If the Armed Forces of Ukraine use shells with depleted uranium, the Russian Federation admits the possibility of responding with tactical nuclear weapons — Russian analyst

We are talking about the depleted uranium-core, armour-piercing, sub-caliber, feathered projectiles for Challenger 2 tanks that will be sent to Ukraine.

World tank building (the production of shells) went two ways :

Use expensive tungsten (safe for the health of the crew and safe for the environment) or an alloy of depleted uranium with titanium .

An alloy with uranium is much cheaper, because it can be used as spent fuel from nuclear reactors. Secondly, it has such a function as “self-sharpening”: when it bites into homogeneous armor (all-metal) at high speed, it does not flatten, but “leaves in layers,” continuing to be sharp and retaining penetrating properties .

By itself, it is not radioactive, but it is very toxic . If inhaled or if it comes into contact with the skin, it will cause serious poisoning.

On impact, part of the projectile is sprayed into fine dust, contaminating the area where the projectile was fired. According to American studies, in the area where such shells were used , oncology and other types of diseases grew six times.

Regarding the response: Russia has clearly defined that this type of munition is considered to be the use of “dirty bombs.” And this already opens up the possibility of conducting a retaliatory strike with tactical nuclear weapons. “Western countries should understand what games they are “playing “, ” said Andrey Klintsevich , head of the Center for the Study of Military and Political Conflicts.

Earlier, the United Kingdom confirmed the transfer of this type of ammunition to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

https://t.me/OstashkoNews/61087

Allegedly. On March 18, a strategic meeting of the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was held. Zelensky, Generals Zaluzhny, Syrsky and others, the head of the OP Yermak, the head of the US Pentagon Austin, the head of the de facto US Army General Staff Milley and from the US president his National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan took part.
2. Allegedly. Approved the plan of offensive operations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.
3. Allegedly. In the coming days, on March 22-23, the Armed Forces of Ukraine will strike around Bakhmut. The goal is to cut off the Wagner pincers around Bakhmut. The blows will be at the junction of Wagner and the Russian army with the hope of a conflict between the leadership of Wagner and the Ministry of Defense.
4. Allegedly, the grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine around Bakhmut is 70 thousand.
5. There is also the main grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which is preparing to break through from Zaporozhye to the Sea of Azov in several directions.
6. But now Bakhmut is a political priority for Zelensky. The essence of his plan.

According to the well-known resource Lostarmour, it is now known about the ongoing formation of the following new Ukrainian brigades:

• 37th Marine Brigade
• 38th Separate Marine Brigade (based on the 503rd Separate Marine Battalion)
• 5th Separate Air Assault Brigade (based on the 5th Air Assault Regiment)
• 13th separate jaeger brigade
• 22nd, 23rd, 31st, 32nd, 88th, 116th, 117th, 118th separate mechanized brigades
• 48th separate artillery brigade
• At least three rifle brigades: in the Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk and Kyiv regions.

According to French estimates (obviously incomplete table on the brigades being formed – see above), now the ground forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the territorial defense forces and the National Guard of Ukraine have or are forming a total of 100 combined arms and six tank brigades. In total, they should include up to 700 infantry battalions and 35-40 equivalent tank battalions, and the total number of personnel, taking into account the rear and support units, can reach 1.3 million people.

In case of failure, Kiev will no longer be able to receive funds for a new counteroffensive , says Czech President Pavel

“Many countries, many politicians expect some progress this year. I believe that Ukraine will have only one attempt to launch a major counteroffensive. Therefore, if they decide to launch a major counter-offensive and it fails, it will be extremely difficult to get funds for the next one,” the ex-NATO officer told Rzeczpospolita newspaper.

In his opinion, the counterattack should take place within the next month.

After next winter, “maintaining the current level of aid will be extremely difficult.”

Russia is creating a new type of military operations using nuclear weapons to protect against possible US aggression.

The magazine “Military Thought”, published by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, spoke about the promising development.

The United States, losing its leadership in the world, plans to defeat Russia in the course of a “strategic multi-sphere operation.” It includes the instantaneous defeat of up to 70% of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces, the neutralization of the remaining and launched carriers with the help of missile defense, and then a nuclear strike on Russian territory.

In turn, the Russian military is developing a strategic deterrence force operation that will be able to suppress American missile defense systems and inflict unacceptable damage to the enemy.

“The US attack can be prevented if Russia convincingly demonstrates the ability to deter at least one of the stages of the American operation,” the magazine notes.

Commonly we see in drone footage “lone” tanks advancing on a position, leading to questions as to why such is done. The tactical picture for battles such as Ugledar and other locations consists of farmland “grids” of open field framed by tree lines.

Due to 24/7 aerial reconnaissance, satellite imaging, and extensive emplacement of mines, movement across these open fields can be suicidal. Whereas in traditional warfare a detachment could make its way across slowly and methodically, identifying and avoiding or destroying enemy mines, Russian forces can no longer dally about in these fields without soon being spotted by an enemy drone, and shortly thereafter coming under artillery fire from what is often a pre-sighted grid square.

As such, RF’s task is now to identify not only at what location a maneuver can be executed, but also the precise timing of when. They must be able to make a mad dash across an open field to the next tree-line, which will almost invariably contain an infantry entrenchment, and then withdraw armor back to the previous treeline until the enemy position is cleared.

Large groupings of armor are vulnerable to entering an enemy minefield or infantry ambush, being stuck in place out in the open as they work the problem, and then coming under artillery fire.

As such, tactical doctrine has adapted. Operationally the principles remain the same as from early last year: conduct recon, fire artillery, and repeat until nothing is moving anymore, then advance.

Tactically however, lessons have been learned.

Once recon/artillery loop has been completed, a single tank will make a mad dash across the open grid, reach the next tree-line, and begin suppressing what remains with heavy machine-gun and main-gun fire. One tank has a greater chance of clearing a path through possible mines and surviving artillery than grouped armor.

Once this tank has successfully made contact with the treeline, two BMPs with mounted infantry will follow in and deliver the assault and medical detachments, then the tank and transports will both withdraw back across the field to their originating position.

Of interesting note:

-RF infantry doctrine currently prohibits maneuver in open fields. All work is to be conducted only within these treelines.

-Occupation of enemy entrenchments is forbidden. They are pre-sighted for enemy artillery and may contain mines or booby-traps. Once the entrenchment is cleared, RF must either continue to “bound” up to the next treeline in this manner, or otherwise fall back to the original and use artillery to prevent enemy re-occupation of the cleared trench.

That is, one must decide when to take “one step forward, one back, then two forward” or to take “two forward” at once, then one back.”

-There are now dedicated medical detachments embedded at the company level. Assault detachments are not to evacuate casualties. They are to provide emergency trauma aid for the wounded, then leave them there and continue the assault up the trench and the remainder of the treeline.

The designated medevac unit moves into the entrenchment behind them and brings wounded out of the trench, friendly and enemy alike. As they follow in, the BMPs which dropped off the assault detachment will dash back across the field to the point of contact for loading of the wounded, then withdraw again.

When one sees a truncated video clip of a “lone” tank working a position, what they’re really looking at is a snapshot of a complex and coordinated multi-hour operation that runs armor back and forth across these open fields, which must take place at a precisely planned point and time to avoid becoming entrapped by enemy artillery.

This is perhaps the first novel tactical doctrine of 21st century warfare, borne in a flatland environment where traditional maneuver warfare is now dead, simply because the battlefield is under constant surveillance.

—Gleb Georgevich Gerasimov, Slavyangrad

Australia is not arming itself against China to protect itself from China. Australia is arming itself against China to protect itself from the United States.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, U.S. President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Surnak at a press event for AUKUS in San Diego, March 13, 2023. (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)

By Caitlin Johnstone
in Melbourne, Australia
CaitlinJohnstone.com

As part of Australian media’s relentless onslaught of war–with–China propaganda, the government-run Australian Broadcasting Corporation just aired a radio segment on RN Breakfast about the newly revealed details on the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine deal, featuring two guests who are enthusiastic supporters of the deal, and hosted by another enthusiastic supporter of the deal.

One of the guests, Australia’s former treasurer and ambassador to the United States, Joe Hockey, made some interesting remarks.

“This locks us in with the United States for decades to come; is there a risk, as the smaller partner in this deal, we’ll just have to do what the U.S. tells us when it comes to future wartime engagements?” host Patricia Karvelas asked Hockey.

“Well we’re already fully integrated with the United States military, and arguably have been for more than one hundred years,” Hockey replied.

“We’re the only country in the world that has fought side-by side with them in every major battle for the last one hundred years. And already today a lot of our navy has the Aegis Combat System, which is an American combat system; our current Collins-class submarines use American torpedoes … and in every major way, communications systems and integration, we already have American technology, and we’re integrated with American systems. So there’s nothing new here in that regard.”

This is true; Australia is inseparably intertwined with the U.S. military and is in practice nothing other than a U.S. military and intelligence asset in every meaningful way, to such an extent that the U.S. navy is reportedly planning to use the country as a full-service submarine station for the entire range of undersea activities in the Asia-Pacific region.

In an incredibly brazen admission that the Australian government has fully given away the nation’s sovereignty to a foreign power, Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of Defence Richard Marles said last year that the Australian Defence Force is moving “beyond interoperability to interchangeability” with the U.S. military so they can “operate seamlessly together, at speed.”

Asked about the hundreds of billions of dollars this submarine program is going to cost Australians, Hockey said that “the cost of failure is far greater than the cost of investment,” citing Australia’s ports and shipping routes which could come under attack without the deterrence factor of the new submarines.

Protecting Ports from Trading Partner

This claim is false. As has been humorously explained on the Australian TV series “Utopia,” China is the power that is supposedly being “deterred” from attacking Australia’s ports and shipping routes, and since China is Australia’s largest two-way trading partner this means that we are effectively pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into protecting our trade with China, from China.

In reality, Australia is not arming itself against China to protect itself from China. Australia is arming itself against China to protect itself from the United States.

This dynamic was illustrated in all its grotesque glory by a 2019 presentation at the Australian think tank Centre for Independent Studies by American political analyst John Mearsheimer. In his usual uncomfortably blunt manner, Mearsheimer told his audience that the U.S. is going to do everything it can to halt China’s rise and prevent it from becoming the dominant power in the region, and that Australia should align with the U.S. in that battle or else it would face the wrath of Washington.

“The question that’s on the table is what should Australia’s foreign policy be in light of the rise of China,” Mearsheimer said. “I’ll tell you what I would suggest if I were an Australian.”

Mearsheimer said China is going to continue to grow economically and will convert that economic power into military power to dominate Asia “the way the U.S. dominates the Western hemisphere”, and explained why he thinks the U.S. and its allies have every ability to prevent that from happening.

“Now the question is what does this all mean for Australia?” Mearsheimer said.

“Well, you’re in a quandary for sure. Everybody knows what the quandary is. And by the way you’re not the only country in East Asia that’s in this quandary. You trade a lot with China, and that trade is very important for your prosperity, no question about that. Security-wise, you really want to go with us. It makes just a lot more sense, right? And you understand that security is more important than prosperity, because if you don’t survive, you’re not gonna prosper.”

“Now some people say there’s an alternative: you can go with China,” said Mearsheimer.

“You have a choice here: you can go with China rather the United States. There’s two things I’ll say about that. Number one, if you go with China, you want to understand you are our enemy. You are then deciding to become an enemy of the United States. Because again, we’re talking about an intense security competition.”

“You’re either with us or against us,” he continued.

“And if you’re trading extensively with China, and you’re friendly with China, you’re undermining the United States in this security competition. You’re feeding the beast, from our perspective. And that is not going to make us happy. And when we are not happy you do not want to underestimate how nasty we can be. Just ask Fidel Castro.”

Nervous laughter from the Australian think tank audience punctuated Mearsheimer’s more incendiary observations. The C.I.A. is known to have made numerous attempts to assassinate Castro.

So if you’re confused as to why Australia is preparing to fight an unwinnable war against its primary trading partner, in direct contradiction to its own security and economic interests, that’s why. It’s because Australia is ultimately more afraid of the U.S. than it is of China.

Contrary to Joe Hockey’s claims, Australia is not paying hundreds of billions of dollars to knit itself even further into the U.S. war machine because “the cost of failure is far greater than the cost of investment.”

In truth those hundreds of billions of dollars are more like pizzo payments to the Mafia; we’re letting the boss wet his beak so he doesn’t trash our business and break our kneecaps.

From left: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, U.S. President Joe Biden, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at an AUKUS meeting in San Diego on Monday. (DoD photo by Chad J. McNeeley)

Nobody ever talks about this, even though anyone who studies U.S. foreign policy knows it’s true. Australian propagandists make up stories about what China might do to us if we don’t play along with Washington’s brinkmanship against Beijing, but they never talk about what the U.S. would do to us if we don’t.

This is because they don’t want us thinking too hard about the fact that we are being coerced by the world’s most powerful government into preparing to fight a war of unfathomable horror under the tacit threat of inflicting even worse horrors upon us if we don’t.

Australia is caught between a rock and a Pentagon, and both are the fault of the United States. The U.S. is responsible for engineering all these hostilities between China and the Western power alliance in its desperate attempts to secure unipolar hegemony, and the U.S. is responsible for creating the fear other countries feel knowing what fate might befall them if they disobey its dictates.

The U.S. is solely responsible for creating a situation in which we are being forced to choose between (A) throwing our sons and daughters into the gears of an unimaginably terrible war while destroying our economy and risking nuclear armageddon, or (B) facing retribution and retaliation from a government that is far more violent and destructive than China.

This completely intolerable situation is why Australians are being aggressively hammered with war propaganda about China right now; if we were simply allowed to consume truthful information and think normal thoughts, no healthy person would ever consent to any of this.

But that’s where we’re at, and it’s not going to get better until people understand that that’s what’s happening. We’ve got to talk about this thing, and we’ve got to help everyone understand the reality of the situation we now find ourselves in. In the end, humanity will not have a chance at health until it has freed itself from the shackles of the U.S. empire.

This article is from CaitlinJohnstone.com and re-published with permission.

by Jared Peterson via American Thinker

One tries to read widely on the state of the Ukraine war, though it’s extremely difficult to cut through the fog of propaganda and obvious lies. But slowly, the picture of a determined, slow-moving, grinding, painful Russian victory emerges. Ukrainian casualties are almost certainly at unbearable, unsustainable levels. Closest guesses are in the range of 250,000 KIA, orders of magnitude greater than Russia’s, which draws from a vastly larger population. Ukraine is losing a generation of its male youth, all to prop up a declining US planetary hegemony.

The vicious, confused, criminally reckless tyros running US policy, and deliberately lengthening this destructive and immensely dangerous, unwinnable conflict, are indifferent to the ruin of Ukraine and the mass deaths of its young men, mere cannon fodder to those who walk the corridors of the State Department and Pentagon. As they are indifferent to the unthinkable consequence that might be the final issue of this war.

This war need never have happened if Kissinger’s, and many others’, proposal for a neutral, non-NATO Ukraine had been accepted by the US in 2021, as Russia reasonably requested, and if Ukraine, at America’s direction, had ceased its eight year, US-sponsored war on the Donbas Russian speakers and Russian ethnics, and had enforced the Minsk II accords.

A neutral Ukraine, no US weapons systems within Ukraine’s borders, an end to Kiev’s ruthless persecution of the Donbas population … and the result: No war.

But the US Military Industrial Complex wanted a war and got one. The object: To bleed and weaken Russia with a Vietnam-like quagmire, thus, per US neocon deep thinkers’ fantasies, one of the two nations able to say no to America is removed from the short list of countries impeding their dreamed-of US sole dominance of planet earth.

The outcome of this totally US-provoked war may be much different than the one that fevers the wet dreams of America’s neocons. Russia appears to be surviving US sanctions quite comfortably, as new customers pop up in Asia for its natural gas and other vital resources, its ruble remains strong, 80% of its people apparently support their government, Europe’s, particularly Germany’s, economies are in free fall as the cost of US liquified natural gas exceeds the cost of demonized Russian pipeline gas by huge multiples, and as the BRICs develop new trade routes and payment methods in Asia and across the global south, threatening the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

All of this, and the risk of nuclear war with a Russia that does in fact feel threatened by the US Military Industrial Complex’s thirty year pattern of gratuitously aggressive behavior toward it, including:

• NATO’s relentless eastward expansion, in the teeth of explicit promises by every 1990 Western leader that such expansion would never occur if Russia accepted German reunification, withdrew its troops from Eastern Europe, and dissolved the Warsaw Pact;
• Invitations in 2008 to Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO, well known at the time to be as totally unacceptable to Russia as the Soviet Union’s attempted similar conversion of Cuba in 1962 was to the United States;
• US deep involvement in the 2014 coup that deposed Ukraine’s democratically elected, pro Russian president;
• US installation of sophisticated weapons systems in the new NATO countries, including Poland, the Baltics and Romania; and
• The Biden administration’s 2021 treatment of Ukraine as a defacto member of NATO.

The motive for Russia’s sending 190,000 troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022 was its perception of threat (see above), and an eight year war by the corrupt Kiev regime against its Donbas population. The claim that Russia’s move into Ukraine was the first step in its supposed lusted-for conquest of Europe is a ludicrous, transparent lie. Those who utter it don’t believe it for a minute, and not one knowledgeable student of international relations believed that Russia posed an aggressive threat to Europe at any time since the collapse of the Soviet Union in December of 1991. The claim that in Ukraine Russia is motivated by world conquest would be laughable, if that piece of propaganda had not been so ubiquitously parroted by the Western media and therefore swallowed whole by an inattentive, barely conscious public.

The media’s lies about the alleged motivation for the conflict, and its understandable total silence about the pertinent history that would expose those lies, is echoed in its reporting on the progress and state of the war itself.

To judge from mainstream accounts, Russia is always losing, being bled to death, its defeats huge, its victories negligible, its military hardware and ammunition nearly exhausted, suffering massively greater casualties than its enemies, and has been greatly weakened as a military power regardless of the war’s outcome. One day Bakhmut is militarily “irrelevant,” the next day we are told it’s being held to the last man because its fall would open a route to further Russian conquests toward the west. Vladimir Putin is dying of — take your pick — cancer, Parkinson’s, dementia. Vladimir Putin is unpopular, about to be killed or deposed, surrounded by foes, etc., etc.

All of this is desperate propaganda by Western elites and their media mouthpieces, who are slowly beginning to realize the magnitude of the catastrophe the Ukraine war they provoked is becoming.

And while the war goes on, beads of sweat are beginning to appear on foreheads of important Western leaders, as the real possibility emerges that the US government blew up the Nordstream pipelines — which would be one of the most enormous acts of terrorism in history. And — don’t forget — that was an act of terrorism directed not merely against Russia, but against America’s close ally Germany, for whom those pipelines were the key to its industrial competitiveness and its population’s well-being. What would be the consequence, for NATO, for US — European relations, for the governments of Europe, for the image of America in the world, if that astounding act originated in the Biden White House?

The West needs to change course in Ukraine, and fast. If it continues to prolong a war that cannot be won, to double down on past blunders, to deliberately engender in Russia a sense of isolation and threat, it will find itself soon at the point where that war can only be continued by direct insertion of NATO troops to replace the tragically depleted and destroyed Ukrainians.

That way — the insertion of NATO troops — lies the serious possibility of civilizational annihilation. Because, whatever happens on the conventional battlefield, the Russians will not tolerate the conversion of Ukraine into a vast military base of the United States on its front porch.

Europe will have to send its soldiers to war if the “human resource” of Ukraine runs out, said the head of the Hungarian Defense Ministry.

“The West decided not to localize the conflict but to bring it to a general level… Now we are at the point where we need to participate; we need to get involved, first by voting for sanctions, then with money, then only with defense means; now we already see that they are sending tanks, Leopard, fighter jets are also on the way, and if this continues, soldiers will be needed if Ukrainian human resources run out. “Europe will end up in the middle of a war.”

The White House explained why the United States is not ready to supply Patriot air defense systems to Ukraine

Experts name a lot of reasons why the United States does not want or cannot transfer Patriot air defense systems to Kyiv. The fact is that some US military are not sure that this air defense system can be effective against Russian cruise missiles and drones.

In this case, the reputation of weapons will be irreparably damaged, which will inevitably affect its further sales to other countries.

“The Patriot system is designed to intercept ballistic missiles, it’s not as effective against cruise missiles, and it certainly won’t be effective against drones,” said John Kirby, White House strategic communications coordinator.

The Pentagon also expressed concern that if the Patriot system is delivered to Ukraine, it could be destroyed by Russian anti-location missiles as soon as possible.