Russian President Vladimir Putin said the United States is planning to deploy five cruisers and 30 destroyers near the Russian border. Should the US make the mistake of attacking Russia, however small the attack may be, Putin will launch nuclear weapons.
Putin’s warning came during a state of the nation address delivered by the Russian president on Thursday, in which he presented a number of new advanced strategic weapon systems. He said he would render all anti-missile capabilities that the US currently has powerless with his new and advanced weapon systems.
“We are greatly concerned by some parts of the new nuclear posture, which reduces the benchmark for the use of nuclear weapons. Whatever soothing words one may try to use behind closed doors, we can read what was written. And it says that these weapons can be used in response to a conventional attack or even a cyber-threat,” he said.
“Our nuclear doctrine says Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons only in response to a nuclear attack or an attack with other weapons of mass destruction against her or her allies, or a conventional attack against us that threatens the very existence of the state.”
“It is my duty to state this: Any use of nuclear weapons against Russia or its allies, be it small-scale, medium-scale or any other scale, will be treated as a nuclear attack on our country. The response will be instant and with all the relevant consequences,” Putin warned. –RT
A nuclear war is not something to take lightly. It would end civilization as we know it. Russian Lieutenant General Evgeny Buzhinsky told RT that by training its European allies to use their nuclear arms, the US is moving towards an atomic war with Russia, forgetting that it would mean the end of the human civilization. The US is also attempting to make a “show of force” against Russia by sending ships to the Black Sea.
*The video below contains some curse words and may not be suitable for those at work or for children.
“This is a gigantic story and nobody’s talking about it,” says Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk. Americans are too busy being bombarded by gun control rhetoric and propaganda in the mainstream media to even realize that the US is posturing for a nuclear war with another nuclear superpower. “We’re rolling the dice with World War 3. That’s not hyperbolic,” Kulinski continued. “So you keep f***ing slowly tumbling toward armageddon and the entire time we all act like there’s not even a story here.”
At a time when the United States is convulsed by anti-Russian hysteria and demonization of Vladimir Putin, a trove of recently declassified Cold War documents reveals the astounding extent of the lies, duplicity and double-dealing engaged in by the western powers with the collapsing Soviet Union in 1990.
I was covering Moscow in those days and met some of the key players in this sordid drama. Ever since, I’ve been writing that the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, and Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, were shamelessly lied to and deceived by the United States, Britain, and their appendage, NATO.
All the western powers promised Gorbachev and Shevardnadze that NATO would not expand eastward by ‘one inch’ if Moscow would pull the Red Army out of East Germany and allow it to peacefully reunify with West Germany. This was a titanic concession by Gorbachev: it led to a failed coup against him in 1991 by Communist hardliners.
The documents released by George Washington University in Washington DC, which I attended for a semester, make sickening reading (see them online). All western powers and statesmen assured the Russians that NATO would not take advantage of the Soviet retreat and that a new era of amity and cooperation would dawn in post-Cold War Europe. US Secretary of State Jim Baker offered ‘ironclad guarantees’ there would be no NATO expansion. Lies, all lies.
Gorbachev was a humanist, a very decent, intelligent man who believed he could end the Cold War and nuclear arms race. He ordered the Red Army back from Eastern Europe. I was in Wunsdorf, East Germany, HQ of the Group of Soviet Forces, Germany, and at Stasi secret police HQ in East Berlin right after the pullout order was given. The Soviets withdrew their 338,000 troops and 4,200 tanks and sent them home at lightening speed.
Western promises made to Soviet leaders by President George W. H. Bush and Jim Baker quickly proved to be empty. They were honorable men but their successors were not. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush quickly began moving NATO into Eastern Europe, violating all the pledges made to Moscow.
The Poles, Hungarians and Czechs were brought into NATO, then Romania and Bulgaria, the Baltic States, Albania, and Montenegro. Washington tried to get the former Soviet Republics of Georgia and Ukraine into NATO. The Moscow-aligned government of Ukraine was overthrown in a US-engineered coup. The road to Moscow was open.
All the bankrupt, confused Russians could do was denounce these eastward moves by the US and NATO. The best response NATO and Washington could come up with was, ‘well, there was no official written promise.’ This is worthy of a street peddler selling counterfeit watches. The leaders of the US, Britain, France, Belgium and Italy all lied. Germany was caught between its honor and imminent reunification. So even its Chancellor Helmut Kohl had to go along with the West’s prevarications.
At the time, I wrote that the best solution would be for the demilitarization of formerly Soviet-controlled Eastern Europe. NATO had no need or business to expand eastward. Doing so would be a constant provocation to Russia, which regarded Eastern Europe as an essential defensive glacis against invasions from the West.
Now, with NATO forces on its western borders, Russia’s deepest fears have been realized.
Today, US military aircraft based on the coasts of Romania and Bulgaria, former Warsaw Pact members, probe Russian airspace over the Black Sea and the vital strategic port of Sevastopol. Washington talks about arming chaotic Ukraine. US and NATO troops are in the Baltic, on Russia’s northwestern borders. Polish right-wingers are beating the war drums against Russia.
In 1990, KGB and CIA agreed to the principal of ‘not one inch’ eastward for NATO. Former US ambassador to Moscow, Jack Matlock, confirms the same agreement. Gorbachev, who is denounced as a foolish idealist by many Russians, trusted the Western powers. He should have had a battalion of New York City garment district shyster lawyers to document his agreements in 1990. He thought he was dealing with honest, honorable men, like himself.
Is it any wonder after this bait and switch diplomacy that Russia has no trust in the Western powers? Moscow watches US-run NATO oozing ever eastwards. Today, Russia’s leaders firmly believe Washington’s ultimate plan is to tear apart Russia and reduce it to an impotent, pauper nation. Two former Western leaders, Napoleon and Hitler, had similar plans.
Instead of carrying on about Hitler’s duplicity after Munich, we should look at our own shameless behavior after 1990.
With its focus on Central Asia and Eastern Europe, the Belt and Road Initiative can be seen as fulfilling a strategy of challenging the West that can be traced back to Mao...
The 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress made it clear that the New Silk Roads – aka, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – launched by President Xi Jinping just four years ago, provides the concept around which all Chinese foreign policy is to revolve for the foreseeable future. Up until the symbolic 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China, in 2049, in fact.
Virtually every nook and cranny of the Chinese administration is invested in making the BRI Grand Strategy a success: economic actors, financial players, state-owned enterprises (SOEs), the private sector, the diplomatic machine, think tanks, and – of course – the media, are all on board.
It’s under this long-term framework that sundry BRI projects should be examined. And their reach, let’s be clear, involves most of Eurasia – including everything from the Central Asian steppes to the Caucasus and the Western Balkans.
Representatives of no fewer than 50 nations are currently gathered in Tbilisi, Georgia, for yet another BRI-related summit. The BRI masterplan details six major economic “corridors,” and one of these is the Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor. That’s where Georgia fits in, alongside neighboring Azerbaijan: both are vying to position themselves as the key Caucasus transit hub between Western China and the European Union.
On the first day of the summit, Georgia’s Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili extolled the drive to “strengthen the economic and civilizational ties between Europe and Asia.” In practice, that translates into a push to build an economic free zone, in accordance with the memorandum of understanding signed by the Chinese and Georgian economic ministers.
Add in the recently inaugurated Baku-Tblisi-Kars railway and a new deep-sea port to be built in Anaklia, in the Black Sea, with Chinese investment, and we have Georgia as a key logistical hub in China-EU connectivity. It helps that, thanks to the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan (BTC) gas pipeline out of the Caspian Sea, Georgia has already been positioned for years as an energy transportation hub.
Crucially, Georgia has signed free trade agreements with both the EU and China, with the latter coming into effect at the start of 2018. It is also maneuvering itself to profit from the interconnection of BRI with the Russian-led Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU). Beijing and Moscow formally signed the BRI/EAEU partnership in June last year – although it will take time for that to translate into actual trade and economic cooperation projects, possibly starting in the Russian Far East.
Mao revisited
The action in the Caucasus was mirrored in Europe earlier in the week as Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban opened the sixth “16+1” summit, involving China and 16 Central and Eastern European nations, in Budapest.
“16+1” is yet another of those trademark Chinese diplomatic “away wins.” Some of these nations are part of the EU, some part of NATO, some neither.
From Beijing’s point of view, what matters is the relentless BRI infrastructure and connectivity drive. Beijing may have invested as much as US$8 billion so far in Central and Eastern Europe.
China is having a ball in the Western Balkans – especially in Serbia, in Montenegro, and in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where EU financial muscle is absent. China has invested in multiple connectivity and energy projects in Serbia – including the much-debated Belgrade-Budapest high-speed rail link. Construction of the Serbian stretch started this week, with 85% of the total cost (roughly€2.4 billion) coming from the Export-Import Bank of China.
The European Commission (EC) in Brussels predictably objected – claiming the tender process might not have complied with EU rules.
The strategic trade importance of Belgrade-Budapest cannot be overestimated. Think container fleets of Chinese merchandise arriving in Piraeus in Greece – a key hub of the so-called Maritime Silk Road – and then being shipped to the EU via Serbia.
In the midst of this frenzy of connectivity, it’s easy to overlook a significant historical point: that it was all anticipated by Mao Zedong.
Scholar Chen Gang has stressed how most BRI-participating nations are not as developed, economically, as China. And they are “not just limited to the Eurasian continent, but will eventually cover all the ‘middle zone’ and ‘third world’ put forward by Mao in his ‘Three Worlds Theory.’”
Flashback to 1974. That’s when Mao described the world as being divided between superpowers (the US and USSR); intermediate powers (Japan, Europe, Canada); and exploited nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia, which Mao praised as constituting the forces against First World hegemony. Mao placed China in the third world – as Deng Xiaoping told the UN.
What’s fascinating is how Chen Gang interprets BRI not only as a sequel to China’s historical ties with the Third World, but also as opening a “new era of China’s Third World strategy.” He correctly states that US and EU elites worry that BRI will bring about “the erosion of their global influence and overseas interests.”
Chen Gang’s analysis touches on what, by now, is obvious: “The international game around BRI has just begun.” And it goes almost without saying that Beijing’s BRI-driven foreign policy strategy, by turbo-charging China’s cooperation with the ‘Global South,’ is leaving the US, at best, marginalized.
The Secretary-General of NATO said this on October 9th, speaking in NATO member Romania, right across the Black Sea from Russia’s region of Crimea (which had always been part of Russia except for the brief period 1954-2014, when the Soviet dictator arbitrarily transferred Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 — i.e., the Soviet dictator had made Crimea ‘Ukrainian’, and only in 2014 was a plebiscite actually held there in order to determine what the people there wanted, and more than 90% chose to be restored to the Russian Government). He said, on October 9th, that NATO is “concerned by Russia’s military buildup close to our borders”, but NATO actually had expanded up to Russia’s borders; in no way had Russia expanded up to NATO’s borders. NATO’s leader was importantly misrepresenting history, there.
In fact, Romania, itself, used to be a member of the former Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact military alliance of nations, which had been set up by the Soviet Union in response to America’s having established in 1949 its NATO military alliance with Western European nations. After the Cold War ended, on Russia’s side, in 1991, and has been secretly continued by the U.S. Government and its allies right up to the present time, Romania became a member of the NATO anti-Russian alliance in 2004, under George W. Bush’s Administration. But Bush’s father, President George Herbert Walker Bush, had, as the U.S. President, established, in 1990, the foundation for what NATO now is doing in Romania, against Russia — even though Russia had, in fact, ended the Cold War on its side, in 1991.
When the Cold War ended in 1991, it was on the basis of the promise by the Soviet Union that the U.S.S.R. would end, and would become its component separate independent states (one of which was Russia), and end its communism, and end its Warsaw Pact military alliance with nations adjoining the Soviet Union - that all of this would happen if the United States and its NATO allies would not expand NATO, and that especially NATO would not move “one inch to the east” (i.e., toward Russia) by adding, to the NATO military alliance, any of the nations (such as Romania) which had been in the Soviet Union’s Warsaw Pact, nor especially any nations that had been a part of the former Soviet Union itself (such as Ukraine). The U.S. Government wants to bring Ukraine into NATO, to become its 29th member-nation. But Ukraine is not yet a member, and NATO therefore doesn’t yet have any legitimate business there, at all. NATO isn’t, and can’t yet be, ‘defending’ Ukraine — no matter how much NATO might possibly want to go to war against Russia.
For NATO to be alleging to be “concerned by Russia’s military buildup close to our borders” is amazing, since NATO is militarily building up not only “close to” Russia’s borders, but right on Russia’s borders (such as in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) and is now seeking to add Ukraine as a member, but already has other formerly Russia-allied nations: Poland, East Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, and, this year, Montenegro - and is attempting to draw in the few remaining ones, but especially Ukraine, which it claims to be ‘defending’.
However, American and other NATO ‘news’media, lie about this entire matter, and present NATO as being purely a ‘defensive’ organization, instead of what it actually is: a major component in the U.S. dictatorship’s effort ultimately to checkmate Russia or else to kill Russians entirely and take over their natural resources to be controlled by U.S. and other international corporations. NATO is an international mega-criminal gang, which enormously increases the likelihood of World War III, but which also is enormously profitable for its ultimate backers, Lockheed Martin and other NATO weapons-makers, whose controlling ownership also happens to own and control, and to advertise their other corporations’ products and services in, the ’news’ media in those nations. Media-profits are thus connected — both directly and indirectly — to that military-industrial complex, which needs invasions, even if it doesn’t actually need to conquer Russia or any other country. But perpetual war for perpetual ‘peace’ is the most essential thing of all for NATO (and, since nuclear weaponry is the most expensive type of all, the anti-Russian agenda is especiallyimportant to NATO, even without Russia’s natural resources). That’s what actually is behind NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg’s speech on October 9th near Russia’s border, in which he alleged, “Our deployments are a direct response to Russia’s aggressive actions in Ukraine,” and, “We are concerned by Russia’s military build-up close to our borders.” He said there, “We do not want to isolate Russia. NATO does not want a new Cold War. Our actions are designed to prevent, not provoke conflict.”(Even Hitler had said, prior to the start of WW II, that he was merely ‘defending’ Germany, against other countries.) He knows, as well as anyone possibly can, that, on the U.S. regime’s side, the Cold War never stopped, and that it has escalated sharply and re-invigorated NATO itself, with the Obama-regime’s takeover of Ukraine, and he knows that the ‘aggression’ which NATO and the U.S. regime blame against Russia, constitute actually Russia’s defensive actions which necessarily result from Obama’s Ukrainian coup on Russia’s very doorstep — a coup which was even documented on recordings, such as here and here (and many other key moments) (and the key background for which coup has, by now, also been documented, going all the way back to 2011, when the planning for organizing Obama’s coup was already begun in 2011 inside the U.S. State Department), and which therefore cannot even be denied (except in the persistently lying U.S.-NATO team’s ‘news’media).
It’s all a big ‘jobs program’ for the U.S. and other extremely corrupt-at-the-top nations - the U.S. aristocracy and its vassal-aristocracies in Europe and elsewhere, and their lying ‘news’media, who can’t deny the evidence, and so they simply ignore the evidence, and they instead stenographically ‘report’ the U.S. Government’s lies as ‘truths’, much the same as had happened prior to the U.S. Government’s invasion of Iraq in 2003, only on a much larger scale now.
So, these ugly facts are not reported in the NATO press, because they’re true - their truth is why they’re not allowed to be broadcast and publicly debated. Their being true is blocking those ‘democracies’ from allowing their respective publics to know anything about any of this.
We are, thus, all living in the type of situation that the allegorical novel 1984 described; but the means by which it operates, in reality, turn out to be far more sophisticated than in the fictional version.
“We are sending a very clear message: NATO is here, NATO is strong and NATO is united,” Stoltenberg told assembled Polish, Romanian, Spanish and Portuguese soldiers.
The force is there to target Russia in the Black Sea region.
Romania insisted the deployment is “not a threat to Russia” and that the purpose of having more troops there to “target” Russia is “peace, not war.”
“We are not a threat for Russia. But we need dialogue from a strong position of defense and discouragement,”
900 US troops were deployed to Romania to participate in this force.
Since Russia doesn’t border NATO anywhere in the Black Sea region, the force appears to be largely pointless, except for additional grandstanding about NATO’s “readiness” for a fight with “invading” Russian forces, in an invasion that’s been predicted for years.
This appears to be an attempt to mirror the creation of NATO’s much larger Baltic forces, which are all deployed at or near the Russian frontier, and which see large western military contingents placed in tiny Baltic states.
The answer to the question in the title of this article is that Russiagate was created by CIA director John Brennan.
The CIA started what is called Russiagate in order to prevent Trump from being able to normalize relations with Russia.
The CIA and the military/security complex need an enemy in order to justify their huge budgets and unaccountable power. Russia has been assigned that role.
The Democrats joined in as a way of attacking Trump. They hoped to have him tarnished as cooperating with Russia to steal the presidential election from Hillary and to have him impeached. I don’t think the Democrats have considered the consequence of further worsening the relations between the US and Russia.
Public Russia-bashing pre-dates Trump. It has been going on privately in neoconservative circles for years, but appeared publicly during the Obama regime when Russia blocked Washington’s plans to invade Syria and to bomb Iran.
Russia bashing became more intense when Washington’s coup in Ukraine failed to deliver Crimea. Washington had intended for the new Ukrainian regime to evict the Russians from their naval base on the Black Sea. This goal was frustrated when Crimea voted to rejoin Russia.
The neoconservative ideology of US world hegemony requires the principal goal of US foreign policy to be to prevent the rise of other countries that can serve as a restraint on US unilateralism. This is the main basis for the hostility of US foreign policy toward Russia, and of course there also is the material interests of the military/security complex.
Russia bashing is much larger than merely Russiagate.
The danger lies in Washington convincing Russia that Washington is planning a surprise attack on Russia. With US and NATO bases on Russia’s borders, efforts to arm Ukraine and to include Ukraine and Georgia in NATO provide more evidence that Washington is surrounding Russia for attack. There is nothing more reckless and irresponsible than convincing a nuclear power that you are going to attack.
Washington is fully aware that there was no Russian interference in the presidential election or in the state elections.
The military/security complex, the neoconservatives, and the Democratic Party are merely using the accusations to serve their own agendas.
These selfish agendas are a dire threat to life on earth.
Today, Moscow kicked off its controversial, week-long "Zapad-2017" drill, the latest iteration of a series of training maneuvers that began under the Soviet Union in the 1970s, and which has angered and put NATO and Baltic States leaders on edge. Land, sea and air units will be taking part in war games until the 21st of September across a huge area encompassing western Russia, Belarus, the Baltic Sea and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.
After a long break following the collapse of communism, Zapad, or "west" in Russian, was revived in 1999 and then was expanded after Vladimir Putin became president at the end of that year. Previous versions were held in 2009 and 2013. Moscow says fewer than 13,000 troops are participating - the threshold for inviting international observers - but NATO members believe as many as 100,000 troops will be involved in the drills. That would make this year"s drill the biggest display of Russian military power since the end of the Cold War a quarter-century ago.
Foreign observers from NATO were never allowed to watch Soviet-era Zapad exercises, and diplomats based in Moscow were barred from visiting regions where the exercises were taking place. That was supposed to change with the signing of the Vienna Document, adopted in 1990 by the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and updated in 2011, but Russia has always found ways to circumvent the agreement.
In the drill, Russia and Belarus will deploy their troops, designated as "the Northern ones" to stand up to the aggression from "the Western ones" – armed attackers from the made-up countries of Vesbaria, Lubenia, and Veishnoria. According to the scenario released by Russian and Belarusian defense officials, Vesbaria and Lubenia are located in the Baltic region and control the corridor which links the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad with Belarus.
In the real world, the corridor roughly corresponds to the border between Lithuania and Poland, both of them NATO members. The hypothetical state of Veishnoria, however, is located in the Grodno area of Belarus, near the country"s western border. Experts cited by DW see this as a sign that Minsk and Moscow are preparing scenarios for threats originating in NATO countries as well as from within Belarus. The Grodno area seems to have a special significance as the home for a large population of Poles living in the former Soviet state. However, military officials insist that the scenario was developed "against a hypothetical opponent, unrelated to the concrete region."
What is the goal of the drill?
"Belarus and the Kaliningrad region have been infiltrated by extremist groups with the intention of committing terrorist attacks. The illegal militias are backed from abroad, providing them with armaments and naval and air capabilities. In order to neutralize the opponents, land forces will be deployed to cut off their access to sea and block air corridors in the region, with the support of the air force, air defense forces, and the navy," the official plan says.
The goal of the Zapad-2017 maneuvers is to coordinate actions between regional military commands "in the interest of ensuring military safety," Moscow and Minsk said. "The Republic of Belarus strives to prevent armed conflicts, and the Russian federation is providing it with political backing, financial aid, as well as technical and military support," according to the Belarusian Defense Ministry.
The drill is set to proceed in two stages. Initially, the military will boost their air force and air defense capabilities to protect key military and state objects, and prepare to "isolate regions of activity by the illegal armed groups and their subversive-reconnaissance squads." The second stage will be "to work out the issues of managing troops while repelling an aggression" against Russia and Belarus.
Who will take part?
Officially, the two countries say that some 12,700 servicemen will be involved in the upcoming drills. "Zapad-2017" will also involve 70 planes and helicopters, 280 tanks, 200 artillery weapons, ten ships, 200 "heavy weapons and guns" and various other pieces of military equipment. The drills will also include agents of the Russian intelligence service FSB, as well as people working for the Russian Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Emergency Situations.
However, NATO allies have repeatedly disputed these numbers, with German Defense Minister Ursula Von der Leyen claiming the real number is likely to be upwards of 100,000 troops. International accords mandate that countries provide a larger degree of transparency when holding drills with over 13,000 troops.
Last weekend, Russia’s Defense Ministry said it was "bewildered" by Von der Leyen"s assertion, and repeated its claims that drill would stay below the 13,000 threshold. Previously, the Kremlin has asked foreign defense officials and military-diplomatic corps to visit the final stage of the joint exercise at one of the sites in Russia. Belarus also stated that it had sent out invitations to UN, OSCE, NATO, the post-Soviet Commonwealth of Independent States, and military attaches accredited in Belarus.
Despite a global anti-Russian wave that would make McCarthy blush, so-called experts don"t believe that Russia is about to launch a war, at least not yet , according to NBC. "NATO remains calm and vigilant, and committed to keeping Estonia and all our allies safe," NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said last week in Estonia, one of the tiny Baltic nations that borders Russia and often worries about undue influence from Moscow. But not everyone in the region is so sanguine. In Lithuania, another Baltic nation that was once part of the Soviet Union, Defense Minister Raimundas Karoblis summed up the mood.
"We can"t be totally calm. There is a large foreign army massed next to Lithuanian territory," he told Reuters.
Other Western officials, including the head of the U.S. Army in Europe, Gen. Ben Hodges, have raised concerns that Russia might use the drills as a "Trojan horse" to make incursions into Poland and Russian-speaking regions in the Baltics. Hodges made the comment in a Reuters interview in July.
There are fears that Moscow may be moving far more troops into Belarus than it intends to withdraw, establishing a permanent military presence there on the border with NATO countries. And officials in the Baltics and Poland have voiced alarm that the exercises could be used as a cover for Russian aggression, as happened in 2014, when Moscow staged large-scale exercises to camouflage preparations to intervene on the side of pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine.
NATO is also concerned: "Russia is not organizing defensive operations but instead an offensive threat, testing how serious we are about protecting the members of NATO," said Jonathan Eyal, international director of the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank. Belarus not only borders Russia, but also three of America"s key but relatively isolated NATO allies: Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia.
"Russia is reminding us that the Baltic states are relatively indefensible," Eyal added according to NBC. "They want to see where the cracks are in NATO and where they can be widened."
Stoltenberg, the NATO secretary general, said he could not speculate about the real purpose of Zapad-2017, saying that this would become clear only once it was over next week. At the same time, he noted, the exercise fits a “pattern of a more assertive Russia” that is “exercising more aggressively” and, through its actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, has shown that “it is willing to use military force against its neighbors.”
In hypothetical scenarios played out by the Rand Corporation last year found that it would take Russian forces just 60 hours to reach the outskirts of the Estonian and Latvian capitals of Tallinn and Riga.
In terms of this year"s Zapad exercise, what concerns some officials and experts is they aren"t exactly sure how big they will be. There are also questions about Putin"s true intention. The last Zapad exercise, in 2013, featured "more than 75,000 men, who were engaged in simulated operations in the air, on land and at sea," according to a report by The Jamestown Foundation, a Washington-based research institute. For comparison, last year 24 NATO members held a military exercise named "Anakonda," which included more than 31,000 service members.
Whatever the number, the exercises come against the backdrop of several close encounters between Russian and NATO aircraft and ships in recent years.
"There"s always a possibility for miscalculation when that"s going on," Gen. Curtis M. Scaparrotti, NATO"s supreme allied commander, told reporters last month, referring to these near-misses. "I think that"s the importance of transparency, particularly on Russia"s part, to tell us about [the Zapad] exercise: What should we expect to see, what is the size of them, where will they operate?"
* * *
What is far less mentioned in the western press, is that are pointed out earlier, Belarus had previously invited international monitors from various foreign countries to observe the active phase of the drills.
“We are not planning to attack anyone. In terms of what the drills will be like – we’ve invited almost anyone who wants to attend. Let them come and watch,” Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko stated in September. In July, Belarusian Defense Minister Andrey Ravkov, also stressed that international organizations, including the UN, NATO, and the OSCE, as well as more than 80 foreign observers, are invited to the drills since there is “nothing to conceal.”
Finally, while the world’s attention is focused on Zapad 2017, NATO and its allies have increased their military activity on Russia"s borders.
Launching today, by odd coincidence, Sweden is holding its largest war games in over two decades, timed to start at the same time as the Russia-Belarus drills. Apart from exceeding the number of troops participating in Zapad 2017 by several thousand, the maneuvers are aimed to prepare for a possible Russian attack.
Moreover, around 40,000 NATO troops and allied forces have taken part in various military drills in Europe this summer, according to Air Force Brigadier General John Healy, who directs the drills of US forces in Europe. Eighteen NATO exercises, including Noble Partner in Georgia, occurred in the Black Sea Region alone, close to the Russian border, in summer 2017. At the same time Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria joined separate US-led Saber Guardian 2017, which took place this summer. Around 25,000 service members from 22 allied and partner nations were involved in the drills, making them the largest of the 18 Black Sea region exercises this year. Earlier, Ukraine hosted the US-led Sea Breeze 17 naval drills, involving around 2,500 troops and more than 30 ships from 17 participating countries.
More than 50,000 jihadists are now living in Europe. - Gilles de Kerchove, EU Counterterrorism Coordinator.
Europol, the European police office, has identified at least 30,000 active jihadist websites, but EU legislation no longer requires internet service providers to collect and preserve metadata - including data on the location of jihadists - from their customers due to privacy concerns. De Kerchove said this was hindering the ability of police to identify and deter jihadists.
German authorities are hunting for dozens of members of one of the most violent jihadist groups in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, but who, according to Der Spiegel, entered Germany disguised as refugees.
The men, all former members of Liwa Owais al-Qorani, a rebel group destroyed by the Islamic State in 2014, are believed to have massacred hundreds of Syrians, both soldiers and civilians.
German police have reportedly identified around 25 of the jihadists and apprehended some of them, but dozens more are believed to be hiding in cities and towns across Germany.
In all, more than 400 migrants who entered Germany as asylum seekers in 2015 and 2016 are now being investigated for being members of Middle Eastern jihadists groups,according to the Federal Criminal Police (Bundeskriminalamt, BKA).
The revelation comes amid new warnings that jihadists are posing as migrants and arriving from North Africa on boats across the Mediterranean and onto Italian shores. In an interview with The Times, Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj said that jihadists who had been able to pass undetected into his country were almost certainly making their way into Europe.
"When migrants reach Europe they will move freely," said al-Sarraj, referring to the open borders within the European Union. "If, God forbid, there are terrorist elements among the migrants, any incident will affect all of the EU."
"These comments show the problem to be two-fold. Firstly, potential terrorists are using the Mediterranean migrant trail as a way of entering Europe unchecked. Secondly, with Europe"s lack of borders due to Schengen rules, once in Europe, they are able to move from one country to another freely. Strong borders are a necessity."
Around 130,000 migrants arrived in Europe by land and sea during the first eight months of 2017,according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The main nationalities of arrivals to Italy in July were, in descending order: Nigeria, Bangladesh, Guinea, Ivory Coast and Mali. Arrivals to Greece were from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Congo. Arrivals to Bulgaria were from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Turkey.
In recent weeks, traffickers bringing migrants to Europe have opened up a new route through the Black Sea. On August 13, 69 Iraqi migrants were arrested trying to reach the Romanian Black Sea coast, having set off from Turkey in a yacht piloted by Bulgarian, Cypriot and Turkish smugglers. On August 20, the Romanian Coast Guard intercepted another boat carrying 70 Iraqis and Syrians, including 23 children, in the Black Sea in Romania"s southeastern Constanta region.
A total of 2,474 people were detained while trying to cross the Romanian border illegally during the first six months of 2017, according to Balkan Insight. Almost half of them were caught while trying to leave Romania for Hungary. In 2016 only 1,624 migrants were detained; most were found trying to cross from Serbia to Romania.
Meanwhile, more than 10,000 migrants reached Spanish shores during the first eight months of 2017 — three times as many as in all of 2016, according to the IOM. Thousands more migrants have entered Spain by land, primarily at the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the north coast of Morocco, the European Union"s only land borders with Africa. Once there, migrants are housed in temporary shelters and then moved to the Spanish mainland, from where many continue on to other parts of Europe.
Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, has warned that jihadists are using the migration crisis to enter Europe and plot attacks across the continent. Frontex It has also conceded that it does not know the true number of migrants who have crossed into Europe and has no way of tracking them. In its annual risk analysis for 2016, Frontex wrote:
"The Paris attacks in November 2015 clearly demonstrated that irregular migratory flows could be used by terrorists to enter the EU. Two of the terrorists involved in the attacks had previously irregularly entered through Leros [Greece] and had been registered by the Greek authorities. They presented fraudulent Syrian documents to speed up their registration process.
"False declarations of nationality are rife among nationals who are unlikely to obtain asylum in the EU, are liable to be returned to their country of origin or transit, or just want to speed up their journey. With a large number of persons arriving with false or no identification documents or raising concerns over the validity of their claimed nationality — with no thorough check or penalties in place for those making such false declarations, there is a risk that some persons representing a security threat to the EU may be taking advantage of this situation."
In an August 31 interview with the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, Gilles de Kerchove, the EU"s Counterterrorism Coordinator said that more than 50,000 jihadists are now living in Europe:
"Three years ago, it was easy to identify someone who has become radicalized. Now, most fanatics disguise their convictions. We do not have exact figures, but it is not difficult to do approximate calculations. United Kingdom, it is not a secret, it has been published, it has 20,000. France, 17,000. Spain much less, but more than 5,000, I suppose. In Belgium almost 500 have gone to Syria and there are about 2,000 radicals or more. I would not venture to a specific figure, but tens of thousands, more than 50,000."
Masked Spanish policemen in Madrid arrest a man suspected of recruiting jihadists to fight for the Islamic State, June 16, 2014. (Photo by Gonzalo Arroyo Moreno/Getty Images)
In an interview with the Belgian daily Le Soir, de Kerchove warned that even if the Islamic State is militarily defeated, it will continue to thrive as a "virtual caliphate." He also said that Europol, the European police office, has identified at least 30,000 active jihadist websites, but that EU legislation no longer requires internet service providers to collect and preserve metadata — including data on the location of jihadists — from their customers due to privacy concerns. De Kerchove said this was hindering the ability of police to identify and deter jihadists: "On metadata, I confess that we pull our hair out."
United States Naval Construction Battalions, better known as the Seabees (C.B. – construction battalion), of the Naval Construction Force held a groundbreaking ceremony for a maritime operations center on Ochakov Naval Base, Ukraine, July 25. According to the Navy.mil, the official website of the US Navy, the maritime operations center is one of three projects that are currently planned to be executed by the Seabees in Ochakov and will serve as a major planning and operational hub during future military exercises hosted by Ukraine. The Seabees arrived in Ochakov in April to establish contracts, obtain construction permits and perform other logistical tasks for the maritime operations center project.
Maritime operations centers are the operational-level warfare command and control organizations designed to deliver flexible maritime capabilities throughout the full range of military operations. The future Seabee projects in Ochakov include a boat maintenance facility and entry control points with perimeter fencing.
«Our ability to maximize European reassurance initiatives in Ukraine holds strategic importance, and will ultimately improve host nation defense capacity and infrastructure, strengthen relations, and increase bilateral training capabilities», said Lt. j.g. Jason McGee, officer in charge of Det. Ukraine.
In July, several US missile warships, including the USS Hue City Ticonderoga-class guided-missile cruiser and the USS Carney Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer, a P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft and a Navy SEALs team took part in the 12-day Sea Breeze 2017 NATO naval exercise held in the northwestern part of the Black Sea, near the port city of Odessa. 17 nations took part in the training event.
The drills were conducted in the "free game" format in the Odessa and Nikolayev regions and the northwestern areas of the Black Sea. The practice scenarios cover amphibious warfare. The only country the forces could be training to assault is Russia.
During the exercise, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made his first visit to Ukraine (July 9) to demonstrate the political support of Kiev’s policy aimed at integration with the United States and NATO. He was accompanied by Kurt Volker, the newly appointed US Special Representative to the Minsk peace process, who is known as a hawk against Moscow.
The US political support is not gratuitous. In late June, the Ukrainian government took a decision to buy American coal from Pennsylvania, which is said to be almost twice as expensive as locally sourced in the Donbass – Ukraine’s traditional supplier of energy needs.
In July, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signed the Law of Ukraine «On Amendments to Certain Laws of Ukraine Regarding the Foreign Policy of Ukraine», which determines membership of the Alliance as one of the country’s foreign policy priorities. Poroshenko said that a referendum on NATO membership would be held by 2020.
Ukraine takes part in a host of NATO exercises: Operation Fearless Guardian, Exercise Sea Breeze, Saber Guardian/Rapid Trident, Safe Skies and Combined Resolve. It became the first non-member country to contribute its troops to the NATO Response Force.
On June 8, Ukraine’s parliament adopted a bill called «On Amending Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine (on Foreign Policy Course of Ukraine), setting NATO membership as Ukraine’s foreign policy goal, replacing the country’s non-aligned status.
The United States will deliver lethal weapons to Ukraine. The Joint Staff is working with US European Command to determine what the lethal defensive aid to Ukraine would look like. The House version of the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) cuts military aid to Ukraine from the initial $300 million to $150 million, but it provides permission for lethal arms supplies. The idea is strongly supported in the Senate. If the legislation goes through, the weapons could be legally sent to Ukraine starting October 1. The money could be used to deliver over 900 FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missiles designed to strike armored vehicles, fortified ground installations and low flying aerial targets at a distance of 50-2,500 meters.
Former President Barack Obama was unconvinced that granting Ukraine lethal defensive weapons would be the right decision in view of corruption widespread in Ukraine. Skepticism about sending weapons to Ukraine is common in Europe. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier opposed the idea. NATO Military Committee Chairman Petr Pavel has spoken against lethal arms deliveries to Kiev.
A recently published RAND study says that the country faces deeply embedded problems which cannot easily be solved by foreign-provided assistance.
A US military facility near Russia’s borders is a very serious threat to regional security.
The Black Sea region is turning into a hot spot. US destroyers and cruisers visit the Black Sea regularly to provide NATO with long-range first strike capability. The Romania-based Aegis Ashore BMD system uses the Mk-41 launcher capable of firing Tomahawk long-range precision-guided missiles against land assets.
Romania has worked energetically to increase US and NATO force presence in the region. The US has recently taken the decision to send an additional 500 forces to the Romanian Mihail Kogalniceanu (MK) forward operating base. A brigade-size multinational NATO force is based in Craiova, Romania. Nations which have pledged to contribute include Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Turkey and the United States. The unit is intended to facilitate the deployment of reinforcements. Georgia and Ukraine will be fully involved in the plans.
Romania calls for a regular trilateral format of joint naval exercises in the Black Sea, along with Turkey and Bulgaria, with the eventual participation of non-littoral NATO members.
The United Kingdom has decided to deploy four Typhoon aircraft to Mihail Kogalniceanu in 2017. Deveselu, Romania, is home for Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense site and a target for the Russian military.
Bulgaria has offered to participate in the Multinational Framework Brigade stationed in Romania with 400 troops. In September, about 150 US Marines, part of the Black Sea Rotational Force, are due at Novo Selo, Bulgaria. This will be the first of three six-month rotations of about 150 US Marines, part of the Black Sea Rotational Force. Under the 2006 defense cooperation agreement, the United States has access to three Bulgarian military bases.
The US plans to deploy up to 2,500 troops at Novo Selo; the base can hold as many as 5,000 during joint-nation exercises with NATO allies. The facility’s upgrade is finished to add a helicopter landing zone and an air operations building. The base is expected to host US heavy tanks. A NATO maintenance support area is to be built in Sliven or Plovdiv. This is a serious military build-up turning Bulgaria into springboard to attack Russia or a target for the Russia’s armed forces.
It’s hardly a wise decision to militarize the country against Russia when 80 percent of Bulgarian exports and imports transit the Black Sea and tourism contributes heavily to the country’s economy, increased maritime militarization could have a widespread negative economic impact in case of heightened tensions, accidents or clashes.
Since September, 2016 US and Bulgarian aircraft conduct patrol flights in the Black Sea. The patrolling mission greatly increases the risk of an accident, especially with the Russian S-400 long range systems stationed in Crimea. Russian aircraft deployed in the Northern Caucasus and Rostov region are capable of controlling the whole Black Sea. President Putin has warned NATO about the consequences such a policy would lead to.
Non-Black Sea NATO members cannot stay in the Black Sea for more than 21 days, according to the Montreux Convention. NATO has three members with Black Sea ports in Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey, as well as two more aspiring members in Ukraine and Georgia. Bulgarian, Romanian, Ukrainian and Georgian navies have limited capabilities. Handing over to them some of other NATO members’ warships is an option under consideration. The ships could be reflagged to beef up permanent naval capabilities in the theater. US warships frequent the Black Sea to provide NATO with long-range first strike capability.
The Romania-based missile defense system as well as NATO air bases and headquarters will be targeted by Russian Kalibr sea- and air-based medium-range cruise missiles successfully tested in Syria some time ago. The active phase array antenna-based radar, located in Romania, can be countered by Russian ground and air-based electronic warfare systems.
In response to NATO growing presence, Russia has deployed S-400 long-range air-defense systems and Bastion-P (K-300P) anti-ship coastal defense missile systems equipped with Onyx missiles. These Mach 2.6 supersonic missiles are highly maneuverable, difficult to detect and have a range of nearly 300 kilometers. With the help of the Monolith-B radar station, the system is capable of obtaining over-the-horizon target designation many miles beyond the horizon. The long-range cruise missile capable Su-24 supersonic attack aircraft are already deployed in Crimea.
Russia has to react in view of massive militarization of the region against the background of high tensions. An accident may spark a big fire. The US military presence in Ukraine is a highly provocative step, which will very negatively affect the situation. Nothing justifies the whipping up of tensions in the Black Sea region, but the United States keeps on doing it with great vigor.
Turkish-German relations were already at a breaking point before Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan accused Germany on Monday of assisting terrorists by not responding to thousands of files sent to Berlin or handing over suspects wanted by Turkish authorities.
Already tense relations deteriorated further last month after Turkey arrested 10 rights activists, including a German, as part of a wider security crackdown. A Turkish prosecutor has accused them of links to the network of Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara blames for a failed coup in July 2016. The U.S.-based Gulen denies any involvement. Turkey accuses Germany of sheltering Kurdish and far-leftist militants as well as military officers and other people linked to the abortive coup. Berlin denies the accusations. Tensions between Berlin and Ankara were already running high after the arrest of a Turkish-German journalist and Turkey"s refusal to allow German lawmakers to visit troops at a Turkish air base.
And now, as Reuters reports, Erdogan told a conference in the Black Sea province of Rize, in comments likely to further escalate tensions between the two countries.
"Germany is abetting terrorists,"
"We gave (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel 4,500 dossiers, but have not received an answer on a single one of them," he told members of his ruling AK Party.
"When there is a terrorist, they can tell us to give that person back. You won"t send the ones you have to us, but can ask us for yours. So you have a judiciary, but we don"t in Turkey?" he said.
In Berlin, a German government source rejected Erdogan"s latest remarks.
"Everything has really been said about this," said the source.
"Repeating the same accusations over and over again does not make them any more true."
Perhaps it is this constant tirade by Erdogan that prompted Turks to import the most gold ever in July... as insurance against the idiocy of politicians...
As Bloomberg reports, Turkey purchased 62,848 kilograms of gold from abroad in July, according to the Borsa Istanbul precious metals exchange, a 13-fold increase compared to the same period last year. That’s equivalent to about $2.5 billion, according to Bloomberg calculations using the average gold price in July. Year-to-date gold imports rose to 237 tons, a seven-fold increase over last year.
[image: John J. Mike/flickr/CC-BY-2.0]Imagine the following scenario. One or more Chinese or Russian warships provocatively enter the Gulf of Mexico, or perhaps intrude close to America’s east or west coast, sailing into its territorial waters – after being warned not to.
Washington would likely consider the intrusion an act of war – with full media support. Yet US warships provoke Russia in the Black Sea and China near its Xisha and Nansha Islands repeatedly – showing its own sovereignty matters, no one else’s.
In response to Washington’s latest intrusion, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang responded sharply, saying:
“Under the (phony) pretext of ‘freedom of navigation,’ the US side once again sent a military vessel into China’s territorial waters off the Xisha Islands without (its) approval.”
Washington clearly “violated Chinese law and relevant international law, infringed upon China’s sovereignty, and disrupted the peace, security and order of the relevant waters.”
“China dispatched military vessels and fighter planes in response to warn off the US vessel. (Beijing) is dissatisfied with, and opposed to, the relevant behavior of the US side.”
It’s responsible for another “serious political and military provocation – deliberately stirring up troubles in the South China Sea, as well as running in the opposite direction from countries in the region who aspire for stability, cooperation and development.”
China’s Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian made similar comments.
On Monday Beijing time (Sunday evening in Washington), Trump called Chinese President Xi Jinping over heightening Sino/US tensions.
China Central Television reported Xi saying bilateral relations with America deteriorated since leaders of both countries met in Mar-a-Lago, Florida last April. It quoted Xi saying:
“We attach great importance to the US government’s reaffirmation of the one-China policy, and hope the US side will properly handle the Taiwan problem by adhering to the one-China principle and the three communiques between the two sides.”
A White House statement said “(b)oth leaders reaffirmed their commitment to a denuclearized Korean peninsula. President Trump reiterated his determination to seek more balanced trade relations with America’s trading partner.”
No further details of their conversation were added or explained if Trump got Xi to toughen his pressure on Pyongyang.
Separately, Beijing sharply criticized US imposition of illegal sanctions on China’s Bank of Dandong, Dalian Global Unity Shipping Co., and two Chinese business officials – accused of running front companies for North Korea.
It strongly objected to its announced $1.4 billion arms sale to Taiwan, and Senate Armed Services Committee approval to let US warships regularly sail into Taiwanese ports.
Tensions between both countries are high over the guided-missile destroyer USS Stethem provocatively entering Chinese territorial waters.
In its annual Trafficking in Persons Report to Congress, Trump’s State Department called China among the world’s worst human trafficking offenders, riling Beijing further – the accusation coming from the leading human rights offender on a global scale. It’s deplorable record is unprecedented.
US relations with China and Russia remain dangerously unstable, compounded by Trump’s unpredictability and advice gotten by neocons and hawkish generals infesting his administration – a combustable mix, risking almost anything.
Hoped for improved US relations with Russia and April bromance with China seem light years away in light of hostile Trump administration actions against both countries.
The recent NATO summit took a decision to formally become a member of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State (IS), in addition to its training mission in Iraq.
Last year, NATO started a training and capacity-building mission for Iraqi armed forces. In January, it opened a regional center in Kuwait. NATO AWACS aircraft operate in Syria. But the participation in combat actions against the IS has so far been limited to a few aircraft taking part in the operations of the US-led coalition of the willing. Formally, each alliance member contributes to the coalition, but NATO as its own entity does not. Despite the coalition’s efforts, the IS had grown and expanded in Syria till Russia launched its military operation there in 2015.
France and Germany have always had reservations about the prospect of joining the anti-IS coalition as an alliance, concerned that it would lead to NATO taking over the fight or overshadowing regional partners, such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Italy has been skeptical of the plan.
Despite all the speeches ringing alarm bells about the deadly threat coming from the IS – the mortal enemy of the West that vowed to fight it till it exists - the bloc’s combat ready forces are deploying…against Russia in the Eastern Europe! As a result, the alliance has seen no need to counter the IS plans to create a caliphate. It stubbornly turns a blind eye on the peril coming from the South.
Migrant flows are flooding the territories of European alliance members, terrorist acts are committed to kill citizens of the NATO member states, US and Turkish military are fighting the extremists on the ground but the bloc largely limits itself to words of condemnation while demonizing Russia – the country which says it does not want to provoke confrontation and calls for a dialogue!
The summit’s decision to join the fight comes at a time the US, UK and France-backed rebel forces based in Jordan are reported to be preparing for operations on Syrian soil. On May 18, US aircraft struck a convoy of forces affiliated with the Syrian government. The attack occurred in far southern Syria near al-Tanf, along the Syria-Iraq border – an area where US Special Operations Forces (SOF) are training local fighters. The leading NATO member plunged directly into the Syrian conflict taking sides. Evidently, the move signaled broadening of American involvement in the six-year Syrian civil war. The US has led the anti-IS in Syria since 2014, but so far has avoided engaging with Syrian government or Iran-backed forces.
The US, the UK and France are the leading members of the alliance and there is little doubt they are preparing to cross the border and establish control over the region where the borders of Jordan, Syria, and Iraq meet. They will need support of other nations, especially the allied ones and it coincides with NATO’s decision to become part of the anti-IS operation. The control over the area by NATO-supported forces will include a key highway from Baghdad to Damascus that Iran has used to supply weapons to Syrian forces. Al-Tanf is a strategic crossing located at the intersection of the Jordanian, Iraq, and Syrian borders and commands the No.1 Route linking Baghdad with Damascus and the Jordanian capital of Amman.
It all happens at a time NATO members involved in the combat actions and Israel are deeply concerned over the recent visit of a high-ranking Iraqi military to Damascus to discuss the situation on the Syrian-Iraqi border. The allegation that Iraq’s Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi has pivoted his support away from the US-led campaign to the Russia-Turkey-Iran coalition adds even more fuel to the fire.
Definitely, the contribution will increase. Right after the summit on May 25, the Netherlands announced the decision to send two more warplanes to fight the IS. From mid-June a Dutch KDC-10 tanker aircraft will be stationed in Kuwait. And in the last quarter of the year, a C-130 transport plane will be contributed to the fight for two months. About 90 military personnel will go with the planes. The new deployment will temporarily increase the number of Dutch soldiers in Iraq to about 175, twenty more than previously agreed. The Dutch commandos currently supporting Iraqi troops on the front will be equipped with armored vehicles and other weapons systems from next month. The Netherlands also expressed readiness to contribute several F-16 fighters from early next year. Other NATO members will increase the contribution to support the NATO effort. It will increase but it is worth to remember that the bloc’s operations in Libya and Afghanistan ended up in failure.
Expanding NATO role in Syria may lead to either confrontation or coordination, or at least de-confliction, with the Russia-Syria-Iran forces. Turkey, a NATO country, is a member of Russia-Turkey-Iran trio pushing forward the Astana peace process. And the common enemy is the IS. Coordination of efforts appears to be a logical step. The issue should top the NATO-Russia Council agenda along with the plans to establish de-escalation zones. It could be discussed with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G20 summit.
Some arrangement with Russia is unavoidable. But is it an achievable goal with NATO building up its forces in the Baltics, Poland, Romania and the whole Black Sea region? Can Russia and NATO fruitfully coordinate efforts, or even cooperate, in Syria with tensions running high in Europe? Evidently, the standoff between Russia and NATO benefits no one but IS. Finding mutual understanding is indispensable to defeat the common enemy. Actually, playing off the West against Russia is the IS only hope for survival. That’s the expectation the group must be deprived of. It remains to be seen if these arguments are taken into consideration as NATO joins the fray.
Sunday"s celebration of China"s grand $1 trillion Silk Road infrastructure plan, three years in the making (detailed earlier), had several somewhat bizarre subplots.
First, just hours before the summit opened, North Korea launched its latest ballistic missile, provoking Beijing and further testing the patience of China, its chief (former) ally. Ironically, the United States had complained to China on Friday over the inclusion of a North Korean delegation at the event.
Second, in a sign that China"s rampant, credit-fuelled growth is making some just a tad uneasy, some Western diplomats expressed unease about both the summit and the plan as a whole, seeing it as an attempt to promote Chinese influence globally according to Reuters.
Third, and the biggest surprise of the day, was India, the world"s fastest growing nation and the second most populous in the world, which did not even bother to send an official delegation to Beijing and instead criticised China"s global initiative, warning of an "unsustainable debt burden" for countries involved.
Meanwhile, in a more entertaining interlude, Russian President Vladimir Putin, also present in Beijing for the Silk Road event, decided to show off his softer side when he sat down to play piano on Sunday.
According to AP, after speaking at the summit in the morning, Putin headed to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping at his residence. While waiting at a state guesthouse, Putin sat down at a grand piano and played two tunes: “Evening Song,” by Vasily Solovyov-Sedoi, and “Moscow Windows,” by Tikhon Khrennikov.
Putin is habitually late for meetings, but this time he was the one who was made to wait, Russian news agencies said. So, Putin played some songs on Xi"s piano. Russian state television showed excerpts of at least two tunes he played — "Moscow Windows" and "City on the Free Neva" — both Soviet classics.
Putin has demonstrated his music talents before. In 2010, he took the stage at a charity concert with a jazz band to play and sing "Blueberry Hills."
It was a departure for the president who, as the NYT put it, "has ridden shirtless on a horse in Siberia, piloted a hand glider with migratory birds, swum with dolphins, tossed judo opponents, and dived into the depths of Lake Baikal and the Black Sea." More details from the NYT:
"Evening Song,” usually performed with lyrics by Aleksandr Churkin, was written in 1957 and is considered an unofficial anthem of St. Petersburg, Mr. Putin’s hometown, formerly known as Leningrad.
The other tune, “Moscow Windows,” usually performed with lyrics by the poet Mikhail Matusovsky, is a tune about friendship.
Both songs are from the late 1950s, when Putin was a child and the Soviet Union was emerging from the shadow of Stalin, who died in 1953.
While the performance seemed casual, "it was clearly not spontaneous — a cameraman was on hand, and video of the impromptu recital quickly circulated on the Russian state news media." Also, the piano could certainly do with some tuning.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri Peskov, told journalists in Beijing that “while Mr. Putin was waiting for a bilateral meeting with Xi Jinping, the president studied some papers, prepared for the meeting and also played piano,” as quoted by Russia"s Gazeta.ru.
However, Chinese propaganda chiefs were not amused that Xi had been upstaged to some extent at his own conference, and the official Chinese news media pointedly made little mention of the piano performance.
Trump’s “sell-out,” as it is called, coming on top of Obama’s eight-year “sell-out,” is instructive. We have now had a Democratic president who sold out the people who elected him and a Republican president who has done the same thing. This is a very interesting point, the meaning of which most people miss.
But not Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. At the Valdai discussion club, Putin summed up Western democracy, which I paraphrase as follows:
In the West, voters cannot change policies through elections, because the ruling elites control whoever is elected. Elections give the appearance of democracy, but voting does not change the policies that favor war and the elites. Therefore, the will of the people is impotent.
People are experiencing that they and their votes have no influence on the conduct of affairs of the country. This makes them afraid, frusrated, and angry, a combination of emotions that is dangerous to the ruling elite, who in response organize the powers of the state against the people, while urging them with propaganda to support more wars.
Obama promised to get out of Afghanistan or Iraq or perhaps it was both. He promised to reverse the police state created by the George W. Bush regime. He promised to focus American resources on American domestic problems, such as health care.
But what did he do? He expanded the wars and launched new ones, destroyed Libya and attempted to destroy Syria, but was stopped by British non-participation and Russian objection. Obama overthrew democratic governments in Honduras and Ukraine. He expanded the police state. He began the demonization of Russia and Putin. He betrayed the American people again by allowing the private insurance industry to write his health care plan known as Obamacare. The private interests wrote a plan that diverts public monies from health care to their profits.
All of this is forgotten when the ruling elites and the presstitutes that serve only them refocused the demonization on Trump. Suddenly, it was the president-elect of the United States who was the main danger to the US and the American people. Trump was a Russian agent. He had conspired with Putin to steal the US election from Hillary Clinton and make the White House a partner of Putin’s alleged reconsruction of the Soviet Empire.
The nonsense was hot and furious, and it was effective. Trump succumbed to pressure and sacrificed his National Secuity Advisior, who was supportive of Trump’s promise to normalize relations with Russia. Trump replaced him with a Russophobic idiot who apparantly cannot wait to see mushroom clouds over cities all over the Western world.
Why did two presidents in succession completely sell out the people who voted for them?
The answer is that presidents are not as powerful as the interest groups who make the decisions.
Trump was going to get us out of Syria, so he committed an unambigious war crime by gratuitously attacking Syria with Tomahawk missiles.
Trump was going to normalize relations with Russia, so his Secretary of State announces that US economic sanctions will stay on Russia until Russia hands over to Ukraine the Russian Crimean naval base on the Black Sea.
It is impossible to normalize relations when the cost to the other party of the normalization is national suicide.
Despite Trump’s complete surrender to the powers that be, today (May 2) on NPR I heard raw propaganda dressed up as “expert opinion” that Trump is biased against the media, when what all of us have seen is massive media bias against Trump, including the program to which I was listening.
For example, NPR had accumulated “experts” who said that Trump had slandered Obama by accusing him of intercepting his comunications. NPR said nothing about the Obama regime’s charge that Trump conspired with Putin to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.
If anything was slander, this was, but all the talk was about how Obama could sue Trump.
But, of course, both are public figures, and neither can sue the other.
I wonder why NPR’s “expert” didn’t get around to this point.
Why is the ruling oligarchy still using its presstitutes to campaign against a president who has surrendered to them?
Perhaps the answer is that the real powers that be are going to make an example out of Trump so that never again does a person running for elected office make a populist appeal to the electorate.
In the past three months, the lines of contact between Ukraine and the forces in Donbass have seen an escalation of considerable tension. Both the republics of Lugansk and Donetsk have suffered violent attacks at the hands of Kiev’s military forces. Of course all these violations are in stark contrast to what was established in the Minsk II agreements, in particular as regards the use of certain weapons systems.
In addition to the military issues between Donbass and Ukraine, Kiev faces important internal struggle between oligarchs regarding economic issues. Symptomatic of this were the clashes in Avdeevka, then the attempts to capture the water filtration plant in Donetsk, and finally the blockade of coal transit from Donbass to Ukraine. All these have further deepened divisions between the components of the Ukrainian state’s power. The consequences of these events have led to greater instability in the country and decisive moves by the nationalist fringe alongside the Ukrainian SBU and other components of the military, who are the authors of the blockade of the railway lines between the Donbass and the rest of Ukraine. Intensifying the divisions within the country, the meeting between Tymoshenko and Trump has further increased tensions, with Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman defining Timoshenko as the source of all problems, both economic as well are regarding corruption. Ukraine is politically divided, exacerbated by disputes between Poroshenko and Timoshenko, and these divisions are being exploited by foreign actors like Israel and Turkey, propping up the nationalist and banderist fringe within the National Guard battalion.
External pressure is clearly exerted indirectly on the Poroshenko administration in order to force it to keep the extreme factions of the nationalist battalions under control. For his part, Trump, by meeting with Tymoshenko, has sent a clear signal that in the case of excessive chaos in Kiev, the succession of power has already been decided. In the same way, the IMF exerts pressure on Kiev, slowing down the funding necessary for Ukraine to survive.
The danger that Western planners see is at the same time simple and delicate. On the one hand, there is a need to avoid a failure of the Ukrainian state, and nearly $18 billion of IMF aid serves that purpose. On the other hand, the withholding of IMF funding is applied whenever there is a need to get something done by the government in Kiev. An example can be easily seen with the escalation in Avdeevka that indirectly led the IMF to reduce the overall aid package, with the justification being that corruption remains high in the country. The goal was actually to avoid a complete breakdown of the Minsk II agreements and put a halt to the Ukrainian operation on Avdeevka. Even in the meeting between Tymoshenko and Trump, the strong signal sent to Poroshenko was clear: stop the nationalists and their provocations or there will be consequences.
The subtle game that is being played in Ukraine sees many components involved, often with diverse objectives and methods. The nationalist component hardly responds to the oligarchs in Kiev and to the central authority. They are often the first to receive training and weapons from western colleagues serving in NATO. American and British instructors have for more than two years provided their services to this component in the country. The National Guard received the blessings of the neoconservative factions of American power, as confirmed by the presence of Lindsey Graham and John McCain in Ukraine a few months ago. In addition to support from the Atlantic networks and the local Ukrainian intelligence service (SBU), these battalions have Turkish support, which involves Islamic extremists in the National Guard. Moreover, they receive both political and economic support from infamous oligarch Igor Kolomoisky. Going straight to the problem, one can see that the National Guard, despite strong political and economic support is not able to deliver a decisive blow to the Donbass and inflict any significant damage, let alone organize an efficient offensive. The problem is therefore clear that the alliance between nationalists loyal to NATO/neocons, Turkish extremists, and Israeli oligarchs like Kolomoisky enable the nationalists to carry out provocations but not to organize a serious military offensive against well-fortified and organized positions of the Donbass republics. To attempt an offensive of this kind would at least need a real army that is well organized and motivated.
Ukraine is back to the usual problems that emerged in 2014 and now plague military planners in Kiev. The Ukrainian army, essential to achieving a real push towards Donbass, lacks the motivation needed to fight. These considerations were already clearly known three years ago at the beginning of the infamous anti-terrorist operation (ATO) Kiev carried out in the east of the country. Two years later, Donbass is much stronger. Thanks to a variety of military acquisitions from Russia, as well as targeted training and an important fortification of their defensive positions, Donbass now has a defensive capability that must be taken into account.
In this situation, there are multiple dangers that can unfold for Kiev. Poroshenko must give the nationalists and international networks connected to them the ability to operate virtually without restrictions in Ukraine. He was put in power exactly for that purpose. When this does not happen, as seen in Avdeevka and with the water-supply center in Donetsk, where National Guard battalions had to pull back, there are consequences. In his sense, the National Guard blockade on Donbass is, other than being part of the usual provocations between oligarchs, an explicit message aimed at Kiev, causing considerable economic damage. No wonder Poroshenko sent the army to remove the blockade, which, unsurprisingly, did not actually change the situation.
The blockade actually obliged Kiev to buy coal from Russia, which was ironically left the only supplier. This fact was exploited by the same nationalists who created the blockade in the first place, blasting the Kiev government for buying coal from their enemy. In this mess, the Kiev government and Poroshenko should be aware of the consequences of excessive provocations against Donbass by the National Guard battalions. The ability of the Donbass to provide a firm response to any further aggression should be pondered by Kiev, even as tensions within Poroshenko’s inner circle continue to rise. The Ukrainian president is forced to support the nationalists and their rhetoric against "terrorists in the east" to ward off new Maidan.
At the same time, he needs to by all means avoid a military response from the two separatist republics. Kiev is aware that it does not possess the capacity to conquer the Donbass in terms of personnel and equipment, and is also aware that if the conflict got out of hand, with the complete collapse of the Minsk II agreements, the DPR and LPR would have the capability to extend their boundaries decidedly to the south, setting their sights on the Ukrainian coastline along the Black Sea.
Realistically, this scenario would be a nightmare for all the actors opposing the Donbass, especially for NATO and Poroshenko. Mariupol and Odessa appear to be the likely targets of a hypothetical new advance of the Donbass should the Minsk II agreements collapse. The Russian Federation and Donbass have made it amply clear that any new aggression from Ukraine will be met with a firm response. While this would not involve a direct attack on Kiev, it would establish a larger buffer zone that could include Mariupol and maybe even Odessa. This posture intends to create the necessary awareness in Kiev, and even in NATO, that it is not in their interests for an all-out war to be waged against Donbass.
The consequences of these actions call directly into question the NATO strategy in the Black Sea. The ultimate purpose of NATO is not to save Ukraine from a non-existent Russian threat but rather to put continuous pressure on the Russian Federation in every possible way. The objective is not even to reconquer Donbass, something that is also unfeasible for the military planners in Brussels, but the continuum of tension on Russia’s borders, occupying the attention of Moscow and continuously creating hotbeds of tension on its borders. In this regard, the Ukrainian access to the Black Sea is fundamental for NATO. The continued presence of NATO ships in the Black Sea to carry out joint exercises with Ukraine violates the Treaty of Montreux and is done to exert pressure on Russia from the sea. To bypass the Montreux convention and have a semi-permanent presence, the United States intends to donate a couple of ships to the Ukraine Navy in order to change the flag of the vessels, thus ensuring NATO’s legal permanent presence in the Black Sea without violating the Montreux Treaty. The port of Odessa is central in these calculations and it is of no particular surprise that in the event of a Novorossiya offensive following a Ukrainian attack, both Odessa and Mariupol would be difficult to defend for the Ukrainian army. Already in 2014, both Mariupol and Odessa had been calculated as possible targets of a wider strategy to liberate the cities from Kiev’s forces.
The bottom line is that the Kiev government is between two fires. On one side, the oligarchs battle each other, without regard for the life of Ukrainian citizens or the residents of Donbass, solely focussed on enriching themselves. On the other side, the western components in Ukraine (known as neoconservatives) fan the flames of conflict with military trainers and equipment banned by the Minsk II agreements, providing them to the Azov battalion, the most extremist wing of the National Guard. At the same time, Germany, and especially Russia, is gravely concerned over a possibility of the Ukraine economy defaulting, and of what that could mean in terms a huge wave of migration towards both countries, a situation Berlin would struggle to digest after all the migration coming from the Middle East over the last two years.
A potential default of the Ukrainian economy, and resulting destruction of the country, overshadows any struggles between oligarchs, and even the battle against Donbass. Options for Putin, Trump and Merkel all seem to be on the table with economic (nationalization of industries in the Donbass, slowdown in lending by the IMF), political (Trump meets Tymoshenko, a rival of Poroshenko) and military pressure (strong Russian presence behind the two separatist republics) applied in every way to prevent an all-out war in Ukraine.
The main danger is now clear to everyone involved - to Russia, the Donbass, NATO and Kiev. A new war between Donbass and Ukrainian would result in the defeat of Ukrainian forces, with consequences for NATO, since Donbass would hardly stop outside Mariupol and would instead proceed to Odessa. Kiev has a very weak capacity to mobilize motivated forces ready to sacrifice their lives for what are deeply corrupt oligarchs. This situation would cause an internal dilemma for NATO as was the case in 2014. Would NATO deploy its forces alongside those of Kiev to defend the ports in question, especially Odessa? If doubts where high three years ago, hardly anything has changed in recent years. NATO will not rally to the Kiev’s side. And the reasons remain the same, namely the risk of a direct confrontation with Russian troops, although Trump"s recent actions in Syria have raised much concern in Moscow in relation to the Ukrainian situation. A war against Donbass could easily lead to a wider conflict between superpowers, something impractical for even the most hyped warmongers on the Atlantic sphere. Realistically, Donbass troops, after repulsing Ukrainian aggression, would go on the offensive, and enjoying clear superiority in the region, thanks to Russia as well as to a higher level of motivation, would probably make their way all the way up to Odessa, securing the entire coastline.
The consequences of such a defeat would lead to the collapse of the central authority in Kiev, to an open war between oligarchical factions, to an end of loans from the International Monetary Fund, condemnation from European and American politicians, and to a definitive collapse of the Ukrainian economy. This would spell the end of business for Poroshenko and other business oligarchs, both in Kiev and in the West. Again, no one is interested in seeing such a scenario coming to fruition.
It is also important not to underestimate the partial unwillingness of Moscow to support an open war on the offensive by the Donbass army, especially given the political and economic consequences that the West would visit on Moscow.
The economic assistance that the Donbass would require from Moscow is another important consideration and something that the Russian Federation would prefer to avoid. It should, however, be stressed that in the unlikely event that Ukraine does not hold at bay its eagerness to wage war in Donbass, Moscow would openly side in favor of the Donbass, and the consequences for Ukraine and NATO would be disastrous, as we have seen. There would be enormous concern in such a scenario from Moscow, and the Russian Federation would take every step to avoid such a scenario, but if things got worse, Putin would be ready to support the advance of Novorossiya up to Odessa in order to secure once and for all the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk.
All the provocateurs in Ukraine should be aware that playing the nationalist card can be dangerous and can even result in a defeat that, when compared to 2014-2015, would be dramatically worse, condemning Ukraine to an economic, social and political crisis without precedent or a way out. It literally could be the beginning of the disintegration of Ukraine as we know it today.
