updated 17 Sep 2024, 15:59 MDT

After our 11/15/22 emergency meeting on the Ukraine War we committed to providing near-daily updates of what we think are some of the most valuable news and analyses for fellow activists. This is that selection. If you find this page helpful please forward it to your friends and contacts. Beginning Nov 16, 2023 we will be updating this page on a semiweekly basis. Stopping this war is of critical, emergency importance. Please do whatever you can.

Unless otherwise noted, the italicized comments below are Greg Mello's.

Highly recommended resource: Judge Andrew Napolitano's video podcast on YouTube.

Sep 17, 2024

Featured  • The Odd Couple To Decide the Fate of Humanity, Edward Lozansky, Antiwar.com, Sep 17, 2024

However, no one has done so much damage to the US and the world as Joe Biden during his eight years in the White House as Vice President and President with his Ukrainian project. It is not just the close to $200 billion taken out of US taxpayers’ pockets, or using his son Hunter to make millions abroad for his family, but provoking the war in Ukraine and preventing its end that might bring us to Armageddon.

Here are three key dates to remember (there were other important dates, but I believe these three were crucial): February 2014 – Biden coordinated the regime change coup in Ukraine to replace an administration that preferred the country’s neutral status with a pro-NATO one; December 2021 – Biden rejected Russia’s call for strategic stability negotiations based on Ukraine’s neutral status that could have prevented the February 2022 war; April 2022 – the president derailed with the help of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson Istanbul peace negotiations that took place in the weeks after the start of the war, from March to April of 2022, and prevented resumption of these negotiations since then.

The second participant, Zelensky, should be credited with taking his popular but provincial comedy show “95th Quarter,” funded by the above-mentioned criminal Kolomoisky, onto the world stage with the audience representing Who is Who in the West and others. To achieve such huge success, Zelensky paid with Ukrainian lives and bodies by the hundreds of thousands, displaced millions more, overseen the destruction of his country’s infrastructure, ruining its economy, and potentially selling off the remaining Ukrainian wealth to BlackRock’s collective sharks.

Now, he wants to do what he did to Ukraine to the rest of the world by involving the US and NATO in a direct military confrontation with nuclear Russia, basically plagiarizing the classic Barry Levinson story “Wag the Dog.”

Actually, the Russia-West war is already on, when the West is training Ukrainian troops, supplying them with money, weapons, advisors, and intelligence, but so far not the regular military. It looks like no one cares about killed mercenaries, while Ukraine, in the words of John Wight, is “merely a convenient and blood-soaked proxy — a cat’s paw whose manhood has and is being sacrificed on the altar of US-led Western hegemony.”

Additional grim context of this story is not just what this odd couple and the Deep State are doing by pushing us to the brink but the obedient flock of sheep that is called the leadership of the collective West that applauds and follows them. What happened to their dignity, traditions, culture, and values that we admired?

Many in the US and Europe understand what is happening and, like John Wight, are unafraid to speak out. However, their voices have not been heard widely due to unprecedented censorship in the Western media. As a result, the threat of nuclear war is not the main subject bothering the electorate, including the one in the US, where elections are very close.

US tech giant Meta has “discredited itself” by banning Russian media outlets, including RT, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. The move further complicates the prospects for “the normalization of relations” with the Facebook and Instagram owner, Peskov added.

The California-based corporation said in a written statement on Monday that it was deplatforming Rossiya Segodnya, RT, and other related entities from its apps due to “foreign interference activity.” The measures will be implemented globally over the next several days.

Put frankly, a new (cleansed) dispensation in Kiev likely would conclude that it has little option other than capitulation on the battlefront, to offer formal neutrality and limits to future militarisation. And Moscow is quite able to discuss ‘that’ with Ukrainians, without ‘help’ from outside.

Of course, a chorus will arise that the U.S. will not be able to accept the complete collapse of Ukraine’s military capabilities – In the run-up to the November elections, that is quite true (rhetorically). That is why Putin keeps the ‘mediation narrative’ alive.

There is the BRICS summit ahead (in Russia, in late October) which needs managing. The West will push mediation until the last, in order to keep the existing Russophobic Kiev regime on life support for as long as possible – and to keep the frozen-conflict notion to the fore in the mind of some BRICS attendees. However, the frozen-conflict proposal is a trap to lay foundations for a future platform of pressures on Russia.

The U.S. and UK intelligence service chiefs may toy with the idea of striking deep inside Russia with ATACMS, but the resort to measures (frankly) aimed to terrorise the Russian civilian population, and to undermine Putin’s popularity, serves more to underline western strategic failure. Yet again, the West has failed to stand up a credible military force to overthrow a target, even one painted in full demonic hues.

The war is lost, and the struggle to keep the ‘enforced pretending’ going is breaking through, to be seen by all as a false reality.

Poland will fulfill its promise to help finance a Czech initiative to buy ammunition for Ukraine from outside the EU, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has told the European Truth news outlet. The Polish diplomat was responding to reports that Warsaw was the only country among Kiev’s backers that had yet to contribute to the scheme, despite vowing to do so earlier this year. According to the Polish newspaper Wyborcza, as of August this year, over a dozen countries had provided funds to buy more than half a million artillery shells, sourced from manufacturers outside the European Union, with Germany providing the largest share. Sikorski acknowledged that Warsaw has yet to make any payments towards the scheme, citing temporary obstacles.

President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree that officially increases the number of personnel in Russia’s armed forces to almost 2.4 million people, including 1.5 million servicemen. The latest increase comes after a similar decree in December 2023, when the president boosted the number of employees in the Russian military to just over 2.2 million, including 1.3 million troops. In his order on Monday, Putin also instructed the Russian government to allocate the necessary funds for the Defense Ministry to carry out the increase, which formally takes the number of personnel in the armed forces to 2,389,130.

Sep 16, 2024

Featured • West Experiences Blowback From Fostering Fascists In Ukraine, Moon of Alabama, Sep 16, 2024

Members of Azov and other 'nationalist' groupings in Ukraine are now experienced fighters. The[y] have the means to fight as there are lots of Ukrainian weapons in unaccountable hands (machine translation):

Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Russia in Ukraine, more than 270,945 weapons have disappeared or been stolen.

...

In less than 2024, more weapons were stolen or lost than in the whole of last year - 78,217 units. At the same time, it is 4 times more than before the start of a full-scale war.

These weapons can be easily smuggled into Europe to target any politician who dares to pressure Ukraine into accepting an end of the war.

The attempted assassination of Trump is only one of the first of such incidents. (The motives for the assassination attempt against the Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico are still unknown.)

Many such incidents, predominantly in Europe, are likely to follow.

The US and its ever-loyal followers Canada and Great Britain have launched a fresh information war offensive. If “fresh” is the word: In a new season of the long-running, apparently never-ever ending Russia Rage show (aka “Russiagate”) that at least the American “elites” simply cannot get enough of, it is again – drum roll – RT that is the target. This time, it stands accused not “merely” of spreading “disinformation” (that is, any information Western governments do not like) but of intelligence work as well.

And then some. Such as trying to influence the American elections (yaaawn) and somehow being linked to collecting volunteer contributions for Russia’s war effort in Ukraine – a form of outreach, by the way, which is exactly the same as what Ukrainian organizations do. There also is an even more terrifying revelation. It has dawned on some troglodytes in the US State Department that RT is not relying on mechanical typewriters and the telegraph but has a “cyber” capability!

Or something. That charge really seems to boil down to being internet-literate, a very special skill set that must appear fiendishly futuristic to some in the US administration. And who can blame them? Can you imagine its – official – leader, Joe “Kind-of-Still-President-When-he-Can-Remember” Biden handling even something as almost antediluvian as a laptop? That is better left, as we know, to his son Hunter “The-Naked-and-The-Paid” Biden. And even then, the consequences tend to be dire.

Former British Ambassador Craig Murray reports that in Britain honest news reporting of Israel’s destruction of Palestine is a felony for which journalists are arrested and face long prison sentences. In the US universities are gearing up to prevent any student protests of Israel’s destruction of Palestine. It is becoming ever more impossible to acknowledge reality. Official narratives have taken reality’s place. Manifestations of moral conscience are to be prohibited. In America the Biden regime has characterized RT’s new reporting as “Russian disinformation” and amounts to espionage. For reporting news that the US presstitutes carefully keep from the people, sanctions designed to shut down RT have been imposed. A September 13 report from a NY Times presstitute, “U.S. Accuses Russian TV Network of Conducting Covert Intelligence Acts,” establishes Washington’s false narrative. Honest information is “Kremlin-friendly content.”

I have long reported that truth was being criminalized throughout the Western world. The process has now been completed. It seems that analysts and commentators of foreign policy developments will have to terminate interviews with Russian journalists. As I previously warned, stopping communication between nuclear powers and limiting the narrative to one side’s version enhances the acceptance and likelihood of nuclear war. Neither truth nor freedom can exist without free speech, and free speech is being everywhere suppressed in the Western world. The “free” media itself has abandoned it. The tyranny that has been created in the West is worse than the tyrannies imagined by writers of dystopian novels. It will take time for the full impact to be felt, but it is on its way. With the US and Russia at the point of war, why is Washington stirring the pot with aggressive steps toward Russian media? The charge that RT and Sputnik are committing espionage by reporting differently from the official US narrative is unsupportable.

Such atrocious judgment by Washington seems to indicate a death wish for humanity. At this critical time we need maximum communication, not a cut-off of communication. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Washington is intentionally driving the world to war. As a “free American” I cannot read the Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement on the actions Washington has taken against RT and Sputnik published in Telegram because “this channel can’t be displayed because it violated local laws.” So, we seemed to have reached the point where official statements of the Russian government violate local laws. What is meant by “local laws?” There is certainly no such law in my town or state. Censorship and controlled narratives are tools tyrannies use to protect lies from truth. That Washington uses these tools so extravagantly indicates that Washington’s agenda requires suppression of the truth.

Washington seeks to silence any dissenting voices, as its celebrated “freedom of speech” applies only to those who support the official narrative and obey instructions from US intelligence services, RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan said following the latest crackdown on Russian media. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced the latest round of sanctions against the news outlet on Friday, accusing it of engaging in “covert influence activities” and “functioning as a de facto arm of Russian intelligence.” Earlier in September, Washington imposed sanctions on Simonyan and three other senior RT employees over alleged attempts to influence the 2024 election. Simonyan asserted that this latest attack on Russian media is a clear effort to clamp down on the information space ahead of the elections.

“They need to silence everyone. This is the story of freedom and democracy in the so-called free West. It seems to me that only clinically insane people or those who are obviously biased can believe in it,” she stated. In practice, the US idea of a free press doesn’t extend to others, she added. It’s very easy to promote freedom of speech and practice it when it’s only your speech that counts and no one else’s. Simonyan argued that Washington’s claims about RT collaborating with Russian intelligence are a “classic case of projection.”

Sep 14, 2024

Featured • US can’t hide from nuclear war – Moscow, RT, Sep 14, 2024

Washington will be unable to hide from a nuclear conflict if it starts across the ocean, Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov has said. Fears of a potential escalation between Russia and NATO over Ukraine have been intensifying in recent days, as Western powers reportedly mull the possibility of allowing Kiev to conduct missile strikes deep in Russian territory.

Speaking with Rossiya 24 channel on Friday, Ambassador Antonov said that he is surprised at the “illusion” that “if there is a conflict, it will not spread to the territory of the United States of America.”

“I am constantly trying to convey to them one thesis that the Americans will not be able to sit it out behind the waters of this ocean. This war will affect everyone, so we constantly say – do not play with this rhetoric,” Antonov stated.

He also mentioned that while Western countries accuse Russia of “sabre-rattling,” the US wants to investigate the consequences a nuclear strike would have for Eastern Europe. Antonov was apparently referring to a study ordered by the US Defense Department to simulate the impact of a nuclear conflict on global agriculture. According to a solicitation notice posted on a government procurement platform, the study will focus on regions “beyond Eastern Europe and Western Russia,” which in the simulation is the epicenter of the hypothetical nuclear attack. (emphasis added).

Granting Kiev permission to use Western-supplied weapons would constitute direct involvement in the Ukraine conflict by NATO, Russia’s envoy to the UN, Vassily Nebenzia, has said. Moscow will treat any such attack as coming from the US and its allies directly, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday, explaining that long-range weapons rely on Western intelligence and targeting solutions, neither of which Ukraine is capable of. NATO countries would “start an open war” with Russia if they allow Ukraine to use long-range weapons, Nebenzia told the UN Security Council on Friday.

"If such a decision is made, that means NATO countries are starting an open war against Russia,” Moscow’s envoy said. “In that case, we will obviously be forced to make certain decisions, with all the attendant consequences for Western aggressors.” “Our Western colleagues will not be able to dodge responsibility and blame Kiev for everything,” Nebenzia added. “Only NATO troops can program the flight solutions for those missile systems. Ukraine doesn’t have that capability. This is not about allowing Kiev to strike Russia with long-range weapons, but about the West making the targeting decisions.”

Chairman of the Council of the Other Ukraine movement Viktor Medvedchuk gave an interview to EADaily on September 12 about the causes of the Ukrainian crisis, Russia’s mission and the destructive influence of the collective West. “For a long time an independent Ukraine has not been existing politically, economically, or legally,” Ukrainian opposition politician and Chairman of the Council of the Other Ukraine movement Viktor Medvedchuk told EA Daily. “The country is ruled by an illegitimate president who has usurped power, becoming a dictator.” The Western-backed Euromaidan coup d’etat of 2014 dealt a heavy blow to Ukrainian sovereignty and legitimate power. For 30 years the West has fuelled anti-Russian sentiment, distorted history and facilitated the rise of Nazism in Ukraine.

The Minsk agreements of 2015 corresponded to EU interests, but the UK and US, who sought to start a war, deliberately disrupted the settlement process. Washington’s plan was “to destabilize the situation on Russia’s borders, and then inside Russia. The first step succeeded, the second did not. The US managed to break Ukraine and Europe, but not Russia.” In 2020 Ukraine got a chance to nullify the adverse consequences of the 2014 regime change through democratic means. “Our party ‘Opposition Platform – For Life’ won local elections in 2020, after we were ranked second in the 2019 parliamentary elections, and began to lead in polls across the country,” Medvedchuk said.

But in February 2021 the Zelensky regime illegally blocked broadcasting of opposition channels, slapped sanctions on Medvedchuk and his wife, groundlessly accused him of treason and arrested him in May 2021. Other Ukrainian opposition politicians were also subjected to persecution. The special military operation in Ukraine would not have begun if Zelensky had abandoned the idea of joining NATO.The situation in Ukraine and in the world will improve after the West stops pouring billions into propping up Zelensky, who is a “political Frankenstein”.

The West has received and understood the latest warning by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. Putin stated earlier that allowing Ukraine to use Western-supplied weapons to hit targets deep inside Russia would make these countries directly involved in the conflict. The UK was the first country to announce the shipment of its own long-range missiles to Ukraine in May 2023, followed by France several months later. Washington revealed that it had supplied Kiev with ATACMS missiles this spring. However, Kiev’s backers have publicly prohibited Ukraine from using the weapons against targets located deep inside internationally recognized Russian territory. Kiev has been demanding that these limitations be lifted since at least May. Several media outlets have suggested that Washington and London will soon do so, or secretly have already.

Speaking to reporters on Friday, Peskov described Putin’s latest warning as “very important.” The Russian president’s statement was “clear, unequivocal, and doesn’t lend itself to multiple interpretations,” the spokesman said. He added that “we have no doubt that this statement has reached its recipients.”

Sep 13, 2024

Featured • Raising the Stakes in Ukraine, John Wight, Consortium News, Sep 13, 2024
For crying out loud why doesn't everybody see this? Wight puts a lot of the pieces together in a beautifully-written piece. It's hard to pick out any part to showcase. Maybe this:

Lammy’s announcement that London is to donate an additional £600 million ($800 million) to Ukraine’s coffers, when placed against his same government’s recent decision to cut a winter fuel allowance that will affect 10 million of the country’s old age pensioners, tells us all we need to know.

It tells us that when it comes to wars abroad there is always money to be found, but when it comes to keeping vulnerable pensioners warm at home there is none available.

Ukraine is engaged in a conflict it cannot win, while Russia is fighting a war it cannot afford to lose.

The former has neither the manpower nor industrial capacity while the latter possesses both. The result is Kiev being turned into a NATO/U.S. dependency and the latter uncoupling from the West geopolitically and economically to the point of accelerating the formation of an Eastern post-hegemonic which points, increasingly, the way to the future.

For Moscow this is an existential struggle with its security in mind, while for the West the geostrategic stakes have never been higher.

Western ideologues have never forgiven Russia from recovering from the demise of the the Soviet Union and emerging with its sovereignty intact under Putin’s leadership.

The Russian president’s real crime in their eyes — his demonization aside — is that he has had the temerity to assert that decisions pertaining to Russia’s security should be taken in Moscow instead of in Washington, London or Brussels.

So now military escalation rather than diplomacy is the name of the game — at least for those who send the sons of the working class to fight and die in wars rather than their own. In his classic antiwar novel, Dalton Trumbo lays it out much more powerfully than this writer ever could:

“So did all those kids die thinking of democracy and freedom and liberty and the safety of the home and the stars and stripes forever? You’re goddamn right they didn’t. They died crying in their minds like little babies … They died yearning for the face of a friend. They died whimpering for the voice of a mother a father a wife a child.”

It bears repeating again and again that this ugly and bitter conflict was eminently avoidable. It is a conflict not of Russia’s but of the West’s choosing.

A few month ago a leak of a call between high ranking German officers appeared. They were discussing the possible deployment of a German Taurus cruse missile to Ukraine to be used against Russian targets.

It became obvious from the leak that any such deployment, aiming and firing of such a weapon can not happen without the participation of staff from the country that donated the weapon. This applies to the U.S. ATAMCS missiles, to the French/British SCALP/Storm Shadow missiles just as it would apply to the German Taurus cruse missile...

The U.S. is currently discussing (archived) to allow Ukraine to use of long range weapons against targets within Russia, that is beyond targets on Ukrainian and former Ukrainian ground.

This would be qualitative transformation of the war in Ukraine into a NATO war with Russia.

The Russian President Vladimir Putin made this unequivocally clear....

Russia has many means to respond to such threats. This includes direct fire on targets within France, the UK and the U.S. itself.

Vladimir Putin is not known for making empty threats.

The Ukraine conflict could have been stopped back in 2022 soon after it started, according to Aleksandr Chaly, former Ukrainian first deputy foreign minister and one of Kiev’s key negotiators at the time. The diplomat said that Moscow and Kiev had a real chance of inking a peace deal at negotiations in Istanbul a mere month after the beginning of hostilities, but that chance has since been lost. “While there were opportunities for a political settlement at the talks in Istanbul… now, in my personal opinion, there are no such opportunities,” Chaly stated at a panel discussion at the Xiangshan defense forum in Beijing on Thursday, as cited by RIA Novosti. Ukraine and Russia held several rounds of peace talks in the spring of 2022, and the Istanbul round was considered the most productive, as the parties managed to develop and pre-approve a draft peace treaty.

The document reportedly included clauses on Kiev formally adopting neutral status, limiting its armed forces and vowing not to discriminate against ethnic Russians. Moscow, in return, was willing to withdraw troops from Ukrainian territories and offer Kiev security guarantees. However, the treaty was never finalized, and Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky later issued a decree banning peace talks with Putin.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has laughed off “ridiculous” claims by German media outlets that the Nord Stream pipelines were blown up by a small group of divers on a “little boat.” Commenting on the issue of protecting critical energy infrastructure at a press briefing on Thursday, he said investigations into the sabotage of the Russian natural gas pipelines in 2022 had been turned into a “spectacle.” Despite submitting numerous requests, Lavrov said Russia had still not received any information about the investigation from the German authorities, and claimed their investigation lacked transparency. Meanwhile, Denmark and Sweden, who have also ignored all of Moscow’s requests, have stated that they had closed down their national investigations into the Nord Stream explosions, the minister noted.

Ukraine sent thousands of troops into the Russian region last month in what was the largest cross-border operation undertaken by Kiev in the ongoing conflict with Russia. Officials in Kiev have offered a number of explanations for the Kursk incursion. The stated aims have included capturing Russian soldiers for prisoner exchanges, instilling fear in Russian society, humiliating President Vladimir Putin, forcing Moscow to redeploy troops from the Donbas front, and seizing Russian territory that could be used as a bargaining chip in eventual peace talks. The operation is supposedly part of a secret “victory plan” that Zelensky has said he would present to US President Joe Biden. Washington is supposed to provide the military capabilities necessary for it to be achieved, he added. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Kiev on Wednesday. According to the Wall Street Journal, he and his British counterpart David Lammy met with the Ukrainian leadership to discuss “how best to define a Ukrainian victory.”

Sep 12, 2024

Featured • Putin Puts West On Notice: Long-Range Arms For Ukraine Will Mean 'NATO At War With Russia', ZeroHedge, Sep 12, 2024
Below is the breaking AFP note:

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that the West giving Kyiv a green-light to use longer-range weapons to strike Russian targets would mean NATO will be "at war" with Russia.

"This would in a significant way change the very nature of the conflict... It would mean that NATO countries are at war with Russia," Putin told a state television reporter.

Just prior to this warning, Russian Senator Aleksey Pushkov wrote on Telegram in response to the UK prepping more, longer-range Storm Shadow missiles for Ukraine, "The decision to strike Russian territory is clearly being prepared."

The Russian lawmaker continued, "There are too many conversations and hints about it for it to be reversed. Even if it has not been made yet, it looks like it will be a matter of days. The leak via The Guardian is not accidental. Public opinion is being prepared."

Below are the full Thursday Putin comments, translated and issued by Russian state media:

"I have already mentioned this, and any experts will confirm, both in our country and in the West, that the Ukrainian army is not capable of [independently] carrying out strikes using Western modern, long-range precision systems. It cannot do this. This is possible only with the use of intelligence from satellites which Ukraine does not have. This data is only available from satellites of the European Union or the United States, in other words, from NATO satellites. That's the first point," Putin said.

"The second and very important, perhaps key point is that only NATO servicemen can make flight assignments to these missile systems. Ukrainian servicemen cannot do this," Putin said.

"So this is not about whether or not to allow the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia using these weapons, but of deciding whether or not NATO countries are directly involved in the military conflict or not. If such a decision is taken, it will mean nothing short of direct participation of NATO countries, the United States, European countries, in the war in Ukraine. This would constitute their direct participation, and this, of course, changes the very essence, the very nature of the conflict. It will mean that NATO countries, the United States and European countries, are at war with Russia. And if this is so, bearing in mind the change in the very nature of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions based on the threats that will be posed to us," Putin said.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Britain's Foreign Secretary David Lammy meet with Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky in Kiev.

Washington and London may have already decided to let Kiev use long-range missiles for strikes deep inside Russia and are now seeding the narrative through the media, Russian Senator Aleksey Pushkov has said.

Britain has already given the green light for the use of ‘Storm Shadow’ missiles, the Guardian reported on Wednesday, citing anonymous government sources. London, however, is not expected to announce the move publicly, the sources claimed.

“The decision to strike Russian territory is clearly being prepared,” Pushkov wrote on his Telegram channel on Wednesday. “There are too many conversations and hints about it for it to be reversed. Even if it has not been made yet, it looks like it will be a matter of days. The leak via The Guardian is not accidental. Public opinion is being prepared.”

Russia’s nuclear doctrine urgently needs to be revised to allow a nuclear response to any major military aggression against the country, former Kremlin adviser Sergey Karaganov stated on Wednesday.

The former foreign policy adviser to the deputy head of the Russian presidential administration told the Kommersant daily that the existing document is “woefully outdated” and no longer serves as an effective deterrent.

1. Russia will take all of Donbass soon, regardless of anything Ukraine does.
2. The Ukrainian troops in the Kursk offensive will all retreat, be killed or wounded, or will surrender. Russia will not allow that salient to affect negotiations.
3. Ukraine and its sponsors will engage in more dangerous and terroristic attacks against Russian strategic and civilian objects.
4. Russia will not take the bait to the extent of overtly attacking NATO -- Zelensky's objective -- but Russia will hurt Ukraine all the more as a result of these increasing attacks, hoping by doing so to bring a more rapid and favorable conclusion to the war and also to control or at least temper Western escalation.
5. As long as Russia believes its basic security needs will remain unmet after negotiations, the war will continue. Russia will take more territory, and more Ukrainians will be killed. Possibilities include a buffer zone in the north and/or along the Black Sea, including Odessa.
6. By continuing the war, Ukraine is risking total economic collapse.

The last several years have brought the United States closer to conflict with a nuclear-armed power than any time since the 1960s, one former CIA analyst claimed.

“They want to provoke Putin [into] doing something really drastic before the election, before the [presidential] election here on November 5th,” suggested McGovern, a critic of neoconservative US foreign policy....

“It's really hard to know what Biden and [National Security Advisor Jake] Sullivan, who are running things, really think,” he claimed. “Some of my best friends and analysts think they're insane. And it’s really, really hard to predict what they're going to do if they're insane.”...

“So I think when this is directed at the Europeans, saying, ‘look at what happened to your fellow country in Europe, Ukraine. You want the same thing to happen to you? So, please, rein these guys in.’”

Washington wants to see Kiev win the conflict against Moscow and join NATO, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said. Blinken is visiting Kiev with his British counterpart David Lammy to reiterate Anglo-American support for Vladimir Zelensky’s government. “At the July summit, we declared that Ukraine’s path to NATO membership is irreversible,” Blinken said on Wednesday, reminding his hosts that the US-led bloc has “established a command dedicated to support Ukraine’s membership.” Blinken has made the case for Kiev’s membership in NATO before. However, the bloc has officially declared, both in Washington this summer and last year in Lithuania, that this could only happen “when allies agree and conditions are met.” Hungary and Slovakia have already said they will not agree under any circumstances, as bringing Ukraine into NATO would mean war with Russia.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stated Wednesday that there was a “high degree of probability” that a decision approving the use of US long-range strike systems by Ukraine has already been taken, and that the Biden administration is simply trying to “formalize” the measure using an information campaign through the media.

That was Moscow’s reaction to President Biden’s comments earlier in the week that Washington was in the process of ‘working out’ whether to lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of its US-made long-range weapons to attack targets deep inside Russia.

Long-range US weapons already delivered to Kiev (or reportedly under deliberation) include:

ATACMS: The US ‘Army TACtical Missile System’, which has a range of up to 300 km, and can be fired by tracked M270 and wheeled M142 HIMARS self-propelled multiple launch rocket systems, which have been delivered to Kiev in large numbers. Russia has found the systems’ weak spots, destroying scores of launchers and incoming fired rockets. Nevertheless, the launchers and their payload (a single 214 kg warhead or cluster bomblets) remain dangerous due to their shoot-and-scoot ability. The Pentagon began the delivery of ATACMS to Kiev last October, but apparently not in numbers Volodymyr Zelensky would prefer. Last week, Zelensky complained about a “shortage of missiles and cooperation” with NATO countries.

JDAM-ER: The ‘Joint Direct Attack Munition-Extended Range’ is a guidance and wing kit converting ‘dumb’ munitions weighing between 230-910 kg into guided smart munitions and delivering them to targets over 70 km away. The weapons are air-launched, meaning Ukrainian aircraft must stay far enough away to avoid dense Russian air defenses while firing them.

ADM-160 MALD: The ‘Miniature Air-Launched Decoy’ is a decoy missile designed to distract air defenses while real threats make their way toward their targets. Thanks to their lack of warhead, these missiles can fly up to 930 km. Deployable aboard a broad array of American aircraft and drones, Ukraine probably fires these weapons from its dwindling fleet of Soviet-era MiG-29 jets.

AGM-88 HARM: The ‘High-speed Anti-Radiation Missile’ is an air-to-ground missile with passive, GPS and millimeter-wave active radar homing, has a range of between 25 and 300 km, depending on variant, and a 68 kg warhead. Adding to the threat is the missile’s flight speed – up to Mach 2.9. The US began deploying these weapons to Kiev in 2022, and, in addition to modifications to allow Ukraine’s jets to fire them, reportedly provided their client with intelligence to enable attacks against Russian radar systems.

Not yet known to have been delivered but widely discussed in recent days is the AGM-158 JASSM (‘Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile’) – a long-range cruise missile with a 450 kg penetrator warhead that can hit targets up to 925 km away (or 370 km in the case of standard range variants). These missiles can be fired from Ukraine’s recently arrived F-16 jets.

Sep 11, 2024

Featured • Ukraine conflict ‘much worse’ than Americans are being told – Trump, RT, Sep 11, 2024

The former US president has said he wants to save millions of lives from being unnecessarily lost.

Former US President Donald Trump has claimed that President Joe Biden’s Ukraine policy – now fully adopted by his Democratic rival, Kamala Harris – is dragging the country into a third world war. He reiterated that he would settle the conflict “in 24 hours” if reelected this November, even before being sworn in.

During a debate with Harris on Tuesday, Trump said the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would never have happened had he still been in the White House in 2022. When asked if he wants Kiev to win, the Republican replied that he wants “the war to stop.”

“I want the war to stop. I want to save lives that are being wasted… People are being killed by the millions… It’s so much worse than the numbers you’re getting, which are fake,” he claimed, without clarifying the source of the estimates.

The moderator pressed for a direct answer, inquiring whether Trump believes “it’s in the US’ best interest for Ukraine to win this war.”

“I think it’s in the US’ best interest to get this war finished and just get it done. We need to negotiate a deal because we have to stop all these human lives from being destroyed,” Trump said.

The former president then claimed that he had a “good relationship” with Russian President Vladimir Putin and that everything has “gone to hell” since he left office. “When I saw Putin building up soldiers on Ukraine’s border, I thought: ‘Oh, he must be negotiating; it must be a strong point of negotiation,’” Trump stated.

“Well, it wasn’t, because Biden had no idea how to talk to him. He had no idea how to stop it… And it is only getting worse; it could lead to World War III,” he added. “Don’t kid yourself... We are playing with WWIII, and we have a president that… Where is our president?”

“They threw him out of the campaign like a dog... We have a president that doesn’t even know he’s alive.”

“I will get it settled before I even become president,” Trump promised. “If I win, when I’m president-elect… I’ll get them together.”

Harris countered by claiming that the only reason Trump says “this war would be over within 24 hours” is that he would simply give it up. “And that’s not who we are as Americans,” she added.

The vice president went on to tout her role in consolidating Western support for Ukraine, claiming that because of “the work that I and others did,” along with the provision of “air defense, ammunition, artillery, javelins, and Abrams tanks,” Ukraine remains an “independent and free” country.

Rep. Michael McCaul, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, believes the Biden administration will lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US missiles to allow long-range strikes inside Russian territory, which would mark another significant escalation of the proxy war.

McCaul made the comments ahead of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s next visit to Ukraine, which will take place on Wednesday. Blinken will be joined by his British counterpart, UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy.

Ukraine has been using US missiles and other weapons in its invasion of Kursk and has been pushing for the use of longer-range capabilities, including Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of about 190 miles and can be fired by the HIMARS rocket systems.

“[Blinken’s] as supportive as I am, and he just said, ‘I have some good news. I’m going to Ukraine with my counterpart from the UK to talk about ATACMS. And what I’ve seen and what I’ve been briefed on, it looks like that’s the message they’re going to give them, that they can use them cross-border,” McCaul said, according to POLITICO.

McCaul joined a group of other senior House Republicans in sending a letter to President Biden on Monday urging US support for long-range strikes. “It is far past time the administration reverses course and lifts the remaining restrictions on Ukraine’s use of US-provided weapons against legitimate military targets in Russia,” the letter reads.

In an interview with Sky News on Tuesday, Blinken said that the administration was not ruling out supporting the long-range strikes. “We never rule out, but when we rule in, we want to make sure it’s done in such a way that it can advance what the Ukrainians are trying to achieve,” Blinken said.

. . . the near certainty that the United States and Britain have just agreed to give the Zelensky regime permission to use the long-range missiles which have been delivered to Ukraine, certainly including Storm Shadow and likely also the 1500 km range stealth missile known as JASSM to strike deep into the Russian heartland, and so 'to bring the war to Russia' as the Zelensky gang put it.

That is the sense of the trip this week by Secretary of State Blinken to Kiev and of the visit to the White House on Friday by British Prime Minister Starmer.

Collective Biden is doing this in the full knowledge that the Russians have issued direct threats of attack on the United States and other countries involved in strikes on its heartland using such Western supplied and directed weapons. However patient and averse to a hot war with NATO President Putin may be, he will have no choice but to rise to the challenge.

People eager to condemn the atrocities committed by the Third Reich are at the same time turning a blind eye to Ukrainian troops wearing Nazi symbols today, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico has lamented. The head of the government gave a speech at the holocaust museum located at the former site of the Sered concentration camp on Monday in western Slovakia, in which he highlighted the need to educate new generations about the crimes committed by Nazis during World War II before bringing up the Ukraine conflict. “We all talk about fascism, Nazism, while silently tolerating units moving across Ukraine that have a very clear label and are connected to movements that we consider dangerous and forbidden today. Since it is a geopolitical fight, nobody cares,” Fico said.

“I want to pay tribute to the victims, not with pathetic speech, but I want to call for action,” he added. “The international community should recognize that troops using Nazi insignia, who often appear to act as such, cannot fight in Ukraine.” Kiev has embraced as heroes Ukrainian nationalists who collaborated with Nazi Germany while the symbols and ideology of the Third Reich have been popular among growing right-wing forces in the country for decades. The Azov battalion, accused of war crimes and atrocities, is infamous for its open embrace of bigotry and white supremacism, although its successor unit claims to have mostly eradicated such people from its ranks. Ukrainian troops have repeatedly been filmed brandishing Nazi iconography on their uniforms and weapons, including during the ongoing incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region.

Sep 10, 2024

Featured • Outgunned and outnumbered, Ukraine’s military is struggling with low morale and desertion, Ivana Kottasova and Kostya Gak, CNN, Sep 8, 2024

 • Germany’s Scholz Calls for Push Toward Peace in Ukraine, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, Sep 9, 2024

On Sunday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz called for a diplomatic push toward peace in Ukraine and said he and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zekensky agreed that Russia should attend a future peace summit.

“I believe that now is the time to discuss how to arrive at peace from this state of war, indeed at a faster pace,” Scholz said. “There will certainly be a further peace conference, and the president and I agree that it must be one with Russia present.”

Scholz’s comments mark a rare call for peace in Ukraine from a leader of a NATO country. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been consistently calling for an end to the fighting, but he’s been out of step with other NATO and European leaders.

Sep 9, 2024

Featured • Russia offsets Ukraine’s Kursk offensive, M.K. Bhadrakumar, Indian Punchline, Sep 8, 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin has outwitted the West by his response to Ukraine’s Kursk offensive one month ago, which was widely celebrated as a tipping point in the conflict. The conflict is indeed at a tipping point today, but for an entirely different reason insofar as Russian forces seized the folly of Ukraine’s deployment of its crack brigades and prized Western armour to Kursk Region to reach an unassailable position in the most recent weeks in the battlefields, which opens the door for multiple options going forward.

As the collapse intensifies, the winning side in a war typically increases its pressure. Russia has increased its deep missile strikes, and its military is pushing through what used to be well-defended front lines. Russia’s more powerful bombing campaign is also motivated by retaliation for the invasion of Kursk and to restore its deterrence by warning NATO against further escalations. Furthermore, Russia has retaliated by further destroying Ukraine’s energy network which reduces the mobility of the military, and reduces the industrial production and the ability to get through the next winter. Millions of Ukrainian civilians who are suffering greatly under these deteriorating conditions will likely leave the country when winter approaches, a humanitarian disaster that will bring further problems to both Ukraine and Europe.

A Proxy War: How Will NATO Respond to Defeat?

What makes the Ukraine War different from many other wars, is that this is a proxy war in which NATO uses Ukrainians to fight Russia. The uncertain and unpredictable variable is therefore how NATO will react as it loses its war against Russia. NATO is already providing weapons, ammunition, training, intelligence, target selection, war planning, managing complex weapon systems, and sending Western mercenaries. NATO’s support for strikes inside Russian territory and the invasion of Russian territory has already taken us to the brink of a direct war. The Americans appear to get ready to cut their losses and instead shift focus on a wider war in the Middle East or confronting China, but the Europeans have bet everything on defeating Russia militarily. In terms of capabilities, it is the US that matters.

There are simply no good solutions anymore. The only two options are to either negotiate or get increasingly involved in direct fighting. NATO has largely rejected diplomacy and placed itself in a rhetorical trap in which victory is the only acceptable outcome, and the EU even punishes member states such as Hungary that attempt to restore diplomacy and negotiations with Russia. However, more direct NATO involvement will likely trigger a direct war with Russia, the world’s largest nuclear power, and it is unclear what a “victory” would look like that would not first trigger a nuclear exchange.

The US, UK and other backers of Ukraine told Kiev to reject the deal reached at the 2022 Istanbul peace talks with Russia, former US under secretary of state Victoria Nuland has said.

In an interview with Russian journalist Mikhail Zygar, former editor-in-chief of the liberal news channel Dozhd, which aired on Thursday, Nuland was asked to comment on reports that the peace process between Moscow and Kiev in late March and early April 2022 collapsed after then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson traveled to Ukraine and told Vladimir Zelensky to keep fighting.

“Relatively late in the game the Ukrainians began asking for advice on where this thing was going and it became clear to us, clear to the Brits, clear to others that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin's main condition was buried in an annex to this document that they were working on,” she said of the deal being discussed by the Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Türkiye’s largest city.

The proposed agreement included limits on the kinds of weapons that Kiev could possess, as a result of which Ukraine “would basically be neutered as a military force,” while there were no similar constraints on Russia, the former diplomat explained.

“People inside Ukraine and people outside Ukraine started asking questions about whether this was a good deal and it was at that point that it fell apart,” Nuland said.

The veteran diplomatic hawk, who during her time in the State Department was renowned for her hostility towards Russia, quit the post of under secretary of state for political affairs in March this year. Nuland played a key role in the violent Western-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, which toppled Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovich.

The global order is under threat from a number of state actors, the heads of the American and British foreign intelligence agencies – the CIA and MI6 – claimed in a joint op-ed published by the Financial Times on Saturday.

In the piece, Bill Burns and Richard Moore pledged that Washington and London would work in lockstep to retain the status quo in a world where technology has considerably accelerated geo-political trends....

The piece singles out an “assertive Russia” in the context of the Ukraine conflict, which both the CIA and MI6 “saw… coming.” The spy agencies’ chiefs noted that the hostilities have demonstrated the increased role of technology in modern warfare, in particular unmanned systems and satellite reconnaissance.

In addition, Burns and Moore accused Moscow of waging a “reckless campaign of sabotage across Europe” as well as spreading “lies and disinformation designed to drive wedges between us.”

However, according to the op-ed, in the eyes of the CIA and MI6 “the principal intelligence and geopolitical challenge of the 21st century” is the “rise of China.” Both agencies have already reorganized their processes to “reflect that priority.”

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has urged NATO countries to pressure Russia to agree to Kiev’s peace terms this fall. He made his statement during a meeting with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany. Regular gatherings at Ramstein are designed to coordinate military aid to Kiev. Zelensky urged Western countries to help arrange joint production of weapons on Ukrainian soil, including drones and missiles. “To achieve this, we need funding – we are ready to quickly produce everything that will help us bring this war to an end, namely, by putting decisive pressure on Russia for real peace,” Zelensky said, according to his website. “Let’s make this fall a time for Russian aggression to fall – in a way that will end the war and restore a reliable international security order.”

Bill Burns calls Vladimir Putin a ‘bully’ whose ‘sabre-rattling’ should not always be taken literally.

Western leaders should not be intimidated by Kremlin threats of nuclear escalation, the head of the CIA said on Saturday, amid a debate over whether Anglo-French Storm Shadow missiles should be used inside Russia.

Bill Burns, on a visit to London alongside the head of MI6, said the US had brushed off a previous Russian nuclear scare in autumn 2022, demonstrating that threats from Moscow should not always be taken literally.

“Putin’s a bully. He’s going to continue to sabre rattle from time to time,” Burns said. “We cannot afford to be intimidated by that sabre rattling … we got to be mindful of it. The US has provided enormous support for Ukraine, and I’m sure the president will consider other ways in which we can support them.”

Sep 5, 2024

Featured • Massive Iskander Attack Sends Rats Scurrying, Simplicius, Sep 5, 2024
The scope of the political shakeup is a tell, reflecting staggering battlefield losses and political losses as well. The resignation of the Swedish foreign minister, on whose watch Sweden lost its neutrality, immediately after the deadly Poltava strike against Swedish troops in Ukraine is also pretty interesting. When will stupid Western leaders wake up? Only with defeat, loss, and sorrow I am afraid. RFK's citing of Aeschylus on the occasion of MLK's assassination comes to mind (video).

Featured • RAY McGOVERN: Conditioning Americans for War With Russia, Consortium News, Sep 4, 2024

 • If US Gives Long-Range Weapons To Kiev, Occupied Buffer Zone May Reach Poland: Medvedev, ZeroHedge, Sep 5, 2024

 • Ukrainian Army facing collapse – Putin, RT, Sep 5, 2024

Kiev’s incursion in Kursk Region has failed to achieve its goal and may lead to a complete defeat, the Russian president has said.

High casualties incurred by the Ukrainian military since Kiev launched its incursion in Russia’s Kursk Region could render its armed forces useless, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

The Russian leader shared his assessment of the frontline situation on Thursday during a panel discussion at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok. He said the Ukrainian attempt to disrupt the Russian military with the massive attack across the border last month had backfired.

”Our military has stabilized the situation and is now gradually pushing the opponent from the border territories. More importantly, there is no resistance to our advancement [in Donbass],” he explained. “The opponent has weakened itself on the key axis by moving those relatively strong and well-trained units to the border areas.”

Ukrainian officials expected Moscow to redeploy some of its forces from the east to repel the incursion in the north. However, the gamble has not paid off, Aleksandr Syrsky, Kiev’s top general, acknowledged last week.

Putin said Russian troops had been securing more land in Donbass, which is a priority for Moscow, at a pace unseen in a long time. Meanwhile, Ukrainian troops are “suffering very high losses in manpower and hardware.”

“Because of that, [Kiev] risks a collapse of the front line on the most important axis. The casualties may result in a loss of fighting capability of the entire armed forces, which is what we are looking to achieve,” the president added.

On Wednesday, the Russian Defense Ministry estimated that Ukrainian casualties in the Kursk operation had surpassed 9,700 troops. Kiev also lost 81 tanks, dozens of other armored vehicles, hundreds of cars, and multiple heavy weapons, the military said.

Sep 4, 2024

 • US ‘close’ to giving Kiev long-range missiles – Reuters, RT, Sep 3, 2024

 • Ukraine Criminals Guilty of Serious International Crimes to Be Brought to Justice - Moscow, Sputnik International, Sep 3, 2024

“Such a step cannot be regarded otherwise than as an undisguised intention to give their military carte blanche to commit serious war crimes,” Zakharova added. Neither Ukraine nor the International Criminal Court have anything to do with law and justice, Zakharova said. “The reputation of both the Kiev regime and the ICC is well known. Neither of them are independent and have anything to do with law or justice,” Zakharova said. On August 24, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed a law to ratify the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the ICC. Ukraine will not recognize the ICC’s jurisdiction over its citizens for seven years after the adoption of the draft law.

Sep 3, 2024

Featured • SITREP 9/2/24: Zermak on Escalation Begging Tour as Pokrovsk Clock Unwinds, Simplicius, Sep 3, 2024
Per usual, a whole bunch of news and analysis.

Featured • 50 countries united against Russia under ‘Nazi banners’ – Lavrov, RT, Sep 2, 2024

The West has always wanted to dismantle Russia and has gone as far as joining forces with the Nazis in Ukraine in an attempt to achieve this goal, Moscow’s top diplomat Sergey Lavrov has said. The foreign minister made the statement during a meeting with students and educators at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations on Monday, the first day of the new academic year in Russia. The West has always been concerned that Russia is “too strong, too independent,” and has wanted to do something about it, “preferably breaking it up,” said Lavrov. “A very indicative story is repeating itself because today, 50 countries have gathered against Russia under Nazi banners, considering the essence of the [Ukrainian leader Vladimir] Zelensky regime,” he continued, referring to the military assistance provided by the US and its allies to Kiev amid the conflict with Russia.

The foreign minister noted that Ukrainian troops have on numerous occasions been filmed wearing Nazi patches or carrying banners similar to those used by Adolf Hitler’s forces during the World War II. The “denazification” of Ukraine was identified by Russian President Vladimir Putin as one of the main goals of Moscow’s military operation against Kiev when it was launched in late February 2022. Lavrov asserted that Moscow was not going to play by Western rules and will not “embed itself into various schemes created without our participation and without taking Russia’s interests into account.” However, he said Putin had made it clear that Moscow remains “open to contacts with the countries of the ‘collective West,’ with the understanding, of course, that they will abandon their openly hostile policies towards our country.”

If the US and its allies do not change their ways, “we will continue to respond resolutely to any unfriendly steps,” Lavrov added. Elsewhere on Monday, Putin said the conflict between Moscow and Kiev had broken out because of “the destructive strategy of the West” regarding Ukraine. For decades, the Americans and their allies “sought total control over Ukraine. They funded nationalist and anti-Russian organizations there; they persistently worked to convince Ukraine that Russia was its eternal enemy and the main threat to its existence,” the Russian leader said. Washington and its “satellites” orchestrated the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev, which was driven by “radical neo-Nazi groups” that continue to determine Ukraine’s policies to this day, he added.

Dmitry Peskov indicated there are no foreseeable prospects for a recovery in ties between the nations.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that Russia-US relations are at a historic low, dismissing the idea that the two sides could gradually improve them in the foreseeable future.

In an interview with national broadcaster, Russia 1, the top official emphasized that Washington has been consistently trampling on Moscow's interests and exerting pressure for several decades.

Ties between the two states have reached “a cracking-up point” during Joe Biden’s presidency, according to Peskov, who stressed that the US administration is demonstrating an openly hostile position towards Russia by supporting Ukraine.

“Right in the middle of Mr. Biden’s presidency all these processes have culminated […] Bilateral relations are now at probably their historical low point with no prospects for entering a growth trajectory to be seen,” he said.

“The US, despite many statements to the contrary, is directly involved in the Ukraine conflict,” Peskov concluded.

Bilateral ties between Russia and the US took a nose-dive in 2022 when Washington and its allies attacked Moscow with a barrage of economic sanctions following the escalation of the Ukrainian conflict. Moreover, the White House has been providing Kiev with substantial economic and military aid, drawing reprobation from Russian officials, who have accused Washington of playing a direct role in the conflict.

In addition, the US withdrew from two security treaties, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty and the Open Skies treaty, under the administration of Donald Trump. While the White House under President Joe Biden has extended the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) through 2026, last year Moscow suspended its participation, citing the US role in the Ukraine conflict.

Peskov also cast doubt on statements made by former US President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly pledged to resolve the Ukraine conflict within 24 hours if elected a second time. The Republican presidential frontrunner has also claimed that he had an excellent relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin while in office, adding that the conflict would have never started on his watch.

“I don’t think there is a magic wand, it is impossible to do anything in a day,” Peskov said. “Although, if we assume that the next US president will make a statement during his inauguration speech that the US stands for peace and is therefore ending its support for Ukraine […], then something in someone’s brain will change.”

Among the various methods of attacking Russia and Belarus, it is no coincidence that the first thought is of a nuclear leak. The easiest way to overcome the “obstacles” to deploying NATO weapons, or even NATO troops, in Ukraine is through a nuclear leak in the region and the creation of a perception that Russia and Belarus are “unable to control the disaster.” Therefore, in military developments like the attack on Kursk, the most critical point to monitor is not which town is controlled by whom, but how close they are to nuclear power plants.In light of the recent developments on the Kursk front, the Belarusian army has decided to strengthen the units in the Gomel and Mazyr regions. Mazyr is a Belarusian region close to the Dniester River and Kyiv, while Gomel is near Kursk via Bryansk. Special operations forces, ground forces, and missile units, including Polonez and Iskander missile systems, have begun new training and exercises in the designated regions.

Sep 2, 2024

Featured • Putin's Remarks About Biden True for VP Harris - Kremlin, Sputnik International, Sep 1, 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent remark about the predictability of US President Joe Biden also applies to his vice president turned presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday. Asked whether Russia would prefer to see Joe Biden or Donald Trump as the next US president, Putin described Biden as more preferable because he was more experienced and predictable. “We do not have a favorite candidate, but the Democrats are certainly more predictable. What Putin said about Biden’s predictability applies to almost all Democrats, including Mrs. Harris,” Peskov said in a recorded interview published on social media. Peskov lamented the state of US-Russian relations, saying tensions between the two were at their highest, having reached a breaking point under the Biden administration. “They have reached the breaking point… The last drop fell,” he said.

When asked about the future of Democrats’ policy on Russia and the European Union, Peskov said it was also easy to predict. “It is all predictable. They will stick to the same policy toward us, they will predictably continue to put pressure on EU member states, and they will continue to enslave those countries politically and economically,” he said. The United States is directly involved in the Ukrainian conflict, despite numerous statements to the contrary, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov added. “The United States, despite many statements to the contrary, is directly involved in the conflict around Ukraine. It is demonstrating a tendency toward increasing the level of involvement in this conflict,” Peskov said in a recorded interview published on Telegram on Sunday. The spokesman accused Washington of “an undisguised hostile attitude” toward Russia. He said the US had spent decades piling pressure on Russia and trampling on its interests. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump will not be able to resolve all problems overnight if elected, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.

Trump has repeatedly promised during the presidential campaign to settle the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in 24 hours after coming into the White House. “I do not think he has a magic wand or that anything can be done overnight,” Peskov said in a recorded interview published on social media, commenting on Trump’s campaign promises. The Kremlin spokesman rejected as impossible speculations that a new US president could announce an end to US military support for Ukraine and call on the parties to sit down at the negotiating table in their inaugural speech in January 2025. Peskov said relations between Russia and the United States had hit rock bottom under Biden and looked unsalvageable for the time being. “Mr Biden’s presidency has become the culmination of all processes in our bilateral relations. They are probably at their historic low at the moment,” Peskov said, adding that so far, he had seen no prospects for them “entering a growth trajectory.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said Sunday that Moscow will change its nuclear doctrine in response to Western escalations related to the war in Ukraine.

“As we have repeatedly said before, the work is in the advanced stage, and there is a clear intent to introduce a correction [to the nuclear doctrine],” Ryabkov told the Russian news agency TASS.

Ryabkov said the doctrine would be updated based on “the examination and analysis of development of recent conflicts, including, of course, everything connected to our Western adversaries’ escalation course in regards to the special military operation.”

Ryabkov said it was too early to say when the doctrine would be updated. “The timeframe for its completion is a rather complicated issue, considering that we are talking about the most important aspect of our national security,” he said.

Russia’s nuclear doctrine was last updated in 2020. It allows for the use of nuclear weapons if Russia faces a nuclear attack or a conventional attack that threatens the existence of the Russian state.

Ryabkov’s comments come amid fighting in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, an offensive Ukraine is carrying out with US and NATO support. The US is allowing Ukraine to use US-provided armored vehicles, bombs, and missiles inside the Russian territory, marking a significant escalation in the proxy war.

The US claims that it was not involved in the planning of the Kursk invasion, but a Ukrainian soldier said last week that Western intelligence was crucial for carrying out the cross-border assault.

Ukraine’s incursion into Russia’s Kursk Region has failed to achieve its intended goal of halting the advance of Moscow’s forces in Donbass, President Vladimir Putin said on Monday.

He stated that Russia has been making great strides in key areas of Donbass, advancing at a pace that has not been seen in a “long time.”

“The Russian armed forces are taking control of territories not by 200, 300 meters at a time, but by square kilometers,” Putin said.

The president added that Kiev’s provocation in Kursk Region would inevitably fail and that Moscow would “deal with the Ukrainian bandits” who have entered Russian territory with the aim of destabilizing the situation at the border.

After that, Putin suggested, Kiev may come to realize that it needs to resolve the conflict through negotiations, and reiterated that Moscow has never refused to hold such talks.

However, the president noted that the Ukrainian leadership was likely not interested in ending the fighting, given that it would have to hold new presidential elections as soon as martial law in the country was lifted.

“The current authorities are clearly not ready for this, they have little chance of being re-elected,” Putin said. “That is why they are not interested in ending the fighting, that is why they tried to carry out this provocation in Kursk Region, and before when they tried to carry out the same operation in Belgorod Region.”...

According to Moscow’s latest estimates, the incursion has proven costly for Kiev’s forces, which have lost more than 7,800 servicemen, 75 tanks, and over 500 armored vehicles since the start of the operation on August 6.

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov has revealed to CNN that the Zelensky government has presented a list of significant targets which lie deep inside Russia to the Biden White House for approval to strike.

His words in the new CNN interview come as Kiev is engaged in intensive lobbying with Washington to get President Biden to greenlight the use of US missiles for longer range attacks. Ukraine has also been begging to receive long-rage missiles toward that end.

Sep 1, 2024

Featured • ‘Getting along with Russia is good’ – Trump, RT, Aug 31, 2024

Engaging positively with such countries as Russia and North Korea is a “smart” thing to do, the former US president says.

Engaging with Russia and North Korea, and “getting along” with them, would be a “good thing,” former US President Donald Trump has argued.

Speaking at an election rally in Pennsylvania on Friday, the Republican nominee touted his diplomatic efforts to fix Washington’s ties with Pyongyang, referring to his 2019 meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas.

“I got along with Kim Jong-un of North Korea. Remember I walked over… the first person to ever walk over from this country,” Trump claimed.

“We also looked at his nuclear capability. It’s very substantial,” he added. “You know, getting along is a good thing. It’s not a bad thing.”

“Getting along” with Moscow is also not “a bad thing,” Trump said. He went on to harshly criticize the incumbent administration, claiming President Joe Biden has a very low IQ “and maybe now it’s nonexistent,” as he has “completely lost his mind.” Getting along with Russia is good, not bad. Remember, getting along with these people is smart.

A total of 158 drones were shot down or intercepted by electronic warfare during a large-scale Ukrainian attack on Russian territory overnight, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

UAVs were shot down over more than a dozen Russian regions, according to a statement issued by the ministry on Sunday morning.

“During an attempt by the Kiev regime to carry out a terrorist attack using unmanned aerial vehicles,” Russian air defenses eliminated 46 drones above Kursk Region, 34 above Bryansk Region, 28 above Voronezh Region, and 14 above Belgorod Region, it said.

Moscow was also the target of an attack, with seven drones shot down over Moscow Region and two more above the capital itself, the statement read.

The U.S. government has so far gradually increased its military support to Ukraine. The purpose of this approach is to test the Russian red lines, to see how Moscow reacts to the deployment of each new weapons system or each new Western sanction and, most recently, of course, the donation of frozen Russian assets, mainly in Europe, to Ukraine. The situation has come to a head, in my humble opinion. Regarding Kursk, there has actually been an attack on Russia; Russian people have been killed, and slaughtered whereby civilians have been taken from their homes in trucks and executed. There is even footage of Ukrainian soldiers with SS helmets and with the detachment of Adolf Hitler’s Leibstandarte Regiment on their sleeves, harassing an old man, who was later killed.

The West is trying to push Russia to the limit, knowing that the Second World War is an extremely sensitive subject for Russian society where every family is related to a victim, a fallen soldier, a grandfather, an uncle, a cousin, or aunt who was killed during the Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany, in which more than 26 million people died. The recent action in the Kursk region, where most Russians perceive that the U.S. and its NATO accomplices are involved, is a brazen provocation. Indeed, more than a provocation, it has violated the Russian soul and there we have landed in a totally different dimension. Perhaps one might say, the “road of no return.”

The administration of US President Joe Biden has rejected a Pentagon plan to send American contractors to Ukraine to maintain Western hardware, including F-16 fighter jets, the Wall Street journal has reported, citing officials in Washington. The longstanding debate about deploying US civilians to Ukraine to service the hardware supplied to Kiev by its foreign backers has intensified since the delivery of the first batch of six F-16s to Ukraine in late July, the outlet said in an article on Friday. The White House National Security Council looked into the proposal coming from the military, but deemed it to be too risky, officials familiar with the discussion told the WSJ. “The intelligence community raised concerns over the prospect of Russia targeting American contractors in Ukraine,” one of the sources told the outlet. The Biden administration has not ruled out sending US contractors to Ukraine completely, but it is not going to happen any time soon, the report read.

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 • Stop the War in Ukraine While We Can, Greg Mello, LASG Vlog, Jun 24, 2024
 • What we’re up to, and reflections on some opportunities and dangers at hand, Greg Mello, VFP Webinar, Jun 20, 2024
 • Can U.S. seize the moment for peace?, Greg Mello, Santa Fe New Mexican, Jun 16, 2024
 • Bulletin 346: Momentous events, and two op-eds, Jun 16, 2024
 • Press backgrounder: U.S. Considers Expanding Its Nuclear Arsenal, Jun 10, 2024
 • Bulletin 345: Ukraine strikes Russian early-warning radar against nuclear attack, May 25, 2024
 • "Russophobia, the Ukraine war, and nuclear weapons," LASG presentation, Peter Kuznick, Steven Starr, & Greg Mello discuss the dangerous phenomenon of "Russophobia" in the West in the context of the potentially widening war in Ukraine, with its attendant nuclear dangers, video, Apr 16, 2024
 •Bulletin 342: Russophobia, the Ukraine war, and nuclear weapons," panel discussion in Santa Fe Tuesday April 16, 6 pm / Pit production: myths and contradictions, Apr 10, 2024
 • LASG friends ltr: "Russophobia, the Ukraine war, and nuclear weapons" -- panel discussion Tuesday April 16, 6 pm, St. John's United Methodist Church, Santa Fe, Apr 8, 2024
 • Bulletin 341: Pit seminar materials available; Russophobia seminar postponed; big jump in FY24 warhead spending as arms race takes hold; Ukraine losing war sparking panic in West, Mar 4, 2024
 • Bulletin 340: "Year in Pits;" Zoom update & discussion on pits 2/27; rich opportunities in the land of nuclear (dis)enchantment; end the Ukraine carnage and genocide in Gaza, Feb 22, 2024
 • The Real Purpose In Making The Bomb Was To Subdue The Soviets. Now Its Happening Again, On A Vast Scale. Why? July 22 At Fuller Lodge, Los Alamos Reporter, Jul 19, 2023
 • LASG friends ltr: Ukraine over the tipping point; more on July 22 event in Los Alamos; comment on generic "nuclear disarmament," Jul 12, 2023
 • Bulletin 330: "'The real purpose in making the bomb was to subdue the Soviets.'* Now it's happening again, on a vast scale. WHY?" A conversation with acclaimed historian Peter Kuznick and Greg Mello in Los Alamos, July 22, Jul 7, 2023
 • Ukraine War Makes it Harder to be a Nuclear Dove | Our Land, Laura Paskus, New Mexico in Focus, Jun 30, 2023
 • Bulletin 329: Russia rules out nuclear disarmament negotiations; second week of Ukrainian offenses fail; what will US and NATO do? Build 60 projects in LANL's Pajarito Corridor?, Jun 17, 2023
 • LASG friends ltr (06/15/2023) Pit production zoom today; halt military "aid" to Ukraine, which just kills more Ukrainians, accept peace
 • Ukraine; Biden's Manicheism; the U.S. cannot even conduct a nuclear arms race, let alone win one, LASG friends ltr, Mar 16, 2023
 • Ukraine protest and updates, pit production delays and cost increases in NNSA's new budget, LASG friends ltr, Mar 14, 2023
 • Antiwar rally 2 pm Saturday in Albuquerque; LANL pits delayed, endorse the "Call for Sanity"; Ukraine update; the Nordstream investigation (and likely impeachment) "imperative" LASG friends ltr, Mar 11, 2023
 • Ukraine losses mount toward critical point; ANSWER rally against the war is now 2 pm (not 1 pm), March 18, Albuquerque; nearly half U.S. citizens believe WWIII is near, LASG friends ltr, Mar 7, 2023
 • Ukraine news and views; antiwar rally March 18; pending guest editorial; pit production precis, LASG friends ltr, Mar 3, 2023
 • Bulletin 325: Understanding the Nordstream sabotage and punishing those responsible, Feb 18, 2023
 • Ukraine news with comments and excerpts; bookmark for future reference if desired,LASG friends ltr, Feb 8, 2023
 • Bulletin 324: Opposition to Ukraine war gains visibility in New Mexico and via our web site, more broadly, Feb 6, 2023
 • Anti-nuclear activist opposes helping Ukraine, encourages peace, Santa Fe New Mexican, Feb 5, 2023
 • Bulletin 323: "Nuclear Hotseat" interview / Ukraine war updates, Feb 4, 2023
 • Bulletin 322: Right and Left To Join in D.C. Protest: Not One More Penny for War in Ukraine / Bulletin of Atomic Scientists resets clock, blames Russia, Jan 25, 2023
 • $10 Trillion for Nuclear War: Racing to the Nuclear Cliff, The Socialist Program with Brian Becker, Jan 10, 2023
 • Bulletin 321: Last day for 2022 donations! / A few quick updates, Dec 31, 2022
 • Bulletin 320: Neocon humiliation -- or nuclear exchange / The centrality of war resistance in moral politics / 3 days left for 1:1 donation match!, Dec 29, 2022
 • Bulletin 319: Ukraine; NDAA: omnibus appropriations bill; fundraising --thank you; some matching funds still available, Dec 21, 2022
 • Stop the war now, Jean Nichols, The Taos News, Dec 19, 2022
 • Bulletin 318: Speak out now against further U.S. escalation in Ukraine; daily updates for your use, Dec 14, 2022
 • Agenda for tonight's emergency Ukraine meeting in Albuquerque, and by Zoom, Nov 15, 2022
 • Bulletin 314: Reminder re next week's antiwar, disarmament, & nuclear safety events: come if you can or tune in, outreach needed; pit interview on KNME tonight 7 pm; fundraising drive continues; erratum, Nov 11, 2022
 • Bulletin 313: Important meeting about Ukraine next week; DNFSB hearing in Santa Fe; more, Nov 7, 2022
 • Biden Administration releases aggressive nuclear strategy envisioning "first use" of nuclear weapons in wars like Ukraine, press release, Oct 27, 2022
 • Bulletin 310: Speak up! We urge you to take up the call for peace in Ukraine, Sep 25, 2022
 • Pope Francis: "World War III has been declared." We agree. Stop LANL's pit factory; Stop the U.S. war against Russia, presentation, Jun 15, 2022
 • Bulletin 301: Oppose the war! Demand and create accountability for lawmakers who fund and promote more war in Ukraine, May 16, 2022
 • Grave dangers loom in Ukraine war votes and escalations; opportunities open for journalists and citizens; We urge news media to widen debate, pose questions, create accountability, press release, May 16, 2022
 • LASG friends ltr: Thursday evening public discussion in Albuquerque: Ukraine, propaganda, progressives supporting Nazis and war, May 10, 2022
 • Escalation in Ukraine: The Nuclear War Danger is Real, Brian Becker & Greg Mello discuss the U.S. policy of waging proxy war on Russia, BreakThrough News, May 4, 2022
 • Bulletin 299: Emergency call to action: stop Biden's proposed $33 billion war escalation, Apr 28, 2022
 • Bulletin 298: Talk on pits & renewed U.S. nuclear weapons production Tuesday evening 4/26/22; antiwar billboard; what you can do, Apr 25, 2022
 • The core debate, Searchlight New Mexico, Mar 23, 2022
 • Bulletin 294: Please consider forwarding this fine statement from UNAC re Ukraine, Mar 23, 2022
 • Nuclear expert speaks on the dangers of war between the US and Russia, World Socialist Website, Mar 15, 2022
 • A Proposed Solution to the Ukraine War, Consortium News, Greg Mello, Mar 7, 2022
 • Bulletin 293: Ukraine conflict: If you want a ceasefire (as we do), stop firing, Mar 5, 2022
 • Bulletin 292: Statement on the Ukraine conflict and war with Russia, Mar 1, 2022
 • "What can we in New Mexico do?," LASG letter, Feb 23, 2022
 • Bulletin 288: US nuclear weapons since 2020: continuity and change, Dec 7, 2021 (see discussion of US, NATO, and Russia)
 • Nuclear experts speak on the dangers of war between the US and Russia, World Socialist Web Site, Apr 15, 2017
 • US Leaders Reject “Nuclear Winter” Studies, Ignore Existential Danger of Nuclear War. Turn a Blind Eye towards Armageddon, Steven Starr, Global Research, Nov 1, 2016
 • The Ukraine Conflict: What's Behind It? Why Is It Important?, Sep 26, 2015
 • Bulletin 200: Warhead budget bloat; U.S.-caused Ukraine catastrophe at the brink; hello peak oil, Feb 8, 2015