El representante permanente de Rusia ante la ONU afirma que no solo Kiev ha perdido en el conflicto de Ucrania, sino también la Unión Europea, que se ha convertido en un satélite de EE.UU.
Los países de la Unión Europea se encuentran entre los principales perdedores del conflicto en Ucrania, según declaró el representante permanente de Rusia ante la ONU, Vasili Nebenzia, en una reunión del Consejo de Seguridad celebrada este viernes.
“Sea como fuere, hoy ya es obvio que en esta guerra por poderes de Estados Unidos, la OTAN y la Unión Europea contra Rusia a manos de los ucranianos, Ucrania está perdiendo“, afirmó Nebenzia en su discurso.
“Y lo que es igual de importante, por mucho que a nuestros colegas europeos les cueste aceptar esta conclusión, no es la única perdedora de este conflicto. En realidad, la propia Unión Europea es casi la principal perdedora“, añadió el diplomático ruso.
A continuación, el diplomático ruso se dirigió a los representantes de la UE y les recordó los tiempos en que el bloque tenía planes para “su propio papel geopolítico” y “una opinión discrepante en una serie de cuestiones internacionales clave”.
“Es sorprendente la facilidad con la que han abandonado todas estas ambiciones de mando para volver a las filas de los obedientes satélites de Estados Unidos”, declaró Nebenzia.
“¿Necesita esto la población de Europa?”
Asimismo, Nebenzia señaló las pérdidas económicas de los países europeos a causa del conflicto. “Según hemos sabido esta semana, las pérdidas directas solo de Alemania, considerada la locomotora de la UE, por las sanciones antirrusas impuestas por Estados Unidos ascienden a 200.000 millones de dólares. ¿Cuál es exactamente el interés europeo en este asunto?“, se preguntó el representante ruso.
El representante permanente ruso también llamó la atención sobre la creciente dependencia de los países europeos respecto a Estados Unidos en cuestiones energéticas. “Y ahora, en lugar de asociación estratégica y proyectos económicos conjuntos rentables, pintan a Rusia como un enemigo y se disparan en el pie, liberándose supuestamente de la dependencia energética de nuestro país y cayendo en una dependencia energética aún más severa de Estados Unidos“, indicó Nebenzia.
“Además, hoy no solo Ucrania, sino toda Europa corre el riesgo de convertirse de nuevo en un trampolín para la confrontación militar a la que se le arrastra constantemente desde el otro lado del océano. ¿Necesita esto la población de Europa? Me gustaría creer que no”, expresó el diplomático.
El presidente sirio, Bashar Al-Assad, elogió el heroísmo y la valentía de las fuerzas armadas rusas en la guerra conjunta que libran contra el terrorismo en el territorio de esta nación árabe.
Esta postura del mandatario fue expresada en un mensaje de felicitación enviado a su homólogo ruso, Vladimir Putin, con motivo del Día de los Defensores de la Patria.
Según Assad, los grandes logros sobre el terreno en la lucha contra este flagelo constituyen uno de los aspectos de la cooperación efectiva que vincula a las instituciones militares de los dos países.
Transmito mis felicitaciones a la valiente institución militar rusa, que ha demostrado una alta eficiencia y eficacia en la defensa de las tierras de Rusia y la protección de sus intereses nacionales, dijo el presidente sirio en su misiva.
A petición de Damasco, Rusia envió en 2015 fuerzas a Siria para contribuir a la lucha contra el terrorismo, las cuales se concentran principalmente en la base aérea de Hemeimem y en la naval de Tartous, en el Mediterráneo oriental.
Las fuerzas de seguridad iraníes han desmantelado una red terrorista pro-occidental en la provincia central de Isfahán, arrestando a 21 terroristas y personas contrarrevolucionarias, dijeron las autoridades.
Asadollah Yafari, presidente del Tribunal Supremo de la provincia de Isfahán, dijo el viernes que ocho terroristas fueron arrestados en la provincia antes de las ceremonias para conmemorar el 45º aniversario de la gloriosa victoria de la Revolución Islámica de Irán en febrero.
En línea con la lucha contra los terroristas y los grupos contrarrevolucionarios, las fuerzas de inteligencia en Isfahán detuvieron a 13 terroristas y confiscaron grandes cantidades de municiones y armas, incluidas 55 bombas hechas a mano, añadió.
El funcionario señaló que los enemigos han estado haciendo todos los esfuerzos posibles para dañar a la nación iraní en los últimos años, pero ésta disfruta de una paz duradera gracias a la vigilancia de las fuerzas de seguridad.
Yafari dijo que las fuerzas de seguridad iraníes se están esforzando por combatir todo tipo de terrorismo, actos de sabotaje y matones organizados y contrarrestar los ciberataques y cualquier amenaza contra la seguridad del país, así como salvaguardar a los diferentes grupos étnicos y religiosos.
En enero, las autoridades judiciales iraníes ejecutaron a cuatro personas condenadas por trabajar para la agencia de espionaje israelí Mossad y planear un ataque con bomba contra una fábrica del Ministerio de Defensa en la provincia central de Isfahán.
The emerging multipolar world order led by Russia, China, and the Global South is pushing the old Western arrogant order into historical oblivion
This week marks the second anniversary of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine that began on February 24, 2022. President Vladimir Putin ordered the intervention of Russian forces for two reasons: to protect the Russian-speaking population of the Donbass region which had endured eight years of NATO-backed aggression; and, secondly, to denazify the regime that the Western powers had illegally installed with a coup d’état in Kiev in 2014. The tenth anniversary of that coup on February 22 was also marked this week.
Two years on, the first objective has been substantially achieved. Russian forces control most of the Donbass region, as well as Kherson, Zaporozhye, and Crimea. These regions are now legally part of the Russian Federation following historic referenda. In sum, Ukraine has lost about 20 percent of its pre-conflict territory to Russia. The concerned populations contend that they have rejoined Mother Russia.
The military victory last week for Russian forces in the key city of Avdeevka portends the imminent full taking of the Donbass along its historic provincial lines. That breakthrough also speaks of the near collapse of the Kiev regime forces. Two years on, the cities and towns of Donetsk and Lugansk have been rebuilt after suffering the vandalism and war crimes of the Kiev regime. The NATO-backed regime still attacks communities but the Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine are appreciably safer and better off than they were two years ago.
As for the second objective, the denazification of the Kiev regime has still not yet been achieved. However, the regime is but a shell of its former incarnation when with the help of NATO weapons and military advisers it was waging a brutal aggression against ethnic Russian communities.
Moscow has stated that it will continue its military operation in Ukraine until the neo-nazi regime is eliminated. There seems to be little doubt that that objective will be met given the superior firepower on the Russian side and the rapidly deteriorating condition of the NATO-backed forces.
The Russian achievement is quite remarkable given that the U.S.-led NATO bloc (30 nations) has flooded Ukraine with a vast array of heavy weapons. The United States and its European allies have spent – wasted – up to $200 billion in supporting the Kiev regime over the past two years. Despite the inordinate flow of weaponry and mercenaries, Russia has secured the territory it set out to obtain, and the NATO-backed side is facing collapse.
The course of the war is on Russia’s side. From the outset, Moscow said it had no intention to occupy all of Ukraine. But the collapse of the regime in a rump state is no doubt something that Russia wants, and the betting odds point to that eventuality as the cabal in Kiev descends into corruption, backstabbing, and infighting.
But, importantly, the military situation in Ukraine is only part of a much bigger picture of global confrontation and one that speaks to an existential crisis for Western imperialism.
On February 25, 2022, the day after Russian forces began their special operation, our SCF weekly editorial stated that the intervention would finally confront NATO’s aggression existentially.
Our editorial then was headlined: “U.S., NATO-Backed Aggression Towards Russia Finally Checked”.
Here is a lengthy clip from that article which gives the context of that historic moment:
“A NATO-backed anti-Russia regime on Russia’s doorstep attacking Russian people is clearly unacceptable. The volume of NATO weapons flowing into Ukraine over recent weeks was pointing to a larger war footing. Then at the Munich Security Conference last weekend [in February 2022] Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky dropped the incendiary threat that Ukraine could develop nuclear weapons. Clearly, the security situation for Russia was crashing several red lines.
“Of course, the chorus of condemnation from the United States and its Western partners is shot through with hypocrisy. They claim that Russia has ‘shattered peace in Europe’ and they have moved to impose an all-out economic blockade to ‘strangle the economic functioning of Russia’. The U.S. and NATO have for years trashed international law and the UN Charter with their criminal wars and regime-change operations. Their duplicity and hysterics are adding more layers of confusion to the problem.
“Western media have systematically concealed the global problem of U.S. and NATO aggression. The misinformation and disinformation are manifest with claims that Russia is embarked on ‘a barbaric venture’ and ‘unprovoked war’. To claim ‘unprovoked’ betrays extreme ignorance of the situation.
“Russia has for years warned that U.S. and NATO aggression was posing a critical danger to international security and had to stop. The revoking of arms control treaties by the U.S. (the ABM, INF, Open Skies Treaty) and the expansion of missile threats near Russia’s borders were no longer tolerable. Ukraine is really just one element of the bigger picture. But this week, Russia has moved finally to stop the aggression. It is a historic watershed.
“Moscow says that its aim is to deNazify and demilitarize an illegitimate NATO-backed regime in Kiev. It says it has no intention to occupy Ukraine. As of this writing, Moscow has indicated it is open to negotiating as it always has been. What Russia is seeking is a more comprehensive security agreement with the U.S. and NATO for Europe.
“More widely, the United States must also end its belligerent ideological view of Russia and China as enemies. The U.S. has to come to terms with a multipolar world order in which its unilateral diktat is no longer tenable, legally, politically, or morally. That is the ultimate challenge for international peace and security.”
Back to the present writing of this week’s editorial, it should be noted that a month after Russian intervention in Ukraine, a potential diplomatic settlement to end the conflict was negotiated in March-April 2022 via mediation by Turkey. The peace deal was sabotaged in April 2022 by the United States and Britain (Boris Johnson on an errand from the Biden Administration) who overruled the Kiev regime and insisted on a full-blown war. Nearly two years later, the Ukrainian military death toll has climbed to 500,000 and the Kiev regime is rendered nearly defunct.
The upshot is that Ukraine has been callously devastated by the United States and its imperialist partners in a proxy war against Russia – a war that the Western powers have all but lost.
But this epoch-making conflict has significance way beyond the disaster of Ukraine.
What is evident to the whole world is the criminal nature of the U.S.-led Western axis.
While the Western powers have fueled a futile slaughter in Ukraine, they are also seen by the world to be complicit in genocide in Gaza with their unbridled support for the Israeli regime even as it massacres Palestinian civilians, including women and children, by the hundreds every day for the past five months. The death toll is nearly 30,000.
The United States – the lead hegemon in the Western imperialist axis – is also recklessly ramping up provocations against China through its illegal weaponizing of Taiwan.
The true face of Western “democracies” and their so-called “rules-based global order” is fully revealed. It is the ugly face of fascism.
For decades after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, the Western powers, which had covertly sponsored the rise of European fascism, were able to project a fraud on the world claiming to be virtuous champions of pro-democracy and pro-peace. Informed people always knew the Western pretensions were a sordid sham.
Since the watershed conflict in Ukraine – and thanks to Russian fortitude and resolve – the Western charade now stands exposed. The U.S.-led axis of Western imperialism is finally facing a nemesis, a day of reckoning.
The emerging multipolar world order led by Russia, China, and the Global South – the world’s majority – is pushing the old Western arrogant order into historical oblivion. The United States and its rogues’ gallery of partners in NATO are crumbling from their own lies, duplicity, and untenable dead-end of warmongering rackets.
The conclusion of our editorial from two years ago stands the test of time: “The U.S. has to come to terms with a multipolar world order in which its unilateral diktat is no longer tenable, legally, politically, or morally. That is the ultimate challenge for international peace and security.”
The immigration issue has emerged as a major liability for Biden and his party.
There was breaking news late Wednesday that the Biden administration is planning “a string of new executive actions … in an effort to curb migration at the U.S. southern border.”
Sources familiar with the plans say an announcement of these new policies will likely be timed around the upcoming State of the Union address.
The reason for this sudden change is obvious. The American people believe we are being invaded, and the immigration issue has emerged as a major liability for Biden and his party.
But this simply proves one thing: Biden has been lying all along.
First of all, “Border Czar” Kamala Harris, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas have repeatedly insisted that “the border is secure.” That’s an obvious lie.
But Biden’s excuse for doing nothing the past three years was the absurd claim that he had “done all I can do” and that Congress had to pass new laws to give him the authority to act on the border.
That was another obvious lie, and these reports of “executive actions” prove it.
By the way, Biden took more than 60 executive actions to gut border security and enforcement of our immigration laws. The result of his actions has been an unmitigated disaster.
Media Bias
We’ve noticed in recent weeks that the left-wing cabal is going all out to frighten the American people. Seeing that Donald Trump is doing well, they are coming out with all the things they believe he will do if their efforts to destroy him fail and he is returned to the White House.
For example, there were multiple stories Wednesday that — horror of horrors — Trump intends to bring “Christian nationalists” into his administration. Translation: A lot of Christians who love America will be able to work in Trump’s second term. We’ll be writing more about that in the days ahead.
But what caught my attention yesterday was this headline from the Washington Post, “Trump Team Sees Camps For Deported.”
The word “camps” is intended to conjure up images of the Holocaust and Japanese internment camps. It is meant to frighten voters.
In fact, Biden even set up migrant camps on our military bases.
Clearly, when 7 million people who shouldn’t be here walked across our border, the Biden administration set up a lot of camps! And if we objected, we were called “haters.”
But if you want to send some of those people back to their native countries and set up camps to process them out, to the left-wing hacks at the Washington Post that smacks of “evil days ahead.”
When Aliens Attack
There is growing alarm from law enforcement and national security experts at the increasing number of illegal aliens coming from nations halfway around the world and nations hostile to U.S. interests.
For example, when a reporter asked one recently detained illegal alien where he was from, he gave this threatening reply, “Soon, you’re going to know who I am.”
Americans rightly believe our country is being invaded by a foreign force embedded among the seven million who have entered the United States. But the massive migrant influx is in itself an attack.
We’re told that most of the people coming here just want to find work. But that doesn’t matter. Their sheer numbers have provided cover for those who mean us harm.
City after city is reporting a major crime wave fueled by illegal immigration, and authorities are worried about violent gangs joining forces.
Do we have such a shortage of criminals that we must import them, too?
Speaking Of Attacks…
Tens of thousands of Americans woke up yesterday and found that their cellular service was down and they couldn’t access the internet. Multiple phone companies and even some emergency 911 systems were impacted.
As of this writing, it is not entirely clear what caused the mass communication outage. But we do know that a cyberattack is affecting pharmacies all over the country.
We also know there has been a serious increase in cyberattacks aimed at our critical infrastructure. We know enemies of the United States are harassing us and preparing for war while there is still a pushover in the White House.
Garbage In, Garbage Out
There’s an old saying in computer science about programming: Garbage in, garbage out. In other words, what the computer produces is based on the quality of its human programming.
Well, we just got an infuriating example of the risk we face from Big Tech “artificial intelligence” (AI) platforms that are obviously being programmed by radical leftists to indoctrinate the country.
Google’s AI chatbot, Gemini, has been temporarily shut down for being overwhelmingly stupid and widely mocked for refusing to produce images featuring white men and women.
For example, when asked to show representative images of the Founding Fathers in 1789, Gemini produced a series of pictures full of various minorities, including one man with a turban.
Gemini even turned George Washington into a black man, explaining that it was trying to “provide a more accurate and inclusive representation of the historical context.”
It produced similarly inaccurate images when asked to create a picture of a pope or people who fought in the French Revolution. When asked to create an image of a Viking, Gemini produced “a shirtless black man with rainbow feathers.”
One user asked Gemini to create an image of a church in San Francisco. It refused because San Francisco sits on land once occupied by a Native American tribe.
Of course, this kind of nonsense is nothing new for Google. Its famous search engine has been discriminating against conservative media outlets and ideas for years.
I am reminded of the famous George Orwell quote, “Who controls the past controls the future.” We just got a glimpse of the Orwellian future that awaits us as the neo-Marxist left increasingly uses AI to manipulate us.
Weaponization Of The Law
The two systems of justice in America — one for conservatives and one for leftists — just suffered a defeat in California of all places.
Federal Judge Cormac Carney was hearing a case involving violent assaults at pro-Trump events in 2017. The two groups involved in the violence were the left-wing radicals of Antifa and members of the Rise Above Movement (RAM), a “white nationalist” group.
In another example of the weaponization of the law, prosecutors only pressed charges against the RAM members and did not prosecute the Antifa thugs. Judge Carney ruled that the government’s selective prosecution was “constitutionally impermissible.”
Carney’s opinion offered an excellent defense of the First Amendment and free speech, and he declared that the government cannot prosecute one violent group and not another violent group simply because it finds one engaged in “more offensive speech.”
Defending Faith, Family & Freedom
In this week’s “Defending Faith, Family, & Freedom” podcast for the James Dobson Family Institute, I discuss three recent examples of the left’s war on truth, reality, and common sense.
Whether we like it or not, the culture war is very real, and only one side can prevail. Men and women of faith must be engaged in this great battle for America.
Gary L. Bauer is an Opinion Columnist at The Patriot Post, and is one of America’s most effective spokesmen for pro-life, pro-family, and pro-growth values. Bauer is a frequent guest on a wide variety of political talk shows and a much-in-demand speaker nationwide.
February 24, 2022 was the day that changed 21st century geopolitics forever, Pepe Escobar writes.
Exactly two years ago this Saturday, on February 24, 2022, Vladimir Putin announced the launching – and described the objectives – of a Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. That was the inevitable follow-up to what happened three days before, on February 21 – exactly 8 years after Maidan 2014 in Kiev – when Putin officially recognized the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
During this – pregnant with meaning – short space of only three days, everyone expected that the Russian Armed Forces would intervene, militarily, to end the massive bombing and shelling that had been going on for three weeks across the frontline – which even forced the Kremlin to evacuate populations at risk to Russia. Russian intel had conclusive proof that the NATO-backed Kiev forces were ready to execute an ethnic cleansing of Russophone Donbass.
February 24, 2022 was the day that changed 21st century geopolitics forever, in several complex ways. Above all, it marked the beginning of a vicious, all-out confrontation, “military-technical” as the Russians call it, between the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder, its easily pliable NATOstan vassals, and Russia – with Ukraine as the battleground.
There is hardly any question Putin had calculated, before and during these three fateful days, that his decisions would unleash the unbounded fury of the collective West – complete with a tsunami of sanctions.
Ay, there’s the rub; it’s all about Sovereignty. And a true sovereign power simply cannot live under permanent threats. It’s even feasible that Putin had wanted (italics mine) Russia to get sanctioned to death. After all, Russia is so naturally wealthy that without a serious challenge from abroad, the temptation is enormous to live off its rents while importing what it could easily produce.
Exceptionalists always gloated that Russia is “a gas station with nuclear weapons”. That’s ridiculous. Oil and gas, in Russia, account for roughly 15% of GDP, 30% of the government budget, and 45% of exports. Oil and gas add power to the Russian economy – not a drag. Putin shaking Russia’s complacency generated a gas station producing everything it needs, complete with unrivalled nuclear and hypersonic weapons. Beat that.
Ukraine has “never been less than a nation”
Xavier Moreau is a French politico-strategic analyst based in Russia for 24 years now. Graduated from the prestigious Saint-Cyr military academy and with a Sorbonne diploma, he hosts two shows on RT France.
His latest book, Ukraine: Pourquoi La Russie a Gagné (“Ukraine: Why Russia has Won”), just out, is an essential manual for European audiences on the realities of the war, not those childish fantasies concocted across the NATOstan sphere by instant “experts” with less than zero combined arms military experience.
Moreau makes it very clear what every impartial, realist analyst was aware of from the beginning: the devastating Russian military superiority, which would condition the endgame. The problem, still, is how this endgame – “demilitarization” and “denazification” of Ukraine, as established by Moscow – will be achieved.
What is already clear is that “demilitarization”, of Ukraine and NATO, is a howling success that no new wunderwaffen – like F-16s – will be able to change.
Moreau perfectly understands how Ukraine, nearly 10 years after Maidan, is not a nation; “and has never been less than a nation”. It’s a territory where populations that everything separates are jumbled up. Moreover, it has been a – “grotesque” – failed state ever since its independence. Moreau spends several highly entertaining pages going through the corruption grotesquerie in Ukraine, under a regime that “gets its ideological references simultaneously via admirers of Stepan Bandera and Lady Gaga.”
None of the above, of course, is reported by oligarch-controlled European mainstream media.
Watch out for Deng Xiao Putin
The book offers an extremely helpful analysis of those deranged Polish elites who bear “a heavy responsibility in the strategic catastrophe that awaits Washington and Brussels in Ukraine”. The Poles actually believed that Russia would crumble from the inside, complete with a color revolution against Putin. That barely qualifies as Brzezinski on crack.
Moreau shows how 2022 was the year when NATOstan, especially the Anglo-Saxons – historically racist Russophobes – were self-convinced thar Russia would fold because it is a “poor power”. Obviously, none of these luminaries understood how Putin strengthened the Russian economy very much like Deng Xiaoping on the Chinese economy. This “self-intoxication”, as Moreau qualifies it, did wonders for the Kremlin.
By now it’s clear even for the deaf, dumb, and blind that the destruction of the European economy has been a massive tactic, historic victory for the Hegemon – as much as the blitzkrieg against the Russian economy has been an abysmal failure.
All of the above brings us to the meeting of G20 Foreign Ministers this week in Rio. That was not exactly a breakthrough. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it very clear that the collective West at the G20 tried by all means to “Ukrainize” the agenda – with less than zero success. They were outnumbered and counterpunched by BRICS and Global South members.
At his press conference, Lavrov could not be more stark on the prospects of the war of the collective West against Russia. These are the highlights:
Western countries categorically do not want serious dialogue on Ukraine.
There were no serious proposals from the United States to begin contacts with the Russian Federation on strategic stability; trust cannot be restored now while Russia is declared an enemy.
There were no contacts on the sidelines of the G20 with either Blinken or the British Foreign Secretary.
The Russian Federation will respond to new Western sanctions with practical actions that relate to the self-sufficient development of the Russian economy.
If Europe tries to restore ties with the Russian Federation, making it dependent on their whims, then such contacts are not needed.
In a nutshell – diplomatically: you are irrelevant, and we don’t care.
That was complementing Lavrov’s intervention during the summit, which defined once again a clear, auspicious path towards multipolarity. Here are the highlights:
The forming of a fair multipolar world order without a definite center and periphery has become much more intensive in the past few years. Asian, African and Latin American countries are becoming important parts of the global economy. Not infrequently, they are setting the tone and the dynamics.
Many Western economies, especially in Europe, are actually stagnating against this background. These statistics are from Western-supervised institutions – the IMF, the World Bank and the OECD.
These institutions are becoming relics from the past. Western domination is already affecting their ability to meet the requirements of the times. Meanwhile, it is perfectly obvious today that the current problems of humanity can only be resolved through a concerted effort and with due consideration for the interests of the Global South and, generally, all global economic realities.
Institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the EBRD, and the EIB are prioritizing Kiev’s military and other needs. The West allocated over $250 billion to tide over its underling thus creating funding shortages in other parts of the world. Ukraine is taking up the bulk of the funds, relegating Africa and other regions of the Global South to rationing.
Countries that have discredited themselves by using unlawful acts ranging from unilateral sanctions and the seizure of sovereign assets and private property to blockades, embargoes, and discrimination against economic operators based on nationality to settle scores with their geopolitical opponents cannot be considered guarantors of financial stability.
Without a doubt, new institutions that focus on consensus and mutual benefit are needed to democratize the global economic governance system. Today, we are seeing positive dynamics for strengthening various alliances, including BRICS, the SCO, ASEAN, the African Union, LAS, CELAC, and the EAEU.
This year, Russia chairs BRICS, which saw several new members join it. We will do our best to reinforce the potential of this association and its ties with the G20.
Considering that 6 out of 15 UN Security Council members represent the Western bloc, we will support the expansion of this body solely through the accession of countries from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
Call it the real state of things, geopolitically, two years after the start of the SMO.
Canadians are by and large nice people, which evidently makes it easier to impose totalitarianism. From Elizabeth Nickson at elizabethnickson.substack.com:
Stress Testing Western Civ by Destroying It
In the Great Game played by the U.N., the W.E.F., and its various grim satellites, the international policy shops, and the closeted meetings of the Round Table, Bilderberg and the Committee of 300, the Vril, the 33rd Degree idiots, the backrooms of the National Security State, the CIA, MI6 etc., Canada’s is generally seen as the most passive western population. All over the world, people joke about us, mock us, and for the past fifty years, we have deserved it all. We went to sleep, we let the buggers have it all and we deserve everything that is happening. Our passivity is real. But it is skin deep – a recent and artificially imposed national character. The people I grew up among, all the families, the thousands among whom we lived, were anything but, though by the time I left university, the new Canada was forming, courtesy of the Marxist Trudeau and the civil service he bulked out.
The truckers invented the protests going on all over the world right now in every single country. That was us. Don’t count us out, but this is what they did , over fifty years, when we trusted them, how they bullied and destroyed a great people.
I left after graduate school, and came back only for family reasons. I vainly dream sometimes of a cottage in the Lake District, a ranch in Wyoming, but stuck I am, hoping, begging, praying for salvation. I am seventh generation Canadian on some sides of the family – they were titanic people who dug the highest longest railroad pass in the world, Kicking Horse Pass, the American branch who dug the first deep cut on the Welland, or my grandmother’s first cousin, Klondike Joe Boyle, who became the richest man in the world, digging gold up in the Yukon with a bear cub for a pet with whom he napped. He competed with the Guggenheims who had a dredging operation the size of his. He financed an entire regiment in the Great War – uniform buttons of gold – romanced and won Marie, Queen of Rumania, Victoria’s granddaughter and built the railroad the Russian army needed to get to the front in WW1. These people I grew up among? They were tough, exigent of their children and they expected much of the future. The future they saw was gleaming, incandescent with light, scholarship, wealth and goodness. And adventure. My great-grandmother started the Vancouver General Hospital in a tent. All these women bureaucrats – our bureaucracy is deeply feminized and not a good way – can do is institute legal fentanyl for children and adults, killing thousands a year on the streets, ruined people defecating, robbing and knifing fathers in front of their children outside Starbucks. You can kill a baby here, at any time in your pregnancy. No questions. Never mind population collapse. We don’t do math. We are girlies.Advertisement
The Houthis stymie 12 percent of the world’s shipping. Israel has bitten off more than it can chew and is desperately trying to maneuver the U.S. into a broader Middle Eastern engagement and years of pointless war. In Europe, farmers and truckers are protesting and blocking roads over climate change measures and other grievances. In the U.S., a governor ignores a Supreme Court decision and receives support from 25 fellow governors.
At the recently concluded confab at Davos, the world’s would-be rulers conferred on how they would rule the world. How quaint. They’re going to rule a world that’s spinning out of their, or anybody else’s, control. A Russian politician, Konstantin Dolgov, coined a phrase for the oxymoronic pipe dream that prevails in Washington, Davos, Brussels, and Tel Aviv: “The Americans need controlled instability to realize their own plans.” Dolgov noted: “But this instability has long been out of Washington’s control.”
Controlled instability is a futile hope from a bygone age. The instability that manifests daily is anything but controlled. Texas Governor Greg Abbott and his fellow governors’ defiance marks an emerging phase: instability and conflict among actors within the political system. It may be posturing, but it still amounts to a middle finger from the governors to the federal government and its once revered Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court has been rubber-stamping expansion of the federal government’s power since the Constitution was ratified. The most egregious recent examples were National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius (2012) and King v. Burwell (2015), the decisions that upheld Obamacare. Nobody protested against the program that hastened the destruction of American health care. Nine years after Burwell, anti-government rage is kindling fires in the U.S. and all over the world. Control is losing; instability is winning, and the game is still in the early innings.Continue reading →
Ursula von der Leyen is not very bright, not very likeable, and not very honest. In other words, she’s perfect for another term as the European Commission president. From Martin Jay at strategic-culture.su:
Ursula von der Leyen wants to have a second term as European Commission president and she has the political support from the European parliament’s most powerful pan-European conservative bloc to get it. But can Europe, indeed the world, put up with this German’s narrow view of Europe’s role in a new multipolar world order when, in so many respects, she is like a twin of Joe Biden – stuck in the 1980s with their views about America running everything and naturally hating Russia and blaming Putin for almost everything which she can get away with.
Her second term bid is not unprecedented as José Manuel Barroso went for two terms, plagued by some rumours that he did it to avoid a paedophile investigation in Portugal soiling his political legacy. And so the EU will not be breaking new ground here. But the system of electing a European Commission president – member states each present their own candidate which is ultimately voted in by MEPs – might have other ideas for Ursula who also will look at the extended term as a way of avoiding awkward graft prosecutions which are inevitably going to arise when she leaves office. Her murky relationship with Pfizer, which sold the EU billions of dollars of vaccines under her watch, while the whole affair was shrouded in secrecy – only to reveal that her husband was working for a biotech company which, strangely, received millions of euros in grants and might be connected to Pfizer – might catch up with her. Presently, and it should come as no surprise, the EU’s own internal watchdogs and anti-fraud units have only carried out the symbolic proceedings to probe her relationship with Pfizer and have found no graft or conflict of interest. But it is the New York Times which is suing her for pretending to no longer have critical text messages to Pfizer bosses about the vaccine deal, which still hangs in the air like a bad smell.
It’s not only graft which might raise its head when MEPs cross-examine her in the parliament as part of one of their first important tasks in the late summer of this year. It’s also the fact that many MEPs simply don’t like her and don’t trust her and, given that we can assume more far right MEPs joining the parliament, this number might be considerable – leading to her being a runner but not succeeding in getting the second term. Many MEPs from the present term simply don’t like how she bungled most of the crises which hit her, almost from day one in the job and have left the EU with not only a constellation of new problems – immigration being a key one – but also spiralling debts. Of course, “Ursula” as Joe Biden calls her, has the answer for this last mess. Increase the EU budget, she simply states as her opening speech at the Munich Security Conference.
Welcome to the club, I’d say, but its nearly two years to late for that. Ukraine lost the war on February 24 2022, the day the Special Military operation had started.
There never was a chance for Ukraine to win.
I will first let the Colonel recap the established narrative to then add my observations to it:
Two years ago, the Ukrainian Armed Forces defied expectations immediately. Days before Russia’s massive combined arms incursion, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley spoke for the U.S. military when he predicted to Congress that Kyiv would fall within 72 hours.
Many military analysts similarly predicted the Russian Armed Forces would quickly rout the overmatched Ukrainians. American leaders encouraged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to leave the country, lest Russian troops assassinate him.
These projections of immediate success for Russia misread the progress Ukraine had made in capability and readiness since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. They also overestimated the Russian forces’ readiness, air superiority, and command cohesion.
That is all – somewhat – true.
There were expectations that the Russian forces would quickly conquer Kiev and overthrow the sitting government. However, the Russians never applied the necessary manpower to do so. Pacifying and holding an enemy city in modern times generally requires abound 1 soldier per 40 inhabitants. When the war started Kiev had about 3 million inhabitants. Taking and holding the city would have required some 75,000 troops. But the Russian forces never deployed more than 40,000 troops into the general direction of Kiev.
Thus the military aim was not to take the city. It was to apply pressure to achieve a political aim.
Immediately after the war had begun the Ukrainian government had agreed to hold peace talks. Over the next weeks these were held first in Belarus and later in Istanbul. In late March, after Ukraine had agreed during the negotiations to not join NATO, Russia made the good will gesture of pulling its troops back from the capitol. But in early April the U.S. and UK intervened and pressed Kiev to abolish negotiations.
The western political and military leadership had simply misread the Russian aim, thought its military was weak and had come to the wrong conclusions.
That also happened in the following phase:
One year ago, all signs were encouraging. Ukrainian forces had been bloodied, but they held on to territory in the east in defiance of expectations. Successful counteroffensives allowed Ukraine to regain territory in the south. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy defiantly declared the coming year one of “our invincibility.” American aid to the country offered a king’s ransom in artillery and anti-tank weapons through the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, and the flow seemed unceasing.
Inspired by Ukraine’s stunning success against the much larger and more advanced military, the West galvanized behind Zelensky and his troops. Tragically, all these indicators led to unrealistic expectations.
Russia has started the war with its military structured in peace-time formations. It had only used its standing forces, not any conscripts or mobilized troops, to launch the Ukraine campaign. The main organizational structure of Russian troops at that time were the Battalion Tactical Groups.
Excursus: During Soviet times the military had the classic war-time structure of Divisions with 4 to 5 Brigades each of which each had 4 to 5 Battalions each of which had four to five Companies. Such structures require lots of people.
To save money Russia did away with the Division layer. The Motorized Infantry Brigades, consisting of one tank Battalion, two motorized infantry Battalions and two artillery Battalions, were shrunken into Battalion Tactical Groups.
About a third of the artillery and tanks formations were eliminated as well as half of infantry. Instead of some 4.000-4.500 soldiers in a Brigade formations the Battalion Tactical Groups had each kept only 2,000 men. The no longer manned and needed equipment was put into storage.
The peace construct of a Battalion Tactical Group was a lot cheaper than the people intensive Brigade structure but still had about 2/3rd of the original fire power. The idea had always been that, should a war happen, the BTG structure would be re-filled with mobilized men and restored equipment to again become a full-sized brigade. – End Excursus
It was not until August 2022, after the failure of another round of negotiations, that the Russian leadership decided to go on war footage. A mobilization was launched, equipment was pulled from storage and peacetime BTG formations were revived into full Brigade structures. The Division command layer was reestablished. All this required time and retraining. The war industry had to be set up to support a longer fight.
There is a saying: “The Russians are slow to saddle but ride fast.” It can be applied here.
During 2022 to early 2023 the sparse Russian forces were required to use economy of force. Positions of less value were guarded by a minimum of forces (Kharkiv, Kherson). When those forces came under pressure the positions were simply given up. Defensive lines were build to guard more valuable ground.
By spring to summer 2023 the Russian forces had (re-)grown to full war power. The systematic destruction of the Ukrainian forces could finally begin.
As soon as the Ukrainian forces tried to challenge the revived Russian formations, most famously in their failed ‘counter offensive, the got beaten the hell out of themselves. Pressed to produced more gains the political leadership of Ukraine demanded that its troops attack everywhere and never retreat.
That fitted the political Russian aim of demilitarizing Ukraine. Defending from well dug positions and with an increasing advantage of artillery and air power the Russian forces decimated attacking Ukrainian forces.
At the end of last year the Ukrainian military started to change its tactic. For a lack of forces and material it had to go into a defensive mode. The Russian forces, now fully equipped and battle ready, started their offensive campaign:
Today, the situation is grim. The fighting has slowed to a cruel slog that works to Russia’s favor. Ukraine runs low on troops and munitions, while Russia maintains both in plenty. The long-planned, high-risk, months-long Ukrainian spring 2023 counteroffensive failed, with Ukraine unable to regain territory seized by Russia. Support for Zelensky in Ukraine and the West has finally slipped. American aid is logjammed in Congress, and the U.S. seems tired of funding the war.
Over much of the past two years, following those predictions of immediate Russian victory, analysts and policymakers have gone in the other direction with a new set of misjudgments: that the Russian Army is a paper tiger; that the generals will turn on Putin; that Ukraine will bleed Russia out in Donbass.
The reality, two years in, is that there is no path to victory for Ukraine, at least not in the sense of pushing Russian troops back to 2021 lines of control. After Ukrainian troops abandoned Avdiivka following some of the war’s heaviest fighting — the most significant loss or gain by either side in nine months — almost all advantages accrue to Russia.
War, as seen by the Russians, is a slow process that requires that all elements, political, civilian and military, are synchronized. In that view winning this or that battle does not matter much. It is the long term approach that makes the difference. It takes time to achieve the steady state that over time creates victory. Only when that state is achieved can the real destruction of the enemy begin.
Russian forces are currently attacking in all directions. The Ukrainian forces lack personnel as well as munitions. It is only a question of time until the Ukraine has to give up and to seek peace under whatever unfavorable condition.
There never really was, and is no longer a way, to change that path.
The $60 billion aid package held up in Congress will not significantly change the future. This fight is a long haul one that will require additional aid. The spigot will close at some point — perhaps soon — turning off aid and sealing Ukraine’s fate.
The endgame in Ukraine is approaching fast. It may indeed come much sooner than many are today willing to admit.
Der Friedensstifter 