By Ivan Timofeev, Valdai Club Programme Director & one of Russia’s leading foreign policy experts.

Washington mulling some of the harshest sanctions ever proposed

A new bill before the US Senate that would introduce unprecedented new sanctions against Russia, as well as against top officials including President Vladimir Putin, has soured security negotiations between Moscow and Washington.

At present, the measures have been mooted as a potential response to any invasion of Ukraine but, if imposed, they would have a dramatic effect on the Russian economy. While businesses are wary of ‘geopolitical risks,’ so far the markets have exercised restraint. Indeed, avoiding panic is the right choice, given that, barring military escalations, the chances the bill would come into force are low.

However, the proposals represent an exceptionally tough stance on Moscow’s Euro-Atlantic security proposals, which have been the subject of talks between Russia, Washington and NATO. The White House opted not to dismiss the two draft treaties put forward by the Kremlin straight away, and entered into a cautious dialogue with Russia. Nevertheless, it is clear diplomacy does not appeal to everyone, and Democratic Senator Bob Menendez, the chief architect of the sanctions, has urged Washington not to make any concessions when it comes to Russia.

In addition, the bill calls for more military assistance to Ukraine, and using punitive measures to contain Russia. And what an impressive list of sanctions it is, including:

• Internationalrestrictions on dealing with major Russian banks;
• Restrictions on transactions with Russian bonds (including bonds issued by state-owned companies);
• Secondary sanctions against companies providing financial messaging services (i.e. SWIFT);
• Personal sanctions against the Russian president and key government officials;
• Sanctions with respect to Russian extractive industries like oil, gas and mining;
• A review of sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 pipeline

Unlike the US administration, which ties tougher sanctions with an open military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, American senators themselves do not clearly spell out the conditions under which the proposed set of sanctions is to be implemented. The bill calls for regular reports to be submitted to the president describing the level of tensions between Moscow and Kiev.

Should Moscow build up pressure, compared to its levels of December 2021, and if Russia’s actions (from Washington’s point of view) threaten Ukrainian statehood, the President of the United States would be required to introduce new sanctions.

In fact, the sanctions can be imposed at any time, since the criteria are somewhat vague.

It’s a bit of a consolation that the chances of the current version of the draft bill passing the Senate don’t seem to be very high. This is primarily because the bill itself is intended to provoke Russia into escalating tensions. It’s highly unlikely, though, that the US administration would be willing to meet Moscow halfway on its proposals. Instead, it will most probably try to stall many of those proposals, leaving only those that the US cares about on the table. However, it is also very clear that Washington is in no mood to anger Russia. Moscow has already demonstrated in recent years that it’s both capable of and willing to use military force – swiftly and efficiently. Slapping Russia with severe sanctions and supplying Ukraine with weapons on a fast track could by all accounts provoke the Kremlin to use force.

This is why the US administration wants to act ‘slowly but surely.’ It can, and probably will, tighten up sanctions and supply arms to Ukraine, but gradually, step by step.

There is another reason why the bill might not fly. It will burden Washington with way too much red tape. Foreign policy is where the executive and legislative branches of power in the United States have a history of playing tug-of-war. Every now and then, the United States Congress attempts to have the White House perform some of the oversight procedures for the sanctions, and the White House is never happy about it. It is therefore not entirely impossible that this proposal will go down the same track as the Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act (DASKA). The DASKA bill also proposed a tightening of the sanctions on Russia and left the procedural burden to the Administration. The bill met substantial criticism from the Bureau of Legislative Affairs of the US Department of State.

Finally, only a small fraction of sanctions bills ever make it into laws. According to the Russian Council on Foreign Affairs, in 2019-2021, only 29 out of 368 bills across all types of sanctions became laws, which is around 7%. Russia sanctions bills are drafted all the time: Bob Menendez’s initiative is impressive in its scale, but is, in effect, part of the legislative routine, given that there have been at least 40 other bills against Russia introduced over the past three years. Incidentally, there have been even more such bills discussed – 65, to be precise – against China.

Nevertheless, the US administration can clearly capitalize on such tactics. By introducing these bills, it demonstrates that Washington is ready to use tougher, more radical methods. The bills can be used to intimidate, but the US doesn’t have to go through with them. The chances of them passing would increase only in the case of a military escalation. Should that happen, the hawks on Capitol Hill would have a lot more cards to play.

via RT

Authored by Pepe Escobar via TheCradle.co,

What happened in Kazakhstan increasingly looks like a US-Turkish-British-Israeli-led coup d’etat attempt foiled dramatically by their Eurasian adversaries…

The year 2022 started with Kazakhstan on fire, a serious attack against one of the key hubs of Eurasian integration. We are only beginning to understand what and how it happened.

On Monday morning, leaders of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) held an extraordinary session to discuss Kazakhstan.

Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev framed it succinctly. Riots were “hidden behind unplanned protests.” The goal was “to seize power” – a coup attempt. Actions were “coordinated from a single center.” And “foreign militants were involved in the riots.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin went further: during the riots, “Maidan technologies were used,” a reference to the Ukranian square where 2013 protests unseated a NATO-unfriendly government.

Defending the prompt intervention of CSTO peacekeeping forces in Kazakhstan, Putin said, “it was necessary to react without delay.” The CSTO will be on the ground “as long as necessary,” but after the mission is accomplished, “of course, the entire contingent will be withdrawn from the country.” Forces are expected to exit later this week.

But here’s the clincher: “CSTO countries have shown that they will not allow chaos and ‘color revolutions’ to be implemented inside their borders.”

Putin was in synch with Kazakh State Secretary Erlan Karin, who was the first, on the record, to apply the correct terminology to events in his country: What happened was a “hybrid terrorist attack,” by both internal and external forces, aimed at overthrowing the government.

The tangled hybrid web

Virtually no one knows about it. But last December, another coup was discreetly thwarted in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek. Kyrgyz intel sources attribute the engineering to a rash of NGOs linked with Britain and Turkey. That introduces an absolutely key facet of The Big Picture: NATO-linked intel and their assets may have been preparing a simultaneous color revolution offensive across Central Asia.

On my Central Asia travels in late 2019, pre-Covid, it was plain to see how western NGOs – Hybrid War fronts – remained extremely powerful in both Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. Yet, they are just one nexus in a western nebulae of Hybrid War fog deployed across Central Asia, and West Asia for that matter. Here we see the CIA and the US Deep State crisscrossing MI6 and different strands of Turkish intel.

When President Tokayev was referring, in code, to a “single center,” he meant a so far ‘secret’ US-Turk-Israeli military-intel operations room based in the southern business hub of Almaty, according to a highly placed Central Asia intel source. In this “center,” there were 22 Americans, 16 Turks and 6 Israelis coordinating sabotage gangs – trained in West Asia by the Turks – and then rat-lined to Almaty.

The op started to unravel for good when Kazakh forces – with the help of Russian/CSTO intel – retook control of the vandalized Almaty airport, which was supposed to be turned into a hub for receiving foreign military supplies.

The Hybrid War west had to be stunned and livid at how the CSTO intercepted the Kazakh operation at such lightning speed. The key element is that the secretary of Russian National Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, saw the Big Picture eons ago.

So, it’s no mystery why Russia’s aerospace and aero-transported forces, plus the massive necessary support infrastructure, were virtually ready to go.

Back in November, Patrushev’s laser was already focused on the degrading security situation in Afghanistan. Tajik political scientist Parviz Mullojanov was among the very few who were stressing that there were as many as 8,000 imperial machine Salafi-jihadi assets, shipped by a rat line from Syria and Iraq, loitering in the wilds of northern Afghanistan.

That’s the bulk of ISIS-Khorasan – or ISIS reconstituted near the borders of Turkmenistan. Some of them were duly transported to Kyrgyzstan. From there, it was very easy to cross the border from Bishek and show up in Almaty.

It took no time for Patrushev and his team to figure out, after the imperial retreat from Kabul, how this jihadi reserve army would be used: along the 7,500 km-long border between Russia and the Central Asian ‘stans’.

That explains, among other things, a record number of preparation drills conducted in late 2021 at the 210th Russian military base in Tajikistan.

James Bond speaks Turkish

The breakdown of the messy Kazakh op necessarily starts with the usual suspects: the US Deep State, which all but “sang” its strategy in a 2019 RAND corporation report, Extending Russia. Chapter 4, on “geopolitical measures”, details everything from “providing lethal aid to Ukraine”, “promoting regime change in Belarus”, and “increasing support for Syrian rebels” – all major fails – to “reducing Russian influence in Central Asia.”

That was the master concept. Implementation fell to the MI6-Turk connection.

The CIA and MI6 had been investing in dodgy outfits in Central Asia since at least 2005, when they encouraged the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), then close to the Taliban, to wreak havoc in southern Kyrgyzstan. Nothing happened.

It was a completely different story by May 2021, when the MI6’s Jonathan Powell met the leadership of Jabhat al-Nusra – which harbors a lot of Central Asian jihadis – somewhere in the Turkish-Syrian border near Idlib. The deal was that these ‘moderate rebels’ – in US terminology – would cease to be branded ‘terrorists’ as long as they followed the anti-Russia NATO agenda.

That was one of the key prep moves ahead of the jihadist ratline to Afghanistan – complete with Central Asia branching out.

The genesis of the offensive should be found in June 2020, when former ambassador to Turkey from 2014 to 2018, Richard Moore, was appointed head of MI6. Moore may not have an inch of Kim Philby’s competence, but he does fit the profile: rabid Russophobe, and a cheerleader of the Great Turania fantasy, which promotes a pan-Turk confederation of Turkic-speaking peoples from West Asia and the Caucasus to Central Asia and even Russian republics in the Volga.

MI6 is deeply entrenched in all the ‘stans’ except autarchic Turkmenistan – cleverly riding the pan-Turkist offensive as the ideal vehicle to counter Russia and China.

Erdogan himself has been invested on a hardcore Great Turania offensive, especially after the creation of the Turkic Council in 2009. Crucially, next March, the summit of the Confederation Council of Turkic-speaking States – the new Turkic Council denomination – will take place in Kazakhstan. The city of Turkestan, in southern Kazakhstan, is expected to be named as the spiritual capital of the Turkic world.

And here, the ‘Turkic world’ enters into a frontal clash with the integrating Russian concept of Greater Eurasia Partnership, and even with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) that, crucially, does not count Turkey as a member.

Erdogan’s short term ambition seems at first to be only commercial: after Azerbaijan won the Karabakh war, he expects to use Baku to get access to Central Asia via the Caspian Sea, complete with Turkey’s industrial-military complex sales of military technology to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

Turkish companies are already investing heavily in real estate and infrastructure. And in parallel, Ankara’s soft power is on overdrive, finally collecting the fruits of exercising a lot of pressure, for instance, to speed up the transition in Kazakhstan from Cyrillic script to the Latin alphabet, starting in 2023.

Yet both Russia and China are very much aware that Turkey essentially represents NATO entering Central Asia. The organization of Turkic states are cryptically called the Kazakh operation ‘fuel protests’.

It’s all very murky. Erdogan’s neo-Ottomanism – which comes with massive cheerleading by his Muslim Brotherhood base – essentially has nothing to do with the pan-Turanic drive, which is a racialist movement predicating domination by relatively ‘pure’ Turks.

The problem is that they are converging while becoming more extreme, with Turkey’s right-wing Grey Wolves deeply implicated. That explains why Ankara intel is a sponsor and, in many cases, a weaponizer of both the ISIS-Khorasan franchise and those Turan racists, from Bosnia to Xinjiang via Central Asia.

The Empire handsomely profits from this toxic association, in Armenia, for instance. And the same would happen in Kazakhstan if the operation is successful.

Bring on the Trojan Horses

Every color revolution needs a ‘Maximum’ Trojan Horse. In our case, that seems to be the role of former head of KNB (National Security Committee) Karim Massimov, now held in prison and charged with treason.

Hugely ambitious, Massimov is half-Uyghur and that, in theory, obstructed what he saw as his pre-ordained rise to power. His connections with Turkish intel are not yet fully detailed, unlike his cozy relationship with Joe Biden and son.

A former Minister of Internal Affairs and State Security, Lt Gen Felix Kulov, has weaved a fascinating tangled web explaining the possible internal dynamics of the ‘coup’ built into the color revolution.

According to Kulov, Massimov and Samir Abish, the nephew of recently ousted Kazakh Security Council Chairman Nursultan Nazarbayev, were up to their necks in supervising ‘secret’ units of ‘bearded men’ during the riots. The KNB was directly subordinated to Nazarbayev, who until last week was the chairman of the Security Council.

When Tokayev understood the mechanics of the coup, he demoted both Massimov and Samat Abish. Then Nazarbayev ‘voluntarily’resigned from his life-long chairmanship of the Security Council. Abish then got this post, promising to stop the ‘bearded men,’and then to resign.

So that would point directly to a Nazarbayev-Tokayev clash. It makes sense as during his 29-year rule, Nazarbayev played a multi-vector game that was too westernized and which did not necessarily benefit Kazakhstan. He adopted British laws, played the pan-Turkic card with Erdogan, and allowed a tsunami of NGOs to promote an Atlanticist agenda.

Tokayev is a very smart operator. Trained by the foreign service of the former USSR, fluent in Russian and Chinese, he is totally aligned with Russia-China – which means fully in sync with the masterplan of BRI, the Eurasia Economic Union and the SCO.

Tokayev, much like Putin and Xi, understands how this BRI/EAEU/SCO triad represents the ultimate imperial nightmare, and how destabilizing Kazakhstan – a key actor in the triad – would be a mortal coup against Eurasian integration.

Kazakhstan, after all, represents 60 percent of Central Asia’s GDP, massive oil/gas and mineral resources, cutting-edge high tech industries: a secular, unitary, constitutional republic bearing a rich cultural heritage.

It didn’t take long for Tokayev to understand the merits of immediately calling the CSTO to the rescue: Kazakhstan signed the treaty way back in 1994. After all, Tokayev was fighting a foreign-led coup against his government.

Putin, among others, has stressed how an official Kazakh investigation is the only one entitled to get to the heart of the matter. It’s still unclear exactly who – and to what extent – sponsored the rioting mobs. Motives abound: to sabotage a pro-Russia/China government, to provoke Russia, to sabotage BRI, to plunder mineral resources, to turbo-charge a House of Saud-style ‘Islamization’.

Rushed to only a few days before the start of the Russia-US ‘security guarantees’ in Geneva, this color revolution represented a sort of counter-ultimatum – in desperation – by the NATO establishment.

Central Asia, West Asia, and the overwhelming majority of the Global South have witnessed the lightning fast Eurasian response by the CSTO troops – who, having now done their job, are set to leave Kazakhstan in a couple of days – and how this color revolution has failed, miserably.

It might as well be the last. Beware the rage of a humiliated Empire.

U.S. and Ukraine are already secretly preparing for the all-out war with Russia that they intend to make happen.

The U.S. and Ukraine are secretly preparing for all-out war while advancing propaganda to make it appear that Russia is the aggressor. Diplomatic talks in Geneva by the U.S. and Russia have failed to alleviate tensions because the U.S. refused to adhere to Russia’s demand that Ukraine “never, never ever” become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman stated that the U.S. would “not allow anyone to slam closed NATO’s Open Door policy.”

Since the February 2014 Maidan coup—where worshippers of Nazi collaborators Stepan Bandera overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych—the U.S. has provided $2.5 billion in military aid to the Ukrainians, including $450 million in 2021 alone. (Since 2014, the EU has provided 17 billion euros to Kyiv!)

This aid has included 100 Javelin rocket launchers and at least 500 rockets, along with training in their use.

Other NATO countries, including Canada, UK, Poland and Turkey have provided weapons, training and intelligence. Turkey has provided Bayraktir attack drones, and instructors, and both the Javelins and the drones have been used in combat against the Donbass Republics’ defense forces.

Ukraine itself has recently required women between the ages of 18 and 60 to register for the draft, including pregnant women and mothers with young children. Meanwhile, NATO already has 13,000 troops, 200 tanks, 400 APCs and 3 dozen aircraft and helicopters stationed in Eastern Europe, and there are currently 10,000 NATO “instructors” in Ukraine (including 4,000 from the United States). In early December, the Greek port of Alexandroupolis received the largest shipment of U.S. military equipment in its history, including helicopters, UAVs, tanks, IFVs and artillery for the annual NATO exercise “Atlantic Resolve.”

US and Ukraine continue preparations for assault on Donbass Republics

In early December, the water of the Severdonetsk River—which supplies more than 90% of the municipal tap water to all major cities of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) in eastern Ukraine (as well as major cities of Donetsk Oblast under Ukrainian control)—was contaminated by chemical and biological agents from sources in Kharkov and Slavyansk.

This contamination—augmented by “fracking” in the areas of Donetsk Oblast under Ukrainian control—has resulted in the tap water of the DPR being unsuitable for cooking or drinking.

Contamination and/or denial of drinking water for civilian populations constitutes a “grave breach,” and thus qualifies as a war crime, under both the Nuremberg Tribunal Charter and the Fourth Geneva Convention.^[1]

The chemical attack on the Severdonetsk River is not the only chemical and biological threat against the Donbass Republics by Ukraine and its Western sponsors.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu reported on reported on December 21^st that 120 U.S. mercenaries received deliveries of chemical weapons in the Ukrainian occupied frontline cities of Avdeevka and Krasny Liman for use in a possible false-flag attack that could be blamed on Russia. 

Press Secretary of the DPR Defense Ministry Eduard Basurin confirmed that Ukraine had received several batches of toxic substances, botulinum toxin and an antidote to it from the U.S.

He stated:

Various types of chemical weapons were brought to Ukraine. In October, one of the shipments contained an antidote against botulinum toxin. In November, the chemical itself was delivered. It can be used with grenade launchers. The weight is small. It can be dropped from drones, and Ukraine has been using shock drones all the time lately. 

In addition, “Another container weighing 300 kilograms was delivered to Mariupol by sea, where there was a chemical warfare agent—dibenzoxazepine, which is used in the form of an aerosol.”

In the southern sector of the Front, near Mariupol, citizens of the frontline village Granitnoye have reported Ukrainian soldiers in full chemical/biological protective suits unloading containers.

These reports do not bode well for a peaceful settlement of the conflict in Ukraine which threatens to expand into a full-fledged war involving the U.S. and Russia.

The reports bring to mind the widely and completely debunked and exposed multiple false-flag attacks by (U.S. and NATO-backed) ISIS terrorists in Syria, in which innocent civilians were slaughtered in order to use them in “White Helmet” propaganda videos, falsely blaming the mass murders on chemical attacks by the legitimate Syrian government.^[2]

Diplomatic Option—Will the Biden Administration Pursue It?

Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov have said multiple times that Russia is prepared to use military force if either its citizens in Donbass or its strategic national interests are further threatened by Ukraine or NATO.

Russia, however, first has proposed a diplomatic solution that the U.S. appears to be rejecting.

On December 17, 2021, Russia published a draft of a pair of treaties for mutual security guarantees between Russia, the U.S. and NATO, with eight specific articles, the first of which is a demand for equal recognition of the security interests of both countries.

The second article requires both countries to adhere to the basic principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter. The third article prohibits the signatories from using the territory of third countries for preparation of armed attacks. The fourth article is very specific—the United States shall prevent the further eastward expansion of NATO and deny NATO membership to any further former USSR Republics, meaning specifically Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia.

The fifth article prohibits either side from deploying weapons in international and third-party spaces to provoke or threaten, including agreement on maximum-approach distances of warships and aircraft. The sixth article is the prohibition of deployment of short and intermediate range missiles outside of the national territories of the parties, or where said missiles could threaten the other party.

The seventh article requires the withdrawal of all nuclear weapons deployed outside the  territories of both parties, and the dismantling of existing infrastructure outside the territories for the deployment of nuclear weapons, and prohibits the training of other countries’ militaries in the use of nuclear weapons. The eighth and final article stipulates the entry into force of the Treaty once ratification by both sides is complete. 

This treaty is wise and highly equitable, a framework for de-escalation and a drawback from potential nuclear war. If the U.S. or NATO fails to ratify this treaty, Russia has made clear that it will enforce the provisions of the Treaty by military means.

Russia is not bluffing, and they do have the technical and military ability to do so. If the U.S./NATO refusal to ratify the treaty or further provocations in Ukraine lead to war, the onus will absolutely be on them and not on Russia. NATO armies, weapons and military infrastructure have advanced literally all the way up to the Russian border, and as Vladimir Putin has noted, “There is nowhere left to retreat.” 

The treaty is not an “ultimatum,” rather it is the only feasible alternative to serious military confrontation that can easily lead to a major war. Unfortunately, it appears that Ukraine and NATO, led by the U.S., have no intention of pursuing the diplomatic option, and continue preparations and provocations that can and will lead only to a military response by Russia.

Amending of Ukrainian Constitution

On December 21^st, four days after the Russian treaty proposal was published, Ukraine, on U.S. and NATO orders, with reckless impudence again amended the Ukrainian Constitution to allow foreign troops to operate on Ukrainian soil, in preparation for multiple NATO exercises to be held in Ukraine in 2022.

These include nine maneuvers to be carried out in 2022, and the number of  military personnel participating in them will almost double compared to 2021—to 64,000. 

The number of aircraft and helicopters will more than triple—to 361—and warships almost four times—to 256. This is a tremendous military escalation, and while Russia can easily handle the Ukrainian military alone, Russia will be faced with a much more formidable foe if the NATO reinforcements are in place before hostilities commence.

Russia’s window of opportunity for a preemptive strike is a matter of weeks, and on December 29^th, President Putin announced that Russia and Belarus have scheduled military exercises of their own for February and March of 2022.

It is quite possible and even “highly likely” that these “exercises” will be conducted not in Russia or Belarus, but in Ukraine itself. This possibility has already prompted the UK to announce plans to evacuate its soldiers and the U.S. to begin preparations to evacuate its citizens from Ukraine.

February 4, 2022, will be the opening day of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, and Putin has announced his intention to attend. The U.S. and NATO have a history of initiating military and geopolitical confrontations during the Olympics, as was seen with the Maidan coup in 2014 during the Sochi Olympics and the Georgian attack on South Ossetia during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. All the above factors have led many analysts, including this author, to predict the start of major military operations in February 2022.

Non-Military Options and Russia’s Alliance with China

If the collective “West”—U.S./NATO—continue their advances and attacks against Russia, Russia also has multiple options of the non-kinetic variety with which to respond. Economic, technical and political means that can teach, even in a non-military way, what Vladimir Putin once described as “the true meaning of pain.” 

Russia’s electronic warfare capabilities are currently unmatched in the world. The Murmansk-BN system has the ability to suppress radio and satellite communication over a distance of 3,000 kilometers, and has proven effective against hard targets like the U.S. F-35. Operating from within its own territory, Russia can suppress not only military aircraft, but civilian air traffic and ground transport and other communication over the entirety of Europe, including the UK.

Russia can play the energy card—the EU’s dependence on Russian oil and gas (47% in 2021) has become painfully clear this year, but it is a little known fact that Russia is the U.S.’s third largest supplier of petroleum products. In 2020, the U.S. imported 538,000 barrels per day from Russia, and even more in 2021. Russia’s supply accounts for 7% of all U.S. petroleum imports, and while an energy loss of 7% would be a major blow to the U.S., Russia can easily divert these shipments to the East and sell them there.

Were Russia to cut off its energy supplies to the EU, the economic devastation would be immediate and immeasurable. And the physical and infrastructure destruction would be even worse. People would literally freeze to death, pipes would freeze and burst, factories would be shut down and deteriorate, never to be re-opened. That is actually happening now in Ukraine. The U.S. and EU should take a look at that and take a lesson from it.

The Russia-China strategic partnership is not only military, it is economic. The U.S. economy today is a façade, a paper tiger with no real strength or foundation. The U.S. national debt is officially $30 trillion, more than 90% of GDP, and the true number, including U.S. government “unfunded liabilities” including $21 trillion for Social Security and $33 trillion for Medicare, is perhaps as much as ten times higher. It is a debt that can and will never be paid.

A combined economic assault by Russia and China against the U.S. dollar would cause inflation of Zimbabwean proportions. Soldiers do not fight if they are not paid, cops and government bureaucrats do not work if their paychecks are worthless, and citizens loot and riot if they cannot afford food. And if the U.S. economy implodes, it will take the EU economy with it. And vice versa.

All (or any) of these non-military moves would paralyze the economies and governments of virtually all NATO countries, inflicting a crushing defeat on the U.S. and EU without firing a shot. But Russia does have full justification and compelling motives for a military response as well. And if done correctly, it could result in total victory in a quick and relatively bloodless fashion.

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1. With that in mind, it should also be noted that in early 2017, the Kyiv regime dammed the North Crimean Canal which had supplied fresh water to the 2.5 million citizens of Crimea. While the Crimean peninsula produces adequate water for survival, this criminal act not only affects the health and quality of life of the citizens, it also has had an extremely negative impact on the agriculture, economy and ecology of the peninsula. ↑

2. Ukraine has been using ISIS and other Jihadi terrorists in its war against the Donbass Republics since the very beginning of the war. In early 2015, The Intercept first reported the links between ISIS and Ukrainian neo-Nazis. Other credible reports soon followed, from such divergent sources as Antiwar.com, The American Thinker, and even The New York Times reported on “three full Islamic battalions fighting in eastern Ukraine.” These reports are all from 2015, and the jihadi presence in Ukraine has only grown since then. ↑

www.defenseone.com

A US security adviser alleges conflict is likely to break out over tensions surrounding Ukraine

The US must ready itself for a war with Russia, a former Defense Department official has warned, saying that Washington could be obliged to step in militarily if Moscow decides to mount an invasion of Ukraine in the near future.

Evelyn Farkas, who served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia from 2012-15, published an op-ed in Defense One on Tuesday in which she claimed that an imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine is “more likely than not.” The former Obama administration official insisted that diplomatic talks between Moscow and Washington, taking place this week, are likely to fail, and that the US should already be getting ready for war with Russia.

In an echo of the words former President George W. Bush, used to describe the nations invading Iraq in 2003, she called for the US to marshal “an international coalition of the willing” to deter Russian President Vladimir Putin “and, if necessary, prepare for war.”

According to Farkas, Russia fails to abide by international law, and has been emboldened by recent mass protests in Kazakhstan, a neighboring nation and former Soviet republic with which Moscow has close ties. All this, she alleged, makes it more likely than ever that Putin is planning to invade Ukraine.

“If Russia prevails again,” she warned, “we will remain stuck in a crisis not just over Ukraine but about the future of the global order far beyond that country’s borders. Left unrestrained, Putin will move swiftly, grab some land, consolidate his gains, and set his sights on the next satellite state in his long game to restore all the pre-1991 borders: the sphere of geographical influence he deems was unjustly stripped from Great Russia.”

Farkas’ article comes as senior diplomats from the US and Russia are meeting in Geneva this week to discuss security proposals that Moscow delivered to Washington in December. The Kremlin has requested written guarantees that NATO, the US-led military bloc, will not expand into Ukraine and Georgia, two countries that share borders with Russia. American officials, meanwhile, have expressed concern about the alleged Russian troop buildup near Ukraine, and have said that they will not make any promises about NATO membership.

Despite the apparent impasse, officials from both sides have indicated that they are willing to negotiate while they have the chance. Russia has repeatedly denied it has any aggressive intentions towards Ukraine, and has accused the US of fueling tensions by providing Kiev with arms and military support.