Military Confrontation
The Russian Embassy in Geneva has released a document entitled “War Crimes and Crime against Humanity Committed by the Ukrainian Military-Political Leadership in the Donbass” and made it available.
Warning pretty graphic content.
https://archive.org/details/presentation-ukrainian-war-crimes/mode/2up
The foreign policy experts promised us that President Biden would restore our standing in the world and “stand up to tyranny.” Retired Admiral William McRaven said Biden would make America lead again. They were wrong, of course. The Afghanistan withdrawal was a disaster. The reliance on intelligence and security from the Taliban got Americans killed.
If they were right about anything, it was about the return to American “normalcy.” This was one of our biggest concerns with Biden. Normalcy in the U.S. is incompetence. It got us the war in Iraq and a ~20 year war in Afghanistan. It gave us Libya and the emergency of ISIS.
This same class of experts – the ones who were wrong on Biden, wrong on Iraq and Afghanistan – are now salivating at the prospects of war with Russia. And they’re doing so by misrepresenting the purpose and risk of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the mental health of Vladimir Putin.
Liz Cheney goes so far as to make this a moral issue, stating “Isolationism has always and will always be wrong.” If isolationism is “always” wrong, then is intervention always right? Follow her twisted worldview to its logical conclusions and you find the answer.
There is no doubt that America would be better off not taking moral lessons from a Cheney. While she doesn’t tell us the standard of this moral judgment, but it is no doubt based on the incorrect assumption that America’s use of force to advance its own interests is morally right. To that I say: bullshit. Rightness isn’t judged by the identity of the actor.
Our criticisms of the West must be addressed before we continue. We are principled anti-war, although we acknowledge the limited necessity of war. In short, we believe in the principles of Just War (but not the secular revisions of that theory). This means we acknowledge the necessity of wars of defense and reject wars conducted for ambiguous notions of “national interest” or “pre-emption” or conflicts to “reorder the international system.”
This puts us in the position of condemning both Russia’s war of national interest in Ukraine and America’s war of national interest in Iraq. In contrast, while neo-conservatives like Liz Cheney condemn Russia’s war Ukraine, they agree with the principles underlying Russia’s use of force.
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice calls Putin’s behavior “erratic,” his views “delusional.” James Clapper says Putin is “unhinged.” Clapper suggests the possibility that Putin will use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Fiona Hill, the Regime’s favorite “Russia expert,” believes“Putin is increasingly operating emotionally and likely to use all the weapons at his disposal, including nuclear ones.”
There’s a couple goals in questioning Putin’s state of mind. First, it serves to defend America from criticisms that potential NATO expansion and continued American meddling in Ukraine helped spark this conflict. (“Blame the crazy man, not us.”)
Second, it justifies the escalation of the West’s involvement in the war between Ukraine and Russia. Talks about the potential for nuclear war only make intervention more necessary (though that doesn’t guarantee Biden would take the bait). U.S. Senators are calling for a no-fly zone over Ukraine. Escalation leads to dangerous questions and unknown answers, such as what happens when the U.S. and Russia are in direct conflict.
Missing from the media’s coverage is push-back on these statements about Putin’s state of mind or the potential use of nuclear weapons. Their skepticism isn’t missing – it’s dead. Putin the Madman is the new talking point, the elite opinion that is approved for the masses. There’s little basis for their new talking point – certainly not in Putin’s February 24, 2022 speech where he calmly outlines Russia’s grievances and concerns, and their plans for Ukraine.
In fact, while Fiona Hill questions Putin’s mental state, she admits they assessed years ago that there was “a real, genuine risk of preemptive Russian military action” against Ukraine in response to NATO’s Open Door promise to welcome any European democracy (including Ukraine). Such predictions don’t square with craziness.
Hill and Clapper’s inflammatory statements about the potential for Russia to use nuclear weapons makes zero sense in context of the conflict in Ukraine and Putin’s demands. Putin is winning the war. At the time I’m writing this, Russia is surrounding major Ukrainian cities and the Russian convoy headed to Kyiv is estimated to be 40 miles long.
The great length of the convoy reflects the fact that Russia owns the air. While there is some brave Ukrainian resistance, it won’t stop the encirclement of Kyiv or other major cities. The New York Times further explains:
Analysts say they expect Russian forces to work to expand their hold on the pro-Russia, separatist enclaves of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine, and to capture a land bridge to Crimea in the south, while pushing troops down from the north to try to encircle the main Ukrainian Army east of the Dnieper River. They are trying to surround Mariupol and take Kharkiv.
That encirclement would cut off the bulk of Ukraine’s forces from Kyiv and from easy resupply, the experts say, limiting the sustainability of organized resistance. Russian troops are also moving steadily toward Kyiv from three axes to try to surround it.
Then we get to the foolishness of escalation in light of Putin’s stated goals of the invasion. Assuming the latest reports are accurate, the purpose of this war isn’t to seize and occupy the whole of Ukraine into perpetuity. Putin isn’t demanding Ukraine be brought into Russia. Instead, Putin’s demands include:
If those are the terms, then how much escalation is necessary? Or justified?
Dare I got out on a ledge and say the U.S. does not have Ukraine’s best interests in mind. (The U.S. initially opposed the settlement talks.) More Ukrainians die as the war drags on.
But cynics in the U.S. government must be considering that a long war also puts economic pressure on Putin. How many other peoples’ lives would the U.S. government be willing to sacrifice if Putin could be unseated? We already know that the goal of some – including Adam Schiff – is to “fight Russia over there.”
Unfortunately for the Ukrainians, they’re the ones doing the fighting. Proxy battles never end well for the proxy.
via The Conservative Tree House
Current CIA Director William “Bill” Burns was the former ambassador to Russia and Jordan. Bill Burns had a 33-year career at the State Department under both Republican and Democratic presidents and speaks fluent Russian. If the people in the background of Joe Biden wanted an intelligence operative to trigger a specific result from Russia, there’s no one more strategically perfect for the job than CIA Director Bill Burns.
The article by Beinart is mainly focused on pointing out the irreconcilable nature of Joe Biden implying Ukraine could join NATO, while his own CIA Director has a history of giving serious warnings emphasizing the “brightest of all red lines” about that specific point.
[…] “Two years ago, Burns wrote a memoir entitled, The Back Channel. It directly contradicts the argument being proffered by the administration he now serves. In his book, Burns says over and over that Russians of all ideological stripes—not just Putin—loathed and feared NATO expansion. He quotes a memo he wrote while serving as counselor for political affairs at the US embassy in Moscow in 1995. ‘Hostility to early NATO expansion,” it declares, “is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.”
On the question of extending NATO membership to Ukraine, Burns’ warnings about the breadth of Russian opposition are even more emphatic. “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin),” he wrote in a 2008 memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. “In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” (read more)
Against this backdrop of Bill Burns, the details about the lead up to the Russia-Ukraine crisis gain quite a bit of clarity.
The CIA Director is crystal clear that Russia would be seriously triggered about any prospect of Ukraine entering NATO.
Yet, in December of 2021, the exact same time when U.S. backchannel intelligence was being shared with China about Russian troop movements on the border with Ukraine, Joe Biden was telling Ukraine that membership in NATO was in their hands.
“U.S. President Joe Biden assured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that Kyiv’s bid to join the NATO military alliance was in its own hands, Zelenskiy’s chief of staff said after the two leaders spoke on Thursday. (link)
Joe Biden was publicly saying something his CIA Director knew to a certainty would trigger Russian President Vladimir Putin.
This is not a mistake.
This is not a strategic blunder or internal messaging error.
This level of provocation now seems completely purposeful.
As noted by ABC during the announcement of Bill Burns as a nominee for CIA Director:
Burns called intelligence the first line of defense for the country and the basis for making sound policy decisions. He also said he would deliver the intelligence to Biden and policymakers “without a hint of partisanship.”
Burns is perhaps an unconventional choice for the CIA job that many thought would go to a career intelligence officer.
However, he is also deeply experienced in the kind of cloak-and-dagger secret contacts that is a hallmark of the agency and won plaudits for his analysis and reporting abilities while he served as an American diplomat overseas. Burns was the author of some of the most insightful State Department cables that were published by Wikileaks in 2010 and is widely respected throughout the national security community. (read more)
If the U.S. was simultaneously influencing Ukraine military to keep targeting the breakaway regions in Eastern Ukraine, well, put it all together and a picture emerges of the people in/around the White House setting up a scenario for months that led up to Russia finally taking the bait and going into Ukraine.
The New York Times expose’ of U.S. intelligence contacting China should be reviewed from the perspective that U.S. intelligence and State Dept operatives were planting information into China – knowing it would be shared with Russia. The U.S. intelligence apparatus, with CIA Director Bill Burns in place, was seeding information into Russia via China for three months prior to the triggering point. Bill Burns would know exactly what type of intelligence would be needed to create maximum anxiety for Vladimir Putin.
WHY?
The Biden team was getting pummeled for negative economic outcomes, massive inflation, skyrocketing energy costs and gas prices set to double. Support for the administration was/is collapsing as the policy outcomes of the administration were felt.
Within the book of instructions for the ideological crew, the Alinsky people behind Biden, there are chapters on how to create off-ramps to cloud their agenda.
If they need a bigger cloud, they create a crisis. The crisis then becomes the cover, the justification to explain the outcomes of their agenda.
As we have witnessed, the White House is shifting blame for the collapsing economy, surging oil prices, massive gas price increases and overall U.S. inflation.
The manufactured crisis in Ukraine then takes on a geopolitical angle and a domestic angle. The rate of inflation, rising oil and gas prices, are now being blamed on Russia-Ukraine.
It is not coincidental that ABC (think George Stephanopolous) took the lead in helping to push this narrative as a cover story for the problems in the economy that are specifically driven by U.S. energy policy (chasing Green New Deal objectives), environmental policy, regulatory policy and massive spending.
The politics of policy are to blame for inflation, so it is the deployment of politics again used to create the cover.
By Global Times
Illustration: Liu Rui/GT
Perhaps no country in the world yearns for a change in its declining image more than the US. Thus, Kurt Campbell, White House Indo-Pacific policy coordinator, put forward his opinion on Monday: The US can focus on two theaters – the Indo-Pacific and the war in Europe. He wants to prove that the US is still dominant and its might remains unrivaled.
The hard truth is Washington is reluctant to step into even one theater of war.
During an event hosted by German Marshall Fund, a US think tank, Campbell said that Washington had been deeply engaged in two theaters simultaneously before, including during WWII and the Cold War. “It’s difficult. It’s expensive. But it is also essential,” he emphasized.
Campbell’s following remarks soon exposed his attempt to mislead the audience. He named a few events to show the US “determination” to sustain high-level engagement with the Indo-Pacific region, including a scheduled summit with Southeast Asian leaders in March and a planned summit of the Quad grouping of the US, Australia, Japan and India in May.
He was just playing with words. By deliberately mentioning the word “theater,” Campbell equated dealing with two US political rivals at the same time with fighting in two wars against two US adversaries simultaneously, Shen Yi, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Fudan University, told the Global Times.
Even if people focus only on the US’ capabilities during the WWII and the Cold War, history tells another story, one that is different from the one Campbell has tried hard to present.
During the WWII, the US did fight in the Pacific Ocean theater and the European theater. Yet, at the 1941 Arcadia Conference between then US president Franklin D. Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill shortly after the US entered the war, the “Europe First” strategy was affirmed. That meant the US and the UK would devote more of their resources to fight in the European theater first.
When it came to the Cold War, reports show that observers used to say that the Pentagon was prepared to fight two and a half wars at the same time, which implied the US should have the capability of fighting two large regional wars and a small one simultaneously.
Really? Then what led to the historic ice-breaking of China-US ties and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries?
“Former president Richard Nixon had long ago done the math for the US – it could not afford to fight two wars at once. That’s why Washington decided to ease tensions with one side, which eventually led to his visit to China,” Shen said.
As for the US strength today, setting aside the fact the country is far from its glory days, Washington is not confident it can win even one regional war. The US’ announcement of not sending its military forces to the frontlines in Ukraine is proof. More examples can be listed – being mired in conflicts in Vietnam, Afghanistan… and failing to claim victory in either. Against this backdrop, fighting two wars will only be a suicide mission for the US.
The US has right now a disastrous domestic economy to cope with. When it plucked up the courage to unleash nuclear-level sanctions – kicking Russia out of the SWIFT system, it had to carefully skirt around the Russian banks involved in the energy sector. “How can Campbell convince anyone that the US can still fight and win two wars with such an overcautious and faint-hearted approach?” Shen questioned.
But the US is afraid to show its weakness to the world, which is what prompted Campbell to have tried so hard to purposefully misguide his audience, giving the false impression that the US is still powerful. The tougher American politicians play, the more they reveal how frail the US has become.
The island of Taiwan is shivering after having witnessed what’s going on in Ukraine. Campbell may try to boost the island’s morale by attempting to talk tough toward the Chinese mainland, pretending it can prevent China’s reunification, said Xu Liang, associate professor at the School of International Relations, Beijing International Studies University.
Campbell might want to assure the island of Taiwan that the US can still offer impenetrable defense for the island, although it has been only watching the Ukraine crisis from the other side of the globe. It remains to be seen how many forces still buy US’ assurances.
Compared with the WWII era, the sun is setting on the US, which is now trying to boost its influence by talking big and launching wars of words. Who is it trying to fool? Who can it intimidate? Forget about two wars, even one theater of war would be too much for the US.
Scott Ritter tells Richard Medhurst that the Ukrainians have already lost their country. Not willing to take the position of neutrality, the Ukrainian army is being wiped up, completely disarmed and defanged
This will be over in less than a week with Ukraine rejoining the Slavic family of nations. Amen!
Historian Anne Morelli has summarized Arthur Ponsonby’s classic book Falsehood in War-Time as this:
h/t Bernd Neuner
As an example I offer you yesterday’s Policy statement by Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany
The above are what you hear and see in current ‘western’ news. It is not reality.
The U.S. and its proxies in the EU and elsewhere have put up very harsh sanctions on Russia to damage its economy.
The final intent of this economic war is regime change in Russia.
The likely consequence will be regime change in many other countries.
This war is waged at a financial size that is unprecedented. The consequences in all markets will be very significant to extreme. But experience from Iran shows that such financial wars have their limits as the targeted country learns to survive. Moreover Russia is in a much stronger position than Iran ever was and is better prepared for the consequences.
The rubel fell some 30% today but Russia’s central bank immediately more than doubled its interest rate to 20%. It is willing to fight inflation before it is really sets in. How much of Russia’s investment and consumption depends on imports from the ‘west’? Can’t most of it not be replaced by imports from China?
All energy consumption in the U.S. and EU will now come at a premium price. This will push the EU and the U.S. into a recession. As Russia will increase the prices for exports of goods in which it has market power – gas, oil, wheat, potassium, titanium, aluminum, palladium, neon etc – the rise in inflation all around the world will become significant.
‘Western’ central banks are still at practical 0% interest rates and will be reluctant to increase those as that will cause a deeper recession. This makes it likely that inflation in the ‘western’ world will increase at a higher rate than Russia’s.
Germany’s crazy move to add $120 billion to defense spending (up from some $40 billion p.a.) will within a few years create a strong military imbalance in Europe as Germany will then dominate all its neighbors. This is unnecessary and historically very dangerous. The shunning of economic relations with Russia and China means that Germany and its newbie chancellor Olaf Scholz have fallen for the U.S. scheme of creating a new Cold War. Germany’s economy will now become one of its victims.
On February 4 Russia and China declared a multipolar world in which they are two partnering poles that will counter the American one. Russia’s move into the Ukraine is a demonstration of that.
It also shows that the U.S. is unwilling to give up its supremacist urges without a large fight. But while the U.S. over the last 20 years has spent its money to mess up the Middle East, Russia and China have used the time to prepare for the larger conflict. They have spent more brain time on the issue than the U.S. has.
The Europeans should have acknowledged that instead of helping the U.S. to keep up its self-image of a unipolar power.
It will take some time for the new economic realities to settle in. They will likely change the current view of Europe’s real strategic interests.
Some tactical observations:
This map shows the ground taken by Russian military over the first days.
This map shows the likely current intent of the Russian forces.
Making up false historical analogies as Western leaders and media are doing is preventing a rational, intelligent discussion to resolve deep-seated problems.
There’s a curious contradiction in the stance of the United States and its NATO allies. They are making out that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is the new Hitler and the Russian military operation ordered in Ukraine is but the beginning of disastrous aggression against Europe.
U.S. President Joe Biden has denounced Russia’s “invasion” of Ukraine. Britain’s Defense Minister Ben Wallace claims Putin has “lost his mind” and that the Russian military will next turn to attack Eastern European states. Wallace compared Putin with Hitler on the cusp of Nazi Germany’s war of conquest unleashed on the rest of Europe.
The analogy with Hitler and World War II is all over the Western media. The Washington Post headlined: “Putin’s attack on Ukraine echoes Hitler’s takeover of Czechoslovakia”. It goes on to say: The Nazi leader used similar tactics to dismember and devour Czechoslovakia before World War II.”
There are shrill calls to not “appease” Putin in the same way that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is accused of being soft on Hitler in 1938 around the time that the Fuhrer was planning to invade Czechoslovakia.
The Washington Post piece is particularly ominous. It implies that Putin’s actions in Ukraine are prefiguring designs on the Baltic states and Poland in an attempt to revive Czarist Russia. Even more darkly, it postulates that the Holocaust inflicted by the Third Reich is potentially unfolding under Putin.
Yet, here is the contradiction. If Western leaders and media really believed in their Putin-Hitler analogy then why are they balking at going to war with Russia?
Biden is busy moving thousands of U.S. troops around NATO countries but insists that there will be no American forces deployed in Ukraine. Likewise, the British are refusing to commit any direct military support for the Kiev regime. Ben Wallace, the defense minister, said the imposition of a No-Fly Zone in Ukraine by British warplanes would mean an open confrontation with Russia, which, he said, was not what London wanted.
But their logic is not consistent. If they believe in the dire comparison of Putin and Hitler, Russia and Nazi Germany, then they should act decisively. But they are not.
Of course, it is possible that the Western powers fear that if they were to go to war with Russia then the outcome could be a nuclear cataclysm.
Another possibility for why they are not willing to go to war for the sake of defending Ukraine is simply this: their analogy of Putin-Hitler is downright false. And they know it.
Granted, Hitler did exploit the presence of ethnic Germans in Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland as justification for expansionism. He hailed the defense of their rights for invading the eastern strip of land adjacent to Germany.
On a superficial level, that move may resemble Putin’s declared recognition of the Donbass republics and defense of the ethnic Russian population. However, the big difference is that Russia’s argument is actually true, unlike Hitler’s pretense of defense in Sudetenland.
(Besides, it should also be noted that the U.S. and Britain are past-masters for cynically using “protection of human rights” as a pretext for their criminal imperialist wars, as in Libya, Syria and many other interventions. So all their posturing and pontificating have a deafening ring of hypocrisy and self-projection.)
It is a verifiable fact that the Russian population in Donbass was besieged and assailed for nearly eight years by the Kiev regime’s forces. If people in the West are unaware of that it is largely because their media chose to ignore the conflict. The Western media also concealed the nature of the Kiev regime and its Neo-Nazi brigades. The regime was brought to power in 2014 by an illegal coup orchestrated by the United States and other NATO powers. The new authorities were and are infested with Neo-Nazi politics and intense anti-Russia phobia. This is who the U.S., Britain and other NATO countries are sending weapons and trainers for.
The shelling of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics by Neo-Nazi brigades persisted for nearly eight years. Moscow vainly held on to the desire that the Kiev regime might implement the Minsk peace accords negotiated in 2014 and 2015. But it had become apparent that the accord would never be implemented. An internal solution was no longer tenable.
As the United States, Britain and other NATO powers flooded Ukraine with lethal weapons – as well as turning a blind eye by France and Germany to systematic violations of the Minsk deal – the Kiev regime was being given license to kill in the Donbass.
Given this background, Russia was forced to take action to defend its compatriots in southeast Ukraine. The hysterical warnings of an impending Russian invasion by Biden and Britain’s Boris Johnson were intended to do two things: incite the Kiev regime forces to ramp up violence; and to stifle Russia from acting because Moscow could then be accused of “invading” as the Western powers had “predicted”.
Moscow says it has no intention of occupying Ukraine. Its objective is to “demilitarize and denazify” the regime that the NATO bloc had installed in Kiev. The priority was to stop a genocide against the people in the Donetsk and Lugansk republics. Recent discoveries of mass graves show that this is not hyperbole, despite the flippant response from Western politicians and media.
If that’s Russia’s objective then it is justified and principled. It will also show that Western analogies of Nazi aggression on the rest of Europe and the Holocaust are grotesque fear-mongering.
A more accurate analogy to contemporary events is found in the Russian-Georgian war in the summer of 2008. The brief war erupted because the United States and other NATO allies incited Georgia to ramp up aggression in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Putin ordered in Russian troops and quashed the NATO-Georgian offensive. Today, there is a modicum of peace in the Caucasus because Tbilisi backed off from the NATO conspiracy to harass Russia, and to come to terms with its separatist regions.
Will the Kiev regime, or whoever replaces it, likewise come to realize that the NATO-incited aggression against the Donbass and Russia is a path to destruction? A path that the NATO powers do not have the courage nor conviction to actually deploy on.
As ever, the bigger picture here is the steadfast refusal by the United States to commit to a peaceful security order in Europe with Russia. Making up false historical analogies as Western leaders and media are doing is preventing a rational, intelligent discussion to resolve deep-seated problems.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said on Monday that it opposes the use of unilateral sanctions to resolve the crisis in Ukraine after Russia’s decision to launch an attack on the country with the stated goal to “demilitarize” it. Western powers have announced a raft of punitive measures, including on the Russian economy and its banking sector.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin told a regular news briefing that sanctions will not solve problems but will create new ones. He claimed that sanctions will interfere with the process of reaching a ceasefire and political agreement to end the conflict.
“China does not support the use of sanctions to solve the problem and is even more opposed to unilateral sanctions that have no basis in international law,” Wang stated.
On Friday, China denied that it was somehow “stained by association” for failing to denounce Russia over bringing order to Ukraine.
Ministry spokesman Wang told reporters at a daily briefing in Beijing that it was countries that interfered in the domestic affairs of others that would see their reputations stained, refuting US President Joe Biden’s comments on the issue from a day prior.
by Yang Sheng
and Xu Yelu via Global Times
Ukrainian soldiers stand next to a burnt Ukrainian army vehicle on the west side of the capital Kyiv on February 26, 2022. Ukraine and Russia are set to hold negotiations at the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. Photo: AFP
Although the US and some other Western countries are trying to handle the current situation in Ukraine with waves of sanctions against Russia and questioning Beijing’s neutral stance, China has once again clarified its neutrality and the reason to the EU, France, Germany and the UK as to why it opposes sanctions ahead of the UN Emergency Special Session on Sunday.
Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi had phone conversations with UK Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Truss, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell, French Diplomatic Advisor to the President Emmanuel Bonne and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock from Friday to Saturday, according to the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Sunday.
They had in-depth exchanges of views with a focus on the situation in Ukraine, while Wang expounded China’s basic position on the Ukraine issue. Wang stressed that “China supports and encourages all diplomatic efforts conducive to a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis. China welcomes the earliest possible direct dialogue and negotiation between Russia and Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s delegation is now heading to Gomel in Belarus for negotiations with Russia, Russian media Sputnik reported on Sunday. This announcement comes just minutes after the deadline previously set by the Russian delegation for the negotiations with Ukraine expired. According to a member of the Russian delegation, Leonid Slutsky, Russia will demonstrate quite a “hardline” approach at the upcoming talks with Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett had a phone call on Sunday in which Putin gave assurances that Moscow remains open to talks with Kiev, but informed Bennett that Ukraine’s leaders have shown “inconsistency” on the matter.
Chinese military experts said Russia has been restrained in using force to attack the Ukrainian army because most Russian forces are being deployed to prevent NATO intervention, but Russia does not want the conflict to last long, so it might change strategy depending on how the situation develops.
Putin ordered the military to put the nation’s nuclear deterrence forces on high alert Sunday following “aggressive statements” from NATO, Sputnik reported.
The US doesn’t want to see the conflict end quickly as it wants Russia to be mired in trouble as long as possible, so the talks won’t be easy, and what happens in the battlefield will decide the result of the negotiations, experts said.
When the conflict broke out, most Western countries were shocked, and only showed support by “praying for Ukraine” and announced sanctions, but did not dare to provide weapons to Ukraine or send reinforcements.
The situation has somehow changed over the weekend, as Ukrainian forces were not as weak as the West previously thought, and the conflict is likely to continue. Some Western countries have started supplying arms to Ukraine, because they have seen the possibility of further escalating and extending the conflict to leave Russia mired in the mud of Ukraine, said analysts.
This is actually bad for negotiations, as the longer the conflict continues, the more casualties there will be, and the West wants to maximize the losses for both Russia and Ukraine rather than minimize the damage, said Chinese experts. China’s stance of neutrality is important because if there is one country that can one day effectively mediate the conflict, that country should be one with real neutrality and which respects Ukraine’s sovereignty and also did not follow the West in sanctioning Russia and harming the livelihood of Russian people.
What’s real neutrality?
Western voices should not be allowed to dominate the voice of the international community over the Ukraine situation, as Western powers, especially the US and NATO, have actually been the key forces in instigating the crisis and contradiction between Russia and Ukraine. In other words, the West is now deliberately taking sides, said analysts.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang said, “China maintains that the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries should be respected and protected and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter should be earnestly observed. This position of China is consistent and clear-cut, and applies equally to the Ukraine issue.”
But he also said, “The legitimate security concerns of all countries should be respected. Given NATO’s five consecutive rounds of eastward expansion, Russia’s legitimate security demands ought to be taken seriously and properly addressed.”
Cui Hongjian, director of the Department of European Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, told the Global Times on Sunday that the US and NATO are actually part of the cause of this conflict in Ukraine, so if the world lets them dominate public opinion across the international community, it would be unfair and the problem will not be solved.
Yang Jin, an associate research fellow at the Institute of Russian, Eastern European, and Central Asian Studies under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that Russia won’t be intimidated by sanctions, and if sanctions were effective, then the conflict would have been prevented long ago.
The reason why China believes Russia does have “legitimate security concerns” is that “we have seen how NATO acted to pressure Russia and destroyed the former Yugoslavia in the past. If there hadn’t been these concrete security pressures and NATO military deployments around Russian territory, Moscow would not have needed to carry out such risky military operations to respond to NATO’s threat,” Yang said.
Wang said to senior European diplomats that “Actions taken by the UN Security Council should help ease the situation and facilitate a diplomatic resolution rather than fuelling tensions and causing further escalation. In view of this, China has always disapproved of willfully invoking UN Charter Chapter VII, which authorizes the use of force and sanctions in UNSC resolutions.”
Sanctioning or condemning Russia, just as the West has done, is actually much easier than staying neutral and responsible in order to contribute to conflict mediation while being questioned and pressured by the West, said a Beijing-based expert on international relations. He added that “China is a responsible major power with independent diplomacy and clear stance based on objective and fair judgment of the situation, rather than a country with no independent thought that just blindly follows the West on every issue.”
The 2022 Winter Paralympics will be held in Beijing from March 4 to 13, and China could use it as a chance to play a bigger role for peace mediation and make the Olympics a platform to realize peace, said some Chinese experts.
Sustainable security mechanism
“The Ukraine issue has evolved in a complex historical context. Ukraine should function as a bridge between the East and the West, not as a frontier in big power confrontation. China also supports the EU and Russia in entering into an equal-footed dialogue on European security issues and implementing the philosophy of indivisible security, so as to eventually form a balanced, effective and sustainable European security mechanism,” the Chinese foreign minister said.
Cui said that for Europe to establish a balanced, effective and sustainable security mechanism, the security concerns of all parties should be resolved in an equal way. “This is the precondition.”
Europe needs to stop engaging in a collective security mechanism that excludes Russia, and even targets Russia. “If NATO cannot accept Russia, then obviously one of NATO’s purposes is to target Russia, and then the problem of European security will never be solved,” Cui said.
Europe should also try to avoid interference from external powers, especially the US, said the experts. Key EU members such as France and Germany always have divergences with the US not only on issues related to Russia, but also on the Iran nuclear deal, ties with China and Middle East affairs. Unfortunately, however, the US and US-led NATO dominate security issues in Europe, making it hard for the continent to reach mutual trust and respect with Russia in the past, which has caused today’s tragedy, they noted.
“If the Ukraine crisis is mainly handled by Europe, rather than by the US and NATO, maybe peaceful negotiation would already have been realized long before Russia lost patience and launched military operations. At least, it wouldn’t be as bad as it is now,” Cui said.
But unfortunately, the US and the US-led NATO are unlikely to let this happen, as they need Russia to play the enemy to keep trans-Atlantic ties solid, and unfortunately, the current conflict in Ukraine has boosted this trend, so it will be hard for Europe to completely act independently to build a new security mechanism with Russia in the future, Yang said.
by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian
We’re only three days into Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, and yet the propaganda cogs are whirring fast as lightning, churning out “news”, opinion and content grist for the media mill.
In just the last 48 hours dozens of stories, images, narratives and videos have circulated as being taken from the fighting in Ukraine, a huge percentage of which are fake.
Now, some of it could be attributed to misunderstandings, mistaken identity, misattribution…but many and most are likely deliberate deceptions designed to provoke a response. Let’s dive right in.
Early Friday morning it was reported that a single Ukrainian plane, a MiG-29, was patrolling the skies above Kiev. The English speaking press called the unnamed pilot “The Ghost of Kiev”, and claimed he had downed 6 Russian jets in air-to-air combat in less than 2 days, making him an official Fighter Ace, and probably one of the fastest to ever earn that title.
The trouble is there is almost no evidence this happened at all. To quote Newsweek:
There is zero evidence the “Ghost of Kyiv” exists”.
Neither side can confirm Russia has lost six planes in total, let alone to one man inside a single day. And a video alleged to be “the Ghost” in combat – shared by the Ukrainian Armed Forces – is confirmed to actually be footage taken from a video game.
Nevertheless, he already has his own Wikipedia page. A testament to how fast a lie can move while the truth is putting its boots on.
A lot of people have been sharing a short video of Russian planes allegedly flying low over the city of Kiev. The Times used it a still from it in their story “Will sanctions stop a Russian shell?”:
The problem with that is it’s not Kiev, it’s Moscow. And it’s not today, it’s two years ago. It’s footage of what is likely a rehearsal for the 2020 Victory Day Parade flyover.
Possibly no politician in history has had a PR makeover quite as fast as Vlodomyr Zelenskiy. Last week he was just some guy, this week he’s a war hero, there’s talk of building statues of the man. A (not at all staged) “leaked” phone call had him turning down the US offer of an airlift to safety.
Twitter is dotted with people sharing photos of him in combat fatigues, comparing him favourably to Trump and Trudeau and asking “what other leaders would fight alongside their troops?”
But the problem with that is the photos are all almost a year old, taken when he visited the troops last April:
Early on in the confrontation, this video started doing the rounds on social media:
The video went viral, receiving 100,000s of views. Hundreds of accounts shared it, even major news networks used it, all claiming it shows a power station in Luhansk exploding after being hit with Russian missiles.
It does not, it’s a chemical plant exploding in Tianjin, China in 2015.
This footage, claiming to show Ukrainian ground forces downing Russian aircraft, also went viral recently, even appearing on Spanish television news:
…It’s from the video game ARMA 3.
This was the first major propaganda narrative following Russia’s advance onto Ukrainian territory. Allegedly leaked audio showed Ukrainian border guards on tiny Snake Island in the black sea communicating with a Russian warship. Upon being told to surrender, the guards say “Russian warship go fuck yourself”.
The Western press reported that all 13 of the men were killed, and the Ukrainian government released a statement saying they would all be awarded posthumous honors.
However, while the supposedly fallen heroes were being canonised all over the western world, Russia was reporting that they had not been killed at all, but taken alive and unharmed back to the mainland.
A story both the press and the Ukrainian government have since reluctantly admitted is likely true.
Another video doing the rounds, and again shared by official Ukrainian accounts, was drone footage supposedly showing the destruction of a column of Russian vehicles.
It’s actually footage of a Turkish drone strike in Syria from 2020.
Meanwhile, other accounts were sharing footage of combat from Libya or Israeli bombardments of Gaza under the hashtag #StandWithUkraine. Middle East Eye has compiled a list.
It’s somewhat beautiful irony that so many of the clips prompting outrage in Western liberals actually come from wars their governments started.
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There we have it, seven stories about the war in Ukraine that are demonstrably fake, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
There’s tons of other fakes out there, not to mention fakes of fakes designed to discredit doubters or just spread chaos.
Ultimately, it’s all a timely reminder that propaganda is at its most potent at times where the news is moving fast and people are feeling emotional.
That is WHY the media whips up fear, anxiety and hatred, because people in that emotional state are less likely to think critically.
It should go without saying that this is equally true for both sides. We shouldn’t blindly accept claims from the Russian side, simply because we know NATO lies. Both sides propagandize, and one-eyed scepticism is only a different kind of bias.
In short, if you see something designed to provoke an emotional reaction, don’t let it. Never get swept along in the narrative, always hold yourself back, keep calm and ask rational questions.
Withhold belief, demand facts. It’s the only way to keep your mind free.
Or, to quote HL Mencken:
Never believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see.”}]
