Connexion
Le président ukrainien Vladimir Zelensky a laissé entendre que tout le monde ne serait pas satisfait de l’issue du conflit
L’article Zelensky sur l’issue du conflit : “Je ne suis pas sûr que tout le monde sera content” est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Dans son discours d’ouverture de la réunion du Conseil du ministère russe de la Défense, Sergueï Choïgou a déclaré que
L’article Choïgou : “Depuis le début de l’opération spéciale, les pertes ukrainiennes se sont élevées à près d’un demi-million de militaires” est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Les troupes russes ont mené à bien l’opération de libération de Novomikhailovka sur l’axe de Donetsk. C’est ce qu’a rapporté
L’article L’armée russe a pris le contrôle du village de Novomikhailovka est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Dominique Delawarde, général de l’armée française, chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur et chevalier de l’ordre National du mérite, a partagé
L’article L’Ukraine se dirige vers la catastrophe: il y aura des négociations, mais Kiev signera ce que Moscou exigera est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
As the Ukraine expires, urgent moves are afoot to raise new “Anti-Russias” to maintain Forever Wars on Russia in the European direction. France and Romania make moves
Editorial at KATEHON.COM.
The draft law that the Romanian Ministry of Defense just introduced for allowing the armed forces to deploy abroad in defense of their country’s compatriots raises very serious questions about Bucharest’s geopolitical intentions. The neighboring countries of Moldova and Ukraine have Romanian minorities within them, some of whom have Romanian citizenship such as the 1.3 million in the first-mentioned. Parts of both of them also used to constitute so-called “Greater Romania” during the interwar period.
The polity included all of modern-day Moldova apart from its unrecognized separatist Transnistrian region as well as Ukraine’s Budjak and Northern Bukovina regions. During World War II, Romania also participated in the Nazis’ Operation Barbarossa and occupied Odessa Oblast, which was ruled as the “Transnistria Governorate”. That historically Russian city is also at the center of speculation about France’s geopolitical plans nowadays too.
President Emmanuel Macron claimed in late February during a meeting with EU leaders in Paris that a conventional military intervention in Ukraine cannot be “ruled out”, later specifying that his country could take the lead in this respect if Russia advances on Kiev once again or moves on Odessa. France already has troops and tanks in Romania and even signed a security pact with Moldova last month. It’s therefore already positioned to conventionally intervene in Ukraine if the decision is made.
Romania has emerged as a crucial conduit for NATO arms to Ukraine over the past two years to complement routes through Poland, which have become blocked in recent months as a result of farmers’ protests in response to Brussels’ “Green Deal” and the influx of cheap and low-quality Ukrainian grain. Arms and equipment are sent to Greece and then pass through Bulgaria and Romania en route to Western Ukraine. The “Moldova Highway” that’s being built in Romania will facilitate this flow.
Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said in mid-March that “Troops cannot be sent to Ukraine under NATO’s mandate because Ukraine is not a NATO ally. But in general, if Ukraine has bilateral agreements with a certain state in any sphere, these issues are a matter of bilateral relations. Romania will not send soldiers to Ukraine.” Reading between the lines, he essentially signaled that a so-called “coalition of the willing” could intervene there instead of it being a formal NATO mission.
As was earlier written, France is already positioned to conventionally do so via its troops and tanks in Romania if the decision is made. Although Iohannis said that “Romania will not send soldiers to Ukraine”, that was before the pro-Western Balkan Insight drew attention to Bucharest’s growing religious dispute with Kiev. Their article titled “Religious Rivalry Threatens Romania-Ukraine’s Close Partnership” was published at the end of last month and is very relevant in light of the latest draft law being tabled.
In brief, the Romanian Orthodox Church announced its support in late February for a separate church for ethnic Romanians in Ukraine. Most of them belong to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and not Kiev’s newly created schismatic “Orthodox Church of Ukraine”, and they’ve since come under pressure following a serious of “suspicious incidents” for refusing to defect to that false religious body. The proposed separate church is apparently designed to protect them from further harassment.
The unspoken intent is for ethnic Romanians to physically distance themselves from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and thus avoid more fascist attacks against the latter’s congregation, which Ukrainian radicals carry out due to the former’s ties with the Moscow Patriarchate. The model that could be employed would emulate that which was already applied towards the Moldovan Orthodox Church in basically bribing priests to defect towards that country’s newly created autonomous local diocese.
If the ethnic Romanians’ request to register their proposed religious entity is denied by Kiev and more “suspicious incidents” follow as punishment for their refusal to defect towards its false religious body, then a Romanian military intervention in defense of its compatriots there also can’t be ruled out either. Most live in modern-day Chernivsti Oblast but there’s still a small community in southern Odessa Region’s Budjak region as well, which overlap with the land previously controlled by interwar Romania.
The likelihood of Romania unilaterally intervening in Ukraine is low, let alone intervening only in that country and not in Moldova where a much larger percentage of the local population holds Romanian passports. Therefore, if any military intervention occurs, it’ll probably be a joint operation with France. Paris would try to seize control of the Black Sea coast around Odessa while Romania would seize Budjak and Chernivsti Oblast, or at least the mostly Romanian-inhabited parts of those regions.
The trigger for this scenario could be a Russian military breakthrough across the front lines sometime later this year that would then serve as the pretext for France to lead a “coalition of the willing” of at least itself and Romania to raise the costs of Russia potentially crossing the Dnieper River. Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu warned his French counterpart in a conversation on Wednesday that intervening in Ukraine could cause problems for France itself, thus hinting at immediate retaliation.
That likely isn’t a bluff either since Russia already killed several dozen French mercenaries in Kharkov in late January so the precedent has been established proving that it could also act against French troops too. In fact, some or perhaps even all of those mercenaries might have even been undercover members of the French military, the possibility of which might explain Macron’s reluctance to follow through on late February’s threat since he fears a humiliating military defeat in that event.
Nevertheless, if he decides to go through with it anyhow irrespective of whether it’s intended to preempt the previously mentioned trigger for this scenario or occurs immediately afterwards, then Romania would probably join France in those two Ukrainian regions and Moldova as well. The casus belli that Bucharest could rely on for intervening in Ukraine might be its growing religious dispute with Kiev while the Moldovan dimension could be attributed to alleged Russian threats from Transnistria.
Russia has previously bombed Ukrainian military targets in Budjak’s southernmost Danuban region like the town of Izmail so it would probably also bomb any Romanian military units that deploy there too. Furthermore, if Russia’s peacekeepers in Transnistria are attacked, blockaded, or threatened by Romania and/or France, then that could also prompt Russia to attack the aggressors in Moldova and possibly within Romania itself, which would amount to strikes within NATO territory for self-defense reasons.
Bucharest’s plans to rebuild “Greater Romania”, arguably in joint partnership with France to a large degree, are therefore fraught with danger and should be reconsidered by responsible policymakers. World War III could be sparked by miscalculation since the escalation cycle could easily spiral out of control in that scenario. If the Ministry of Defense’s draft law passes, then Bucharest would regard itself as having the subjectively defined legal pretext for risking this, which raises the chances of a wider war.
L’administration du président américain Joseph Biden a remporté des succès majeurs. Elle a réussi à convaincre la Chambre des représentants
L’article L’aide américaine à l’Ukraine approuvée est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
when is it no longer “safe” ?? A free article by Elijah Magnier. Presciently published 2-3 days PRIOR to the Iranian retaliation. Iran moved from Patience to direct Power. Henceforth, there will be consequences for Zio-USUK, as in Novorossiya!
By Elijah J Magnier on 11/04/2024.
In a calculated move of retaliation, Iran has decided to respond to Israel’s actions by earmarking several targets from its extensive list for initial and, if deemed necessary, subsequent more destructive reprisals. Reliable sources reveal that Iran’s strategic planning includes the Israeli Chief of Staff’s headquarters among the range of potential targets. This decision is a direct consequence of Israel’s targeted assassinations of Iranian generals on Monday, 1 April 2024, which targeted the Iranian diplomatic consulate in Damascus, Syria. This attack destroyed the consulate and the death of seven senior Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) officers, including a brigadier general and general, his second in command. In the light of these events, Iran has vowed to retaliate.
Hezbollah, an ally of Iran, proposed a joint attack on Israel. However, reliable Iranian sources report that Sayyed Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Leader, rejected the proposal. Sayyed Khamenei’s refusal is based on a desire to prevent harm to Iran’s allies and a belief that retaliation should be an exclusively Iranian response, especially after the attack on its diplomatic consulate. The purpose of Iran’s planned retaliation is not necessarily to effectively harm Israel by destroying its diplomatic mission but to send a warning. This serves as a deterrent message to Israel and the international community to refrain from similar actions in the future. Iran’s strategy is not aimed at escalating the situation into a wider conflict unless Israel retaliates. Instead, Iran is trying to navigate out of the position it has been placed in by Israel’s actions against its diplomatically and legally protected consulate in Syria.
Israel’s conduct violates essential norms protecting the inviolability of diplomatic premises and representatives, as enshrined in the Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961), the Convention on Consular Relations (1963), and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes against Internationally Protected Persons, including Diplomatic Agents (1973).
Invoking Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which sanctions the right of individual or collective self-defence in response to an armed attack against a UN member state, Iran is in a position to retaliate against Israel without the option of restraint. This stance is based on the need to protect its diplomatic missions around the world. Iran has notified the United States of its intention to retaliate by international legal frameworks while at the same time preparing for possible further escalation by Israel by preparing additional countermeasures in the event of significant Israeli retaliation.
Delaying a retaliatory strike does not put Iran at a disadvantage, as strategic depth and patience define its approach to conflict. This stance emphasises that time serves Iran’s interests by allowing it to respond to any aggression in a calculated manner and by draining Israel’s resources and nerves in anticipation of Iranian retaliation. The notion that the explicit intent of a “damaging strike” would typically come from the “Axis of Resistance” that aims to underscore a strategy of surprise and direct engagement. On the other hand, Iran’s primary goal isn’t just tit-for-tat but to prevent future provocations and maintain established limits of engagement.
Iran’s decision-making process is not hasty or impulsive but deliberate and methodical. It is based on a thorough assessment of the immediate facts, strategic evaluations, and broader implications on the regional and international stage. This approach instils confidence, as it shows that Iran’s actions are not driven by the clamour of public opinion on social media but by a complete understanding of the potential consequences.
The leadership’s emphasis on strengthening the resilience of the Iranian people, increasing national enthusiasm, and reinforcing ideological cohesion is not just a prelude to military action but a testament to Iran’s commitment to its citizens. The Iranian leadership considers this internal fortification more important than the act of retaliation itself, highlighting the depth of their commitment.
The symbolic gesture of Sayyed Khamenei appearing with a Russian Dragunov semi-automatic sniper rifle during the Eid al-Fitr sermon, an action usually reserved for Friday sermons, is a deliberate display of readiness for conflict. This act is not just a message of defensiveness but a declaration of Iran’s readiness and resolve, reinforcing its strategic position and ideological steadfastness.
In sum, Iran is a nation that approaches the prospect of conflict with caution, strategic planning and a deep-seated commitment to preserving its sovereignty and principles rather than being swayed by external pressures or immediate provocations.
‘Operation Faithful Promise’ written in a red rocket
Iran’s measures
Iran has upgraded security measures around more than 91 Iranian sites deemed ‘sensitive’ as a defensive measure. These measures included its infrastructure, nuclear facilities and military installations, underlining its comprehensive approach to hardening its critical infrastructure against potential Israeli threats. This strategy appears to mirror tactics seen elsewhere, including by Israel and highlights a trend towards multi-layered defence systems that combine physical interception measures with electronic warfare capabilities.
Indeed, Iran’s deployment of anti-aircraft and interceptor missiles at critical sites, including nuclear facilities and military bases, represents a direct approach to countering air threats such as human-crewed aircraft, drones and missiles. These systems range from short-range air defence (SHORAD) systems designed to engage targets at lower altitudes to advanced long-range missile defence systems capable of intercepting high-altitude threats and fighter jets.
Furthermore, the Iranian deployment of GPS jamming systems throughout Iran indicates a significant emphasis on countering precision-guided munitions and navigation-dependent drones and missiles. By degrading the accuracy of GPS-guided weapons, Iran aims to reduce the effectiveness of potential attacks on its territory, particularly on sites critical to its national security and infrastructure. GPS jamming can create a defensive buffer, making planning and executing air strikes more challenging.
By publicly demonstrating the enhancement of its defensive capabilities, Iran seeks to deter potential adversaries from considering direct attacks by projecting a willingness to defend its critical assets. This move reflects the ongoing technology race in military capabilities, where corresponding improvements match advances in offensive weapon systems in defensive technologies. Also, strengthening Iran’s defensive posture may have implications for regional security dynamics, potentially affecting the calculus of NATO, Israel and other regional actors regarding their security strategies and policies.
Using GPS jamming on a national scale highlights the growing importance of electronic warfare in modern defence strategies. It not only complicates adversaries’ operational environment but also represents an investment in non-kinetic means of warfare.
(L): Il Papa kisses the Ring ; (R): Christian Zionist former Vice Prez Pence at Christians United for Israel (CUFI)
Israel measures
Israel’s approach to missile defence is indeed multi-layered and highly sophisticated, designed to counter a wide range of threats from short-range rockets to medium-range ballistic missiles. This defence strategy includes several key components to provide a comprehensive shield. In addition, the involvement of NATO, particularly with naval assets equipped with missile interceptors, provides an international dimension to regional missile defence efforts.
Israel’s missile defence architecture consists of several layers, each designed to engage different types of threats at various ranges and altitudes:
Iron Dome: Primarily aimed at intercepting short-range rockets and artillery shells. It is known to have been effective in intercepting projectiles from Gaza.
David’s Sling: Targets medium- to long-range rockets and cruise missiles, filling the gap between the Iron Dome and Arrow systems.
Arrow 2 and Arrow 3 systems: Designed to intercept ballistic missiles at high altitudes, including outside the Earth’s atmosphere, providing a last line of defence against long-range threats.
Role of Patriot Missiles in Israel’s Air Defense: Israel’s inclusion of the Patriot missile system in its air defence arsenal is a significant component of its multi-layered defence strategy aimed at countering various aerial threats. Initially developed by the United States, the Patriot missile system is designed to detect, track, and engage incoming ballistic missiles at high altitudes, as well as aircraft and drones.
GPS jamming and non-GPS-guided threats: The Israeli army uses GPS jamming to mitigate the threat posed by precision-guided munitions, including missiles and drones that rely on GPS for navigation. By jamming or spoofing GPS signals, defenders can degrade the accuracy of incoming threats, potentially diverting them from their intended targets. However, as noted above, not all missiles and drones deployed by Iran and its allies rely on GPS for guidance. Many systems may use alternative navigation methods, such as inertial guidance, which uses gyroscopes and accelerometers to maintain a course without external references. Others may use Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM) or optical or radar-based homing technologies that are not susceptible to GPS jamming.
Furthermore, NATO’s deployment of missile interceptors around Israel and in the Red Sea and the Mediterranean demonstrates a high level of cooperation and commitment to Israel’s defence. These ships will likely be equipped with Aegis combat systems capable of tracking and shooting down enemy missiles and aircraft, enhancing Israel’s national missile defence capabilities.
(L): Display of satellite rockets, Khorramshahr missile, and Qiyam-1 missile in the national day parade, 11.02.2024 ; (R): Iran’s missile strikes against Mossad & terrorist targets in Iraq and Syria, 15.01.2024
Countermeasures
However, missile guidance systems, especially those used by countries such as Iran and its allies (Hezbollah, Iraqi Resistance), have evolved to incorporate a variety of technologies aimed at improving accuracy and reliability while evading countermeasures. One such technology is using gyroscopes in the missile’s guidance system. Let’s look at the basics of how these systems work, their advantages and their potential limitations.
A gyroscope in a missile guidance system performs a critical function: it provides inertial navigation data. This means that it can measure and maintain the orientation and angular velocity of the missile without external references. It tells the rocket whether it has rolled, pitched or yawed during flight and by how much.
How it works? A gyroscope maintains its orientation using the principle of angular momentum. In the context of missile guidance, it can provide a stable reference that indicates the missile’s orientation relative to the Earth’s surface. By integrating data from gyroscopes with accelerometers (which measure acceleration), the missile’s inertial navigation system (INS) can calculate its position, orientation and velocity without needing external references such as GPS.
One of the main advantages of using a gyroscopic guidance system is its independence from external signals such as GPS. This makes the missile less susceptible to jamming and spoofing techniques, which are common electronic countermeasures used to disrupt the guidance of GPS-guided weapons. Relying on an internal guidance system allows the missile to be guided to its target even in environments where GPS signals are compromised.
Gyroscopes make missiles more resistant to jamming and spoofing. They do not rely on external updates and can operate in GPS-denied environments. When combined with accelerometers in an INS, gyroscopes can provide precise navigation capabilities.
However, Inertial navigation systems, including gyroscopes, can accumulate errors over time. The longer the missile is in flight, the greater the potential error in its calculated position. Thus, implementing a robust gyroscopic guidance system can be complex and expensive compared to simpler GPS-based systems. Still, it is necessary when facing an advanced enemy with a GPS jamming system. Gyroscopic missile guidance systems offer significant advantages regarding autonomy and resistance to electronic countermeasures, making them particularly useful for countries such as Iran that can anticipate GPS jamming techniques.
Legal approach
The attack on the consulate of a nation, which caused both material damage and fatalities, is a severe violation of international norms, in particular the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which stipulates the inviolability of diplomatic premises and the protection of diplomatic personnel. In response, Iran lodged a formal protest with the United Nations, highlighting the international condemnation by entities such as the United Arab Emirates, the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (except Bahrain), Russia and China, all of which emphasised the sanctity of diplomatic premises and condemned the violation of these principles.
The collective condemnation by the 121 countries of the Non-Aligned Movement demonstrates global solidarity with Iran and highlights the significant geopolitical implications of disregarding diplomatic norms. Yet the Western response has been muted, with minimal public condemnation, reflecting a polarised global perspective on the incident.
Iran’s efforts to rally international support to isolate Israel diplomatically, coupled with Israeli Minister Benny Gantz’s call for a coalition against Iran, reflect the complex global dynamics at play. Iran is criticising the United States, Britain and France for not supporting a UN Security Council condemnation of the Israeli attack on its consulate in Damascus, which Iran blames on US-supplied weapons. This position is being portrayed as a tacit endorsement of the aggression, risking further instability in West Asia. Iran asserts its right to seek legal redress and retaliation under international law for this affront.
In solidarity, Ansar Allah in Yemen and Hezbollah in Lebanon expressed their unwavering support for Iran and condemned the attack on the consulate. The support of Iran’s powerful allies was manifested during Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian’s talks in Muscat, Oman, which focused on sending the right message and soft warning to the US administration to remain neutral.
Since 7 October, the United States has already sent four indirect messages to Iran, urging Tehran to remain in control and not to be provoked into joining Netanyahu’s conflict. The messages stressed that the US administration would do everything in its power to contain the conflict. However, Iran perceives that the US has not lived up to its commitments and points to Israel’s actions, which have further antagonised Iran, including the destruction of its consulate in Damascus, as evidence of this failure.
Iran is aware that the US will not abandon Israel, just as Israel and the US know that Iran’s main allies in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen will stand by it. This mutual recognition is what led Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to believe that he could carry out a strike on the Iranian consulate with impunity and expect no retaliation from Iran.
The US is limited to intercepting missiles and drones aimed at Israel and using its diplomatic clout to defuse tensions and prevent Israel from escalating the situation, given the potential for full-scale conflict. The prospect of the US becoming embroiled in a Middle East conflict, especially one it could start but find difficult to end, is particularly unappealing as President Joe Biden faces a presidential election in two months. The US administration, already unhappy with Israel’s conduct in the Gaza conflict, is putting pressure on Netanyahu to cease hostilities and facilitate humanitarian aid. As a result, there is little appetite for escalation, which could only benefit Netanyahu by prolonging his tenure and aiding his domestic political survival while significantly undermining Biden’s re-election ambitions. This precarious situation encourages all parties to remain vigilant and avoid Netanyahu’s potentially dangerous strategies, especially as he faces declining domestic and regional support due to various failures.
Régis Chamagne est un colonel de l’aviation française, il fut commandant de l’escadron Mirage F1C à Cambrai, puis commandant de
L’article L’Ukraine n’a aucune chance de gagner cette guerre, la politique de la France va à l’encontre de ses intérêts nationaux est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Israel is now vowing to respond to Iran’s retaliatory attack, and while the Biden regime claims to have told Netanyahoo that the U.S. won’t aid in any offensive action, they are still promising to provide air defense… just like they did when Tehran retaliated for Israel’s deadly attack on the Iranian consulate in Syria.
Journalist and Editor-in-Chief of The Cradle, Sharmine Narwani, reported that an Iranian military security official revealed exclusively to The Cradle that the U.S. reached out and asked Iran to allow Israel “a symbolic strike to save face,” which was “outright rejected” and met with warnings that any attack from Israel targeting Iran will be met with immediate action.
~~~~~
Choreographed retaliations impacting Iran proper, or its interests anywhere else, as during the mild and lawful Round One Iranian barrage, were rejected by Iran for Round Two.
Iran warned ANY support of Zion’s aggression by the deranged West (such as needed aerial refueling and air defense) will bring retaliation on their bases throughout the region, and closing Hormuz, perhaps selectively a la Houthis?!
Zion is committed to regaining permanently lost deterrence. F-UKUS is committed to Zion. The circle is about to be squared
L’armée russe a attaqué la zone de l’aérodrome des Forces armées ukrainiennes dans la banlieue de Starokonstantinov, dans la région
L’article La Russie frappe un aérodrome ukrainien qui doit recevoir des F-16 est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
L’Ukraine a tenté d’attaquer la Russie à l’aide d’un ballon qui a été détruit par la défense aérienne au-dessus du
L’article Kiev a attaqué le territoire russe avec… un ballon est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Les forces armées russes ont frappé l’emplacement des mercenaires français à Slaviansk, contrôlé par les Forces armées ukrainiennes, a déclaré
L’article L’armée russe frappe des mercenaires français à Slaviansk est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Knocking at the wrong door. Egypt and Qatar can’t ‘deliver’ the Hamas leadership in Gaza
By Abdel Bari Atwan at Rai Al Youm.
This week, US President Joe Biden called Egyptian President Abdelfattah as-Sisi and the emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin-Hamad to press them to threaten Hamas and force it to agree to a ‘temporary’ cease-free to pause the war and exchange captives. Hamas did not reply directly, but hinted the proposal was unacceptable.
The exercise demonstrates the US president’s astonishing degree of ignorance about his two supposed Arab allies, and also about Hamas and the nature of its on-the-ground leadership in the Gaza Strip.
I have been closely following the ongoing negotiations in Doha and Cairo, the roles played by the mediators, and the way Hamas has been handling — and foiling — the plans that emerged from the earlier four-way meeting of intelligence chiefs in Paris.
Several points stand out.
First, Biden and his entourage seem incapable of understanding that it is the Hamas leadership in the Gaza Strip led by Yahya al-Sinwar that has the final say. They still think certain Arab rulers or former PLO leaders can decide matters on its behalf.
Secondly, the Egyptian and Qatari mediators have no means of putting pressure on the Sinwar’s leadership.
Egypt lost its strongest card — the Rafah crossing — by failing (not wanting or not being able) to open it for humanitarian aid over the past six months, and by opting for ‘neutrality’ regarding Israel.
Qatar and its emir also lost their only card, the $30 million in financial aid they used to provide monthly to Hamas in the Gaza Strip monthly, transferred via Tel Aviv with prior coordination.
Third, the amended US proposal is confined to the humanitarian needs of the Gaza population and offering temporary, not permanent, solutions, aimed at rescuing Israel. It does not address their legitimate demands for freedom, liberation, and a dignified life, but treats them as supplicant beggars.
Fourth, Hamas’ leaders in Gaza do not know the Arab world’s leaders, especially those who revolve in the US orbit, and do not want to make their acquaintance. They decided form the start to keep their distance from them, not trust them, and rely on themselves, with assistance and political support from the Axis of Resistance. Most of them have barely travelled outside the Gaza Strip, other than when being released from Israeli prisons back to their refugee camp homes.
Fifth, by contacting the Egyptian and Qatari rulers to demand they pressure Hamas into agreeing a temporary truce, Biden effectively conceded Israel’s defeat in the war. But he also demonstrated his inability to extract any meaningful concession from Netanyahu. He therefore turned his pressure on the Arab and Palestinian sides.
Sixth, Biden avoided calling for an immediate ceasefire or unconditional access for humanitarian aid for the past six months. The reasons he is now so keen on them is not out of sympathy for the suffering children of Gaza, but to prevent Iran retaliating for Israel’s airstrike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. He knows a temporary cease-fire might avert or postpone such retaliation, which could expand the Gaza war into a region-wide war.
I hope Sinwar will reject the poisoned US prisoner exchange agreement that is on the table, and hold fast to his demands for a permanent ceasefire, withdrawal of Israeli forces, return of displaced people, and resumption of relief and reconstruction operations.
The US intelligence community, composed of 18 different agencies, conceded in its latest annual report that Israel would never be able to eradicate Hamas and would continue to face armed Palestinian resistance for many years to come.
Netanyahu’s repeated threats to invade Rafah will not make any difference. He may have succeeded in cowing and intimidating Arab leaders, but his methods won’t work with the leaders of the Palestinian resistance in Gaza.
Dans toutes les directions, dans la République populaire de Donetsk, il y a eu un tournant en faveur des forces
L’article L’armée russe avance sur tous les axes en RPD, selon un conseiller de Pouchiline est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Le président biélorusse Alexandre Loukachenko, lors d’une réunion avec son homologue russe Vladimir Poutine, a déclaré que si Minsk pouvait
L’article En visite diplomatique, Loukachenko rappelle le soutien de Minsk à Moscou pour le processus de paix en Ukraine est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Le 10 avril, une réunion s’est tenue à la Maison-Blanche entre le président américain Joe Biden et le Premier ministre
L’article Les États-Unis et le Japon transforment leur alliance militaire est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
… as the whole planet awaits with bated breath the avowedly inevitable Iranian response to the attack against its consulate/ambassador residence in Damascus by the biblical psychopaths responsible for the Gaza genocide.
By Pepe Escobar at Sputnik International.
Enveloped in an aura of secrecy, each passing day betrays the immensity of the challenge: the possibly asymmetrical response must be, simultaneously, symbolic, substantive, cogent, convincing, reasonable and rational. That is driving Tel Aviv totally hysterical and the deciding instances of the Hegemon extremely itchy.
Everyone with a functioning brain knows this wet dream of a stunt from the point of view of hardcore Zionists and US Christian zio-cons was a serious provocation, designed to draw the US to the long-cherished Israeli plan of striking a decisive blow against both Hezbollah and Tehran.
The IDF’s Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi all but gave away the game, when he said this past Sunday that “we are operating in cooperation with the USA and strategic partners in the region.”
Translation: never trust the Hegemon even as the notion is floated – via Swiss mediators – that Washington won’t interfere with Tehran’s response to Tel Aviv. One just needs to remember Washington’s “assurances” to Saddam Hussein before the first Gulf War.
It’s impossible to take Hegemon back-channel assurances at face value. The White House and the Pentagon occasionally dispense these “assurances” to Moscow every time Kiev strikes deep inside the Russian Federation using US-UK satellite intel, logistics, weaponry and with NATO in de-facto operational control.
The state terror attack on Damascus, which shredded the Vienna convention on diplomatic immunity, crucially was also an attack on both the expanded BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Iran is a member of both multilateral bodies, and on top of it is engaged in strategic partnerships with both Russia and China.
"If Iran attacks from its territory – Israel will respond and attack in Iran," Israel's foreign minister threatened Iran with strikes, tweeting in Hebrew and Persian and tagging Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
Iran's supreme leader, for his part, later said that the Israeli… pic.twitter.com/eWq4XDmu3Y
— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) April 10, 2024
So it’s no wonder the leadership in both Beijing and Moscow carefully consider all possible repercussions of the next Iranian move.
Tel Aviv’s purposeful escalation – when it comes to expanding war in West Asia – happens to mirror another escalation: NATO’s no way out in Ukraine except by doubling down, with no end in sight.
That started with the invariably out of his depth Secretary of State Little Tony Blinken affirming, on the record, that Ukraine will (italics mine) join NATO. Which any functioning brain knows is translatable as the road map towards a Russia-NATO hot war with unbelievably dire consequences.
Little Blinkie’s criminal irresponsibility was duly picked up and reverberated by the Franco-British duo, as expressed by British FM David “of Arabia” Cameron and French FM Stephane Sejourne: “If Ukraine loses, we all lose”.
At least they got that (italics mine) right – although that took ages, when it comes to framing NATO’s approaching cosmic humiliation.
“Dual Opposition” to “Dual Deterrence”
Now let’s switch from clownish bit players to the adults in the room. As in Russian FM Sergei Lavrov and Chinese FM Wang Yi discussing literally every incandescent dossier together earlier this week in Beijing.
Lavrov and Wang could not be clearer on what’s ahead for the Russia-China strategic partnership.
They will engage together on all matters regarding Eurasian security.
They will go, in Lavrov’s words, for “dual opposition” to counterpunch the West’s “dual deterrence”.
They will be countering every attempt by the usual suspects to “slow down the natural course of history”.
Add to it the confirmation that President Putin and President Xi will hold at least two bilaterals in 2024: at the SCO summit in June and at the BRICS summit in October.
In a nutshell: the dogs of Forever Wars bark while the Eurasian integration caravan marches on.
Both Lavrov and Wang made it very clear that while steering through “the natural course of history”, the Russia-China strategic partnership will keep seeking a way to resolve the Ukraine tragedy, taking into account Russia’s interests.
Translation: NATO better wake up and smell the coffee.
This bilateral at the FM level in Beijing is yet another graphic proof of the current tectonic shift in what the Chinese usually describe as the “world correlation of forces”. Next month – already confirmed – it will be Putin’s turn to visit Beijing.
It’s never enough to remember that on February 4, 2022, also in Beijing, Putin personally explained to Xi why NATO/Hegemon expansion into Ukraine was totally unacceptable for Russia. Xi, for all practical purposes, understood the stakes and did not subsequently oppose the SMO.
This time, Lavrov could not but refer to the 12-point peace plan on Ukraine proposed by Beijing last year, which addresses the root causes “primarily in the context of ensuring indivisible security, including in Europe and the world over.”
Your “Overcapacity” is Driving Me Nuts
Both Tehran and Moscow face a serious challenge when it comes to the Hegemon’s intentions. It’s impossible to definitely conclude that Washington was not in the loop on Tel Aviv’s attack on Iran in Damascus – even though it’s counter-intuitive to believe that the Democrats in an election year would willingly fuel a nasty hot war in West Asia provoked by Israel.
Yet there’s always the possibility that the White House-endorsed genocide in Gaza is about to extrapolate the framework of a confrontation between Israel and Iran/Axis of Resistance – as the Hegemon is de facto implicated in myriad levels.
To alleviate such tension, let’s introduce what under the circumstances can be understood as comic relief: the “Yellin’ Yellen goes to China” adventure.
US Secretary of Treasury Janet Yellen went to Beijing to essentially deliver two threats (this is the Hegemon, after all).
1. Yellen said that Chinese companies could face “significant consequences” if they provided “material support for Russia’s war on Ukraine.”
2. Yellen accused Chinese companies of “overcapacity” – especially when it comes to the electric-vehicle (EV) industry (incidentally, 18 of the top 20 EV companies around the world are Chinese).
The Chinese, predictably, dismissed the whole show with barely a yawn, pointing out that the Hegemon simply cannot deal with China’s competitive advantage, so they resort to yet another instance of “de-risking” hype.
In sum: it’s all about barely disguised protectionism. Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao went straight to the point: China’s advantage is built on innovation, not subsidies. Others added two extra key factors: the efficiency of supply chains and ultra-dynamic market competition. EVs, in China, along with lithium batteries and solar cells, are known as the new “three major items.”
Yellin’ Yellen’s theatrics in Beijing should be easily identified as yet another desperate gambit by a former hyperpower which no longer enjoys military supremacy; no dominant MICIMATT (the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex, in the brilliant formulation by Ray McGovern); no fully controlled logistics and sea lanes; no invulnerable petrodollar; no enforced, indiscriminate fear of sanctions; and most of all, not even the fear of fear itself, replaced across the Global South by rage and utter contempt for the imperial support for the genocide in Gaza.
Just a Tawdry Greek Tragedy Remix
Once again it’s up to the inestimable Michael Hudson to succintly nail it all down:
“The official US position recognizes that it can’t be an industrial exporter anymore, though how is it going to balance the international payments to support the dollar’s exchange rate? The solution is rent-seeking. That’s why the United States says, well, what’s the main new rent-seeking opportunity in world trade? Well, it’s information technology and computer technology.
That’s why the United States is fighting China so much, and why President Biden has said again and again that China is the number one enemy. It moved first against Huawei for the 5G communications, and now it’s trying to get Europe and American and Taiwanese exporters not to export a computer chip to China, not for the Dutch to export chip-engraving machinery to China. There’s a belief that somehow the United States, if it can prevent other countries from producing high-technology intellectual property rents, then other countries will be dependent.
Rent-seeking really means dependency of other countries if they don’t have a choice to pay you much more money than the actual cost of production. That’s rent, the price over value. Well, the United States, since it can’t compete on value because of the high cost of living and labor here, it can only monopolize rent.
Well, China has not been deterred. China has leapfrogged over the United States and is producing its own etching machinery, its own computer chips. The question is, what is the rest of the world going to do? Well, the rest of the world means, on the one hand, the global majority, Eurasia, the BRICS+, and on the other hand, Western Europe. Western Europe is right in the middle of all this. Is it really going to forego the much less expensive Chinese exports at cost, including normal profit, or is it going to let itself be locked into American rent-extraction technology, not only for computer chips but for military arms?”
Graphically, this eventful week provided yet another howler: Xi officially received Lavrov when Yellin’ Yellen was still in Beijing. Chinese scholars note how Beijing’s position in a convoluted triad is admirably flexible, compared to the vicious deadlock of US-Russia relations.
No one knows how the deadlock may be broken. What is clear is that the Russia-China leadership, as well as Iran’s, know full well the dangers roaming the chessboard when the usual suspects seem to go all out gambling everything, even knowing that they are outgunned; outproduced; outnumbered; and outwitted.
It’s a tawdry Greek tragedy remix, alright, yet without the pathos and grandeur of Sophocles, featuring just a bunch of nasty, brutish specimens plunging into their unblinking, self-inflicted doom.
Kiev a un plan pour une nouvelle contre-offensive, mais cela nécessite une aide militaire des États-Unis, a déclaré Zelensky. Il
L’article Zelensky évoque déjà une contre-offensive… à condition d’avoir une aide militaire américaine est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
La centrale nucléaire de Zaporojié a été la cible d’attaques de drones plusieurs jours de suite. Après une série d’attaques
L’article La centrale de Zaporojié ciblée par des attaques sans précédent est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Le président ukrainien Vladimir Zelensky a déclaré que Kiev était prêt à accepter un prêt des États-Unis si le Congrès
L’article Kiev se dit prêt à accepter l’aide américaine sous forme d’emprunts est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
‘Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.’
King Henry V, 1415, the Hundred Years War.
By Pepe Escobar at Strategic Culture Foundation.
The Mechanism: how the “order” based on made-up rules is descending into savagery
As the de facto North Atlantic Terror Organization celebrates its 75th birthday, taking Lord Ismay’s motto to ever soaring heights (“keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down”), that thick slab of Norwegian wood posing as Secretary-General came up with a merry “initiative” to create a 100 billion euro fund to weaponize Ukraine for the next five years.
Translation, regarding the crucial money front in the NATO-Russia clash: partial exit of the Hegemon – already obsessing with The Next Forever War, against China; enter the motley crew of ragged, de-industrialized European chihuahuas, all in deep debt and most mired in recession.
A few IQs over average room temperature at NATO’s HQ in Haren, in Brussels, had the temerity to wonder how to come up with such a fortune, as NATO has zero leverage to raise money among member states.
After all, the Europeans will never be able to replicate the time-tested Hegemon money laundering machine. For instance, assuming the White House-proposed $60 billion package to Ukraine would be approved by the U.S. Congress – and it won’t – no less than 64% of the total will never reach Kiev: it will be laundered within the industrial-military complex.
Yet it gets even more dystopic: Norwegian Wood, robotic stare, arms flailing, actually believes his proposed move will not imply a direct NATO military presence in Ukraine – or country 404; something that is already a fact on the ground for quite a while, irrespective of the warmongering hissy fits by Le Petit Roi in Paris (Peskov: “Russia-NATO relations have descended into direct confrontation”).
Now couple the Lethal Looney Tunes spectacle along the NATOstan front with the Hegemon’s aircraft carrier performance in West Asia, consistently taking its industrial-scale slaughter/starvation Genocide Project in Gaza to indescribable heights – the meticulously documented holocaust watched in contorted silence by the “leaders” of the Global North.
UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese correctly summed it all up: the biblical psychopathology entity “intentionally killed the WCK workers so that donors would pull out and civilians in Gaza could continue to be starved quietly. Israel knows Western countries and most Arab countries won’t move a finger for the Palestinians.”
The “logic” behind the deliberate three tap strike on the clearly signed humanitarian convoy of famine-alleviating workers in Gaza was to eviscerate from the news an even more horrendous episode: the genocide-within-a-genocide of al-Shifa hospital, responsible for at least 30% of all health services in Gaza. Al-Shifa was bombed, incinerated and had over 400 civilians killed in cold blood, in several cases literally smashed by bulldozers, including medical doctors, patients and dozens of children.
Nearly simultaneously, the biblical psychopathology gang completely eviscerated the Vienna convention – something that even the historical Nazis never did – striking Iran’s consular mission/ambassador’s residence in Damascus.
This was a missile attack on a diplomatic mission, enjoying immunity, on the territory of a third country, against which the gang is not at war. And on top of it, killing General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, commander of the IRGC’s Quds Force in Syria and Lebanon, his deputy Mohammad Hadi Hajizadeh, another five officers, and a total of 10 people.
Translation: an act of terror, against two sovereign states, Syria and Iran. Equivalent to the recent terror attack on Crocus City Hall in Moscow.
The inevitable question rings around all corners of the lands of the Global Majority: how can these de facto terrorists possibly get away with all this, over and over again?
The sinews of Liberal Totalitarianism
Four years ago, at the start of what I later qualified as the Raging Twenties, we were beginning to watch the consolidation of an intertwined series of concepts defining a new paradigm. We were becoming familiar with notions such as circuit breaker; negative feedback loop; state of exception; necropolitics; and hybrid neofascism.
As the decade marches on, our plight may at least have been alleviated by a twin glimmer of hope: the drive towards multipolarity, led by the Russia-China strategic partnership, with Iran playing a key part, and all that coupled with the total breakdown, live, of the “rules-based international order”.
Yet to affirm there will be a long and winding road ahead is the Mother of All Euphemisms.
So, to quote Bowie, the ultimate late, great aesthete: Where Are We Now? Let’s take this very sharp analysis by the always engaging Fabio Vighi at Cardiff University and tweak it a little further.
Anyone applying critical thinking to the world around us can feel the collapse of the system. It’s a closed system alright, easily definable as Liberal Totalitarianism. Cui bono? The 0.0001%.
Nothing ideological about that. Follow the money. The defining negative feedback loop is actually the debt loop. A criminally anti-social mechanism kept in place by – what else – a psychopathology, as acute as the one exhibited by the biblical genocidals in West Asia.
The Mechanism is enforced by a triad.
1. The transnational financial elite, the superstars of the 0.0001%.
2. Right beneath it, the politico-institutional layer, from the U.S. Congress to the European Commission (EC) in Brussels, as well as comprador elite “leaders” across the Global North and South.
3. The former “intelligentsia”, now essentially hacks for hire from media to academia.
This institutionalized hyper-mediatization of reality is (italics mine), in fact, The Mechanism.
It’s this mechanism that controlled the merging of the pre-fabricated “pandemic” – complete with hardcore social engineering sold as “humanitarian lockdowns” – into, once again, Forever Wars, from Project Genocide in Gaza to the Russophobia/cancel culture obsession inbuilt in Project Proxy War in Ukraine.
That’s the essence of Totalitarian Normality: the Project for Humanity by the appallingly mediocre, self-appointed Great Reset “elites” of the collective West.
Killing them softly with AI
A key vector of the whole mechanism is the direct, vicious interconnection between a tecno-military euphoria and the hyper-inflationary financial sector, now in thrall with AI.
Enter, for instance, AI models such as ‘Lavender’, tested on the ground in the Gaza killing field lab. Literally: artificial intelligence programming the extermination of humans. And it’s happening, in real time. Call it Project AI Genocide. — Sidebar: [01] [02] [03] [04] [background]
Another vector, already experimented, is inbuilt in the indirect assertion by toxic EC Medusa Ursula von der Lügen: essentially, the need to produce weapons as Covid vaccines.
That’s at the core of a plan to use funding of the EU by European taxpayers to “increase financing” of “joint contracts for weapons”. That’s an offspring of von der Lügen’s push to roll out Covid vaccines – a gigantic Pfizer-linked scam for which she is about to be investigated and arguably exposed by the EU’s Public Prosecutor Office. In her own words, addressing the proposed weapons scam: “We did this for vaccines and gas.”
Call it Weaponization of Social Engineering 2.0.
Amidst all the action in this vast corruption swamp, the Hegemon agenda remains quite blatant: to keep its – dwindling – predominantly thalassocratic, military hegemony, no matter what, as the basis for its financial hegemony; protect the U.S. dollar; and protect those unmeasurable, unpayable debts in U.S. dollars.
And that brings us to the tawdry economic model of turbo-capitalism, as sold by collective West media hacks: the debt loop, virtual money, borrowed non-stop to deal with “autocrat” Putin and “Russian aggression”. That’s a key by-product of Michael Hudson’s searing analysis of the FIRE (Finance-Insurance-Real Estate) syndrome.
Ouroboros intervenes: the serpent bites its own tail. Now the inherent folly of The Mechanism is inevitably leading casino capitalism to resort to barbarism. Undiluted savagery – of the Crocus City Hall kind and of the Project Gaza Genocide kind.
And that’s how The Mechanism engenders institutions – from Washington to Brussels to hubs across the Global North to genocidal Tel Aviv – stripped down to the status of psychotic killers, at the mercy of Big Finance/FIRE (oh, such fabulous seafront real estate opportunities available in “vacant” Gaza.)
How can we possibly escape such folly? Will we have the will and the discipline to follow Shelley’s vision and, in “this dim vast vale of tears”, summon the transcending Spirit of Beauty – and harmony, equanimity and justice?
O Mockers, ‘Ask not for whom the Bell tolls, it tolls for thee!’
Pepe begins ~38th min; Prof Marandi at ~1:19 min.
The entire is worthwhile, especially the introduction putting Gaza’s Al Shifa Hospital barbarity into perspective.
Rubicons were crossed on one-way paths…. The absolutely shocking events of last week harken and were last seen during the open Drang of the Third Reich against mankind; Pax Judaica presented its calling card back-to-back-to-back with the annihilation of historic Al Shifa Hospital, the missiling of the sacrosanct Iranian Embassy of Damascus, immediately followed by the measured triple-tap droning of the caravan of the western aid workers. Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi? Urbi et Orbi on Pax Judaica? We are all guilty of lèse-majesté, or are we? We shall see. The Fat Lady hasn’t sung.
Regardless, it is the End of the Line for the Old Order — in every way on every theater of confrontation, internal and external. Note Pepe’s sense of indignities suffered by all BRICS and the SCO through the savage attack on the Iranian Embassy in Syria. Responses are now due from the Axes of Civilization of this joined Global-SMO.
Le ministère russe de la Défense a confirmé une conversation téléphonique entre le chef du département, Sergueï Choïgou, et son
L’article En conversation téléphonique, Lecornu a tenté de convaincre Choïgou de l’innocence de l’Ukraine dans l’attentat au Crocus est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Le dirigeant ukrainien Vladimir Zelensky a marqué la fin de son premier mandat présidentiel par des changements de personnel à
L’article Après l’armée, Zelensky purge son administration présidentielle est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Des véhicules aériens sans pilote (UAV) ukrainiens ont attaqué le Tatarstan pour la première fois depuis le début de l’opération
L’article Des drones ukrainiens parviennent pour la première fois à frapper des sites au Tatarstan est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Les icônes dans lesquelles des explosifs ont été trouvés lors d’une fouille de voiture à l’entrée de la Lettonie se
L’article Le FSB découvre des icônes bourrées d’explosifs à la frontière lettone est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Terror Attack on Moscow & Why the US Stands as the Prime Suspect
US use of terrorism to advance foreign policy objectives is based on decades of evidence and includes support for militants in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union, Chechen separatists inside Russia in the 1990s and 2000s, and Al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria against Syrian, Iranian, and Russian forces;
More recently, US foreign policymakers have laid out plans to use listed terrorist organizations as proxies to carry out attacks in targeted nations like Iran and Pakistan;
Ukraine has already carried out an extensive terror campaign aimed at Russian civilians deep within Russian territory including in Belgorod, St. Petersburg, and Moscow;
US media admits collaboration between US intelligence and Ukrainian intelligence from 2014 onward while also admitting Ukraine has carried out a number of attacks on civilians inside Russia including Darya Dugina and Vladen Tatarsky;
US media also admits that despite the US claiming to have warned Russia of an impending terrorist attack, information was withheld due to the “adversarial relationship” between the US and Russia;
Leading up to the deadly Moscow attack, US foreign policymakers had repeatedly stated the need to make ordinary Russians “feel the pinch” of the conflict;
References:
NYT – Why Russia’s Vast Security Services Fell Short on Deadly Attack (March 28, 2024)
RAND Corporation – Extending Russia (2019)
The New Yorker – The Redirection, by Seymour Hersh (2007)
NYT – C.I.A. Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition (2012)
NYT – Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A. (March 2013)
Washington Post – ‘Al-Qaeda is eating us’: Syrian rebels are losing out to extremists (2017)
BBC – Islamic State and the crisis in Iraq and Syria in maps (2018)
Brookings Institution – Which Path to Persia? (2009)
BBC – US removes Iran group MEK from terror list (2012)
Foreign Policy – Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists (2012)
Russia Matters – Claim (in 2004, 2015 and 2017): The U.S. government supported Chechen separatism
RFE/RL – Chechen Separatist Fighters Defend Ukraine Against ‘Common Enemy’ Russia (November 2022)
NY Times – Why Russia’s Vast Security Services Fell Short on Deadly Attack (March 28, 2024)
NYT – U.S. Believes Ukrainians Were Behind an Assassination in Russia (October 2022)
NYT – The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin (February 2024)
Where to Find My Work:
Le ministère russe des Affaires étrangères exige du régime de Kiev l’arrestation du chef du SBU Vasily Malyuk, qui a
L’article Attentats : Moscou exige de Kiev l’arrestation du chef du SBU est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Des spécialistes du Centre russe pour les solutions intégrées sans pilote (CDBR) ont étudié un drone ukrainien Baba Yaga capturé,
L’article Des experts russes trouvent le site d’assemblage de drones ukrainiens Baba Yaga est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
The broken relationship between the United States and Niger reveals U.S. grand strategy as well as policy towards Russia. The policy failed to isolate Russia in the Global South. The denial of Niger’s right to choose its own partners uncovers the lie behind America’s stated objectives in Ukraine.
By Ted Snider at Antiwar.com
What Does the Coup in Niger Tell Us about the War in Ukraine?
On July 28, 2023, a coup led by General Abdourahamane Tchiani kicked out the democratically elected government of Niger. On March 16, 2024, the coup government kicked the United States out of Niger.
Niger, and a cooperative government in Niger, are important to the United States. “Niger is a strong ally of western nations, especially France, the U.S. and the European Union in fighting insurgency and curbing illegal migration to Europe,” according to Olayinka Ajala, senior lecturer in politics and international relations at Leeds Beckett University. The New York Times has called Niger “a centerpiece of American efforts to combat surging Islamist militancy in the Sahel region” and “the main U.S. counterterrorism ally in the region.” Niger’s vast uranium and oil reserves also give it an economic importance to the United States.
That partnership was threatened by the July 2023 coup. The United States was sluggish in calling the coup a coup because such a recognition would force the U.S. to suspend military aid and limit the ability of the U.S. military to operate in Niger. The State Department did eventually make that decision and suspended aid. The United States did not, however, withdraw their forces from Niger and soon resumed flights of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance drones.
The Defense Department says that the U.S. currently has “approximately 1,000” troops in Niger. They are “consolidating” to U.S. Air Base 201, “the linchpin of the U.S. military’s archipelago of bases in North and West Africa.” The $110 million base is key to U.S. intelligence in the region, including satellite communications and a fleet of drones that includes armed Reapers.
The March 16 statement by the coup government in Niger ended those drone flights and that military partnership and kicked those American forces out of Niger.
Niger’s military spokesman, Colonel Major Amadou Abdramane, announced on television that, “The government of Niger, taking into account the aspirations and interests of its people, decides with full responsibility to denounce with immediate effect the agreement relating to the status of military personnel of the United States and civilian employees of the American Department of Defense in the territory of the Republic of Niger.” The agreement for U.S. forces and civilian personnel to be hosted in Niger has been revoked.
The decision came just days after a U.S. delegation traveled to Niger to “continue ongoing discussions… with leaders of the National Council for Safeguarding the Homeland (CNSP) regarding Niger’s return to a democratic path and the future of our security and development partnership.”
Those discussions, for a number of reasons, reportedly went very badly. Those unsuccessful talks contain a number of lessons, not only on failed American foreign policy in Africa, but on the war in Ukraine.
Alex Thurston, assistant professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati and a specialist in the politics of northwest Africa, says there are reports that American officials were criticizing Niger’s turn towards Russia. The State Department says that, while exchanging “views on how to chart a new path of cooperation forward,” the “U.S. delegation met with Nigerien officials, expressing concerns over Niger’s potential relationships with Russia.”
In a March 18 briefing, Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh again referred to “direct conversations about some of our concerns, about some of their, you know, pursuing relationships with Russia.” She also raised concerns over the fact “that Russia has, certainly, a presence within the region from, you know, they continue to pursue ties to African nations to deepen their security cooperation.”
The American delegation’s warnings about Russia outraged Niger. Abdramane said, “Niger regrets the intention of the American delegation to deny the sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and types of partnerships. Also, the government of Niger forcefully denounces the condescending attitude accompanied by the threat of retaliation from the head of the American delegation towards the Nigerien government and people.”
The American effort in Niger is crucial for the hypocrisy it reveals in American foreign policy. On March 21, 2022, at the beginning of the war in Ukraine, State Department spokesperson Ned Price explained that one of the “core principles at the heart of the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine” is that
“each and every country has a sovereign right to determine its own foreign policy, has a sovereign right to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances, its partnerships, and what orientation it wishes to direct its gaze.”
The United States was prepared to risk a war with Russia, a third world war, a potential nuclear war, and the injury and death of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers for a “core principle” that it does not subscribe to: at least not when it comes to Africa or when it does not convenience the United States. The U.S. “den[ies] the sovereign Nigerien people the right to choose their partners and types of partnerships.”
The pressure brought to Niger reveals that Washington is supporting the war against Russia for reasons other than the right of Ukraine to choose its partners and join NATO, or that that right only applies when the partner being chosen is the United States and NATO but not Russia. The core principle, then, is not the right of a sovereign nation to choose its partner, but the right of a sovereign nation to partner with the United States.
The American attitude toward Niger and Russia reveals a second lesson. A key response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine was to isolate Russia and reinforce the U.S.-led unipolar world. It has not worked.
The United States has expressed concern that the “Russian Federation is really trying to take over central Africa as well as the Sahel.” Thurston told me that the U.S. is “very worried about Russian influence throughout the Sahel, and it has a particular sting in Niger given the previous closeness of the relationship.”
He added that the United States “seems to regard competition with Russia in Africa as zero-sum; whereas, most African governments don’t see things that way.” And that is the hallmark of the emerging multipolar world that the U.S. is trying to hold back. Saudi Arabia has said “we do not believe in polarization or in choosing between sides.” India’s Minister of External Affairs, S. Jaishankar, in his book, The Indian Way, describes the new multipolar world as one in which countries deal “with contesting parties at the same time with optimal results” for their “own self-interest.”
Africa has rejected America’s “zero-sum” framing of partnerships. Not one country in Africa has joined the U.S.-led sanctions on Russia. Instead, Africa has asserted its sovereign right not to be forced to choose sides in a world where you can partner with many factions in pursuit of your own national interest. So, Niger stands up to American pressure and asserts its “right to choose their partners and types of partnerships.”
The broken relationship between the United States and Niger is important for what it reveals about America’s foreign policy in Africa and the future of its footprint on the continent. But it is also important for what it reveals about U.S. grand strategy and its policy towards Russia. American fears and concerns about Russia’s strengthening relationships in Africa reveal its fears about the failure of its policy of isolating Russia. And, most importantly, the denial of Niger’s right to choose its own partners uncovers the lie behind America’s stated objectives in Ukraine.
Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets. To support his work or for media or virtual presentation requests, contact him at tedsnider@bell.net.
A continuation with this week’s speech of the Yemeni leader on the state of the war against Zio-USUK, Gaza, and the wider region. He gives his speech on Thursdays, the day before their now-regular million man marches in most cities of Yemen on each Friday.
This week’s edition reviews exploits against Zio-USUK on the seas and Eilat; mocks the futile Drang of USUK against Yemen — informing them the Age of Plunder and gunboat diplomacy has ended; the abject situation of the losing zionists, now resorting to Volkssturm like their cousins the UkroNazis; the pitiful and heartless arab compradore hypocrites who built their glass palaces on sand; and the severely deteriorated plight of the poor starving Palestinians.
He enjoins patience on his people. The correlation of forces are in the firm favor of the Resistance. The war is attritional and going according to the consensual plan of the many fronts, as drawn by General Soleimani. The western enemy is starved economically, morally, geopolitically, and its all-essential naval force projection rendered null. As irreversible demilitarization takes full hold, the land war component will swing into action, completing the deZioNazification of the Arabian Peninsula. In the meanwhile, the Zio-USUK frog boils.
@Resistance News Network:
Ansarallah Commander, Sayyed Abdulmalik Badr El-Din Al-Houthi, in his speech, March 28th, 2024
—
To the criminal zionists:
Your crimes will inevitably take you more swiftly to the inevitable demise that Allah has promised you in His books.
You are occupiers, and the blood is a curse upon you that will sweep you from the land of Palestine. Your injustice will not be forgotten by generations and will be etched in their consciousness.
Revenge for those oppressed and animosity towards you runs like blood through the veins of all the free.
To the Americans:
The era of control, colonization, subjugating nations, and enslaving them through genocide and intimidation to enforce surrender has passed and ended.
Go back a bit in history to remember what happened to you in Vietnam, Iraq, and other countries.
In this battle, you are in a bigger predicament, and your loss is massive as you sacrifice the interests of your people to serve the zionists.
You are facing damages that you will not be able to compensate for generations, and if you persist, the consequences will be worse, bigger, and more dangerous.
You will inherit from Britain the disappointment and defeat, and the British patronage is one of disappointments, defeats, and failure.
Your protégé “israel” that you planted in our region is indeed facing a historic scandal.
The tragedy in Gaza grows
crimes become increasingly brutal every day, with the criminal zionist killer becoming more determined, overbearing, and savage. The audacity and insistence of the American partner to support and protect zionist criminality increases.
What is happening in Gaza is a disgrace to all humanity and a warning to everyone about the zionist danger and the savage American colonial inclination.
Over the course of half a year, the enemy “israeli” army has been incapable of achieving a military victory in the narrowest geographic area in the history of wars.
The enemy’s army engaged in a fierce battle for 5 hours with the participation of helicopters and drones against one of the Palestinian heroes in Ramallah. A single fighter humiliated the enemy’s soldiers and settlers for nearly half a day on his own.
Kuwait Roundabout has become a scene for zionist starvation crimes every week.
Behind the air drop operations is an American plan coordinated with the “israeli” on the ground to kill the locals in the areas of aid drops.
The “israeli” enemy leaves the displaced with choices of death by starvation, epidemics, or murder.
The “israeli” enemy announces a safe area, then when people gather there, it targets them as happened this week in the Al-Mawasi camp.
For the second consecutive week, the “israeli” enemy continues its invasion and siege of the al-Shifa medical complex, creating a tragedy for patients, medical staff, and displaced people.
The “israeli” enemy has made hospitals primary targets for its criminal and savage offensive operations.
The “israeli” enemy has failed and was disappointed
in creating a rift between the clans and the fighters due to the steadfastness of the tribes in their supportive stance towards the resistance.
The “israeli” enemy’s ongoing failure is also a failure for the American, complicit in the crime of genocide and mass destruction in Gaza.
Fighters in all fronts of battle are inflicting losses on the enemy and its machinery.
After the enemy’s celebration of the depletion of the fighters’ rocket stockpile, rockets were launched from areas that the enemy had declared under its control towards Asdod.
The [IOF] recruitment crisis continues, evidencing the “israeli” enemy’s significant failure.
Evidence of the enemy’s failure and defeat is the ongoing reverse migration from Palestine and the escape of zionist Jews from there.
The enemy’s economic losses are continuously rising, with Hezbollah’s operations having a significant impact on the enemy’s factories in the north of occupied Palestine.
Hezbollah continues in its direct front impacting the “israeli” enemy, inflicting daily losses on the “israeli” enemy.
Our front in Yemen, in the battle of Promised Conquest and Sacred Jihad, by the grace of Allah and His success, is an active, ongoing, and effective front.
This week, 10 operations were carried out using 37 ballistic and cruise missiles and drones.
This week, 9 ships were targeted, bringing the total number of ships associated with the “israeli” enemy, America, and Britain targeted to 86.
The enemy’s movement at sea has become rare, and they try to camouflage to the utmost extent, attempting to mislead through media and information. The movement of the enemy’s ships is akin to a smuggling operation, yet they fail, and effective strikes are executed.
A missile strike operation with cruise missiles was carried out towards Um Al-Rashrash [“Eilat”] to target objectives belonging to the “israeli” enemy.
By the grace of Allah, the impact of military operations at sea and also towards Palestine and the enemy’s inability to stop them is a clear matter acknowledged by the enemy.
It is a great blessing that Allah grants success in impactful actions against the enemy, starting from its economic situation, which it relies on in its military aggression.
The only solution is to stop the aggression, crimes, and siege on the Gaza Strip.
According to a U.S. officer, the U.S. Navy has not reached this level of humiliation since the 19th century
American stubbornness in supporting zionist criminality and aggression against our country has truly placed it in a dilemma.
The Americans and British have entangled themselves in the problem with “israel” , despite the rise in prices of goods, shipping, and insurance.
The Americans and British have reached this predicament and failure while still in military confrontation with our armed forces.
The Americans and British should imagine their situation if they were to get involved in any ground attack against hundreds of thousands of heroes supported by millions.
The British are in a very bad situation.
demeaning themselves as a pitiful follower of the Americans and the hand of zionism that guides them.
British Navy leaders acknowledge facing missiles launched from Yemen traveling at speeds more than three times the speed of sound.
A commander of a British destroyer states that Yemenis are currently using more advanced and lethal weapons in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.
British Navy leaders said that one of the destroyers faced a deadly attack by a large number of drones.
British Navy leaders describe the pace of operations in the Red Sea as challenging and its concentrations as exhausting.
The American is proceeding with the aggressions against our country
its attacks this week reaching 13 air raids and naval bombardments.
Like previous ones, this week’s enemy attacks were unsuccessful and could not undermine the capabilities of our armed forces or impact our decision to support the Palestinian people.
The aggression against our country will only contribute, unintentionally from the enemies, to the development of military capabilities.
The enemy also continues to incite mercenaries and the coalition, seeking to involve them, and continues to distort the honorable stance of our people.
“Israeli” committees using Arab dialects participate in social media campaigns against our people’s stance.
The media campaigns distort the Palestinian position itself and any supporting stance.
The enemy continues to pressure the humanitarian file to deprive the Yemeni people of the aid that comes through the United Nations.
Our people continue unaffected by any of the hostile actions from the Americans, British, and their agents.
The million-man march turnout last Friday was a great, large, and honorable mobilization with 154 major marches in governorates and directorates.
There is no equivalent to our people’s widespread movement in any Islamic country, although demonstrations take place in some countries.
Some countries are aligning with the “israeli” enemy on the media level and through various normalization activities.
Our people’s participation stems from their faith and sense of responsibility, feeling deeply of the unparalleled suffering of the Palestinian people.
Given the magnitude of the Palestinian people’s tragedy, our responsibility indeed grows to take serious action for jihad and to mobilize in all fields.
If we do not stand with the Palestinian people in their enormity of oppression, then when will we act?
If we do not carry the banner of jihad for the sake of Allah against the tyranny and criminality of the zionist “israelis”, Americans, and British, then against whom and when will we wage jihad?
It is extremely dangerous for a person not to stand in any position in countries where greater stances are possible.
It is a great blessing for us in our country that we have conditions conducive to a comprehensive stance.
We were not able to mobilize hundreds of thousands of fighters to participate directly in the Gaza Strip against the enemy due to geographical landscapes, the countries between us and the enemy not agreeing to open land corridors for our people to cross. [iirc, this is the first instance he calls the Saudis “the enemy” since October 07]
The weekly million-man march turnout is a great, important, and comprehensive act alongside military operations and other activities.
Media activity is an important front in supporting the Palestinian people and countering enemy campaigns.
Our people have achieved a comprehensive stance as a fruit of past sacrifices and their liberating and revolutionary movement at all previous stages.
If a person completely ignores what is happening in Gaza, they become a partner in creating the tragedy
they are an accomplice to the “israeli” enemy.
The Palestinian people have suffered greatly from the betrayal of their Arab and Islamic surroundings, except for a rare few, and from the “israeli” aggression and criminality.
Our people’s battle in support of the Palestinian people is an extension of the battles of their honorable fathers and earliest ancestors.
I call on our dear people to honorably come out tomorrow, on the third Friday of Ramadan, in Sana’a and other governorates.
My hope in you is very great, and with fasting during these blessed days, the reward and closeness to Allah the Almighty are magnified.
You are people of faith and proximity to Allah, people of loyalty, steadfastness, chivalry, integrity, and manhood.
Le commandant en chef des forces armées ukrainiennes, Syrsky, a annoncé l’abandon du projet de mobilisation de 500 000 personnes.
L’article Le commandant en chef des forces armées ukrainiennes Syrsky abandonne la mobilisation de 500 000 personnes est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Le chef du Comité d’enquête, Alexandr Bastrykine, a tenu une réunion régulière avec l’équipe de l’enquête. “Les enquêteurs ont fait
L’article Le Comité d’enquête de Russie a découvert un lien financier entre Kiev et les terroristes du Crocus est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
The public humiliations being experienced by both USUK and the UNSC are astonishing! The first video makes clear the Zionist Occupation Government (ZOG) is turned into a global pariah against its own interests, domestic laws and the future of the Democratic party.. the second video makes clear the same process as done to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) is underway at the UNSC: binding demands to cease and desist from unfathomable crimes against humanity are not merely ignored but escalated with open sense of contemptuous impunity. What will these actions do to the Old Order largely crafted by the 1941 Atlantic Charter system? How to return international law to primacy in the face of nuclear powers turned rogue parasited entities? For now, it appears only regional solutions are available — for those willing to fight to the death for dignity and liberty.
Ukraine, ISIS, and the Moscow Concert Attack: What really happened? Pepe Escobar joins us to examine the complicated spider web of connections between Ukrainian intelligence, jihadist groups, and Western governments.
hosted by Dimitri Simes Jr. at the New Rules.
Ukraine, ISIS, and the Moscow Concert Attack: What really happened?
Pepe Escobar joins us to examine the complicated spider web of connections between Ukrainian intelligence, jihadist groups, and Western governments.
#NewRulesPodcast @RealPepeEscobar pic.twitter.com/oiNQgd7eLP— NewRulesGeopolitics (@NewRulesGeo) March 28, 2024
L’armée ukrainienne est confrontée à une stagnation au front. Le conseiller du chef de cabinet du président ukrainien, Mikhaïl Podolyak,
L’article Le conseiller de Zelensky, Podolyak, regrette la stagnation du front est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Le Bureau du Commissaire des Nations Unies aux droits de l’homme a publié un rapport dans lequel il parle de
L’article L’ONU publie un rapport sur la torture de prisonniers de guerre russes en Ukraine est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
En écoutant les déclarations de Macron et d’autres sur l’envoi de troupes françaises au sol en Ukraine, j’ai été surpris
L’article Macron-Zelensky : le baiser du scorpion ? est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Les traces des commanditaires de l’attaque terroriste contre le Crocus City Hall à Moscou mènent à l’Ukraine. Le régime de
L’article Poutine voit une piste ukrainienne dans l’attentat du Crocus City Hall est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
The Russian population has handed to the Kremlin total carte blanche to exercise brutal, maximum punishment – whatever and wherever it takes.
By Pepe Escobar at Strategic Culture Foundation.
Let’s start with the possible chain of events that may have led to the Crocus terror attack. This is as explosive as it gets. Intel sources in Moscow discreetly confirm this is one of the FSB’s prime lines of investigation.
December 4, 2023. Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Mark Milley, only 3 months after his retirement, tells CIA mouthpiece The Washington Post: “There should be no Russian who goes to sleep without wondering if they’re going to get their throat slit in the middle of the night (…) You gotta get back there and create a campaign behind the lines.”
January 4, 2024: In an interview with ABC News, “spy chief” Kyrylo Budanov lays down the road map: strikes “deeper and deeper” into Russia.
January 31: Victoria Nuland travels to Kiev and meets Budanov. Then, in a dodgy press conference at night in the middle of an empty street, she promises “nasty surprises” to Putin: code for asymmetric war.
February 22: Nuland shows up at a Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) event and doubles down on the “nasty surprises” and asymmetric war. That may be interpreted as the definitive signal for Budanov to start deploying dirty ops.
February 25: The New York Times publishes a story about CIA cells in Ukraine: nothing that Russian intel does not already know.
Then, a lull until March 5 – when crucial shadow play may have been in effect. Privileged scenario: Nuland was a key dirty ops plotter alongside the CIA and the Ukrainian GUR (Budanov). Rival Deep State factions got hold of it and maneuvered to “terminate” her one way or another – because Russian intel would have inevitably connected the dots.
Yet Nuland, in fact, is not “retired” yet; she’s still presented as Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and showed up recently in Rome for a G7-related meeting, although her new job, in theory, seems to be at Columbia University (a Hillary Clinton maneuver).
Meanwhile, the assets for a major “nasty surprise” are already in place, in the dark, and totally off radar. The op cannot be called off.
March 5: Little Blinken formally announces Nuland’s “retirement”.
March 7: At least one Tajik among the four-member terror commando visits the Crocus venue and has his photo taken.
March 7-8 at night: U.S. and British embassies simultaneously announce a possible terror attack on Moscow, telling their nationals to avoid “concerts” and gatherings within the next two days.
March 9: Massively popular Russian patriotic singer Shaman performs at Crocus. That may have been the carefully chosen occasion targeted for the “nasty surprise” – as it falls only a few days before the presidential elections, from March 15 to 17. But security at Crocus was massive, so the op is postponed.
March 22: The Crocus City Hall terror attack.
ISIS-K: the ultimate can of worms
The Budanov connection is betrayed by the modus operandi– similar to previous Ukraine intel terror attacks against Daria Dugina and Vladimir Tatarsky: close reconnaissance for days, even weeks; the hit; and then a dash for the border.
And that brings us to the Tajik connection.
There seem to be holes aplenty in the narrative concocted by the ragged bunch turned mass killers: following an Islamist preacher on Telegram; offered what was later established as a puny 500 thousand rubles (roughly $4,500) for the four of them to shoot random people in a concert hall; sent half of the funds via Telegram; directed to a weapons cache where they find AK-12s and hand grenades.
The videos show that they used the machine guns like pros; shots were accurate, short bursts or single fire; no panic whatsoever; effective use of hand grenades; fleeing the scene in a flash, just melting away, almost in time to catch the “window” that would take them across the border to Ukraine.
All that takes training. And that also applies to facing nasty counter-interrogation. Still, the FSB seems to have broken them all – quite literally.
A potential handler has surfaced, named Abdullo Buriyev. Turkish intel had earlier identified him as a handler for ISIS-K, or Wilayat Khorasan in Afghanistan. One of the members of the Crocus commando told the FSB their “acquaintance” Abdullo helped them to buy the car for the op.
And that leads us to the massive can of worms to end them all: ISIS-K.
The alleged emir of ISIS-K, since 2020, is an Afghan Tajik, Sanaullah Ghafari. He was not killed in Afghanistan in June 2023, as the Americans were spinning: he may be currently holed up in Balochistan in Pakistan.
Yet the real person of interest here is not Tajik Ghafari but Chechen Abdul Hakim al-Shishani, the former leader of the jihadi outfit Ajnad al-Kavkaz (“Soldiers of the Caucasus”), who was fighting against the government in Damascus in Idlib and then escaped to Ukraine because of a crackdown by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) – in another one of those classic inter-jihadi squabbles.
Shishani was spotted on the border near Belgorod during the recent attack concocted by Ukrainian intel inside Russia. Call it another vector of the “nasty surprises”.
Shishani had been in Ukraine for over two years and has acquired citizenship. He is in fact the sterling connection between the nasty motley crue Idlib gangs in Syria and GUR in Kiev – as his Chechens worked closely with Jabhat al-Nusra, which was virtually indistinguishable from ISIS.
Shishani, fiercely anti-Assad, anti-Putin and anti-Kadyrov, is the classic “moderate rebel” advertised for years as a “freedom fighter” by the CIA and the Pentagon.
Some of the four hapless Tajiks seem to have followed ideological/religious indoctrination on the internet dispensed by Wilayat Khorasan, or ISIS-K, in a chat room called Rahnamo ba Khuroson.
The indoctrination game happened to be supervised by a Tajik, Salmon Khurosoni. He’s the guy who made the first move to recruit the commando. Khurosoni is arguably a messenger between ISIS-K and the CIA.
The problem is the ISIS-K modus operandi for any attack never features a fistful of dollars: the promise is Paradise via martyrdom. Yet in this case it seems it’s Khurosoni himself who has approved the 500 thousand ruble reward.
After handler Buriyev relayed the instructions, the commando sent the bayat – the ISIS pledge of allegiance – to Khurosoni. Ukraine may not have been their final destination. Another foreign intel connection – not identified by FSB sources – would have sent them to Turkey, and then Afghanistan.
That’s exactly where Khurosoni is to be found. Khurosoni may have been the ideological mastermind of Crocus. But, crucially, he’s not the client.
Oleh Tyahnybok, with McCain and Nuland
The Ukrainian love affair with terror gangs
Ukrainian intel, SBU and GUR, have been using the “Islamic” terror galaxy as they please since the first Chechnya war in the mid-1990s. Milley and Nuland of course knew it, as there were serious rifts in the past, for instance, between GUR and the CIA.
Following the symbiosis of any Ukrainian government post-1991 with assorted terror/jihadi outfits, Kiev post-Maidan turbo-charged these connections especially with Idlib gangs, as well as north Caucasus outfits, from the Chechen Shishani to ISIS in Syria and then ISIS-K. GUR routinely aims to recruit ISIS and ISIS-K denizens via online chat rooms. Exactly the modus operandi that led to Crocus.
One “Azan” association, founded in 2017 by Anvar Derkach, a member of the Hizb ut-Tahrir, actually facilitates terrorist life in Ukraine, Tatars from Crimea included – from lodging to juridical assistance.
The FSB investigation is establishing a trail: Crocus was planned by pros – and certainly not by a bunch of low-IQ Tajik dregs. Not by ISIS-K, but by GUR. A classic false flag, with the clueless Tajiks under the impression that they were working for ISIS-K.
The FSB investigation is also unveiling the standard modus operandi of online terror, everywhere. A recruiter focuses on a specific profile; adapts himself to the candidate, especially his – low – IQ; provides him with the minimum necessary for a job; then the candidate/executor become disposable.
Everyone in Russia remembers that during the first attack on the Crimea bridge, the driver of the kamikaze truck was blissfully unaware of what he was carrying,
As for ISIS, everyone seriously following West Asia knows that’s a gigantic diversionist scam, complete with the Americans transferring ISIS operatives from the Al-Tanf base to the eastern Euphrates, and then to Afghanistan after the Hegemon’s humiliating “withdrawal”. Project ISIS-K actually started in 2021, after it became pointless to use ISIS goons imported from Syria to block the relentless progress of the Taliban.
Ace Russian war correspondent Marat Khairullin has added another juicy morsel to this funky salad: he convincingly unveils the MI6 angle in the Crocus City Hall terror attack (in English here, in two parts, posted by “S”).
The FSB is right in the middle of the painstaking process of cracking most, if not all ISIS-K-CIA/MI6 connections. Once it’s all established, there will be hell to pay.
But that won’t be the end of the story. Countless terror networks are not controlled by Western intel – although they will work with Western intel via middlemen, usually Salafist “preachers” who deal with Saudi/Gulf intel agencies.
The case of the CIA flying “black” helicopters to extract jihadists from Syria and drop them in Afghanistan is more like an exception – in terms of direct contact – than the norm. So the FSB and the Kremlin will be very careful when it comes to directly accusing the CIA and MI6 of managing these networks.
But even with plausible deniability, the Crocus investigation seems to be leading exactly to where Moscow wants it: uncovering the crucial middleman. And everything seems to be pointing to Budanov and his goons.
Ramzan Kadyrov dropped an extra clue. He said the Crocus “curators” chose on purpose to instrumentalize elements of an ethnic minority – Tajiks – who barely speak Russian to open up new wounds in a multinational nation where dozens of ethnicities live side by side for centuries.
In the end, it didn’t work. The Russian population has handed to the Kremlin total carte blanche to exercise brutal, maximum punishment – whatever and wherever it takes.
L’armée russe avance dans la région de Chasov Yar en RPD, a déclaré le chef de la région, Denis Pouchiline,
L’article L’armée russe a pris le contrôle de Krasnoié et avance vers Chasov Yar est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Il existe une grave pénurie de personnel dans le secteur agricole ukrainien en raison de la mobilisation active dans les
L’article Le secteur agricole ukrainien subit une grave pénurie de main d’œuvre à cause de la mobilisation est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Was the US behind the Moscow terror attack? The US and Ukraine will pay a high price. And that, I have been reliably informed, will extend to our Arab world.
By Abdel Bari Atwan at Rai Al Youm.
The Ukraine war could be poised to take a dramatic new turn
The terrorist operation in Moscow’s Crocus City Hall centre, which killed 143 people and injured hundreds of others, mostly concertgoers, was clearly carried out by a group that had been given serious military training. It could mark a paradigm shift in the Ukraine war presaging a strategic escalation and NATO’s official entry into the war.
Two weeks earlier, the US embassy in Moscow had warned its citizens that extremists were planning imminent attacks on large gatherings, including concerts, in the Russian capital, and warned them to stay away. That foreknowledge of the planning and execution of the operation raised suspicions about a degree of complicity. Washington’s denunciation of the atrocity, and swift disavowal of involvement, cannot be taken at face value.
When the initial warning was made, Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova remarked that if the US had information about terrorist actions of such enormity, it should have shared it with Russia. That was the first official hint from Moscow of suspected American complicity.
Two years into the Ukraine war, the US has begun to sense defeat. Russia has made a succession of gains, taking control of the Donbas region and annexing it after holding referendums.
Large-scale US and NATO intervention — on the material, military, and intelligence fronts — failed to achieve any major success. Russia did not collapse under the weight of draconian sanctions. Its economy remains strong. The predicted colour revolution never happened, nor the anticipated military coup to depose Putin.
The opposite occurred, with the Russian president getting re-elected with an 87% majority on a 74% turnout.
The resort to terrorist attacks in Moscow could be a mark of the US’ frustration and a response aimed at expanding the scope of the war. But that would not only be a losing bet. It could bring the prospect of a catastrophic nuclear war closer.
Putin announced on Saturday night that the eleven people involved in the attack, including four direct participants, had been apprehended.
Meanwhile, the editor-in-chief of the Russia Today broadcast network, Margarita Simonyan, published video excerpts of the interrogation of one of the suspects. He identified himself as Feredoun Shamsedin, born in 1988, who arrived in Russia from Turkey on 4 March. He said he had been recruited via Telegram after following an extremist preacher, by someone who offered him 5 million roubles ($5,000) to conduct a mass killing in Moscow. Half of the money was transferred to him in advance.
I met Ms. Simonyan when I visited Moscow recently. She was constantly accompanied by a security detail because she had been subjected to death threats. She said she believed the Crocus atrocity was masterminded by the Ukrainian regime, rather than by ISIS as the US media were claiming. Putin’s subsequent assertion that the perpetrators were arrested while heading towards the Ukrainian border reinforced that accusation.
Russia’s fingers of blame pointed at Ukraine were a portent of fierce retaliation. It seems to have already begun. Former president and current deputy national security chief Dmitri Medvedev warned immediately after the massacre that Russia would hunt down any Ukrainian leaders proven to have been involved.
Reading between the lines, that may imply that Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky could be top of the target list.
Two days before the Crocus attack, Putin threatened Ukraine with ”war’—abandoning the term special military operation’ — in response to French President Emanual Macron’s hint that NATO could send 90,000 fully equipped troops to Ukraine. Under Russian military doctrine, a declaration of war authorises the use of all available means, including nuclear weapons.
The US administration, disoriented and defeated in Ukraine and (so far) the Middle East, is fueling this escalation against Russia. It is the primary beneficiary of the Crocus attack. Not just to destabilise Russia by stoking ethnic tensions, but also to divert international attention away from its collusion in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and the failure of its cynical attempt at the UN Security Council to sustain it under the guise of favouring (but not actually calling for) a cease-fire.
Putin won’t forgive this assault on his capital while it was celebrating the renewal of his presidential term. He is likely to make the US and Ukraine pay a high price. And that, I have been reliably informed, will extend to our Arab world.
Turkey starts to drift into view, as NATO becomes officially activated in Europe.. Turkish elites, in spite of antipathy of its working peoples for post-modern western values, remain at the heart of NATO.
To woo Washington, Erdogan will sell out Palestine
After Ankara and Washington successfully swapped Sweden’s NATO accession for an F-16 fighter jet deal, Turkiye is focused on accelerating that rapprochement and is willing to sweep divisive issues – like genocide in Gaza – under the rug.
By Mohamad Hasan Sweidan at The Cradle.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan
On 7–8 March, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan and Intelligence Chief Ibrahim Kalin visited Washington. The trip garnered attention as it marked Turkiye’s first official visit to the US following the conclusion of the ‘Sweden for F-16’ deal, whereby Ankara accepted Stockholm’s accession to NATO in exchange for US Congressional approval of the sale of 40 F-16s to Turkiye.
During the visit, the two Turkish officials met with their US counterparts Antony Blinken and William Burns, along with National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and their respective foreign ministers chaired the seventh meeting of the US–Turkiye Strategic Mechanism.
“Naval Battle of Çesme at Night,” July 1770, Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774), by Ivan Constantinovich Aivazovsky (1848)
US–Turkish rapprochement
The thaw in US–Turkish relations has been palpable, as noted by Jeff Flake, the US Ambassador to Ankara, during a televised interview: “Especially in recent months, the two countries have developed shared areas. We observe improvements in defense, trade, and interpersonal relations.”
A closer examination of the joint statement released following the meeting illustrates the transition of Turkish–American relations into a more favorable and cooperative phase.
Established in 2021 and inaugurated on 4 April 2021 amidst escalating discord between Turkiye and the US, the strategic mechanism was conceived to address and improve the strained bilateral relations.
The joint statement issued by the Strategic Mechanism this month included several crucial points, each carrying significant implications:
Both parties addressed the ongoing war in Ukraine, condemning Russia’s actions as ‘unacceptable’ while emphasizing the importance of upholding Ukraine’s unity and sovereignty. However, it is worth noting that Ankara’s endorsement of the statement’s rhetoric aligns more closely with Kiev’s perspective, a deviation from Turkiye’s previous neutral stance. This marked shift will undermine President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s aspirations to mediate the conflict impartially.
“Destruction of the Turkish Fleet in the Bay of Chesme,” July 1770, Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774), by Jacob Philipp Hackert, commissioned by Catherine II in 1772
Playing to the audience
On Israel’s brutal military assault in Gaza, the statement merely referred to an “ongoing crisis” and “underlined the importance of finding a path towards ending the conflict and addressing the humanitarian crisis immediately.” This is a war that Erdogan has, on the record, framed as a “genocide” and called its aggressors in Tel Aviv “war criminals.”
While both parties expressed support for the “two-state solution” as an end goal to the war, the statement’s release coincided with a fiery speech by Erdogan in Istanbul in which he attacked Israel, calling it “the Nazis of our time.” The contrast between the two statements is a real-time reflection of how Turkiye addresses its different target audiences.
On the issue of combating terrorism, the statement endorses joint US–Turkish efforts against organizations like the PKK, ISIS, and Al-Qaeda across regions spanning from Africa to Central Asia. They also recommitted to counterterrorism consultations and discussions on the Syria file, including the adherence to UN Resolution 2254 and supporting a “Syrian-led, Syrian-owned political process.”
The two parties addressed a multitude of regional issues in West Asia and Africa in alignment with the broader US strategy outlined by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, which focuses on partnership-building, deterrence, diplomacy, regional integration, and “democracy promotion” in these geographies.
This includes cooperation in military industry, energy, and trade development, reflecting the existing $30 billion trade volume between Washington and Ankara.
Significantly, the parties discussed leveraging financing opportunities under the Global Infrastructure and Investment Partnership – a western initiative intended to rival China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). This partnership includes the controversial India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), aimed at enhancing regional connectivity and economic development very much to the benefit of Israel.
New Turkish military action in Syria and Iraq?
As the municipal elections in Turkiye draw near – with Erdogan seeking to reclaim his Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) control of Istanbul and Ankara after notable previous losses – there’s a tangible resurgence in Turkish rhetoric advocating for military action in northern Syria and Iraq.
According to reports from the Turkish news agency T24, the Turkish armed forces are gearing up for an operation against the People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) inside its neighboring states following local elections on 31 March.
After a 4 March cabinet meeting, Erdogan spoke of Turkiye’s readiness for a comprehensive operation against the Kurdish separatist groups and reiterated Ankara’s objective of establishing a security corridor spanning 30 to 40 kilometers along the Turkish–Syrian border.
Although the military rhetoric is undoubtedly influenced by Erdogan’s bid to attract nationalist voters in the upcoming elections, it is also connected to the recent Turkish–Iraqi diplomatic breakthrough following a high-level Turkish delegation’s visit to Baghdad.
The meeting in the Iraqi capital led to a security deal in which both countries committed to take action against the PKK. A joint statement read:
Both sides stressed that the PKK organization represents a security threat to both Turkiye and Iraq, and it is certain that the presence of the organization on Iraqi territory represents a violation of the Iraqi constitution … Turkiye welcomed the decision taken by the Iraqi National Security Council to list the PKK as a banned organization in Iraq. The two sides consulted on the measures that must be taken against the organization and its banned extensions [PKK’s alleged offshoots] that target Turkiye from within Iraq’s territory.
Fidan’s senior adviser, Nuh Yilmaz, praised the move, saying, “Turkiye and Iraq decided for the first time to fight jointly against PKK terrorism.” In a post on platform X, he added: “A decision that will mark a turning point! We will see results gradually!”
Strategic interests come first
According to a well-informed Turkish source:
Turkey’s main purpose is very clear. The presence of the PKK in Metina and Gara [in northern Iraq] has the potential to seriously threaten the Iraq Development Road Project … We both would like to remove PKK from these two areas as well as secure the area for the construction of the project, reaching both objectives in one step.
Ankara and Baghdad seek to counter any threat to this development road project, a land corridor linking the port of Faw in Basra to the Turkish border and from there to Europe.
In this context, Erdogan is expected to visit Baghdad for the first time since 2012, where, some speculate, he will try to conclude a border control security agreement with the Iraqi government and seek to convince Baghdad to support future Turkish military operations against the PKK.
Despite Turkiye and Erdogan’s vocal criticism of Israeli atrocities in Gaza, recent interactions between Ankara and Washington indicate a pragmatic approach in their dealings, through which Turkiye hopes to be reinstated as an important US strategic partner.
While the Turkish president is stepping up anti-Zionist rhetoric on his domestic front, his administration maintains substantial economic ties with Israel, exporting various vital goods and services to the occupation state.
Although a Washington–Ankara rapprochement is still in its nascent stage, recent developments reveal the old allies are on a positive trajectory to repair bilateral relations after a period of strained diplomatic ties.
Erdogan’s foreign policy approach – as exemplified by his rhetorical Gaza stance and material support for Israel – makes clear Turkiye’s shift toward prioritizing strategic interests over ideological ones.
≈≈≈
“Chesma battle of 1770,” Russo-Turkish War (1768–1774), by Vladimir Kosov (2021)
Nuclear Threat, World War III and Turkey: Balance Policy or a Game?
Is Turkey’s rhetorical stance of “balancing” a genuine attempt at strategic equilibrium, or merely an endeavor to occupy multiple positions simultaneously?
By Erkin Öncan at Strategic Culture Foundation.
Alexander Stubb, the newly elected president of Finland, has made several noteworthy statements regarding the current geopolitical climate. He emphasized the escalating tensions amidst discussions of a World War III. Stubb, representing the center-right National Coalition Party, expressed openness to the possibility of allowing the transportation and storage of U.S. nuclear weapons in Finnish territory, branding them as a “guarantee of peace.” This stance remained consistent throughout his election campaign and was reiterated upon assuming office. Stubb underscored the necessity for Finland to possess a tangible nuclear deterrent force, citing NATO membership as pivotal in providing multiple layers of deterrence, including military, munitions, and nuclear deterrence from the USA. He further asserted that Finland’s alignment with NATO signifies a definitive step towards embracing Western values, a sentiment echoed by the inclusion of Turkey as an enthusiastic participant in the anticipated third major conflict.
However, Finland’s enthusiasm for NATO membership has not gone unnoticed by Russia, which shares a significant border with the country. In response to Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO, Russian President Putin announced plans to bolster military presence along the Western borders to counteract perceived threats stemming from NATO’s eastward expansion. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov conveyed Moscow’s acknowledgment of the democratic choice made by the Finnish people but indicated pessimism regarding potential improvements in Russo-Finnish relations.
The most explicit reaction to Stubb’s nuclear policy came from Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mariya Zakharova. Addressing the issue during a weekly press conference at the World Youth Festival in Sochi, Zakharova outlined Russia’s stance on the placement of U.S. nuclear weapons in Northern Europe. She asserted that such deployments would be considered a direct threat and would consequently be designated as legitimate targets in the event of a direct military conflict between Russia and NATO. Zakharova underscored Russia’s awareness of the desires of the United States and its allies in this regard.
Izmir, Turkey: permanent headquarters of NATO Land Forces, known as Allied Land Command (LANDCOM).
The primary source of concern regarding nuclear capabilities is now widely recognized to stem from the potential for World War III to be nuclear in nature. When discussing nuclear power, the focus often turns to Russia, acknowledged as the “world’s largest nuclear power”.
Western media consistently highlights the perceived “nuclear threat emanating from the authoritarian Kremlin”. However, to truly address the concept of a “nuclear danger”, it is essential to consider the United States, which has transformed Europe into a depot for nuclear weapons, rather than Russia, which does not maintain nuclear forces beyond its borders, apart from the neighboring Belarus.
The United States and its NATO allies do not disclose precise figures regarding the stockpiles deployed in Europe. Nevertheless, estimates from the U.S.-based Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in 2021 suggest that around 100 U.S. nuclear weapons are stored across six bases in five NATO member countries.
These weapons are kept in inactive states within underground vaults at national air bases. Notably, the “permissive action link” (PAL) codes required to activate these weapons are under American control. In the event of their use, the weapons would be loaded onto warplanes designated by NATO.
This situation is intricately tied to the “modernization” efforts undertaken by nations operating F-35A, F-18 Super Hornet, or Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft.
U.S. nuclear weapons have been stationed in Europe since the mid-1950s, authorized by President Dwight D. Eisenhower for storage at NATO bases on the continent as a deterrent against the Soviet Union.
Stored in warehouses across Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and other countries, these weapons are maintained for potential deployment when required. Additionally, countries such as Czechia, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Norway, Poland, and Romania participate in SNOWCAT operations, facilitating NATO partner involvement in nuclear missions.
Meanwhile, Finland, under the leadership of Stubb, is positioning itself as a significant player in the ongoing ’nuclear preparedness’ measures originally aimed at countering the USSR and persisting in response to Russia.
This dynamic persists alongside ongoing military actions initiated by NATO against Russia. Notably, the commencement of Steadfast Defender-24, hailed as NATO’s largest military exercise since the Cold War, marks a significant development. This exercise aims to test the transfer of military forces to Eastern Europe and beyond, encompassing regions where Russia’s influence is perceived as encroaching.
This exercise constitutes a series of 15 maneuvers rather than a singular major military operation.
Steadfast Defender encompasses various other exercises conducted at national or regional levels, including Joint Warrior, Solid Approach, Arctic Dolphin, Northern Response, Immediate Response, Brilliant Jump, Movable Defender, Slovak Shield, Saber Strike, Trojan Trail-24, and Spring Storm.
İzmir: rebranded ancient Smyrna from pre-historic through the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, Ottoman, and Turk Periods.
Turkey actively participates in these exercises, with the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) playing a pivotal role in Brilliant Jump, Nordic Response, Saber Strike, and Immediate Response exercises.
Turkey’s involvement extends beyond military participation; it also hosts one of NATO’s most crucial commands. The permanent headquarters of NATO Land Forces, known as Allied Land Command (LANDCOM), is situated in Izmir.
Decisions regarding NATO’s land maneuvers are made at the command post within the General Vecihi Akın Barracks in Buca, Izmir. Given its historical significance, Izmir, where the first shot was fired against invaders a century ago, could potentially be remembered as the site where the decision to initiate the first shot of a world-engulfing war was made if a new global conflict were to erupt on Russia’s borders.
This prompts consideration of Turkey’s rhetorical stance of “balancing”. Is it a genuine attempt at strategic equilibrium, or merely an endeavor to occupy multiple positions simultaneously?
“Rules-based Terrorism” Returns to Moskau. No more shadow play. It’s now in the open. No holds barred.
By Pepe Escobar at Strategic Culture Foundation.
Exhibit 1: Friday, March 22, 2024. It’s War. The Kremlin, via Peskov, finally admits it, on the record.
The money quote:
“Russia cannot allow the existence on its borders of a state that has a documented intention to use any methods to take Crimea away from it, not to mention the territory of new regions.”
Translation: the Hegemon-constructed Kiev mongrel is doomed, one way or another. The Kremlin signal: “We haven’t even started” starts now.
Exhibit 2: Friday afternoon, a few hours after Peskov. Confirmed by a serious European – not Russian – source. The first counter-signal.
Regular troops from France, Germany and Poland have arrived, by rail and air, to Cherkassy, south of Kiev. A substantial force. No numbers leaked. They are being housed in schools. For all practical purposes, this is a NATO force.
That signals, “Let the games begin”. From a Russian point of view, Mr. Khinzal’s business cards are set to be in great demand.
Exhibit 3: Friday evening. Terror attack on Crocus City, a music venue northwest of Moscow. A heavily trained commando shoots people on sight, point blank, in cold blood, then sets a concert hall on fire. The definitive counter-signal: with the battlefield collapsing, all that’s left is terrorism in Moscow.
And just as terror was striking Moscow, the US and the UK, in southwest Asia, was bombing Sana’a, the Yemeni capital, with at least five strikes.
Some nifty coordination. Yemen has just clinched a strategic deal in Oman with Russia-China for no-hassle navigation in the Red Sea, and is among the top candidates for BRICS+ expansion at the summit in Kazan next October.
Not only the Houthis are spectacularly defeating thalassocracy, they have the Russia-China strategic partnership on their side. Assuring China and Russia that their ships can sail through the Bab-al-Mandeb, Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with no problems is exchanged with total political support from Beijing and Moscow.
The sponsors remain the same
Deep in the night in Moscow, before dawn on Saturday 23. Virtually no one is sleeping. Rumors dance like dervishes on countless screens. Of course nothing has been confirmed – yet. Only the FSB will have answers. A massive investigation is in progress.
The timing of the Crocus massacre is quite intriguing. On a Friday during Ramadan. Real Muslims would not even think about perpetrating a mass murder of unarmed civilians under such a holy occasion. Compare it with the ISIS card being frantically branded by the usual suspects.
Let’s go pop. To quote Talking Heads: “This ain’t no party/ this ain’t no disco/ this ain’t no fooling around”. Oh no; it’s more like an all-American psy op. ISIS are cartoonish mercenaries/goons. Not real Muslims. And everyone knows who finances and weaponizes them.
That leads to the most possible scenario, before the FSB weighs in: ISIS goons imported from the Syria battleground – as it stands, probably Tajiks – trained by CIA and MI6, working on behalf of the Ukrainian SBU. Several witnesses at Crocus referred to “Wahhabis” – as in the commando killers did not look like Slavs.
It was up to Serbia’s Aleksandar Vucic to cut to the chase. He directly connected the “warnings” in early March from American and British embassies directed at their citizens not to visit public places in Moscow with CIA/MI6 intel having inside info about possible terrorism, and not disclosing it to Moscow.
The plot thickens when it is established that Crocus is owned by the Agalarovs: an Azeri-Russian billionaire family, very close friends of…
… Donald Trump.
Talk about a Deep State-pinpointed target.
ISIS spin-off or banderistas – the sponsors remain the same. The clownish secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksiy Danilov, was dumb enough to virtually, indirectly confirm they did it, saying on Ukrainian TV, “we will give them [Russians] this kind of fun more often.”
But it was up to Sergei Goncharov, a veteran of the elite Russia Alpha anti-terrorism unit, to get closer to unwrapping the enigma: he told Sputnik the most feasible mastermind is Kyrylo Budanov – the chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence at the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.
The “spy chief” who happens to be the top CIA asset in Kiev.
Stoking the unholy USUK meatgrinder
It’s got to go till the last Ukrainian
The three exhibits above complement what the head of NATO’s military committee, Rob Bauer, previously told a security forum in Kiev: “You need more than just grenades – you need people to replace the dead and wounded. And this means mobilization.”
Translation: NATO spelling out this is a war until the last Ukrainian.
And the “leadership” in Kiev still does not get it. Former Minister of Infrastructure Omelyan: “If we win, we will pay back with Russian oil, gas, diamonds and fur. If we lose, there will be no talk of money – the West will think about how to survive.”
In parallel, puny “garden-and jungle” Borrell admitted that it would be “difficult” for the EU to find an extra 50 billion euros for Kiev if Washington pulls the plug. The cocaine-fueled sweaty sweatshirt leadership actually believes that Washington is not “helping” in the form of loans, but in the form of free gifts. And the same applies for the EU.
The Theater of the Absurd is unmatchable. The German Liver Sausage Chancellor actually believes that proceeds from stolen Russian assets “do not belong to anyone”, so they can be used to finance extra Kiev weaponizing.
Everyone with a brain knows that using interest from “frozen”, actually stolen Russian assets to weaponize Ukraine is a dead end – unless they steal all of Russia’s assets, roughly $200 billion, mostly parked in Belgium and Switzerland: that would tank the Euro for good, and the whole EU economy for that matter.
Eurocrats better listen to Russian Central Bank major “disrupter” (American terminology) Elvira Nabiullina: The Bank of Russia will take “appropriate measures” if the EU does anything on the “frozen”/stolen Russian assets.
It goes without saying that the three exhibits above completely nullify the “La Cage aux Folles” circus promoted by the puny Petit Roi, now known across his French domains as Macronapoleon.
Virtually the whole planet, including the English-speaking Global North, had already been mocking the “exploits” of his Can Can Moulin Rouge Army.
So French, German and Polish soldiers, as part of NATO, are already in the south of Kiev. The most possible scenario is that they will stay far, far away from the frontlines – although traceable by Mr. Khinzal’s business activities.
Even before this new NATO batch arriving in the south of Kiev, Poland – which happens to serve as prime transit corridor for Kiev’s troops – had confirmed that Western troops are already on the ground.
So this is not about mercenaries anymore. France, by the way, is only 7th in terms of mercenaries on the ground, largely trailing Poland, the US and Georgia, for instance. The Russian Ministry of Defense has all the precise records.
In a nutshell: now war has morphed from Donetsk, Avdeyevka and Belgorod to Moscow. Further on down the road, it may not just stop in Kiev. It may only stop in Lviv. Mr. 87%, enjoying massive national near-unanimity, now has the mandate to go all the way. Especially after Crocus.
There’s every possibility the terror tactics by Kiev goons will finally drive Russia to return Ukraine to its original 17th century landlocked borders: Black Sea-deprived, and with Poland, Romania, and Hungary reclaiming their former territories.
Remaining Ukrainians will start to ask serious questions about what led them to fight – literally to their death – on behalf of the US Deep State, the military complex and BlackRock.
As it stands, the Highway to Hell meat grinder is bound to reach maximum velocity.
Deux ans après le début de la guerre en Ukraine, la réalité contredit les prévisions hasardeuses du camp occidental qui
L’article La guerre en Ukraine ou la douloureuse naissance d’un monde nouveau est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Will France/NATO invade Ukraine? How will Russia respond?
— NewRulesGeopolitics (@NewRulesGeo) March 21, 2024
In this week’s episode of the New Rules podcast, we’re discussing the potential of a French/NATO military intervention in Ukraine. Longtime friend of the program, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter goes NUCLEAR on French President Emmanuel Macron, Poland, and the Baltic States.
“France is the equivalent of an overfed Chihuahua, and you don’t want to get in the ring with the really beefed up Rottweilers, especially when they’ve been trained to eat overfed Chihuahuas their entire life,” he told the New Rules podcast.
Les États-Unis ont appelé l’Ukraine à cesser ses attaques contre les installations énergétiques russes. Washington a averti Kiev que de
L’article Washington appelle Kiev à cesser les attaques sur les installations pétrolières russes pour éviter un renchérissement des prix, selon le FT est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
Le gouvernement ukrainien cessera de tenir une liste des entreprises “sponsors internationaux de la guerre”, a rapporté le service de
L’article Kiev abandonne sa liste des “sponsors internationaux de la guerre” est apparu en premier sur STRATPOL.
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