiden in früheren Jahren keine enge Beziehung hatten. Über diese Periode redet der Vater nur ungerne. Bisweilen reagiert er sogar gereizt, wird mürrisch und bemüht sich, das Gespräch in eine andere Richtung zu lenken. Der innere Kampf mit sich selbst dringt nach außen, zeigt sich in seinen Gesichtszügen und verhärtet die Stimme. Dann gibt er sich wieder sanftmütig. Es ist ein Wechselbad der Gefühle, die er – wie einige Aufnahmen verraten – mit Yoga-Übungen zu regulieren versucht.
Das Schicksal seines Sohnes wiegt schwer. Für Shipton bekommt die psychische Last jedoch dadurch noch mehr Gewicht, dass er seine kleine Tochter aus einer anderen Beziehung zu Hause in Australien lassen muss und mit ihr während seiner Reise durch Europa keine Zeit verbringen kann. Um ihr zumindest partiell nahe zu sein, spricht er mit ihr zwischen den Terminen per Telefon, ob im Taxi, in der Bahn oder im Hotelzimmer. In solchen Bildern tut sich die quälende Rastlosigkeit aus, die Unruhe und Bewegung, in der er sich befindet, sowohl physisch als auch mental. Die nervliche Anspannung ist mit den Händen greifbar und bemächtigt sich seiner, so wie am Ende des Films, wo Shipton sogar Spuren negativen Denkens zeigt.
Noch näher rückt die Kamera an Assanges Frau Stella heran. Im Film nimmt sie zwar weniger Raum ein als Vater John, liefert jedoch einen besseren Einblick in die Gefühlswelt des inhaftierten Protagonisten, der zwar stets im Hintergrund bleibt, aber die Dramaturgie bestimmt. Regisseur Ben Lawrence gelingt es, mehrere Telefongespräche zwischen Assange und Stella festzuhalten. Solche Szenen wirken sehr unmittelbar und verraten viel über die seelische Verfassung des inhaftierten Opfers. Seine Stimme ist brüchig, die Depressionen führen das Wort. Stella muss bisweilen stark überlegen, wie sie ihn bei Laune halten soll. In solchen Augenblicken offenbart sich ihr schweres Schicksal, zu der die Angst hinzukommt, nachts alleine nach Hause zu gehen. Sie habe sich intensiviert, als ihr die Mordpläne der Sicherheitsbehörden bekannt wurden. „Manche Leute wollen, dass er tot ist“, sagt Stella an einer Stelle.
Wie Shipton ist Assanges Frau ebenfalls permanent im Einsatz, führt Interviews, hält Vorträge und spricht mit Anwälten, muss sich parallel aber auch noch um die gemeinsamen beiden Kinder kümmern. Eigentlich sei Nachwuchs lange Zeit kein Thema gewesen, verrät sie. Doch es habe eine Zeit gegeben, als der WikiLeaks-Gründer in der ecuadorianischen Botschaft Hoffnungen hatte, sich in Zukunft wieder frei bewegen zu können. Die USA vereitelten diese Möglichkeit, so subtil wie wirkungsvoll. Über deren Methoden spricht im Film vor allem Nils Melzer. Der ehemalige UN-Sonderberichterstatter ist einer der wenigen, die neben Shipton und Stella interviewt werden. Obwohl er wertvolle Informationen über die Dimension von Assanges Schicksal liefert, dient er mehr als Kontrastfolie, durch die die Leiden der engsten Familienmitglieder deutlicher zum Vorschein kommen.
Zwar ist auch Melzer in den Fall involviert und zeigt sich besorgt hinsichtlich der Konsequenzen für Demokratie und Pressefreiheit, wirkt vor der Kamera jedoch gefasster und nüchterner, wie ein Mann, der die Angelegenheit aus einer emotional größeren Distanz beobachtet. Ganz anders Shipton und Stella, deren ganzer Körper von Müdigkeit gezeichnet ist. Sie mobilisieren ihre letzten Kräfte, schwanken zwischen Frustration und Hoffnung, kämpfen mit Tränen. «Ithaka» bildet ihre Lebenssituation mit viel Empathie ab, ohne auf Effekte abzuzielen. Wer den Film schaut, wird fühlen, was in Assange und dessen Familie vorgeht. Der brisante Fall geht jedoch über das persönliche Schicksal hinaus und betrifft die Weltgemeinschaft, die entscheiden muss, ob sie wirklich in einer wahrhaft liberalen Demokratie leben möchte. „Wenn Julian fällt, tut es auch der Journalismus“, sagt sein Vater in einem Interview.
Es ist daher wichtig, dass die öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit stärker auf Assanges Geschichte gelenkt wird. Die Dokumentation stellt dafür die Weichen, indem sie nicht nur den Einsatz seiner Unterstützer beleuchtet, sondern auch Hintergrundinformationen liefert, die vielen Menschen möglicherweise nicht bekannt sind – eben weil die Leitmedien ihnen nicht genügend Beachtung schenken. Wer die Tragweite von Assanges Fall verstehen will, kann das derzeit im Kino tun. «Ithaka» läuft deutschlandweit in ausgewählten Spielstätten. Besonders viele Tourtermine gibt es im Dezember – in Halle und Düsseldorf, in Bremen und Berlin, in Hamburg und Würzburg. Einen Monat später wird der Film auch in Köln vorgeführt, bis er schließlich nach Saarbrücken kommt.
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Die jüngsten Unruhen in Iran haben mindestens 300 Tote gefordert, darunter Demonstranten, bewaffnete Randalierer und iranische Sicherheitskräfte. Iran beschuldigte ausländische Mächte, die Unruhen im Land angezettelt zu haben.
Im Bericht einer englischsprachigen Zeitung in Iran wird ein ranghoher iranischer General mit den Worten zitiert, dass die „Feinde“ der Islamischen Republik während der jüngsten Unruhen eine „hybride Kriegsführung“ gegen das Land geführt hätten und dass Dutzende von ausländischen Geheimdiensten daran beteiligt gewesen seien.
General Gholamreza Soleimani, der Kommandeur der Basidschmilizen, wurde von der Tehran Times mit den Worten zitiert, die jüngsten Unruhen sollten eigentlich zu Beginn des akademischen Schuljahres in Iran beginnen, hätten dann aber doch früher stattgefunden.
Der Tod der 22-jährigen Iranerin Mahsa Amini – angeblich in Polizeigewahrsam – in Teheran habe den ausländischen Spionageagenturen den Vorwand gegeben, vorgezogene Unruhen in Iran anzustiften. „47 Spionageagenturen haben einen hybriden Krieg gegen die Islamische Republik Iran geführt“, erklärte der Chef der Basidsch.
Iran hat ausländische Mächte beschuldigt, die Unruhen im Land angezettelt zu haben. Nach dem Tod Aminis am 16. September erschütterten Proteste das Land, von denen sich viele später zu gewalttätigen Ausschreitungen entwickelten.
Die jüngsten Unruhen hatten Hunderte von Toten gefordert, darunter Demonstranten, bewaffnete Randalierer und iranische Sicherheitskräfte, die entweder der Iranischen Revolutionsgarde (IRGC), ihren Hilfstruppen, nämlich der Basidsch, oder der Polizei angehören. Vor Kurzem gab Teheran die erste aktualisierte Zahl der Toten seit Mitte September an.
General Amir-Ali Hadschisadeh, der Kommandeur der Luft- und Raumfahrtabteilung der Iranischen Revolutionsgarde, sprach in einer Rede von mindestens 300 Toten. „Ich kenne die aktuellen Statistiken nicht, aber ich denke, dass seit diesem Vorfall … mehr als 300 Märtyrer und Menschen in diesem Land getötet worden sind, darunter Kinder“, fügte er hinzu. Die Zahl umfasse Dutzende Sicherheitskräfte, die bei den Zusammenstößen mit Demonstranten getötet worden seien, sagte der Revolutionsgardist.
Mitte November wurde Iran von einer Terrorserie in mehreren Städten überschattet. Auf einem belebten Markt in der Kleinstadt Izeh in der iranischen Provinz Chuzestan wurden sieben Menschen von bewaffneten Randalierern erschossen.
Unter den Toten waren zwei Kinder, der neunjährige Kian Pir-Falak und der 13-jährige Abteen Rahmani. Nach dem Tod Kians beschuldigte die Mutter des Jungen umgehend die in der Gegend stationierten Basidsch-Kräfte, die gegen bewaffnete Randalierer vorgingen. Die Basidsch ist eine als Freiwilligenmiliz organisierte Gruppe, die der Iranischen Revolutionsgarde untersteht. Nun ist eine Videoaufzeichnung von diesem Tag aufgetaucht, auf der die Ereignisse aufgezeichnet sind, die zur Tötung des Jungen führten.
Auf dem Video sind Basidsch-Milizen zu hören, die um Hilfe schreien und erklären, dass sie unbewaffnet seien und dass mehrere ihrer Mitglieder erschossen worden seien. Die Regierung bezeichnete die Schießerei, bei der Kian getötet wurde, später als „terroristischen Angriff“.
Einem Dokument zufolge, das von der Hackergruppe „Black Reward“ veröffentlicht wurde, haben iranische Beamte eine Reihe von Bedenken hinsichtlich der Fähigkeit der Basidsch-Gruppen, auf die Unruhen zu reagieren, aufgeführt. Zu diesen Bedenken gehören die angebliche Desorganisation der Basidsch und ihre „Unvorbereitetheit“ auf Unruhen. Sollte das durchgesickerte Dokument zutreffen, könnte sich die jüngste Erklärung der Regierung, die Sicherheitskräfte hätten noch keine scharfe Munition eingesetzt, als wahr erweisen.
Der ehemalige Nationale Sicherheitsberater der USA John Bolton räumte kürzlich ein, dass die Protestierenden in Iran mit Waffen aus dem Nordirak beliefert werden. Iran griff den Nordirak Ende September mehrfach mit ballistischen Raketen und Kampfdrohnen an. In der nordirakischen Stadt Erbil sind auch US-Truppen stationiert. Teheran zielte mit diesen Luftschlägen auf kurdische Separatistengruppen, die im Nordirak aktiv sind, und beschuldigte sie, die jüngsten Unruhen in Iran herbeigeführt zu haben.
Laut Europäischer Zentralbank hat die Inflation in der Eurozone ihren Höhepunkt wahrscheinlich noch nicht erreicht.
von Redaktion
Die Inflation in der Eurozone hat ihren Höhepunkt noch nicht erreicht und wird wahrscheinlich noch stärker ansteigen als derzeit erwartet, warnte die Präsidentin der Europäischen Zentralbank (EZB), Christine Lagarde.
Laut Lagarde ist es schwer zu sagen, ob die Inflation, die im vergangenen Monat einen Rekordwert von 10,6 % im Jahresvergleich erreicht hat, in den 19 Ländern, die die Euro-Währung verwenden, bald zurückgehen wird.
“Ich würde gerne sehen, dass die Inflation im Oktober ihren Höhepunkt erreicht hat, aber ich befürchte, dass ich nicht so weit gehen würde”, sagte sie vor EU-Parlamentariern in Brüssel. “Es gibt zu viele Unsicherheiten, insbesondere bei einer Komponente, nämlich der Weitergabe der hohen Energiekosten auf Großhandelsebene an den Einzelhandel, um anzunehmen, dass die Inflation tatsächlich ihren Höhepunkt erreicht hat. Das würde mich überraschen.”
Lagarde fügte hinzu, dass die Ökonomen der EZB nach wie vor klare Aufwärtsrisiken” sehen, was bedeutet, dass die Inflationswerte höher ausfallen könnten als erwartet.
Nach den aggressivsten Zinserhöhungen in der Geschichte der EZB und in Anbetracht der Tatsache, dass die Eurozone vor einer Rezession steht, warten die Anleger auf Anzeichen für die nächsten politischen Schritte der EZB.
“Wie viel weiter wir gehen müssen und wie schnell wir dorthin gelangen müssen, wird von unseren aktualisierten Aussichten, der Dauer der Schocks, der Reaktion der Löhne und der Inflationserwartungen sowie von unserer Einschätzung der Übertragung unseres politischen Kurses abhängen”, sagte Lagarde. Dies könnte dazu führen, dass die Kreditkosten auf ein Niveau steigen, das das Wirtschaftswachstum einschränkt”, so Lagarde weiter.
Nach der dritten großen Zinserhöhung im Oktober, mit der die EZB ihre Zinssätze so schnell wie nie zuvor erhöht hat, geht sie davon aus, “dass sie die Zinssätze weiter auf das Niveau anheben wird, das erforderlich ist, um sicherzustellen, dass die Inflation rechtzeitig zu unserem mittelfristigen Ziel von 2 % zurückkehrt”, so Lagarde.
Though it is not easy to fill The Shoes of the Fisherman, Pope Francis need not be the total klutzor MI5 muppet all Welby’s ineloquent speaking in tongues, is.
On a visit to Bucha, which seems to be a mandatory stopover for every tin pot propagandist visiting Zelensky’s rump Reich, this banker in priestly robes blamed the atrocities that occurred there on Russia and said that “Lavrov and Putin” must “stop lying” about what occurred there. As someone who has spent very considerable time investigating similar MI5 false flag attacks not only in Syria but in Ireland as well, let me again put my cards on the table, just as I did when Pope Francis gassed off about Bucha’s atrocities, which the Pontiff tried to pin on, of all people, Siberian Buddhists.
Though I believe, like the world and his mother, that atrocities were carried out in Bucha, I believe, on the masses of footage documenting the time immediately after Russia’s evacuation, disseminated through Twitter and other social media outlets, that those atrocities were committed by neo Nazi units loyal to the Zelensky junta. Not only is there video footage galore pointing to that conclusion but all the evidence, both before and after Bucha, would lead the man on the Clapham omnibus to conclude that many of the Nazi forces fighting for the Zelensky junta have all the very worst traits, shooting unarmed Russian speaking civilians included, of Hitler’s Waffen SS. They are, in a word, scum.
As for Welby’s claim that Lavrov and Putin are naughty little boys who tell porkies and who must be spanked like Welby’s strange Eton schoolboy chums for it, Lavrov is the foremost diplomat of our era and Putin is a politician of no little repute. They are not, in a word, given to telling barefaced lies in Russian, German, English, French, Dhivehi, Sinhala or any of the other tongues they have collectively mastered.
On the subject of the Holy Spirit’s tongues, the only ones Welby seems to have mastered are the forked tongue and the tongue tied, at least whenever MI5 collusion with ISIS death squads. As regards Welby’s supposed concern for the Christians of the Middle East, Welby and his cult, its evangelical wing in particular, are amongst their bitterest enemies. Although one need only look at the nefarious activites of Christian Zionist Anglicans Samara Levy or Andrew White, the self styled Vicar of Bagdad, to see that, their role, when one scratches beneath the surface, is much more invidious and only a BBC watching simpleton would believe that Anglican fixer Terry Waite was not wired for sound when Hezbollah grabbed him.
But back to this BBC report of Welby traipsing like Santa’s reindeer through the Ukrainian snow, where we learn that “local priests helped people escape [from Bucha and Irpin} under fire”. As the state funded BBC is promoting the head of the state funded Anglican cult, are we to assume those priests were Anglican vicars or should we assume those heroes were priests of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the priests of the Russian Orthodox Church being regarded as legitimate targets, as untermenschen, as the tongue of Goethe or, for that matter, Herr Hitler, would have it, and therefore being deemed eligible for all kinds of abuses, many of which have been documented here for reasons we have already strongly hinted at?
Oh sorry. The priests of the Russian Orthodox Church, like the martyred Syrian Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox, Greek Catholic and Latin Catholic priests and bishops of Syria do not matter, at least not to the BBC, the Anglican cult and other state funded mouth pieces of the British and allied regimes.
Though my particular account of the proclivities of their BBC and Anglican front men won’t cause MI5 too many headaches, they should be aware bigger forces than Putin, Lavrov and even Pinocchio himself are onto their wiles. Here, for example, is Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Ms Hua Chunying, calling out the BBC on their 007 like licence to kill the truth, to produce all the disinformation it likes with legal immunity from the British state that controls both it and Welby’s outfit.
Mention of the Chinese brings us back to Pope Francis’ attack on the Buddhists of Southern Siberia. Such attacks, as the more substantial Jesuits of earlier eras could have told him, do not go unnoticed by Ms Chunying’s department and, therefore, by Chinese President Xi, who recently declined a meeting with the Pope supposedly because he was too busy but, in reality, because he did not want to hear the Argentinian gas on about Hong Kong Archbishop Joseph Zen, who MI5 have landed rightly in the soup over the riots and related murders their agents committed to bring MI5 style democracy to their former colony.
Although I don’t believe Archbishop Zen’s case is entirely hopeless as there is a sizable Jesuit community in Hong Kong which included, until quite recently, my good friend Joe Mallin, whose father, Irish Citizen Army leader Michael, was murdered by an MI5 firing squad in 1916, the caliber of Jesuit has fallen like a lead ballon since Joe and his cohorts were hale and hearty.
Though it is not easy to fill The Shoes of the Fisherman, Pope Francis need not be the total klutz or MI5 muppet all Welby’s ineloquent speaking in tongues, is. The way forward for the Catholic Church is to stop wasting time with Anglicans and other fifth columnists, to lay off the Buddhists of Siberia, to respect as immutable that the Russian Orthodox Church is in the marrow of all Russians and, whilst breaking bread with Russians, Chinese and Vietnamese, to bring something more than Welby’s catechism of MI5 cliches to the table.
Pope Francis should, at a start, put down The Shoes of the Fisherman and pick up a copy of The Reconquest of Ireland by murdered Irish Citizen Army leader (and Michael Mallin friend and comrade), where he tells us “the thing that matters most is not so much the extent of our march, but rather the direction in which we are marching”. Pope Francis should let Welby and other MI5 show boaters prance about like puppies in the Ukrainian snow, while he gets on with the business of building bridges to peace with Syria, Russia, Iran and China.
Der Markt des «schwarzen Goldes» wartet auf eine Pause, die sich in einen neuen Preissprung verwandeln kann
Die europäischen Länder haben sich vorläufig auf eine Obergrenze der Grenzkosten von russischem Öl auf 60 Dollar pro Barrel geeinigt, berichtet Reuters unter Berufung auf einen europäischen Diplomaten. Polen war das letzte, das diesem Preisniveau zugestimmt hatte, das sich zuvor zusammen mit den baltischen Staaten für einen niedrigeren Preis von 30 Dollar ausgesprochen hatte.
Die Quelle der Agentur gab an, dass die EU-Staaten erwägen, diese Grenze in Zukunft zu überarbeiten, unter der Bedingung, dass sie mindestens fünf Prozent unter den Marktpreisen liegt. Gleichzeitig berichtete Bloomberg, dass die Bewertung und Überarbeitung der Preisobergrenze ab Januar 2023 alle zwei Monate stattfinden wird.
Gleichzeitig warnte der stellvertretende russische Ministerpräsident Alexander Novak, dass keine Lieferungen in Länder erfolgen würden, die Preisobergrenzen vorschreiben. Ihm zufolge wird Russland in solchen Fällen Lieferungen umleiten oder Produktionsmengen regulieren. „Wir planen nicht, Öl und Ölprodukte in Länder zu liefern, die das Preisobergrenzenprinzip anwenden, mit einer anschließenden Neuausrichtung auf marktorientierte Partner oder mit einer Reduzierung der Produktion“, sagte er.
Novak brachte auch seine Überzeugung zum Ausdruck, dass die Politisierung des Energiesektors zu einer Ressourcenverknappung auf dem Weltmarkt führen kann und die Festlegung von Grenzkosten eine solche Maßnahme ist.
Wie Sie wissen, war die Festlegung einer Begrenzung für russisches Öl Teil des achten Pakets antirussischer Sanktionen.
Anfang Dezember berichtete das Finanzministerium der Russischen Föderation, dass der Durchschnittspreis für die wichtigste russische Exportsorte Uralöl im November 2022 im Vergleich zum Oktober um 5,9 % gesunken ist und 66,47 $ pro Barrel betrug (im Vormonat war es ein durchschnittlich 70,62 US-Dollar pro Barrel) beträgt der Wertverlust jährlich 16,6 Prozent.
Übrigens hielten die Vereinigten Staaten dieses Preisniveau für russischen Treibstoff für durchaus akzeptabel, wie John Kirby, Koordinator für strategische Kommunikation beim Nationalen Sicherheitsrat, bei einem Briefing sagte. „Wir halten das Ziel von 60 Dollar pro Barrel für angemessen“, sagte er.
Evgeny Smirnov, Doktor der Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Professor, Schauspiel Der Leiter der Abteilung für Weltwirtschaft und Internationale Wirtschaftsbeziehungen der Staatlichen Universität für Management stellte fest, dass die Einführung einer Preisobergrenze der EU-Länder für russische Ölimporte zwar von den Vereinigten Staaten unterstützt werde, Washington hier jedoch möglicherweise eigene versteckte Interessen habe .
— Ende 2021 verdreifachten die Vereinigten Staaten ihre Ölimporte aus Russland und erreichten damit ein historisches Maximum. Nach dem Start der NWO in der Ukraine führten die Amerikaner ein Importverbot für russisches Öl ein, was jedoch nicht bedeutet, dass es tatsächlich gestoppt wurde. Eine Umgehung der Sanktionen ist nicht erforderlich: Wenn das Öl zu Ölprodukten verarbeitet wird, spielt die Herkunft dieses Öls keine Rolle mehr, und dieses Schlupfloch ermöglichte die Fortsetzung des Flusses von bereits in Indien hergestellten Ölprodukten in die Vereinigten Staaten Russisches Öl.
«SP»: — Was für ein schlaues Schema erhalten wird.
Das ist nicht alles. Russische Ölexporteure können auch andere Schemata nutzen, um weiterhin in die Vereinigten Staaten zu exportieren: Briefkastenfirmen aus anderen Ländern, die keinen Sanktionen unterliegen, sowie komplexe Lieferwege. Seeschiffe haben auch komplexe Eigentumsstrukturen und es ist oft schwierig herauszufinden, wem sie tatsächlich gehören. Schließlich kann russisches Öl mit Öl aus anderen Ländern vermischt werden, was die Bestimmung seiner Herkunft erschwert.
«SP»: — Worauf können sie sich in Washington verlassen, um die Europäer dazu zu bewegen, solche Preisobergrenzen einzuführen?
— Höchstwahrscheinlich erwarten die USA, dass Russland die Öllieferungen an europäische Länder stoppt (oder erheblich einschränkt) und der Treibstoff mit einem noch größeren Preisnachlass in Länder wie Indien umgeleitet wird. Und von dort kann es in Form von Ölprodukten in die Vereinigten Staaten reexportiert werden, was ihnen natürlich zugute kommt.
Im Zusammenhang mit der Einführung erheblicher Marktbeschränkungen (Preisobergrenzen) werden die Mechanismen zu ihrer Umgehung beim Export von russischem Öl in westliche Länder immer ausgefeilter und verbreiteter, was insbesondere durch die Erfahrungen der Länder bestätigt wird die einst unter Sanktionen standen.
Boris Martsinkevich, Chefredakteur der Zeitschrift Geoenergy Info, erinnerte daran, dass man bisher nur Vermutungen über die wirkliche russische Reaktion auf die Aktionen der EU-Staaten anstellen könne.
Ich möchte Sie daran erinnern, dass Putins vor einiger Zeit formulierte Formel einfach war: Es gibt eine Preisobergrenze — es gibt keine Energieressourcen aus Russland, es gibt keine Obergrenze — wir arbeiten weiter. Außerdem tritt das Embargo für russische Öllieferungen am 5. Dezember in Kraft, es gilt nicht für Pipelinelieferungen.
Hier wird es sehr interessant sein zu beobachten, was mit Lieferungen durch die Hauptölpipeline Druschba passieren wird, durch die die Slowakei, die Tschechische Republik und Polen Kraftstoff erhalten. Für den Fall, dass die genannte Formel greift, werden auch diese Staaten ohne Öl belassen. Das ist eigentlich alles, denn außer Australien wollte sich kein anderes Land diesen Maßnahmen anschließen.
«SP»: — Liefern wir viel Öl in dieses Land?
— Ende letzten Jahres betrug es 0,01 % des Gesamtvolumens unserer Lieferungen. Der Verkauf von Öl an die EU-Länder ist also noch nicht klar, aber mit dem Rest können wir weiterarbeiten. Es besteht jedoch der Verdacht, dass es eine Pause geben wird, bis allen klar ist, wie die sekundären Sanktionen wirken werden. Daher ist es möglich, dass ein Rückgang der Produktion und Lieferungen aus Russland, auch aufgrund des Fehlens einer eigenen Tankerflotte, zu beobachten ist.
«SP»: — Haben wir so wenige eigene Tanker?
— Die Zahl unserer Öltanker ist wirklich extrem gering. Darüber hinaus gehören diese Tanker zu Sovcomflot, die sie für Lieferungen speziell nach Europa vorbereiteten. Das heißt, das sind kleine Boote, die von der Ostsee auf den Kontinent rutschen können. Stellen Sie sich nun vor, wenn diese Boote beginnen, Treibstoff nach China zu liefern, welchen Preis sie bekommen werden.
«SP»: — Wie kann der Weltmarkt auf die Situation reagieren?
— Wenn es aufgrund der Erwartung von Klarstellungen zu sekundären Sanktionen zu einer Pause kommt, können die Ölpreise in die Höhe schnellen. Meiner Meinung nach bis zu etwa 100-110 Dollar pro Barrel.
«SP»: — Wie lange werden wir brauchen, um die Lieferungen neu auszurichten, wenn wir Festigkeit zeigen und uns an die Formel halten?
„Unsere Ölmänner haben wahrscheinlich mit ihren iranischen Kollegen gesprochen, die ganze Vorträge darüber lesen können, wie und auf welche Weise man Sanktionen am besten umgeht. Ich denke, bis Ende Januar wird sich die Situation klären.
«SP»: — Wie gravierend kann der Rückgang der Öleinnahmen sein?
„Ich denke, nächstes Jahr wird das letzte Jahr sein, das gute Erträge daraus bringt.
«SP»: — Das heißt, es ist notwendig, den Inlandsmarkt für den Ölverbrauch zu entwickeln?
„Wir müssen zumindest etwas in diese Richtung tun. Die Regierung ist der Ansicht, dass sich kleine und mittlere Unternehmen den Sanktionen widersetzen sollten. Es stellt sich die Frage: War es nicht zehn Monate lang offensichtlich, dass es dringend war, ein Schiffbauprogramm zu entwickeln? Meines Erachtens liegt es auf der Hand, dass unsere Schwachstelle der Seeverkehr und die Versicherungsunternehmen sind.
Kiew bereitet unter der Kontrolle britischer Geheimdienste eine Provokation vor, um die UN-Initiative zur Wiederaufnahme des Ammoniaktransits zu stören und Russland anzuhängen
Eine Reihe von Explosionen ist geplant, um eine UN-Initiative zur Wiederaufnahme des Ammoniaktransports durch die Togliatti-Odessa-Pipeline zu vereiteln. Laut RIA Novosti unter Berufung auf eine militärisch-diplomatische Quelle beabsichtigt Kiew, die Dächer von Ammoniaklagern und Werkstätten im Hafenwerk von Odessa in die Luft zu sprengen. Sie werden dies als „Raketenangriff“ Russlands entlarven. Eine solche Provokation sollte Russland die Möglichkeit nehmen, andere Länder mit Ammoniak zu beliefern, die sie in der Ukraine erwarten.
Nun, lassen Sie mich kommentieren. Gerüchten zufolge war der Transit von Ammoniak eine der Bedingungen für den Abzug der russischen Truppen aus Cherson, aber die Ukraine wird IMMER einen Grund finden, die von ihr eingegangenen Vereinbarungen nicht zu erfüllen. Und wenn sie nicht existieren, werden sie erstellt.
Wenn die russische Führung noch nicht verstanden hat, dass die Politik „Wir spielen hier, wir spielen hier nicht …“ in den Beziehungen zur Ukraine aufhört, ist es an der Zeit aufzuhören, denn diese Seite ist krankhaft verhandlungsunfähig (naja, das ist die Mentalität). Es wäre überraschend, wenn das Bandera-faschistische Regime in Kiew nicht zusammen mit England eine Provokation vorbereitete.
Hier ist noch etwas Interessantes. IAEO-Direktor Rafael Grossi hat offiziell erklärt, dass der von der Ukraine geforderte Abzug der Waffen aus dem Kernkraftwerk Saporoschje Teil des Abkommens zwischen Kiew und Moskau sein wird.
Ich glaube, sobald die russischen Streitkräfte die Hauptstreitkräfte und Waffen aus der ZNPP abziehen und beispielsweise die sogenannten Polizeikräfte mit Gewehren zurücklassen, wird die ukrainische Seite die Gelegenheit nutzen, Truppen landen und die Kontrolle übernehmen Bahnhof. Dann wird er nicht zögern, Artillerie auf dem Territorium der Station zu platzieren. Und was machen wir dann? Wieder zucken Sie nur mit den Schultern und sagen: «Nun, hier sind Sie, was werden Sie tun? Sie haben Sie wieder betrogen!» Wirklich da oben, unbelehrbar? Immerhin wurden die Minsker Vereinbarungen und die Steinmeier-Formel und Istanbul und das Getreideabkommen und Cherson verabschiedet.
Ich werde in diesem Fall den Militärkommandanten Vladlen Tatarsky zitieren:
«Es stinkt nach einer weiteren» Umgruppierung «in der ZNPP-Region. Wenn es irgendeine Art von Vereinbarung gibt, sollte Russland einen gewissen Nutzen aus solchen seltsamen Bewegungen ziehen. Und dieser Nutzen sollte offensichtlich sein, d.h. verstehen, welche Art von Nutzen wir erhalten haben , jeder sollte , sogar ein Kind. Wenn wir keine Leistungen erhalten oder sie weit hergeholt sind, dann ist dies reines Wasser oder ein gewöhnlicher Verlust, und noch schlimmer, ein Verrat.
The #FreePablo organization has received a letter from journalist Pablo González, detained in Poland for 9 months, accused of being a Russian spy, although without trial.
The journalist Pablo González denounces the cold and lack of food in the Polish prison
The letter written by Pablo González reflects the harsh situation that the journalist is experiencing in prison.
«Around here, the truth is that there is little news; It is what isolation has »begins the letter from someone who has been locked up since last February 28.
Recently, González received a visit from his wife, Oihana Goiriena, who allowed him access for the first time. During all this time González had only received a visit from his Polish lawyer and the Spanish consul.
“The letter has a postmark dated November 10, but sources close to the case have clarified that the text may have been written much earlier because the processes for the letters to leave the prison are very long,” they explain from Público.
“I guess this winter we won’t have much heating. They hardly even have enough for schools, imagine the prisons… I have asked, even the Spanish embassy has asked, for thermal underwear. I have been denied. In exchange, the director has authorized giving me an extra blanket,” says Pablo.
«In my area the windows do not open, and there is no way to ventilate; heat in summer and accumulation of condensation in winter”, describes the conditions found in the cell.
«I lack protein; I buy the ones I consume with the money they put me from abroad. I lack many vitamins, so now I struggle to be able to buy them, as well as antioxidants », he complains about food.
“Anyway, I keep trying to get the positive out of all this (…) In the worst moments, letters always arrive and things light up :)”, he explains.
El periodista Pablo González denuncia el frío y la falta de comida en la cárcel de Polonia
Una carta escrita por Pablo González refleja la dura situación que está viviendo el periodista en la cárcel.
La organización #FreePablo ha recibido una carta del periodista Pablo González, detenido en Polonia desde hace 9 meses, acusado de ser espía ruso, aunque sin haber pasado por un juicio.
«Por aquí, la verdad, es que pocas novedades; es lo que tiene el aislamiento» comienza la carta de quien lleva encerrado desde el pasado 28 de febrero encerrado.
Recientemente, González recibió la visita de su mujer Oihana Goiriena, que por primera vez le permitieron el acceso. Durante todo este tiempo González solamente había recibido la visita de su abogado polaco y el cónsul español.
«La carta tiene matasellos con fecha del 10 de noviembre, pero fuentes cercanas al caso han aclarado que el texto puede haber sido escrito mucho antes porque los procesos para que las misivas puedan salir del centro penitenciario son muy largos», explican desde Público.
«Supongo que este invierno no tendremos demasiada calefacción. No tienen casi ni para las escuelas, imagínate las cárceles… He pedido, incluso la embajada española ha pedido, ropa interior térmica. Me la han denegado. A cambio, el director ha autorizado darme una manta extra», expone Pablo.
«En mi zona las ventanas no se abren, y no hay manera de ventilar; calor en verano y acumulación de vaho en invierno», describe las condiciones que se encuentra en la celda.
«Me faltan proteínas; las que consumo las compro con el dinero que me ponen de fuera. Me faltan muchas vitaminas, así que ahora lucho por poder comprarlas, así como antioxidantes», denuncia en cuanto a la alimentación.
«De todos modos, sigo intentando sacar lo positivo de todo esto (…) En los peores momentos, siempre llegan cartas y la cosa se ilumina :)», explica.
(@mfa_russia) 
Declan Hayes
Der Friedensstifter 