The thing to remember about ANY/EVERY single person who leaves Azovstal previously, presently or in the future is this:
1. The Russians are not stupid or sloppy.
2. First they are taken under guard to a processing place. Wounded are
under guard during treatment until fit for normal processing.
3. They are scrupulously checked for real identity by their papers and
every civil database the Russians have access to. Local Mariupol LDPR
investigators are also there to use their local knowledge to verify all
claims of civilian neutrality.
4. They are stripped to look for any fascist sympathetic tattoos, men
and women alike, it has been reported by one woman evacuee.
5. They are FINGERPRINTED AND PHOTOGRAPHED and their future intended
residential address documented as they may be called as witnesses to war
crimes in future criminal trials. The LDPR and Russians are fkn serious
about legal retributions for the 8 year war and about making sure that
not a single nazi sympathiser ever gets back into social circulation.
6. They are interrogated about all personal matters and all knowledge
about what is going in inside Azovstal. Obviously, anyone NOT completely
forthcoming is held for future interrogation.
7. Only after all the above tests, they are sorted into:
* free civilians to go home, their choice of Uk or LD or RF territory or to refugee camps;
* harmless Ukrainian Regular soldiers who go to LDPR POW camps awaiting
exchange for Regular Russian POWs as per Geneva Convention;
* foreign low level mercenary fighters who go to LDPR POW camps awaiting criminal prosecution;
* high level foreigner (eg NATO staff), who most probably go to FSB
Headquarters in Moscow for future intel and political purposes;
* Azov fighters who will all get kept as non-swapable POWs to be
prosecuted by the LDPF for war crimes. The LDPR Public Prosecutors have
publically clearly stated their guilty punishments may be as high as the
death penalty.
So that's the strict filtering regime. So have no fear that any of
the "Rats of Azovstal" will escape their rightful fates. Even after
another 1000-2000 surrenders, the exact same processing will be done to
each and every one. The LDPR and Russian military jails are gunna be
real full, real soon.
thecradle | Strategic primacy, for Byzantium, more than diplomatic or military, was a psychological affair. The word Strategia itself is derived from the Greek strategos
– which does not mean “General” in military terms, as the west
believes, but historically corresponds to a managerial politico-military
function.
It all starts with si vis pacem para bellum: “If you want
peace prepare for war.” Confrontation must develop simultaneously on
multiple levels: grand strategy, military strategy, operative, tactical.
But brilliant tactics, excellent operative intel and even massive
victories in a larger war theater cannot compensate for a lethal mistake
in terms of grand strategy. Just look at the Nazis in WWII.
Those who built up an empire such as the Romans, or maintained one
for centuries like the Byzantines, never succeeded without following
this logic.
Those clueless Pentagon and CIA ‘experts’
On Operation Z, the Russians revel in total strategic ambiguity,
which has the collective west completely discombobulated. The Pentagon
does not have the necessary intellectual firepower to out-smart the
Russian General Staff. Only a few outliers understand that this is not a
war – since the Ukraine Armed Forces have been irretrievably routed –
but actually what Russian military and naval expert Andrei Martyanov
calls a “combined arms police operation,” a work-in-progress on
demilitarization and denazification.
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is even more abysmal in
terms of getting everything wrong, as recently demonstrated by its chief
Avril Haines during her questioning on Capitol Hill. History shows that
the CIA strategically blew it all the way from Vietnam to Afghanistan
and Iraq. Ukraine is no different.
Ukraine was never about a military win. What is being accomplished is
the slow, painful destruction of the European Union (EU) economy,
coupled with extraordinary weapons profits for the western
military-industrial complex and creeping security rule by those nations’
political elites.
The latter, in turn, have been totally baffled by Russia’s C4ISR
(Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance
and Reconnaissance) capabilities, coupled with the stunning
inefficiency of their own constellation of Javelins, NLAWs, Stingers and
Turkish Bayraktar drones.
This ignorance reaches way beyond tactics and the operational and
strategic realm. As Martyanov delightfully points out, they “wouldn’t
know what hit them on the modern battlefield with near-peer, forget
about peer.”
thesaker | Make no mistake about it: The tragic war that is currently taking
place on Ukrainian battlefields is not between the Russian Federation
and the Ukraine, but between the Russian Federation and the
US-controlled NATO. The latter, also called ‘the collective West’,
promotes an aggressive ideology of organised violence, a politically-
economically- and militarily-enforced doctrine euphemistically known as
‘Globalism’. This means hegemony by the Western world, which arrogantly
calls itself ‘the international community’, over the whole planet. NATO
is losing that war, which uses NATO-trained Ukrainians as its proxy
cannon fodder, in three spheres, political, economic and military.
Firstly,
politically, the West has finally understood that it cannot execute
regime change in Moscow. Its pipedream of replacing the highly popular
President Putin with is CIA stooge Navalny is not going to happen. As
for the West’s puppet-president in Kiev, he is only a creature of
Washington and its oligarchs. A professional actor, he is unable to
speak for himself, but is a spokesman for the NATO which he loves.
Secondly,
economically, the West faces serious resistance to the 6,000 sanctions
it has imposed on Russia and Russians. Those sanctions have
backfired. In the West, we can testify to this every time we buy fuel or
food. The combination of high inflation (10% +) and even higher energy
prices, caused almost solely by these illegal anti-Russian sanctions,
are threatening the collapse of Western economies, much more than
threatening Russia or China. As a result of this reverse effect of
sanctions against Russia, the rouble is at a three-year high, standing
at about 64 to the US dollar and rising, though immediately after the
sanctions it had briefly gone down to 150 to the dollar.
After
strenuously denying that they would do it, already most countries in
Europe (at least 17 for now), including Germany and Italy, have agreed
to open accounts with Gazprombank, as Russia advised them to do and to
pay for oil and gas in roubles. And this number is growing by the week.
The problems will be even greater with food shortages, as the world food
chain is highly integrated and the agricultural production of Russia
and the Ukraine (now controlled by Russia) is at least 40% of the
world’s grain production. Just days ago it was announced that Russia
expects record grain production this year (130 million tonnes). Russia
may yet demand payment in roubles for all this as well.
The sanctions against Russia have divided Europe and are threatening to divide NATO. President
Erdogan of Turkey, a NATO member, has announced that he would veto the
entry to NATO of Finland and Sweden into NATO. At the same time, Russia
has announced that it will cut off Finland’s natural gas supply. Swedish
leaders are re-thinking their entry to NATO.
Thirdly, militarily,
it is clear that the Ukraine, with huge numbers of desertions and
surrenders, has no chance of winning the war against Russia. Most of its
military equipment has already been wiped out and newly-delivered and
often antiquated Western equipment will make little difference, even if
it is not destroyed by Russian missiles as soon as it reaches the
Ukraine. The conflict could now be over within weeks, rather than
months. The US ‘Defense Secretary’ (= Minister for Offense), Lloyd
Austin, has desperately called the Russian Defence Minister Sergey
Shoigu to beg for a ceasefire. Would you agree to a ceasefire when in
less than three months and with only 10% of your military forces you
have already occupied an area greater than England inside the Ukraine,
an area that produces 75% of Ukrainian GDP?
The panic of financial
disaster in the West has begun to set in. As a result, the French
President Macron has told President Zelensky (that is, told Washington)
to give up part of Ukraine’s sovereignty and at last start serious
negotiations with Russia. Macron is also trying to free French
mercenaries from Azovstal in Mariupol, but the problem is much bigger
than this, as the whole of Europe is facing economic meltdown. And the
Italian Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, has asked President Biden to
contact President Putin and ‘give peace a chance’. Note that Mario
Draghi is a former president of the European Central Bank and a Goldman
Sachs puppet – just as Macron is a Rothschild puppet.
There have
always been empires and invasions throughout history. However, they have
always been local and not been justified as the only possible global
ideology, a ‘New World Order’, to be imposed by violence all over the
planet. After the NATO war is over, lost by ‘the collective West’, NATO
Centralism, the ideology of a ‘Unipolar World’, controlled from
Washington, must end. However, Centralism must also come to an end
everywhere else, like that under Soviet-period Moscow (1).
ria.ru |MOSCOW, May 17 - RIA Novosti.More than 15,000 Ukrainian soldiers and mercenaries ended up in a cauldron near Severodonetsk and Lisichansk in the Luhansk People's Republic, Vitaly Kiselyov, Assistant Minister of the Interior of the LPR,saidon Channel One.
"There will be 15-16 thousand in full," he said, answering the host's question whether "a huge group of nationalists from the Armed Forces of Ukraine" really turned out to be in the cauldron in the areas of these cities.
WaPo | Ending
one of the most dramatic battles of the Ukraine war, hundreds of
Ukrainian fighters, many seriously wounded, gave up their weeks-long defense
of a besieged steel plant in the strategic port city of Mariupol on
Monday and were taken to Russian-controlled territory, while hundreds
more remained trapped in the plant Tuesday as delicate negotiations
continued.
“Ukraine
needs Ukrainian heroes alive,” President Volodymyr Zelensky said in his
nightly address, as the delicate operation took place. “We hope that we
will be able to save the lives of our guys. Among them are the
seriously wounded. They are being provided with medical aid.”
Russia’s
Defense Ministry portrayed the exit of 264 Ukrainian soldiers from the
Azovstal steel plant as a surrender and a Russian victory. To Ukrainian
officials, the fighters were heroes whose desperate last stand changed
the course of the war, by tying up Russian forces for weeks in the
battle for Mariupol, preventing them from sweeping across southern
Ukraine.
Russia
won effective control of Mariupol weeks ago, securing a crucial land
bridge from Russia to Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula it annexed in
2014. But fate of fighters trapped in tunnels under the steel plant
became a desperate symbol of Ukrainians’ will to fight and die for their
land, a key factor in Ukraine’s military successes against Russia’s
larger, more powerful army.
Mariupol’s Azovstal Iron and Steel Works and its network of underground tunnels served as a shelter and final foothold for hundreds of Ukrainian fighters, including many from the controversial far-right Azov Regiment, as well as trapped civilians.
They
were holed up in the facility for weeks under an intense Russian
assault, before all women, children and elderly people were evacuated
under an agreement earlier this month. Those who made it to safety described a brutal siege in cold and fetid bunkers, where they lived without sunlight as food and water supplies dwindled.
natyliesbaldwin |This is the second part of a three-part series on ‘the Blob’ that runs American foreign policy. Read part one here.
WASHINGTON – The Russian war on Ukraine has seen ‘the Blob’ reassert
itself with a vengeance in the 11 weeks since Russia announced the
commencement of hostilities on February 24.
This article will examine the forces shaping President Joe Biden’s
approach to the Ukraine crisis, and then move on to explore the state of
foreign policy debate, or lack thereof, within Biden’s Democratic
Party.
Former high-ranking military officials, intelligence analysts and
diplomats who served at various points during the Clinton, Bush, Obama
and Trump administrations paint a picture in recent conversations with
Asia Times of the likely policy options being presented to President
Biden as he faces the gravest crisis on the European continent since the
Second World War.
The past month has seen the Biden administration, by fits and starts
and then seemingly all at once, adopt a militarized, hardline approach
toward Russia, declaring Ukraine’s “victory” over Russia as the only
acceptable outcome.
While Biden remains steadfast in assuring the public that there will
be no “boots on the ground,” in point of fact, current and former
officials have suggested that US paramilitaries are indeed on the
ground, with military assistance being coordinated by the new appointee
to the Biden National Security Council, retired US Army Lieutenant
General Terry Wolff.
According to retired US Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who served
as secretary of state Colin Powell’s chief of staff, the
administration is planning for a protracted conflict in Ukraine.
Wilkerson says “they are extremely desirous of a protracted conflict
because they want to effect regime change in Moscow, destabilize Russia
and then take on China. That is their long-term geopolitical strategy.”
It is helpful here to take a moment to describe the prevailing mindset of the top national security officials closest to Biden.
At the very beginning of Biden’s term, a message was sent loud and
clear to both supporters and critics in Washington that it would
not tolerate any deviations from the establishment orthodoxy and that
the perspective and expertise of outsiders were not welcome.
No fierce challenger of the establishment, Rojansky had been a
fixture in track-two level talks between American and Russian political
scientists and former government officials.Russia expert Matthew
Rojansky’s views are unwanted by the Biden administration. Image:
Twitter / Bucknell University
Yet when news leaked that Rojansky was under consideration for an
appointment to Biden’s National Security Council (NSC), the knives came
out and the Democratic hawks made Rojansky their prey. The appointment
was torpedoed – and quickly.
Rojansky is now head of a US-Russia-focused non-profit, far from the
corridors of power. That’s worrying because, outside of Central
Intelligence Agency director William Burns, deep expertise on Russia is
thin on the ground in the Biden administration, according to former and
current officials who spoke to Asia Times.
But if Russia expertise is lacking, what the vast majority of Biden’s foreign policy appointments do have are deep connections to
the reflexively hawkish and dominant wing of the Democratic foreign
policy establishment, and that, in part, explains the trajectory of the
administration’s policy in Ukraine.
The evolution of Biden’s policy was described to this correspondent
by former ambassador Chas Freeman, now a senior fellow at the Watson
Institute at Brown University who remains deeply engaged in the foreign
policy debate in Washington. Freeman said: “It took about eight weeks
for the administration, in the person of NSC Advisor [Jake] Sullivan, to
enunciate war aims for the proxy war.
“At the outset of its response to the Russian invasion, the
administration was careful to limit possible provocation of the
Russians. But, not having seen direct retaliation from Moscow, it has
become progressively less cautious.
“This lack of caution is aided by the fact that it is Ukrainians, not
Americans, who are dying and by the success of pro-Ukrainian propaganda
and the effective Western ban on contradictory information from
non-Ukrainian sources. There is a risk that the administration will
inhale its own propaganda and underestimate the risks it is taking,”
said Freeman.
George Beebe, former head of Russia analysis at the CIA and a senior
member of the intelligence service who served on the national security
staff of vice president Dick Cheney, agrees.
“It seems to me that the United States and NATO are experiencing the
phenomenon of the appetite growing with eating. We didn’t expect the
Ukrainians to be as successful as they proved to be,” Beebe said.
Beebe, now the director of the grand strategy program at the Quincy
Institute, continued: “A good part of the credit goes to the Ukrainians
themselves, their leadership, their courage and fighting against the
Russians. A good part of it comes from our own support for them, the
intelligence and military assistance that we’ve provided that they’ve
used very effectively.
“But I think that has produced battlefield successes that go well
beyond anything that the US government expected when Putin launched this
invasion. As a result, we started to think, ‘Hey, maybe we can win
this.’”Ukrainian soldiers use a launcher with US-made Javelin missiles
during military exercises in Donetsk region, Ukraine, on December 23,
2021. Photo: Ukrainian Defense Ministry Press Service
“Our eyes, “ says Beebe, “have grown bigger. You walk around here in
Washington and there are very few people that are worried that we might
get into an escalation spiral that we can’t control. Seems to me that
much of Congress is worried that they might be accused of not doing enough to
support Ukraine, not of doing too much that tips us over the edge here
into a very dangerous situation. So I think it is fair to say that we
are in a much more dangerous situation right now from the point of view
of escalation than we’ve been in my lifetime.”
Freeman observes that as a result of the war fever enveloping
Washington, “It is now taboo in the United States to inquire into the
origins of the war, to suggest that Western policy had any role in
provoking it, or that there has been or is any basis for Russia’s
security concerns.”
unz | Scott Ritter(5:20 mark)– “The idea that the Ukrainian military
has been eliminated as an effective fighting force is a flawed concept,
and unless Russia broadens its special military operation– probably to
the point of changing it form a special military operation to a war
which includes the totality of Ukrainian battle-space–(then) this is a
conflict that is dangerously close to becoming unwinnable by Russia
which means that while they can complete their objectives in the east
with 200,000 troops, they aren’t able to prevent Ukraine from rearming
and reequipping when Ukraine is being provided with tens of billions of
dollars of equipment by NATO —Whenever you provide your enemy with “safe space” to rebuild military capability, you’re never going to win. …
Yes,
Russia is winning in the east which is what they said their objective
was all along. And they are accomplishing that. That is the special
Military Operation. But now we’re talking about “war”, and I don’t think Russia has made that transition yet. This
is a defacto proxy war between the west and Russia using Ukrainian
forces as NATO’s sword. The object of this is to “bleed Russia dry”. And
if Russia doesn’t change the dynamic, Russia will be bled dry.”
Zelensky has indicated that he’s willing to mobilize a million people,
at a time when the west is ready to provide the funding and equipment to
turn those million men into a real military threat.
So, I see what has been happening in the last few weeks as being decisive.
The
military aid the west is providing is changing the dynamic and if
Russia doesn’t find a way to address this meaningfully, and to eliminate
it as a military capability… then the conflict will never end.” (“Saturday Morning Live with Scott Ritter and Ray McGovern, You Tube)
consortiumnews |It
was — literally — a made-for-television moment. A former U.S. Navy
chief petty officer turned cable news pundit, dressed in a fresh
out-of-the-box camouflage uniform replete with body armor and magazine
pouches, wearing matching camouflage helmet and gloves, and cradling an
automatic rifle, stared into the camera and announced “I am here to help this country [Ukraine] fight what is essentially a war of extermination.”
With
a Ukrainian flag on his left shoulder, and a U.S. flag emblazoned on
his body armor, the man, Malcolm Nance, declared that “This is an
existential war, and Russia has brought it to these people and is mass
murdering civilians.”
A day before, Nance had tweeted a black-and-white photograph of himself, similarly clad, announcing “I’m DONE talking.”
Nance spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy as a cryptologic technician, interpretive (CTI),
specializing in the Arabic language, and has turned his career into a
thing of legend, so much so that when he speaks of his journey from news
desk to Ukraine, it almost sounds convincing.
“Ukraine announced that there was an international force on Feb. 27,” Nance told one reporter,
“and
I started looking into it on Feb. 28 … I called the Ukrainian embassy
in Washington, and I said: ‘Hey, I want an appointment.’ They were a
little slow, so I just went down there and put in my application. The
guy asked if I had combat experience and I said ‘Yep.’ Then he looked at
my application and said, ‘You’re on the team.’”
Just like that.
But
the hype doesn’t match the reality. Although he sports a combat action
ribbon on the lapel of his coat jacket (when not attired in full combat regalia), Nance has never actually participated in ground combat operations, according to a serviceman who served with him. His “combat” experience was limited to providing linguistic support onboard a U.S. Navy ship off the coast of Beirut in 1983. Important work, but not combat.
Despite
this resume enhancement, Nance was — according to Nance — a natural for
recruitment by Ukraine. In the days before the Russian invasion, Nance
was in Ukraine, reporting for MSNBC.
But being Malcolm Nance, he claimed to be doing so much more. “I spent a month in Ukraine,” Nance recalled,
“driving around, mapping out the Russian order of battle, driving up
and down the highways and analyzing where the invasion routes would come
and go. So I knew the country backward and forwards by the time of the
invasion.”
(It
might be time to remind the reader that Nance’s Navy specialism in
Arabic gave him neither the training nor the experience to conduct the
kind of battlefield intelligence preparation that he described.)
The
Ukrainians know this. So why would they take on a 61-year old Arabic
linguist whose physical presence on any battlefield would be seen as a
detriment?
sonar21 | If you want to know how the war is going in Ukraine, you only needed
to take note of one piece of “news” today–Secretary of Defense Lloyd
Austin called his Russian counterpart:
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke with his Russian counterpart for the first time since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Pentagon announced on Friday.
The
call lasted approximately an hour and was at the request of Austin, who
used the first call between the two in 84 days to urge Defense Minister
Sergei Shoigu to implement an “immediate ceasefire,” according to a
brief readout of the call. The two last spoke on February 18, a week
before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.
CNN
If Russia was losing or completely stuck in Ukraine, one would expect
that Sergei Shoigu would be the guy calling Austin and begging for
mercy. Well, that is not what happened. It was Austin that placed the
call, apparently unconcerned about his recent public call to weaken
Russia. Why would Austin urge Shoigu to implement an “immediate
ceasefire” if Russia was getting its ass kicked? Russia getting whipped
by Ukraine is exactly what Austin has called for. Remember?
“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine. . .”
If Russia is on the ropes, why call off the beating? You call off the
fight when its your guy getting pummeled. The Russian offensive in the
Donbass has ramped up significantly in the last week and it is carving
up entrenched Ukrainian units with no hope of being reinforced or
rescued by a counter-offensive.
The situation in Mariupol is returning to normal and Russia controls
the city. The Russians are restoring electrical and water services and
providing food to the population.
Ukrainian counter-attack reaches Russian border and threatens to break Donbas supply line.
LIE–The Ukrainians have not reached the Russian border and at least
one Russian Battalion Tactical Group has crossed the Severs Donetsk
river and are expanding their position south toward Kharkiv. But this is
a sideshow. The area is isolated and there is only one significant road
running from Kharkiv to Belgorod in Russia.
DOUBLE LIE–There is zero threat to the “DONBAS SUPPLY LINE.” Those
lines are south and east of Kharkiv. Just look at the map–the Donbas
with the city of Luhansk is prominently displayed. Kharkiv is 230 miles
northwest of Luhansk.
The map does get two things right–the Russia has taken Avdiivka and
has surrounded Ukrainian troops at Severodonetsk. It is because of the
progress Russia is making in the Donetsk that Lloyd Austin called Sergei
Shoigu to beg for some mercy. I suspect that General Shoigu told
Austin, идите стучите по песку (which is Russian for “go pound sand.”)
One more observation regarding the supposed defeat of the Russians
north of Kharkiv on the border of Russia. The people writing on this
cannot even get their facts straight about the size of a Russian
Battalion Tactical Group aka BTG. Here are three different “experts”
with their numbers:
Each Russian Battalion (BTG) tactical group has around 700-900 soldiers (Justin Bronk)
According to the DOD on 18 April there are almost a dozen BTGs in Mariupol. As each BTG has about 200 infantry, then 11 x 200 gives us 2,200 infantry. (Christopher Lawrence, Dupuy Institute)
A Russian battalion tactical group consists of about 1,000 troops. (Associated Press)
The western media has been crowing about the mighty Ukrainians wiping
out a Russian BTG. Yet no photos of Russian medical units recovering
the dead and wounded from the battle site have been published on
Ukrainian or Russian sites. But let us assume the claim is true–the
Ukrainians reportedly ambushed and defeated one BTG. It is meaningless
as far as the progress of the Russian war effort is concerned. If the
Russians were concerned about the battle over a pontoon bridge they
would have deployed fixed wing and rotary wing support aircraft armed
with rockets and delivered an artillery barrage on the attacking
Ukrainians. That apparently did not happen either.
mtracey | Two advocacy organizations in particular devoted huge amounts of resources
to documenting the purported rise of Nazism during this period. If you
read an article over the past several years which purported to announce
that Nazism, “white nationalism,” and similar tendencies were ascendant,
there’s a good chance the basis for the article’s claims was sourced
either to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) or the Southern Poverty Law
Center (SPLC). “Neo-Nazi Groups Explode Under Trump,” read one
representative Daily Beast
headline from 2018, citing a report produced by the SPLC. In denouncing
Trump for having “flirted with the deepest racists and Nazis,” Charles
Blow of the New York Times
cited a report from the ADL which claimed that “anti-semitic incidents
in the United States surged 57 percent in 2017.” And 2017, as Blow
shrewdly reasoned, “was of course the first year of the Trump
administration.” The methodology of such “reports” is hardly ever
scrutinized with any degree of precision; organizations like the SPLC
and ADL are largely just assumed by journalists to possess
unchallengeable empirical authority. On the rare occasions when someone
in the media does think to dig deeper into the genesis of these groups’ oddly precise statistical figures, doubts as to their veracity sometimes arise.
After
having spent such enormous effort warning Americans that their country
was being overwhelmed by Nazis, you’d have thought it would be a
no-brainer for these groups to spring immediately into action last month
and sound the alarms again. Because another “incident” took place that
was right up their alley: an honest-to-god pro-Nazi rally. In the middle
of New York City. Thanks to footage
captured by journalist Elad Eliahu, we know that on April 23 in
Downtown Manhattan, a group of rally-goers gathered to chant — with
total, uninhibited exuberance — “Azov! Azov! Azov!”
Eliahu told me the rally was organized by a group called “Razom for
Ukraine,” which has held regular protest actions in the city since the
war began, including to demand a No Fly Zone. But on this occasion, they were focused on rapturous praise for “Azov.”
In case you still need a primer on what “Azov” refers to, you may want to consult The Nation
magazine, which has been unique among US left-liberal media over the
last several years in still allowing a modicum of countervailing
thought. And so The Nation is one of the vanishingly few outlets that continues to plainly describe Azov — i.e., the Battalion of the Ukraine military currently fighting in the war — as an “outright Neo-Nazi group.”
The bluntness of The Nation’s
description stands in stark contrast to what the vast majority of US
media consumers have recently been told about said group. Elsewhere,
Americans are being instructed to actively root for the righteous
battlefield victory of Azov — particularly in the city of Mariupol,
where the fighters have been under sustained siege by Russia. It’s easy
for the untrained eye to miss, but US journalists — including the top
Ukraine war correspondent for TIME magazine — have taken to characterizing these Azov fighters merely as Mariupol’s brave “defenders.”
Which is a term that coincidentally obscures the fighters’ ideological
composition. Thanks to most US and “Western” media coverage, this
foreign battalion comprised of “outright Nazis” has become primarily
known as valorous warriors for “democracy.”
Tune into NPR or the BBC, and you will similarly hear the “defenders” euphemism used in reports about Mariupol. Naturally, this is also the preferred nomenclature of the “Kyiv Independent,” the newly-formed English-language media outlet whose sudden emergence owes
to an emergency infusion of funds late last year from the European
Union’s equivalent of the National Endowment for Democracy. Relentlessly
touted by “Western” media as an authoritative source for
news-on-the-ground from Ukraine, the outlet has also enjoyed massive
algorithmic amplification by Twitter — with it seldom ever noted that
their chief “defense reporter” publicly proclaimed himself a “brother in arms” with Azov.
Despite
his public admission of affiliation with what most reasonable observers
used to uncontroversially classify as a Neo-Nazi regiment, millions of
Americans have been fed
a regular supply of “journalism” from this person, Illia Ponomarenko,
who appears to function as Azov’s main English-speaking PR operative.
But he’s far from alone: a whole roster of newly-minted social media stars regularly heap praise
on Azov fighters for “sacrificing their lives for democracy.” By sheer
coincidence, these superstars also frequently tend to be affiliated with
US-based think tanks funded by the weapons-manufacturing industry.
Do
you think if NPR or BBC listeners were clearly informed that the
“defenders” of Mariupol were in fact “outright Neo-Nazis,” they might
have a slightly different reaction to the news segments extolling their
bravery? Especially if they can recall earlier NPR or BBC segments, such as those which warned listeners to be petrified of Trump-backed “Nazis” taking over the US? Alas, we can only speculate.
Now,
one might reasonably ask: isn’t this whole “Nazi” angle a bit
overblown? After all, in the US, that label gets blithely slapped onto
anyone who’s slightly more right-wing than Mitt Romney. And it’s not an
unfair point. The elasticity of the term “Nazi” has become so
preposterous, and it was deployed so indiscriminately during the era of
Trump, that one could be forgiven for having an urge to immediately
eye-roll whenever they hear it uttered.
Here’s the point, though:
in a prior political context, the purported existence of Nazis was
supposed to prompt an earnest outpouring of shock, horror, and
counter-Nazi mobilization. But in the current political context, the
existence of Nazis is supposed to be carefully ignored — in service what
is now the superseding imperative, namely to “Stand with Ukraine.”
munkdebates | Be it resolved, ending the world’s
worst geopolitical crisis in a generation starts with acknowledging
Russia’s security interests.
By any measure, the Russian
invasion of Ukraine represents a profound security risk for the world.
It raises fundamental issues about the basic principles that underwrite
the current international order and it threatens the specter of an
entrenched, high-risk Great Power conflict. How is this fast-evolving
crisis best addressed? Does it demand a resolute and relentless push by
the West to punish, isolate and degrade Putin’s Russia economically,
politically and militarily? Or is a solution to be found in
acknowledging Russia’s security needs and finding ways to mutually
de-escalate the war, sooner not later? Which of these different
strategies stand the best chance of success? And how ultimately is this
conflict best resolved?
Janice Gross Stein, the Founding Director of the
Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of
Toronto, will moderate the panel discussion portion of the debate.
The debate video is available to our Curator and Supporter Members. To view the video, log-in to your member account and go Russia-Ukraine War Debate pagehere.
Summary: Michael McFaul was in Toronto yesterday for the Munk Debate: Russia-Ukraine War,
with Stephen Walt, John Mearsheimer v Michael McFaul, Radosław
Sikorski, the resolution being debated was Yay/Nay "ending the world's
worst geo-political crisis starts with acknowledging Russia’s security
interests", For those who don't follow the Munk debates, about 4 yrs ago
there was a similar debate with Stephen Cohen where the Munk debates
reversed the results when they came out "wrong". Anyhow the Munk
debates made sure to pepper the results well in advance this time with
an 63% nay vote (ok, well if your not willing to acknowledge Russia's
security interests to stop a war, that can ONLY mean you want to
continue the war in the hopes of "winning" the war against Russia).
Anyhow, I bring this up because McFaul was a hysterical mess during
the debate, talking over the other debaters, interrupting them,
shouting, at one point he even said that YES, US diplomats lie to other
nations (ok Michael, then why the hell should Russia believe YOU when
you give these worthless security assurances!) McFaul looks like he
realizes that the US's ambitions in Ukraine are collapsing and he's
hoping for a miracle to save them. But listening to these people (even
Mearsheimer) makes it obvious how out of touch all of them are with the
global situation. Globalism is dead, Russia will never reintegrate with
the West, the theft of the 300 billion dollars, will not be forgiven or
forgotten, what most people dont remember is that this is the 2nd time
in 100 yrs where the West has seized Russia's foreign reserves, they did
it before after the Russian Revolution and it took more than 60 yrs
before Russia was willing to trust the West with their money again. How
long will it take this time, 80 yrs, 100yrs? But listening to these
"experts" they talk as if once Russia is expelled from Ukraine and Putin
is removed from power, Russia will beg to be integrated into the West.
No, Russia and the West have undergone a bitter divorce and never again
the twain shall meet.
WaPo | But
Massie — an engineer who graduated with several degrees from M.I.T. and
became an inventor who still holds a number of patents — has devoted
time and energy to honing his America First views during five terms in
the House.
“I’m
further, I think, than he is on the issue of NATO. He demanded that the
partners pay their share. I would withdraw us from NATO,” Massie
explained of his and Trump’s views toward the critical alliance. “It’s a
Cold War relic. Our involvement should have ceased when the [Berlin]
wall fell and the Soviet Union collapsed.”
He
would have preemptively surrendered portions of eastern Ukraine to
Russia in a manner that would have “avoided tens of thousands of people
dying,” because this is how he sees the war ending anyway.
“A
fractured Ukraine, with the Eastern portion of it being a satellite or
more government, more deferential to Putin, and the Western part of it
more deferential to Europe or the United States,” Massie said.
These
views are anathema to traditional Republican hawks as well as Democrats
in line with Biden, who push for a vigorous foreign policy that works
to unify allies, particularly in Europe.
“Both
Democrats and Republicans have at different times in history had a more
isolationist, nativist wing,” said Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chairman
of the House Armed Services Committee. “Right now, it’s the Republicans
who are highest on that. They’re playing a very isolationist card.”
“Honestly
there is an isolationist wing within the party that’s traditionally
been there,” said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), ranking member of the
House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Smith
takes a more optimistic outlook, focusing on how more than 70 percent
of House Republicans supported the latest Ukraine aid package and that
on other votes, Massie and Greene have had few allies.
“Pretty
much everybody else understands that this isn’t just about Ukraine. It
is about our security and peace and stability in the world. So thus far
the Republican Party is still there,” Smith said.
McCaul
has actually been pleasantly surprised that the anti-Ukraine faction
has not grown larger, something he attributes to the success on the
ground of Ukrainian troops and the atrocities committed by Putin’s
troops.
“I was really worried, interestingly, earlier on about how this was going to trend,” McCaul said Friday.
thenation |Late last month, the Joe Biden administration publicly confirmed that a “Disinformation Governing Board” working group had been created within the Department of Homeland Security. The news prompted a flood of concern about the impact of such an Orwellian organ on America.
But there’s no need to engage in hypotheticals to understand the
dangers. One has to only consider the past of Nina Jankowicz, the head
of the new disinformation board.
Jankowicz’s experience as a disinformation warrior includes her
work with StopFake, a US government-funded “anti-disinformation”
organization founded in March 2014 and lauded as a model of how to combat Kremlin lies.
Four years later, StopFake began aggressively whitewashing two
Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups with a long track record of violence,
including war crimes.
If the Biden administration is serious about combating threats such
as white supremacy, perhaps it should first reflect on the old Roman question: Who will guard the guardians?
StopFake was founded right after Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan uprising
ousted the country’s president and swept a new, US-backed government
into power. Formed by professors and students from the Kyiv Mohyla Journalism School,
StopFake presented itself as a plucky, grassroots group wielding hard
facts and semi-permanent smirks as it shredded Russian propaganda. It
gained notoriety by producing slick videos hosted by dynamic
disinformation warriors debunking the Moscow lies of the day.
Western reporters—and checkbooks—were paying attention. Shortly after
its creation, StopFake began receiving funding from Western
governments, including the National Endowment for Democracy—an
organization mainly funded by the US Congress—and the British embassy in Ukraine. It was also supported by George Soros’s Open Society Foundation. (StopFake has run numerous episodes that cover Soros but fail to disclose this potential conflict of interest—a violation of basic tenets of journalism.)
Among StopFake’s hosts was Jankowicz,
a graduate of Bryn Mawr and the Georgetown School of Foreign Service
who was already part of the burgeoning disinformation warrior industry
while in Ukraine as a Fulbright Clinton Public Policy Fellow. On January
29, 2017, she hosted StopFake Episode 117, whose lead story dealt with a perennial obsession of Russian propaganda: Ukraine’s volunteer battalions.
These are the dozens of paramilitaries formed in 2014 to fight
against Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine’s Donbas region. From the
beginning, Moscow focused on the violent and far-right nature of many of
these units.
At the time of Jankowicz’s piece, the Russian press was bristling
at Kyiv’s creating a new holiday to honor military volunteers—Moscow
commentators depicted this as a celebration of far-right butchers.
Jankowicz offered an emphatically different take.
“Volunteer battalions organized throughout the country and they
supported weak Ukrainian armed forces and prevented further Russian
separatist encroachment. Today the volunteer battalions are part of the
official Ukrainian armed forces, overseen by the Defense and Interior
Ministries,” she said in her StopFake debunking segment.
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