Submitted by: Don Hank
Are Ukrainians happy under US heel?
By Don Hank
In Soviet days, Russia spoke in the name of Ukraine. The Soviets gave Ukraine all the big industries that it had profited from prior to 2014. It even got nuclear power plants, which unfortunately, had a bad accident that is now famous and in the history books.
Russia got products made by those industries and in return, Ukraine got factories that made money for the people. People lived fairly well and social progress was being made.
It was tit for tat. Win-win, as the Chinese are fond of saying these days.
I visited Kiev in about 1970 in the midst of these moderately prosperous times and found optimistic people with a sense of purpose. I spoke Russian with them and heard no foreign sounding accents — not like today. I gathered that they identified with the Soviet Union and Russia.
I visited Yalta and found Russian vacationers and Russian speaking hotel keepers and waiters and generally what seemed like happy people.
It wasn’t until the 2000s that the US and EU took an interest in Ukraine. And it pursued these interests via the CIA initially, but later via Ingos (International non-governmental organizations.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/
Quote:
“These three revolutions – the "rose revolution" in Georgia (November 2003-January 2004), the "orange revolution" in Ukraine (January 2005) and the "tulip revolution" in Kyrgyzstan (April 2005) – each followed a near-identical trajectory; all were spearheaded by the American democratization Ingos working at the behest of the US foreign policy establishment.”
Thus it is no secret that the US foreign policy establishment was behind the events in Ukraine starting at least around 2004, and the Obama-Biden regime is largely responsible for what the country is today. Some citizens may have felt at ease knowing that their country was pursuing the interests of a foreign power in the development of its political currents in a generally positive way.
But what is easily forgotten is that whenever a foreign power starts to gain traction in your country, it is there primarily for its own interests, not yours. The average Ukrainian may not have grasped this yet but events are moving rapidly and already, the country is at war with itself, is caught in an IMF debt trap from which there is no escape, and is being de-industrialized at a breathtaking rate. It did not face any of these problems before the Ukrainians accepted the bid to side with the US and EU, and none of these are the things it bargained for at the Maidan in Feb 2014.
Ukrainians had a right to expect more.
This principle of focusing on US interests at the expense of Ukraine’s interests played out and finally came to a head when the US started pressuring Ukraine to break off lucrative business ties with Russia and dismantle its Soviet-built industries, draining off much-needed cash from their economy.
There’s no need to ask the Ukrainians if they are happy with these circumstances.
Who’s happy to have a civil war in their country? To have fallen into a debt trap. To be the second-poorest country in Europe? To be at the mercy of a foreign agent?
**
[Don’s notes are in red and in square brackets]
https://euobserver.com/
Even without war, Russia has defeated Europe already
[Don
Vladimir Putin (second left) with senior military officers on Moscow's Red Square. 'Washington just cannot afford a war with Russia now that China has become so powerful' (Photo: Romania Libera)
By JONATHAN HOLSLAG
BRUSSELS, 14. JAN, 07:06
LISTEN TO ARTICLE
Whether or not Vladimir Putin moves his troops into Ukraine, he has once again confronted Europe with a most painful reality: while being too weak to defend itself, it can no longer rely on the United States to come to its rescue.
We are facing a reality in which Russia, despite its economy only having the size of Italy's, can bully and intimidate a continent thanks to its energy reserves and its readiness to project vast military power.
[There’s the old “economy the size of Italy’s” saw. No Russophobic “analyst” would leave home without it. But there’s another way of looking at it: https://www.quora.com/What-
Sure, any Russian invasion of Ukraine would cost Russia a fortune and likely degrade into a grinding war of attrition. Invasion is unlikely to be president Putin's preferred option. Yet, this game of brinkmanship has another part of the equation. If Russia invades Ukraine, the costs for Europe will be equally devastating.
It will force gas-addicted European countries to find expensive alternatives and to severe billions in infrastructure, from pipelines, over pumping stations, to dedicated storages.
Russia also remains a key export destination and a supplier of other resources than oil and gas. Think of titanium. While the Kremlin has long prepared a gradual decoupling from Europe, the opposite remains unthinkable for most Europeans.
While a sizeable part of the Russian population would support an intervention in the eastern part of Ukraine, citizens in many European countries will find it hard to accept soldiers to die for what they consider a strange, peripheral country: Ukraine.
Countless times, I have heard very senior European business leaders sympathise with the leadership of Putin, to the point that one got the impression that they were more attracted to Russian strong leadership than Western liberalism.
Cannon fodder
Let's also be fair. If, at this stage, European countries would have to stand up to a large Russian land invasion, many soldiers would end up as cannon fodder.
Western European land forces have decayed into a bulky peace corps, their wheeled armoured vehicles hardly suitable for combat in the muddy battlefields in eastern Europe, their fire power no match for Russia's, and their command and communication infrastructure highly-vulnerable to Russia's immense electronic war-fighting capabilities.
Chasing poorly-equipped terrorists is one thing; facing a formidable conventional army, ready for sacrifice yet another.
Many European land forces struggle with a predator complex from the 'Global War on Terror'. They are used to being superior, at least in terms of technology and fire-power, and have huge difficulties imagining that the hunter of the last decade might become the hunted in a large-scale conflict.
The whole strategic mindset in that regard has become skewed towards defense; tactics towards limited surgical offense, often even from a distance.
Stand-off, it is called. Land powers like Russia have also trained in precision and long-range strikes, yet always combined with blunt power: wearing volleys of missiles and artillery and big division-size units moving in.
Sacrifice and attrition
If everything in Europe is about efficiency; armed forces like Russia still factor in sacrifice, redundancy, and attrition. Clean wars do not exist in the Russian strategic lexicon.
Europe has a lack of everything. Even if it tries to steer clear of frontline involvement, supporting from behind will not be much in evidence either. Many countries lack stand-off missiles or their ammunition stockpiles are dangerously low. Advanced fighter jets, capable of penetrating Russia's air defence, are still rare. Special forces that would, a crucial asset, are stuck in Africa and struggle to enlist enough quality recruits.
The US is slowly restocking their arsenals, with new long-range precise ammunitions, but will prefer to send them to the Pacific. It preserves a sizeable conventional deterrence in Europe, including 70,000 troops, hundreds of prepositioned armoured vehicles and dozens of fighter jets.
Yet, this is not sufficient to counter a Russian invasion in a country like Ukraine - and Washington just cannot afford a war with Russia now that China has become so powerful.
We can endlessly reflect on what drives Russia in amassing its vast military presence on Ukraine's border, on how we came to this point, the misgivings and frustrations on both sides.
What is clear, however, is that we enter a new tournament of great power politics and that Europe arrives at the start not as a strong, unified team, but as throng of plump puerile pygmies.
AUTHOR BIO
AUTHOR BIO
Jonathan Holslag teaches international politics at the Free University Brussels and guest lectures at the Nato Defense College. His latest book is World Politics since 1989 (Polity, September 2021).
https://avia-pro.net/news/
Syria can be accepted into the CSTO and send thousands of peacekeepers to the country
[you gotta watch these avia-pro translations. They, the Syrians, will not send peacekeepers. They will have them sent. And that will turn the tide in the Syrian war between Russia, Syria, Turkey and Israel. Remember that Turkey and US were not invited – are their illegally, and that Israel is unlawfully attacking with its missiles, accomplishing nothing but provocation and killing innocent people- In addition, the US is at war with the Syrian PEOPLE, stealing the oil and wheat they need to survive and rebuild, and imposing baseless sanctions to harm them even more economically]
If Syria is accepted into the CSTO, Turkey, Israel and the United States will have huge problems.
Against the background of new information that Syria could be accepted into the CSTO countries, it became known that in this case, Russia, as well as other CSTO countries, may well send their troops to the Arab Republic because of the forces illegally stationed here called the international coalition, pro-Turkish terrorists and Israeli aggression. Such a strategy can be extremely effective in quickly freeing Syria from various terrorist formations, as well as in restoring peace in this country as soon as possible.
According to experts, despite the fact that the information about the possible admission of Syria to the CSTO was perceived with ridicule in the West, experts note that Russian peacekeepers and the peacekeeping forces of other countries have demonstrated a high degree of training in suppressing protests in Kazakhstan.
“Only three thousand peacekeepers arrived in Kazakhstan, and this was enough to suppress the activities of terrorists [which Western msn and politicians cynically called “protesters,” though they destroyed infrastructure worth $92 million]. It is clear that, if necessary, Russia and other CSTO countries can deploy 10-20 thousand troops to Syria and thereby quickly take control of the situation.”, - notes the specialist Avia.pro.
Moreover, according to foreign analysts, in the near future Russia may well follow a similar path. Moreover, this will probably apply not only to Syria, but also to Iran, which will become a huge problem for the United States and Israel.
**
NO, Western friends, maybe NOT Cuba and Venezuela but IRAN
Russia doesn’t think rectilinearly like Westerners, who are now predicting Russian bases in Cuba and Venezuela. Russian commentators are now saying the most strategic place for a strategic partnership is Iran.
https://tass.com/world/1390491
Tehran hands over to Moscow draft agreement on strategic cooperation for 20 years — Raisi
On January 19, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Moscow on his official visit
MOSCOW, January 19. /TASS/. The Iranian side has handed over to Moscow a draft agreement on strategic cooperation for a 20-year period, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said on Wednesday following talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
"We handed over to our Russian colleagues a document on strategic cooperation between our countries which can determine prospects for at least 20 years," he said. According to the Iranian president, "the current level of trade and economic relations [between Iran and Russia] is not satisfactory." "We can increase the level of our trade and economic cooperation by several times," he added.
Raisi also noted "the very good experience of cooperation between Iran and Russia in Syria in combating terrorism." "This experience can create the prerequisites for its expansion and exploitation in other fields. In the present circumstances, it is possible to develop cooperation in the fields of economy, politics, culture, science, technology, defense, and military spheres, as well as security and space issues," the Iranian president pointed out.
"We would like our relations with Russia to be strengthened and comprehensive. These relations won’t be short-term or positional but long-term and strategic," the Iranian head of state noted. In addition, he thanked his Russian counterpart "for facilitating Tehran’s entry into the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization)".
On January 19, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi arrived in Moscow on his official visit. The meeting with Putin was the first since the Iranian politician took office. On January 20, Raisi is expected to speak at Russia’s State Duma and at the Moscow Cathedral Mosque.
**
Hunger is made (II)
German Foreign Policy News is an independent German news site.
This is my translation from the German.
https://www.german-foreign-
Hunger is made (II)
The West is partly to blame for the famine in Afghanistan: Its economy was made dependent during the occupation; US sanctions prevent humanitarian aid.
KABUL/BERLIN/WASHINGTON(Own report) - The current famine in Afghanistan was largely caused by the western powers. This is shown by reports from aid organizations as well as analyses of the Afghan economy during the Western occupation. Accordingly, when the Western powers left the country in August 2021, they left the country in a state of extensive dependence on aid, primarily from the West, which was a logical consequence of the occupation economy. On the other hand, the unchanged US sanctions have cut off Afghanistan from essential imports – such as medicines – as well as from the global financial system; even aid organizations have major problems getting relief supplies into the country and paying their staff on site. Special permits for humanitarian aid are useless because other sanctions continue to apply. 98 percent of Afghans no longer have enough to eat. The US media recalls Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's statement in 1996 that US goals for sanctions policy in Iraq were "worth" the sanctions-related deaths of half a million children at the time.
The heartless witch Madeleine Albright was interviewed on 60 Minutes, where she made this infamous statement. Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/
The Democrat Party remembers her fondly, along with Hillary and her cute little giggle as she said “we came, we saw, he died (chuckle chuckle),” referring to the agonizing demise of Col. Ghaddafi at the hands of the terrorist pals of Obama-Biden.
My translation from Russian
https://www.kp.ru/daily/27351.
"Russian bayonet" at the belly of the United States: why Americans are so annoyed by the possibility of deploying Russian military being deployed in Latin America
Moscow will never allow you to dictate with whom it will be friends and cooperate
Victor BARANETS
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan: "The US will give a strong response if Russia deploys its troops in Latin America."
What the…! As soon as Moscow hinted that in response to NATO's further advance to its borders, it might ask Cuba or Venezuela to "shelter" our military facilities, an irritated cry was heard from Washington: "The United States will give a decisive answer if Russia deploys its troops in Latin America. If Russia moves in this direction, we will deal with it in a decisive manner, "that's what National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at a meeting with reporters.
I just want to say to him: So, from now on, Russia is obliged to ask the United States for permission, with which countries it can conduct military cooperation, and with which not? Or does the United States consider all of Latin America to be its patrimony? Yes, and it turns out very unfairly: dozens of American military facilities and bases are deployed on the European continent, near Russia, but we can’t “lodge” in Latin America? Where and in what UN documents is it stated that the issues of military or economic cooperation between Russia and the countries of sacred Latin America must necessarily be coordinated with Washington? And if, for example, the governments of Cuba and Venezuela officially turn to Moscow for military assistance, will the United States slap their wrists? Well, we are not the American boors who, without the permission of the UN and the legitimate government of Syria, brazenly entered this country, and when they were asked to get out, they didn’t so much as react.
I understand that just the thought that not even nuclear, but operational-tactical Russian missiles, which in the event of a tussle will reach both Washington and New York, may be even 90 miles from US territory, makes Americans shiver like a puppy. The "Russian bayonet" held at the belly of the United States is a very uncomfortable thing. And in what "decisive way" do the Americans intend to react to the possible deployment of Russian units in Cuba and Venezuela? Bomb them or sink our ships and submarines on their way to these countries? Or shoot down military transport aircraft? What if they do not have military equipment, but oil equipment? So maybe we will then have to do the same if US ships and aircraft continue to supply weapons to their bases in Japan or Ukraine?
[Just as a reminder, when Trump threatened to invade Venezuela, the Russians sent in some warplanes including Two nuclear-capable Tu-160s and Trump never again brought up the issue of invading Venezuela. And when the Venezuelan First Interim Lady Fabiana Rosales, wife of “Interim President” Juan Guaido, showed up at the White House for a TV interview with Trump, and a reporter asked about the Russians in Venezuela, Trump blurted out “the Russians must go. What’s your next question?”
Do you remember the Russians quickly running away? All US military rhetoric is bluff now that the Russians are there to interdict the Pentagon.]
Yes, guys, you haven’t been beaten for a long time if you decide that everything that is allowed by the United States is unacceptable for Russia. Won’t work. The brains of American politicians and generals have clearly not had of the dirty "ideology of omnipotence" washed out. They still feel like the rulers of the globe, for whom everything is permitted. And who believe that opponents should only play by American rules (don't the recent talks in Geneva and Brussels confirm this?).
[Yes, but to be honest. It’s not just the elites. There is a lot of residual American omnipotence left in the minds of the US little guy as well. Americans are still revulsed by candidates who talk peace instead of war. Their biggest hangup in politics is “my president (or my political party) is tougher on Putin than yours.” As long as John Q. Public continues to think in cowboy terms, there will be no peace until the US gets its butt handed to it definitively. The public did not inherit Jake Sullivan. It created him]
And Russia is no longer the “trophy of the Cold War” or “obedient girl” as it was perceived in the United States in the 90s, after the fall of the USSR. But Washington is far from being the "director of the planet." Moscow will never allow him to dictate with whom to be friends and cooperate. And it will interfere, - we will also answer “in the most decisive way” ...
Read on WWW.KP.RU: https://www.kp.ru/daily/27351.
**
Here’s why it is silly to keep saying “Putin wants to invade Ukraine.” No, Putin doesn’t want to invade. BIDEN needs him to invade!
http://smoothiex12.blogspot.
Wednesday, January 19, 2022
Desperately. In this particular instance the war is more needed on Democrat's side of the isle due to a variety of reasons, which are:
1. US being caught in the Catch 22 of Russia's "ultimatum" and having no other ideas about how to extricate itself from Ukraine's conundrum;
2. The coming trashing of Democrats at the upcoming mid-terms, aggravated by POTUS' "excellent" rating;
3. With Democrats' agenda imploding as I type this and massive systemic crisis engulfing combined West.
The US, being geopolitically one trick pony, is hell-bent on pushing Russia towards invasion of the country Russians neither want nor need and would prefer NATO (and US with EU) cleaning up and paying for the mess they created in 404. The US desire is so strong that good ol' Joe went on record today.
Of course, it remains a matter of speculation on what conflict POTUS had in mind (maybe he meant China and Taiwan, or whatever), but the truth is--Washington is desperate. So much so that it continues to issue empty threats promising Russia a "catastrophe" and even forbidding Russia any operations with the US Dollar (in Russian). I slowly reach for a pop-corn bucket. Not to be outdone, of course, are all kinds of professional abusers of legislative positions such as Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy promising:
Well, for starters you can look up this Senator's biography filled with studies of combined arms operations, deployments into operational zones, degrees in weapon system integrations... Ah, wait, I am screwing with you. Senator's pathos about "army that's ready to fight" and, especially, which is funny, about population are the occasions on which I always like to enroll the help from Sergei Victorovich Lavrov:
because at this stage one has to ask a question: how else these people want to embarrass their own country by the virtue of them being elected to the positions they are utterly unqualified for? They literally have no grasp of the reality, especially economic one (forget military--it is impossible to explain to average US politician what it is) outside of their constituency. But hey, what do I know. People continue to ask me to comment on this or that statement or talking by one or the other American "expert" on Russia. Read my lips: bar some few exceptions, US academe, including those who specialize in Russia are not experts. They are narrative-mongers, majority of who have no serious skills, background nor experience in anything they try to "analyze" about Russia--this problem is systemic and is due to a complete corruption of the America's education, especially history and military history and over-saturation of the American body-politic by people without any serious education or lawyers. It is literally the situation of auto-mechanic with vocational school performing an open heart surgery and thinking that he knows what he is doing. You can easily predict the result, for a patient.
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