Russia Makes More Artillery Shells In One Day Than The West Can Make In A Month

russiamatters  |  As Russia begins its one-year presidency of the BRICS in a turbulent world, great power competition in the Global South will intensify. The Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas war have enabled the Kremlin to solidify and increase its influence in the Global South, or what Russia now calls the “World Majority.” The Global South comprises those developing or less- developed countries in the Southern Hemisphere. The Russian definition of the World Majority, however, is not economic, but political. It refers to a community of non-Western countries that have no binding relationships with the United States and the organizations it patronizes.

While the U.S. and its allies struggled to persuade these countries to support Ukraine and reject the Kremlin’s narrative about the origins and course of the war, Russia has largely succeeded in convincing them that the West is to blame for both the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas wars. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, in his December interview with leading Russian TV propagandist Dmitri Kiselev, praised the “World Majority” countries “who have not publicly declared Russia as an enemy.” These countries, he declared, “are ready to work with us honestly, mutually beneficially and mutually respectfully, including in the economy, in politics, in the security sphere,” and he went on to predict that ties with these counties would further intensify in 2024. The West, Russia’s top diplomat proclaimed, does not respect these countries’ interests. In the interview, Lavrov also highlighted the 2024 Russian presidency of the BRICS, which began on Jan. 1, and now has expanded to include Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Ethiopia and Iran, bringing the group’s share of world GDP and population to 34% and 45%, respectively (see tables 1 and 2 below).[1] 

Why has Russia succeeded in strengthening its standing with many countries in the Global South even as it pursues its brutal war of attrition in Ukraine? Moscow starts out with a major advantage—deep skepticism amongst these countries about the West, especially the United States. Many Global South countries assert that they see no difference between what Russia is doing in Ukraine and what the United States did in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. Russia also taps into the alienation and resentment in many countries that both the war and the West’s rivalry with China are distracting attention and shifting resources away from their own urgent challenges, such as debt, economic growth, food, energy, climate change and health. These countries view the United States and many of its European allies as neo-colonial powers who still treat them with condescension. They do not accept that what Russia in doing in Ukraine is a form of colonialism, because Russia repeatedly invokes the Soviet past and the USSR’s support for anti-colonial liberation movements to prove its bona fides as the leading anti-colonial power. Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar Subrahmanyam told European ministers that they should “grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.”[2]

Votes in the United Nations General Assembly tend to reflect these sentiments. In February 2023, the votes in favor of condemning Russia’s invasion as a violation of the U.N. Charter and demanding that Russia withdraw its troops from Ukraine were 141 in favor, 7 against, with 32 abstentions, including China, India and other countries in the Global South. However, a significant number of Global South countries did vote to condemn Russia.

Although Western countries have much more to offer the Global South economically than does Russia, Moscow does retain levers of economic influence. Energy remains the most important. Europe has largely weaned itself off Russian hydrocarbons, but cheap Russian oil remains attractive to many countries. India, a traditional partner of both the Soviet Union and Russia, has been the second largest  purchaser of Russian oil after China, enabling Russia to continue to earn billions of dollars despite Western sanctions on Russian energy and the oil price cap. Nuclear energy exports, which are not sanctioned, are also growing. Rosatom has a 74% share of the world’s nuclear power plant market, with 73 projects in 29 different countries. Russian fertilizer and grain exports are important for a number of countries. Recently Russia shipped free grain to six African countries, no doubt to counter the fact that its refusal to renew the earlier Black Sea grain deals had harmed its reputation in parts of the Global South. 

Arms sales have been a significant element in Russia’s competition with the United States in parts of the Global South. However, the sub-par performance of the Russia military in Ukraine and the shoddy condition of some of the weaponry made Russia’s customers question the wisdom of continuing to purchase its arms. Western sanctions have also curbed Russia’s ability to export weapons, as Russia needs to use its own weapons in Ukraine. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia’s share of global arms exports fell from 22% in 2013-2017 to 16% from 2018 to 2022, while the U.S. increased its share from 33% to 40%.[3] India has cut back on its imports of Russian weapons. Nevertheless, during Jaishankar’s December 2023 visit to Moscow, Lavrov announced that they had made significant progress on plans to jointly produce military equipment. [4]

Russia Inks Expansive New Energy And Weapons Deal With Iran

oilprice  |  Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, gave his official approval on 18 January to a new 20-year comprehensive cooperation deal between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Russia, according to a senior energy source in Iran and a senior source in the European Union’s (E.U.) energy security complex, exclusively spoken to by OilPrice.com last week. The 20-year deal – ‘The Treaty on the Basis of Mutual Relations and Principles of Cooperation between Iran and Russia’ - was presented for his consideration on 11 December 2023. It will replace the 10-year-deal signed in March 2001 (extended twice by five years) and has been expanded not only in duration but also in scope and scale, particularly in the defense and energy sectors. In several respects, the new deal additionally complements key elements of the all-encompassing ‘Iran-China 25-Year Comprehensive Cooperation Agreement’, as first revealed anywhere in the world in my 3 September 2019 article on the subject and analysed in full in my new book on the new global oil market order.

In the energy sector to begin with, the new deal gives Russia the first right of extraction in the Iranian section of the Caspian Sea, including the potentially huge Chalous field. The wider Caspian basins area, including both onshore and offshore fields, is conservatively estimated to have around 48 billion barrels of oil and 292 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas in proven and probable reserves. In 2019, Russia was instrumental in changing the legal status of the Caspian basins area, cutting Iran’s share from 50 percent to just 11.875 percent in the process, as also detailed in my new book. Before the Chalous discovery, this meant that Iran would lose at least US$3.2 trillion in revenues from the lost value of energy products across the shared assets of the Caspian Sea resource going forward. Given the newest internal-use only estimates from Iran and Russia, this figure could be a lot higher. Previously, the estimates were that Chalous contained around 124 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas in place. This equated to around one quarter of the gas reserves contained in Iran’s supergiant South Pars natural gas field that account for around 40 percent of Iran’s total estimated gas reserves and about 80 per cent of its gas production. The new estimates are that it is a twin-field site, nine kilometres apart, with ‘Greater’ Chalous having 208 bcf of gas in place, and ‘Lesser’ Chalous having 42 bcf of gas, giving a combined figure of 250 bcm of gas. 

Related: E&P Companies Face Tough Year Despite Oil Patch 'Bumper Crop'

The same right of first extraction for Russia will also now apply to Iran’s major oil and gas fields in the Khorramshahr and nearby Ilam provinces that border Iraq. The shared fields of Iran and Iraq have long allowed Tehran to side-step sanctions in place against its key oil sector, as it is impossible to tell what oil has come from the Iranian side or the Iraqi side of these fields, which means that Iran is able simply to rebrand its own sanctioned oil as unsanctioned Iraqi oil and ship it anywhere it wants, as also analysed in full in my new book on the new global oil market order. Former Petroleum Minister, Bijan Zanganeh, publicly highlighted this very practice when he said in 2020: “What we export is not under Iran’s name. The documents are changed over and over, as well as [the] specifications.” Another advantage of the shared fields is that they allow effectively free movement of personnel from the Iranian side to the Iraqi side, and the utilisation of key oil and gas developments across Iraq is a key part of Iran’s longstanding plan, fully supported by Russia, to build a ‘land bridge’ to the Mediterranean Sea coast of Syria. This would enable Iran and Russia to exponentially increase weapons delivery into southern Lebanon and the Golan Heights area of Syria to be used in attacks on Israel. The core aim of this policy is to provoke a broader conflict in the Middle East that would draw in the U.S. and its allies into an unwinnable war of the sort seen recently in Iraq and Afghanistan, and which may soon be seen as the Israel-Hamas War escalates.

The price of all manufactured items traded between Russia and Iran, including military and energy hardware, has been formalised in the new deal, although also not in Iran’s favour. For Iranian goods exported to Russia, Tehran will receive the cost of production plus 8 percent. However, these export sales to Russia will not be transferred to Iran, but rather they will be held as credit in the Central Bank of Russia (CBR). Moreover, Iran will receive a huge markdown on US dollar/Rouble or Euro/Rouble exchange rates used to calculate its credits in the CBR. Conversely, for Russian goods exported to Iran, Moscow will receive the payment in advance of delivery and at a much stronger exchange rate that benefits Russia. Moreover, the base price before any exchange rate calculations are made, will be founded on the highest price that Russia has received in the previous 180 days for whichever product it is selling Iran. This system has informally been in place for several weeks now, and according to the senior energy sector source in Tehran exclusively spoken to by OilPrice.com last week, Russia has ensured itself the highest possible price by selling to Belarus at a very large premium whichever product it intends to sell later to Iran, so establishing the required pricing benchmark. Payments for goods and services falling outside the direct finance route between the central banks of the two countries can now be done through interbank transfers between Iranian and Russian banks. Those also involving renminbi can also be done through China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) system, its alternative to the globally-dominant Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) system. 

In many cases, the expansion of military cooperation between Iran and Russia is tied into the energy sector elements of the new 20-year deal. Progress is earmarked to be made on upgrading the facilities at the key airports and seaports that have long been targeted by Russia as being especially useful for dual-use by its air force and navy, and which are also close to major oil and gas facilities. Top of the list of Iranian airports that Russia regards as the best for dual-use by its air force are Hamedan, Bandar Abbas, Chabahar, and Abadan, and it is apposite to note that in August 2016, Russia used the Hamedan airbase to launch attacks on targets in Syria using both Tupolev-22M3 long-range bombers and Sukhoi-34 strike fighters. Top of the list of seaports for use by its navy are Chabahar, Bandar-e-Bushehr, and Bandar Abbas. Similarly linked to Russia’s gaining the first right of extraction in the Iranian section of the Caspian Sea is that it will also be given a joint command capability over the northern aerospace defense section of Iran’s Caspian area.

In His Own Words Why RFKJr. Has Israel Stuck Up His Butt

RFK Jr says the quiet part out loud:

Israel is a stronghold for us…It's like having an aircraft carrier in the Middle East…If Israel disappears, Russia, China and the BRICS+ countries will control 90% of the world's oil, and this will be a disaster.pic.twitter.com/OWmu2peyFF

— Danny Haiphong (@SpiritofHo) November 8, 2023

The U.S. Will Fight The West Asian Part Of WW-III Down To The Last Israeli...,

geopoliticaleconomy  |  It is crucial to stress that Israel is an extension of U.S. geopolitical power in one of the most critically important regions of the world.

In fact, it was current U.S. President Joe Biden, back in 1986, when he was a senator, who famously said that, if Israel didn’t exist, the United States would have to invent it:

If we look at the Middle East, I think it’s about time we stop, those of us who support, as most of us do, Israel in this body, for apologizing for our support for Israel.

There is no apology to be made. None. It is the best $3 billion investment we make.

Were there not an Israel, the United States of America would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region; the United States would have to go out and invent an Israel.

I am with my colleagues who are on the floor of the Foreign Relations Committee, and we worry at length about NATO; and we worry about the eastern flank of NATO, Greece and Turkey, and how important it is. They pale by comparison…

They pale by comparison in terms of the benefit that accrues to the United States of America.

First of all, it goes without saying that the so-called Middle East, or a better term is West Asia, has some of the world’s largest reserves of oil and gas, and the entire economic infrastructure all around the world relies on fossil fuels.

The world is gradually moving toward new energy sources, but fossil fuels are still absolutely critical to the entire global economy. And Washington’s goal has been to make sure that it can maintain steady prices in the global oil and gas markets.

But this is about something much bigger than just oil and gas. The U.S. military’s stated policy since the 1990s, since the end of the Cold War and the overthrow of the Soviet Union, is that the United States has tried to maintain control over every region of the world.

This was stated very clearly by the U.S. National Security Council in 1992 in the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine. The U.S. National Security Council wrote:

[The United States’] goal is to preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a global threat to the interests of the U.S. and our allies. These regions include Europe, East Asia, the Middle East/Persian Gulf, and Latin America. Consolidated, nondemocratic control of the resources of such a critical region could generate a significant threat to our security.

Then, in 2004, the U.S. government published its National Military Strategy, in which Washington stressed that its goal was “Full Spectrum Dominance – the ability to control any situation or defeat any adversary across the range of military operations”.

Now, historically, when it came to the Middle East, the U.S. relied on a so-called “twin pillar” strategy. The west pillar was Saudi Arabia, and the east pillar was Iran. And until the 1979 revolution in Iran, the country was governed by a dictator, a shah, the monarch, who was backed by the United States and served U.S. interests in the region.

However, with the 1979 revolution, the U.S. lost one of the pillars of its twin pillar strategy, and Israel became increasingly important for the United States to maintain control over this crucially strategic region.

It is not just the massive oil reserves and gas reserves in the region; it is not just the fact that many of the world’s top oil and gas producers are located in West Asia.

It is also the fact that some of the most important trading routes on Earth also go through this region.

It would be difficult to overstate how important Egypt’s Suez Canal is. This connects trade from the Middle East going into Europe, from the Red Sea into the Mediterranean, and around 30% of all of the world’s shipping containers pass through the Suez Canal. That represents around 12% of the total global trade of all goods.

Then, directly south of the Suez Canal, where the Red Sea enters the Arabian Sea, you have a crucial geostrategic choke point known as the Bab al-Mandab Strait, right off the coast of Yemen. And there, more than 6 million barrels of oil pass through every single day.

The Globalist Plan For Gaza

moneycircus  |  Zionism has lost its mask; for it is, and has always been, a tool of globalist imperialism. (We’ll leave the religious aspects until a later article.)

Readers know well the story. The European empires were corporate ventures, beginning around 1600. Operating under royal charter or exemption, corporations carved out territories according to where the narcotics, textiles, spices, minerals and, later, the oil lay.

First they drew on the investment of shareholders, and later the lending of banks which provided a shot of steroids to the business of empire and war, paying for troops and mercenaries, and greater and ever more costly wars.

Today there is oil in them there hills, namely the Golan Heights, for which Rothschild-backed Genie Energy (its board is a Who’s Who of the deep state) secured a license in 2013.

There is oil off the shore of Gaza, in the Mediterranean, and lip-smacking plans for pipelines this way and that, with the potential to flow north to Europe or east to Asia.

We saw this coming more than a year ago — as an outcome of the Ukraine war — when the NordStream pipeline was detonated. See Europe, Gas And The Endgame (Sep 30, 2022)

Longstanding plans have resurfaced for a new canal to rival Egypt’s Suez, flowing from the Red Sea directly to the Levantine gas fields, disappropriating the residents of Gaza.

The British Empire’s favourite narrative is that as herders and nomads they are transients, having no land, nor rights thereto.

And so there are plans to expel much of the population of Gaza to allow for these projects.

See Gaza Depopulation Plan Revealed By Intel Leak (Oct 30, 2023)

While these economic machinations unfold, the general attitude is one of compliance, lock step and censorship. UK political leaders and corporate executives are firing any who call for ceasefire.

Florida has acted against students showing sympathy for Palestinians.

The U.S., France and Britain may outlaw public critique of Zionism just at the moment it is being exposed as an extension of globalism and imperialism.

Such gagging is straight out of the Covid censorship play book, and that is the connection they do not want you to make: exposing the lie that governments care about the people whom they so recently terrorised and poisoned.

For why should the same politicians who marched in lock step to the dictates of big pharma and the military care about Israel except for its role as a regional bridgehead? It is the world’s most-jabbed nation — the laboratory for Pfizer, as prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu boasted.

Palestinians were not given the jab. He had other plans for them.

 

These Polacks Out'chere Just Really Doing The Most....,

polskieradio |  The war in Ukraine has weakened the Franco-German axis that once defined Europe, with the balance of power now shifting toward the UK and Poland, a British political scientist has claimed. 

In an op-ed featured in the British news magazine The New Statesman, Maurice Glasman, a political scientist from St Mary's University in London, highlights the profound impact of Russia's invasion of Ukraine on the existing order in Europe.

Glasman argues that the invasion has not only disrupted the balance of power across the continent but has also had consequences for the European Union, Poland's wpolityce.pl website reported on Thursday.

Prior to the crisis, the EU functioned under a shared leadership model, with France and Germany at the helm. France assumed a dominant role in military and diplomatic affairs, while Germany focused on economic matters, according to Glasman.

However, he says the legal framework governing the EU was rooted in the primacy of EU law within member states, which ultimately created tensions in both eastern and western Europe.

These tensions were exemplified by Britain's decision to withdraw from the EU, as well as the opposition voiced by Poland and Hungary on social issues.

“The status quo was based on an understanding over the export of gas (as well as oil and coal) from Russia to Germany, most obviously through the Nord Stream pipeline," according to Glasman.

He writes: "Berlin and Moscow held the fate of Central Europe in their hands once more. German economic interests were predominant, partly because the EU did not develop a unified military strategy of its own."

Significant shift in European landscape

Glasman further states: “This is what made the status of Ukraine so explosive. Its integration into either the EU or NATO was not in German interests. It would undermine its economic interests, as the only serious industrial economy within the EU, which were predicated upon cheap energy imports from Russia.”

In his analysis, Glasman highlights the fact that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia has resulted in a significant shift in the European landscape, particularly in the realms of economics and military affairs, wpolityce.pl reported.

Glasman says this shift has exposed Germany's relative weakness and hesitancy in the military sphere, sentiments that are shared by France.

He argues that in the event of a military confrontation with Russia, power and resources within Europe would gravitate towards NATO, subsequently leading to a resurgence of influence from the United States and the United Kingdom.

He writes that “it was widely assumed within academic and elite political discourse that Brexit would lead to the marginalization of Britain within Europe, and to the consolidation of the Franco-German axis within the EU. The opposite has been the case.”

He continues: “Following the invasion of Ukraine, Britain took an unambiguous position of military and political support for the beleaguered Ukrainian state. While the US was offering President Volodymyr Zelensky asylum, Britain immediately transferred weapons and led the western European political response with an unprecedented array of economic sanctions against Russia. It seemed as if Brexit had strengthened its freedom of action at a time of war."

China's Xi Jinping Plans To Visit Russian President Vladimir Putin In Moscow

WSJ  |  Chinese leader Xi Jinping is preparing to visit Moscow for a summit with Russia’s president in the coming months, according to people familiar with the plan, as Vladimir Putin wages war in Ukraine and portrays himself as a standard-bearer against a U.S.-led global order.

Beijing says it wants to play a more active role aimed at ending the conflict, and the people familiar with Mr. Xi’s trip plans said a meeting with Mr. Putin would be part of a push for multiparty peace talks and allow China to reiterate its calls that nuclear weapons not be used.

Western capitals have expressed skepticism about China’s diplomatic initiative, the broad outlines of which were first previewed last week by the country’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, at the Munich Security Conference.                                                                                                                           

Arrangements for the visit are at an early stage and the timing hasn’t been completed, the people said. Mr. Xi could visit in April or in early May, they said, when Russia celebrates its World War II victory over Germany, an event that the Kremlin last year used to liken Ukraine’s elected leaders to Nazis.

Since Mr. Putin ordered his armies into Ukraine last year, the war has claimed tens of thousands of lives, displaced millions of people and sent shock waves through energy markets and the global economy.

Mr. Wang arrived Tuesday afternoon in Moscow, in a trip Beijing’s Foreign Ministry had billed as an opportunity to discuss China-Russia relations and “international and regional hot-spot issues of shared interest.” 

Mr. Wang initially met with Nikolai Patrushev, the powerful secretary of the Russia Security Council, according to accounts in both Russian and Chinese state media that both cited cooperation between the countries.  

According to China’s Xinhua News Agency, the two sides agreed to continue to strengthen cooperation and make more efforts to improve global governance, while opposing the introduction of a “Cold War mentality.”  

Xinhua’s brief report said the two sides also exchanged views on the Ukraine issue. It didn’t elaborate.

According to Russian state media, RIA Novosti, Mr. Wang was more declarative. “Sino-Russian relations are solid as a rock and will withstand any test of the changing international situation,” Mr. Wang told Mr. Patrushev, according to RIA. 

Russia’s state news agency TASS said the two men spoke about the importance of deepening Russian-Chinese coordination. The agency cited Mr. Patrushev as saying that “the course toward developing a strategic partnership with China is an absolute priority for Russia’s foreign policy. Our relations are valuable in themselves and are not subject to external conjuncture.”

 

The Ukraine War In Light Of The U.N. Charter

counterpunch |   In his book The Great Delusion[5], Professor John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago elucidated principles of international order and the necessity to respect agreements (pacta sunt servanda), including oral agreements.  In his article in the Economist on 19 March 2022[6], Mearsheimer explains why the West bears responsibility for the Ukrainian crisis.  Already in 2015 Mearsheimer had signalled the importance of keeping oral agreements, as those given by the United States to Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989-91, to the effect that NATO would not expand eastward[7].  In subsequent lectures Mearsheimer has explained that, whether of not the West considers NATO’s expansion a provocation, what is crucial is how NATO expansion is perceived by those who feel threatened by it.  In this context we must remember that article 2(4) of the UN Charter prohibits not only the use of force but also the threat of the use of force.  Promising to expand NATO to the very borders of Russia and the massive weaponization of Ukraine certainly constitute such a threat, especially bearing in mind the aggressive campaigns by NATO members in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Lybia.

For decades Russian Presidents Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev have been warning the West – notably at the 2007 Munich Security Conference[8] — that NATO eastward expansion constitutes an existential menace to Russia.  Both Presidents advocate a European security architecture that will take into account the national security concerns of all countries, including Russia. Whether Russian fears are objectively justified or not (I think they are) is not the pertinent question, since their apprehension is a factum.  What is crucial is the obligation of all UN member states to settle their differences by peaceful means, i.e. to negotiate in good faith.  That is precisely what the Minsk agreements were all about.  Yet, Ukraine violated the Minsk agreements systematically.  Russia did make a credible effort to negotiate since 2014 in the context of the OSCE and the Normandy Format.  German Chancellor Angela Merkel[9] and French President François Hollande[10] recently confirmed that the Minsk agreements were intended to give Ukraine time to prepare for war.  Thus, essentially, the West entered the agreements in bad faith by deliberately deceiving the Donbas Russians.  In a very real sense, Putin was taken for a ride at Minsk and during the eight years of Normandy Format discussions.  Such behavior reflects a “culture of cheating”[11] and violates well-established principles of international relations amounting to perfidy, in contravention of the UN Charter and general principles of law.  Notwithstanding, In December 2021 the Russians put forward two peaceful proposals in the hope of averting military confrontation.  Although the treaty proposals were moderate and pragmatic, the US and NATO refused to negotiate pursuant to article 2(3) of the Charter and arrogantly rejected them.  If this was not a provocation in contravention of article 2(4) of the UN Charter, I do not know what is.

Professor Wittner is right in reminding us of the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 and the 1997 Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, but these instruments have to be placed in legal and historical context, in particular in the context of Western pronouncements since 2008 to bring Ukraine into NATO, an issue that in no way was foreseen in the two instruments above.

Wittner is wrong in his evaluation of the Crimean issue.  I was the UN representative for the elections in Ukraine in March and June 1994 and criss-crossed the country, including Crimea. Without a doubt, the vast majority of the population there and in the Donbass are Russian and feel Russian.  This brings up the issue of the jus cogens right of self-determination of peoples, anchored in articles 1 and 55 of the UN Charter (and in Chapters XI and XII of the Charter) and in Art. 1 common to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.  Wittner seems to forget that the US and EU supported the illegal coup d’état[12] against the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Victor Yanukovich, and immediately started working together with the Putsch-regime in Kiev, instead of insisting in re-establishing law and order as provided for in the Agreement of 20 February 2014[13].  As Professor Stephen Cohen wrote in 2018, Maidan was a “seminal event”[14].

Without the Maidan Putsch and the anti-Russian measures immediately taken by the Putsch-regime, the Crimean and Donbass peoples would not have felt menaced and would not have insisted on their right of self-determination.  Wittner errs when he uses the term “annexation” to refer to the reincorporation of Crimea into Russia.  “Annexation” in international law presupposes an invasion, military occupation contrary to the will of the people.  That is not what happened in Crimea in March 2014.  First there was a referendum to which the UN and OSCE were invited – and never came. Then there was an unilateral declaration of independence by the legitimate Crimean Parliamen, only then was there an official request to be re-incorporated into Russia, a request that went through the due process mill, being first approved by the Duma, then by the Constitutional Court of Russia, and only then signed by Putin.  Had a referendum been held in 1994, when I was in Crimea, the results would surely have been similar.  A referendum today would confirm the will of the Crimeans to be part of Russia, not Ukraine, to which they had been artificially attached by decision of Nikita Khruschev, a Ukrainian himself.  There are no historical or ethnic reasons justifying Crimea’s attachment to the Ukraine. Many international lawyers agree that Crimea exercised its right of self-determination and was not “annexed” by Russia[15].

Khazarians Were Slick Using The Navy Without The Need For Congressional Consent

democracynow  |  When the Nord Stream pipelines carrying natural gas from Russia to Germany were damaged last September, U.S. officials were quick to suggest Russia had bombed its own pipelines. But according to a new report by the legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, it was the U.S. Navy that carried out the sabotage, with help from Norway. Citing a source “with direct knowledge of the operational planning,” Hersh writes on his Substack blog that planning for the mission began in December of 2021. The White House and the Norwegian government have since denied the claims. Hersh joins us for an in-depth interview to discuss his report and says the U.S. decision to bomb the pipelines was meant to lock allies into support for Ukraine at a time when some were wavering. “The fear was Europe would walk away from the war,” he says. Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for his reporting on the My Lai massacre. His reporting on CIA spying on antiwar activists during the Vietnam War era helped lead to the formation of the Church Committee, which led to major reforms of the intelligence community, and in 2004, he exposed the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.

Joe Biden Blew Up Nordstream Because His Khazarian Handlers Didn't Trust Germany

berliner-zeitung  |   In your article, you wrote that in early 2022, the CIA working group reported to Sullivan's "Interagency Group" and said, quote, "We have a way of blowing up the pipelines."

They had a way. There were people there who knew what we in America call "mine warfare." In the United States Navy there are units that deal with submarines, there is also a nuclear engineering command. And there is a mine squad. The area of ​​underwater mines is very important and we have trained specialists in it. A central location for their education is a small vacation town called Panama City in the middle of nowhere in Florida. We train very good people there and employ them. Underwater miners are of great importance, for example to clear blocked entrances to harbors and blow up things that stand in the way. You can also blow up a specific country's underwater petroleum pipelines. It's not always good things they do

It was clear to the group in the White House that they could blow up the pipelines. There's an explosive called C4 that's incredibly powerful, especially at the level they use. You can control it remotely with underwater sonar devices. These sonars emit signals at low frequencies. So it was possible, and that was communicated to the White House in early January, because two or three weeks later, Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland said we could do it. I think that was January 20th. And then the President, when he held the press conference together with the German Chancellor on February 7, 2022 , also said that we could do it.

The German chancellor didn't say anything concrete at the time, he was very vague. One question I'd like to ask Scholz if I was chairing a parliamentary hearing is this: Has Joe Biden told you about this? Did he tell you then why he was so confident that he could destroy the pipeline? As Americans, we didn't have a plan in place then, but we knew we had the ability to do it.

You write that Norway played a role. To what extent was the country involved - and why should Norwegians do something like that?

Norway is a great seafaring nation and they have deep sources of energy. They are also very keen to increase their natural gas supplies to Western Europe and Germany. And that's what they did, they increased their exports. So why not join forces with the US for economic reasons? In addition, in Norway there is a pronounced hostility towards Russia.

In your article you write that the Norwegian secret service and the Navy were involved. They also say that Sweden and Denmark were informed to some extent, but did not know everything.

I was told: They did what they did and they knew what they were doing and they understood what was going on, but maybe no one ever said yes. I've done a lot of work on this subject with the people I've spoken to. Anyway, for this mission to go ahead, the Norwegians had to find the right place. The divers, who were trained in Panama City, could dive up to 100 meters deep without heavy equipment. The Norwegians found us a spot off the island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea that was only 260 feet deep to operate there.

The divers had to return to the top slowly, there was a decompression chamber, and we used a Norwegian submarine hunter. Only two divers were used for the four pipelines. One problem was how to deal with the people monitoring the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea is monitored very closely, there is a lot of data freely available, so we took care of it, there were three or four different people on it. And what was then done is very simple. For 21 years, our Sixth Fleet, which controls the Mediterranean Sea and also the Baltic Sea, has been conducting an exercise for the NATO navies in the Baltic Sea every summer (BALTOPS, ed.). We're sending an aircraft carrier and other large ships to these exercises. And for the first time in history, the NATO operation in the Baltics had a new program. A 12-day mine dumping and mine detection exercise was to be conducted. A number of nations sent out mine teams, one group dropped a mine, and another mine group went in search and blew it up.

So there was a time when things blew up, and that was when the deep sea divers who put the mines on the pipelines were able to operate. The two pipelines are about a mile apart, they're a little under the seabed silt, but they're not difficult to get to and the divers had practiced. It only took a few hours to plant the bombs.

So that was in June 2022?

Yes, they did towards the end of the exercise. But at the last minute, the White House got nervous. The President said he was afraid to do it. He changed his mind and issued new orders, giving the ability to remotely detonate the bombs at any time. You do that with a regular sonar, a Raytheon product by the way, you fly over the spot and drop a cylinder. It sends a low-frequency signal, you can describe it as a flute sound, you can set different frequencies.

However, the fear was that the bombs would not work if they stayed in the water for too long, which in fact should be the case with two bombs. So there was concern within the group to find the right remedy, and we actually had to reach out to other intelligence agencies, which I intentionally didn't write about.

And then what happened? The explosives were in place and a way was found to control them remotely.

Joe Biden decided not to blow them up back in June, it was five months into the war. But in September he ordered it to be done . The operational staff, the people who do "kinetic" things for the United States, they do what the President says, and at first they thought that was a useful weapon that he could use in negotiations. But sometime after the Russians invaded and then when the operation was complete, the whole thing became increasingly repulsive to the people running it. These are people who work in top positions in the secret services and are well trained. They opposed the project, they thought it was crazy.

Shortly after the attack, after they did as they were told, there was a lot of anger at the operation and rejection from those involved. That's one of the reasons I learned so much. And I'll tell you one more thing. The people of America and Europe who are building pipelines know what happened. I'm telling you something important. The people who own companies that build pipelines know the story. I didn't hear the story from them, but I quickly learned that they knew.

Let's return to this situation in June of last year. President Joe Biden decided not to do it directly and postponed it.

Foreign Minister Antony Blinken said at a press conference a few days after the pipelines were blown up that an important factor in his power had been taken away from Putin. He said destroying the pipelines is a tremendous opportunity -- an opportunity to deprive Russia of the ability to use the pipelines as a weapon. The point was that Russia could no longer pressure Western Europe to end US support in the Ukraine war. The fear was that Western Europe would no longer participate.

I think the reason for this decision was that the war was not going well for the west and they were afraid of the approaching winter. Nord Stream 2 was put on hold by Germany itself, not international sanctions, and the US was afraid Germany would lift sanctions because of a cold winter.

The Plan To Takedown Russia Via A Zombie Ukraine Was Hatched 30 Years Ago...,

thepostil  |  “We are fighting a war against Russia and not against each other,” German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Strasbourg, January 24, 2023.

(For an unauthorised biography of Baerbock, see here).

On July 27, 1993, the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (MoD) signed a Memorandum of Understanding and Cooperation on Defense and Military Relations, establishing a programme of defence cooperation at the Department-Ministry-level, with “substantive activities” between those offices being launched in July 1994 (Cf. Lt. Col. Frank Morgese, US-Ukraine Security Cooperation 1993-2001: A Case History). Since that date, the Ukraine has teemed with US military advisors of every stripe.

The Morgese case study is a blow-by-blow review of the US military activity in the Ukraine between 1993 and 2001, designed to set up the Ukraine for her destruction. So detailed a review, that it would swamp the layman. Accordingly, we propose another document dating from 1994, readable by the laymen amongst us, and which spells out thirty years in advance, the full-blown War Plan for a zombie Ukraine.

Its author, Barry R. Posen (Rand, CFR, MIT, Woodrow Wilson Foundation), belongs to the leather-armchair school of strategy the US so excels in: arranging for others to die for the US living standard.

For obvious reasons, only Posen’s assessment of Russian military strength is dated. The remainder of his study predicts with such ghastly exactitude both events in the Ukraine over the last 20 years and the expected, indeed hoped for, Russian response, that one readily perceives that this is no prediction, but rather a fully-formed proposal for War—complete with Posen’s dismay, very faintly-veiled, at Operation Barbarossa’s failure, and his pleasure at the “high cost” Barbarossa exacted on Russia.

To give our readers the flavour of Posen’s text, we have selected a few, notable paragraphs from this Must-Read, one which Russia surely cannot have missed. All quotations are so marked and in italics.

Why Are So-Called Leftists Blind To The Cause Of War In Ukraine?

BAR  |  As the Left in the US struggles to hold to a clear ideological line against the US empire in its proxy war using Ukraine against Russia, the understanding of how this conflict arose has been lost amid the discourse of needing to either present a “balanced” view of the conflict, or to accuse anti-imperialists who indicate US/EU/NATO’s complicity, as “Putin’s apologists.” This kind of mealy-mouthed, spineless analysis is expected from those who always support the empire and its bloody deeds. But these days, more and more of this criticism of anti-imperialists is coming from some of the so-called US left. This group is engaged in a bizarre public display of supporting Ukraine, a display that defies logic and the facts surrounding the conflict.

As an example, the Ukraine Solidarity Network was created by Howie Hawkins, one-time Green Party presidential candidate and alleged leftist, and has been signed onto by dozens of people who are prominent in some way in US progressive politics. Among the Network’s absurd positions are their demand for reparations for the people of Ukraine, their support for Ukraine’s right to receive as many arms as they can without question or strings attached, and their demand for the IMF to cancel Ukraine's debts.

Are these demands made on any basis of fact? No. When you consider that information about actual events that led up to this conflict are easily located with the most cursory search, there is no way that anyone can conclude that Ukraine is the victim of some terrible crime committed by Russia, let alone that they are owed reparations and deserve all the weapons they could want to fight them.

What’s more, the paper trail that documents the lead-up to this conflict includes sources that are the publications of the empire, so-called mainstream, sources that are neither left-leaning nor anti-war in any substantive way. This, I believe, lends a level of credibility to their documentation that some would easily dismiss as “biased” if it were provided in left-leaning sources.

For example, if members of the Ukraine Solidarity Networkhad bothered to look, they could have found this February 24, 2022 article from the Yale MacMillan Center, which details the scuttled negotiations to completely avoid the conflict in Ukraine.

The article pointedly notes that:

“More than anything else, it was the refusal of Ukraine to implement the provisions of Minsk 2 – especially the provision that would give the predominantly Russian-speaking regions a special constitutional status – that caused Russia to threaten military action against Ukraine. Time after time in recent weeks, Putin and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei V. Lavrov made it clear in meetings and press conferences that the key to resolving the situation in and around Ukraine was the full implementation of Minsk 2.”

An unprovoked attack on Ukraine? Even the empire admits that this is not true, and goes further to document that the conflict could have been avoided entirely had Ukraine simply adhered to the agreement they signed. Furthermore, the same article confirms that the civil war between Kiyv and those Russian-speaking regions in Ukraine - Donbas and Luhansk - that began in 2014 was also an important factor in this current conflict, as more than 700,000 of the people in those regions were granted Russian citizenship while they “...for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kiev (Kyiv in Ukrainian) regime.” 

If the Yale MacMillan Center can acknowledge the centrality of these issues to this currency conflict, how is that these Latte Leftists dismiss them as insignificant?  

But why did Ukraine refuse to adhere to the agreements, one might ask? This is actually an important piece of information that also has a very clear answer if anyone is interested in knowing it. An article in Modern Diplomacy reveals that, at least according to the former Chancellor of Germany Angele Merkel, the leaders who signed onto the Minsk Accords who were not representing Russia (the leaders of Germany, France, and Ukraine) never had any intention of adhering to the agreements, as they were just a ploy to “...buy time for Ukraine. Ukraine used this time to become stronger, as you can see today,” Merkel said, “Ukraine in 2014-2015 and Ukraine today are not the same.”

The Late Great Glen Ford Foresaw War With Russia's Endgame Eight Years Ago

BAR  |  I think that President Obama’s attempt to destabilize Russia will be seen by history as disastrous as George Bush’s invasion of Iraq in 2003. Like the Iraq war, the de facto declaration of “war by other means” against Russia will accelerate the very dynamic that it intends to halt: the steady weakening of U.S. imperialism’s grip on the world. It will increase the resolve of a host of nations to disengage themselves from American madness and to strengthen collaboration and cooperation among many countries, and not just Russia and China.

The result will be the exact opposite of Washington’s intention. The attempt to isolate and destabilize Russia, the other nuclear superpower, may appear to some to be an act of brashness, a flexing of American muscle, an act of imperial overconfidence and recklessness. People thought the same thing when Bush went into Iraq. They were shocked and more than a little bit awed. [1]  In fact, sometimes I think that Americans are more shocked and awed by the American military than anybody else. But the Iraq invasion, and the brazen offensive against Russia, as well as the so-called “Pivot Against China” and the octopus-like U.S. military entrenchment in Africa — these are really symptoms of weakness and desperation.

U.S. Imperialism is losing its grip on the world and responds to its weakening condition with massive campaigns of destabilization. Destabilization characterizes U.S. foreign policy today more than any other word. The purpose is to reverse the general dynamic of global affairs today in which U.S. influence and power shrinks in relative terms as the rest of the world develops. U.S. and European hegemony — and that is the ability to dictate the terms of economic and political life on the planet — has daily diminished in myriad objective ways, ways that we can measure by the numbers. China’s soon-to-be status as the world’s biggest economy is just one aspect of that decline.

The process is inexorable and it’s gaining momentum. The trajectory of imperial decline has been firmly set ever since the Western capitalists decided to move the production of things — that, is the industrial base — to the South and the rest of the planet. Inevitably power and influence follow and imperial hegemony diminishes. This is of course unacceptable to the rulers of the United States who now find themselves in objective opposition to all manifestations of collaboration and mutual development under terms that are not dictated by Washington. They are in objective opposition to all manifestations of independence by countries in the world. This applies not just to China, not just to China and Russia, but to the rest of the BRICS and to other developing nations. And it even applies to America’s closest allies.

That is because hegemons don’t really have allies. All they have are subordinates, and so the U.S. is quite prepared to do serious harm to European economic interests by pressuring them to break long established economic ties to Russia. They will ultimately do the same thing in the pacific region with China and cause great destabilization there. They do so not because of strength but because of growing relative weakness. Their desperation compels them to risk war because their only clear superiority is in weapons.

However, the net end result, if we survive these flirtations with all-out war, can only be further isolation of the United States and the further weakening of imperialism. I think there is on what passes for the left in the United States a tendency to describe U.S. aggressions like the Iraq war, like the current offensive against Russia, as mistakes and miscalculations: “They didn’t mean to do that.”

In reality the U.S. goes to the brink and beyond the brink of war because it perceives itself as having no other choice. Its soft power is fading. It has few other means beyond the military to strategically influence events. It recruits or buys allies where it can get them, be it jihadists or Nazis. As imperialism’s sway in the world shrinks, so do its options.

The Arctic Is Russian

politico  | Since the end of the Cold War, the Arctic has largely been free of visible geopolitical conflict. In 1996, the eight countries with Arctic territory formed the Arctic Council, where they agreed to environmental protection standards and pooled technology and money for joint natural resources extraction in the region. Svalbard, Europe’s northernmost inhabited settlement, just 700 miles south of the North Pole, perfectly represents this spirit of cooperation. While a territory of Norway, it is also a kind of international Arctic station. It hosts the KSAT Satellite Station, relied on by everyone from the U.S. to China; a constellation of some dozen nations’ research laboratories; and the world’s doomsday Seed Vault (where seeds from around the world are stored in case of a global loss in crop diversity, whether due to climate change or nuclear fallout). Svalbard, where polar bears outnumber people, is considered a demilitarized, visa-free zone by 42 nations.

But today, this Arctic desert is rapidly becoming the center of a new conflict. The vast sea ice that covers the Arctic Ocean is melting rapidly due to climate change, losing 13 percent per decade — a rate that experts say could make the Arctic ice-free in the summer as soon as 2035. Already, the thaw has created new shipping lanes, opened existing seasonal lanes for more of the year and provided more opportunities for natural resource extraction. Nations are now vying for military and commercial control over this newly accessible territory — competition that has only gotten more intense since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

An antenna within the KSAT Satellite Station, the world's largest ground station for polar orbiting satellites relied on from the U.S. to China. | Ola Lewitschnik for POLITICO

For the past two decades, Russia has been dominating this fight for the Arctic, building up its fleet of nuclear-capable icebreakers, ships and submarines, developing more mining and oil well operations along its 15,000 miles of Arctic coastline, racing to capture control of the new “Northern Sea Route” or “Transpolar Sea Route” which could begin to open up by 2035, and courting non-Arctic nations to help fund those endeavors.

At the same time, America is playing catch-up in a climate where it has little experience and capabilities. The U.S. government and military seems to be awakening to the threats of climate change and Russian dominance of the Arctic — recently issuing a National Strategy for the Arctic Region and a report on how climate change impacts American military bases, opening a consulate in Nuuk, Greenland, and appointing this year an ambassador-at-large for the Arctic region within the State Department and a deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and Global Resilience. America’s European allies, too, have been rethinking homeland security, increasing national defense budgets and security around critical energy infrastructure in the Arctic as they aim to boost their defense capabilities and rely less on American assistance.

But 17 Arctic watchers — including Norwegian diplomats, State Department analysts and national security experts focusing on the Arctic — said they fear that the U.S. and Europe won’t be able to maintain a grip on the region’s energy resources and diplomacy as Russia places more civilian and military infrastructure across the Arctic, threatening the economic development and national security of the seven other nations whose sovereign land sits within the Arctic Circle.

Even as the U.S. says it has developed stronger Arctic policies, five prominent Arctic watchers I spoke with say that the U.S. government and military are taking too narrow a view, seeing the Arctic as primarily Alaska and an area for natural resource extraction, but not as a key geopolitical and national security battleground beyond U.S. borders. They say the U.S. is both poorly resourced in the Arctic and unprepared to deal with the rising climate threat, which will require new kinds of technology, training and infrastructure the U.S. has little experience with. Several U.S. government officials involved in Arctic planning told me in private they also fear a nuclear escalation in the Arctic, which would threaten to engulf Europe and its allies in a larger conflict.

“We’re committed to expanding our engagement across the region,” one of those officials, granted anonymity to speak candidly about a tense geopolitical region, told me, “but we’re not there yet.”

“The [Defense] Department views the Arctic as a potential avenue of approach to the homeland, and as a potential venue for great power competition,” America’s new deputy assistant secretary of defense for Arctic and Global Resilience, Iris A. Ferguson, wrote me in an email. Ferguson described Russia as an “acute threat” and also outlined fears that China, a “pacing threat” was seeking “to normalize its presence and pursue a larger role in shaping Arctic regional governance and security affairs.” (China has contributed to liquid natural gas projects and funded a biodiesel plant in Finland as part of its Belt and Road Initiative now reaching the Arctic.)

Sweden And Finland Joining NATO Has Nothing Whatsoever To Do With Ukraine

indianpunchline |  Sweden’s (or Finland’s) NATO membership isn’t exactly round the corner. Sweden is either unable or unwilling to fulfil Turkiye’s demands. Besides, there are variables at work here. 

Most important, the trajectory of the current Russian-brokered rapprochement between Ankara and Damascus will profoundly impact the fate of the Kurdish groups in the region — and the Kurdish-US axis in Syria. Washington has warned Erdogan against seeking rapprochement with President Bashar Al-Assad. 

What complicates matters further is that presidential and parliamentary elections are due in Turkiye in June and Erdogan’s political compass is set. Any change in his calculus can only happen  in the second half of 2023 at the earliest.

Now, 6 months is a long time in West Asian politics. Meanwhile, the Ukraine war will also have phenomenally changed by summer. 

Finland is ready to wait till summer, but Sweden (and the US) cannot. The heart of the matter is that Sweden’s NATO membership is not really about the war in Ukraine but is about containing the Russian presence and strategy in the Arctic and North Pole. There is a massive economic dimension to it, too. 

Thanks to climate change, the Arctic is increasingly becoming a navigable sea route. The expert opinion is that nations bordering the Arctic (eg., Sweden) will have an enormous stake in who has access to and control of the resources of this energy- and mineral-rich region as well as the new sea routes for global commerce the melt-off is creating. 

It is estimated that forty-three of the nearly 60 large oil and natural-gas fields that have been discovered in the Arctic are in Russian territory, while eleven are in Canada, six in Alaska [US] and one in Norway. Simply put, the spectre that is haunting the US is: “The Arctic is Russian.”

Why Did France And Germany Participate In U.S. Deception And Aggression Against Russia?

scheerpost  |  The U.S., having no need of or gift for statecraft, has long practiced what I’ve taken to calling the diplomacy of no diplomacy. You can’t expect much from bimbos such as Antony Blinken or Wendy Sherman, Blinken’s No. 2 at the State Department. All they can do is roar, even if they are mice next to any serious diplomat. 

But have the European powers now followed along? I fear to ask because I fear the answer. But I must, given recent events.

Early last year, when Petro Poroshenko stated publicly that the post-coup regime in Kyiv had no intention of abiding by diplomatic commitments it made in 2014-15 to a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis, a few eyebrows arched, but not over many. Who was the former Ukrainian president, anyway? I had him down from the first as a self-interested dummkopf who did what Washington told him to do and nothing more, no shred of statesmanship about him. 

It was another matter when, in early December, Angela Merkel admitted in back-to-back interviews that the European powers were up to the same thing. The objective of diplomatic talks in late 2014 and early 2015, the former German chancellor told Der Spiegel and Die Zeit, was not, as they had pretended, a framework for a federalized Ukraine in the cause of a lasting peace between its hostile halves: It was to deceive the Russians to give Kyiv time to prepare for a military assault on the Russian-speaking provinces in the east, whose people had refused to accept the U.S.–orchestrated coup that brought compulsively Russophobic Nazi-inflected nationalists to power in February 2014. 

Merkel’s revelations came as a shock, of course. But I contrived to mark down her comments as an inadvertent indiscretion in the autumn of a long-serving leader’s years. Merkel made her remarks more or less in passing. There was no boasting in them. She did not seem proud of her duplicity. 

Now François Hollande weighs in. A few days before the year ended, the former French president gave a lengthy interview to The Kyiv Independent. In it he made the Franco–German position perfectly clear: Yes, Merkel and I lied to the Russians when we negotiated the Minsk I and Minsk II Protocols in September 2014 and February 2015. No, we never had any intention of making Kyiv observe them or otherwise enforcing them. It was a charade from the first and—the part of this interview that truly galls—Hollande advanced this as wise, sound statesmanship.

Let us count the betrayals we must assign to the hapless Hollande and the inconstant Merkel. 

The betrayal of Russia and its president will go without saying. It is a matter of record that Vladimir Putin, who participated directly in the Minsk talks, worked long, long hours in the cause of a settlement that would leave Ukraine stable and unified, a freestanding post–Soviet republic on the Russian Federation’s southwestern order.  

Here I will remind readers of the animosity Putin expressed in his New Year’s address, three days after Hollande described the Franco–German sting operation in detail:

The West lied to us about peace while preparing for aggression, and today, they no longer hesitate to openly admit it and to cynically use Ukraine and its people as a means to weaken and divide Russia.