#Arkhaven INFOGALACTIC #Castalia House
The EU member-states now have permission to pay for oil and natural gas in rubles:
The European Commission said Friday that EU companies may be able to comply with Russia’s proposed gas payment system, without running afoul of sanctions against Moscow.
Considering that democracy no longer means democracy and free trade no longer means free trade, there’s no reason why sanctions should actually mean sanctions.
Elections in Serbia and Hungary support pro-Russian, anti-globalist governments by large margins:
The president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Saturday depicted the Hungarian leader as out of touch with the rest of Europe, which has united to condemn Putin, support sanctions against Russia and send aid including weapons to Ukraine.
‘He is virtually the only one in Europe to openly support Mr. Putin,’ Zelenskyy said.
Preliminary election results with about 98% of national party list votes counted showed Orban’s Fidesz party leading with 53.1% of votes versus 35% for Marki-Zay’s opposition alliance. Fidesz was also winning 88 of 106 single-member constituencies.
Based on preliminary results, the National Election Office said Fidesz would have 135 seats, a two-thirds majority, and the opposition alliance would have 56 seats. A far-right party called Our Homeland would also make it into parliament, winning 7 seats.
His comfortable victory could embolden Orban, 58, in his policy agenda which critics say amounts to a subversion of democratic norms, media freedom and the rights of minorities, particularly gay and lesbian people.
I note that none of the slavish puppet regimes have won any elections since falling in line with the globalists’ demands for anti-Russian sanctions. But the pro-Russian parties are outperforming the media’s pre-election predictions as the pro-globalist parties significantly underperform theirs.
Serbia’s incumbent President Aleksandar Vucic is set to win the presidential vote on Sunday with 59.8% of the votes, according to a projection by pollsters Ipsos and CeSID, based on a sample of the partial polling station count.
Zdravko Ponos, a retired army general representing the pro-European and centrist Alliance for Victory coalition, is set to come second with 17.1% of the votes.
In the parliamentary vote Vucic’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) is set to come first with 43.6% of votes, Ipsos and CeSID projections showed.
Art predicts reality again. First the Yellow Vest battles in France, and now social media thought crime round-ups in Germany.
Germany Conducts Mass Raids Over Online ‘Insults’ Against Elected Officials
The German government has begun prosecuting its citizens for thought crimes, raiding the homes of hundreds of Germans who have allegedly leveled insults against politicians online. In an effort to prosecute”criminal content” contained in over 600 statements posted on the internet, Federal Criminal police raided scores of apartments and houses for incriminating evidence on Tuesday and interrogated 100 people across 13 German states for allegedly posting hateful remarks against elected officials and question the results of the 2021 federal election, the German news publication Der Spiegel reports.
To stay well ahead of the news, read ALT★HERO on Arktoons.
The Swiss government just sacrificed the historic neutrality of Switzerland on the altar of globohomo:
Switzerland’s historic neutrality is no longer: moments ago Reuters reported that the Swiss government had joined the EU in adopting sanctions on Russia, freezing assets of targeted companies and people effective immediately:
SWISS GOVERNMENT SAYS ADOPTS EU SANCTIONS ON RUSSIA
SWISS GOVERNMENT SAYS FREEZES ASSETS OF TARGETED PEOPLE AND COMPANIES EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY
SWISS GOVERNMENT SAYS ADOPTS FINANCIAL SANCTIONS AGAINST PRESIDENT PUTIN AND OTHER RUSSIAN OFFICIALS
Swiss President Ignazio Cassis said that adopting the EU sanctions against Russia was a unique, difficult step that required careful consideration. Previously, on Sunday, he said that Switzerland’s neutrality must be preserved and it stood ready to offer its good offices for diplomacy if talks between Ukrainian and Russian officials on the Belarusian border do not succeed, for example by reaching an armistice.
This is an unbelievably stupid act that will have negative consequences that last decades. The Swiss people will need to respond strongly to this by passing a referendum forbidding the government from further violating their neutrality in the future.
But it’s not a surprise. The globalists in the Swiss government have been working toward this moment for years, constantly chipping away at the commitment to neutrality through signing up for various NATO, EU, and UN programs that could be defended as not actually taking a side. However, this action, in taking sides at the behest of one belligerent party against another, is a clear and obvious violation of their historic neutrality.
Having abandoned both banking privacy and neutrality, one wonders what the Swiss government will turn against next. Cheese? Chocolate?
This is a massive mistake and there can be little doubt that the Swiss will come to regret it. With one idiotic move, the Swiss just removed themselves from any future involvement on the world stage. That being said, the fact that the globalists are rapidly pulling out all the stops, including some that have never before been pulled out, tends to underline their desperation as well as their impotence.
Information is not power. Influence is not power. Money is not power. Power is power.
UPDATE: The UK is attempting to surpass the Swiss stupidity. Their idiotic bellicosity is such that one can’t rule out the Boris Johnson government declaring war on Russia.
Toppling Russia’s President Vladimir Putin is the goal of the new wave of international sanctions introduced in response to Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine, a spokesman for Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson told reporters on Monday. “The measures we are introducing, that large parts of the world are introducing, are to bring down the Putin regime,” the unnamed official said.
Downing Street later clarified that the spokesperson had “misspoken”.
UPDATE: The Swiss are already discovering that taking sides means making enemies, even if you try to cover yourself with the ridiculous claim that you haven’t stopped being neutral while striking at one side at the demand of the other.
Moscow has closed its airspace to Swiss planes, mirroring Bern’s decision on Monday to prohibit Russian aircraft from flying over the Alpine country. Russia’s aviation authority released a statement on Tuesday saying that “in keeping with international law and as a retaliatory measure” in the wake of the ban Switzerland had imposed on Russian aircraft, Moscow was “restricting flights by civil aircraft” belonging to or registered in Switzerland.
Not only that, but Switzerland has already lost all of the considerable revenues it would have made from the Nordstream 2 pipeline that will deliver Russian gas to Germany, as the Russian-owned Swiss company just fired all of its 150+ employees, presumably in preparation for being shut down.
The US Secretary of State suggests that Russia might press past Ukraine into NATO territory:
Vladimir Putin may not stop once he has taken Ukraine, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has warned, as satellite images show Russia assembling troops, armor and artillery along Belarus’s border with Poland. The massive buildup was spotted in the Belarus city of Brest, just 10 miles east of the the Polish border.
‘Russia has assembled troops, armor, artillery, and more than 50 heavy equipment transporters at a training area in Brest, the Polish border. Russia has also added more equipment at a nearby railyard in Belarus,’ said reporter Jack Detsch, a Pentagon and national security correspondent at Foreign Policy magazine.
Blinken was asked by ABC News on Thursday night whether he felt the Russian president would recall his forces once Ukraine was conquered.
‘Is it a possibility that Putin goes beyond Ukraine? Sure, it’s a possibility,’ Blinken told host David Muir.
But he stressed that progressing beyond Ukraine into neighboring Poland, Slovakia, Hungary or Romania would mean invading a NATO member country, and would automatically draw in the US, UK, France, Canada and the other nations that form the 30-country alliance.
‘There is something very powerful standing in the way of that, and it’s something we call Article Five,’ said Blinken.
In theory, sure. But Article Five is precisely why Russia is highly incentivized to attack any of the four countries concerned. Vladimir Putin now has a low-risk, low-cost opportunity to shatter NATO once and for all, and he would be remiss if he did not seriously contemplate taking advantage of the opportunity that now presents itself. This is so obvious that even the dementia-addled Fake Biden Administration is aware of it.
It’s clear that the USA, let alone the larger European states, have no desire whatsoever to go to war with the highly formidable Russian military. Even their ability to do so has to be in question given the way in which the larger Ukrainian military has melted before the Russian quantzkrieg, especially given the fact that the third-largest European military – Germany’s – is considered to be roughly comparable to the now-defeated Ukrainian forces.
So Putin now has the chance to prove to the various NATO member states that their precious treaty, including Article Five, is as worthless as the Anglo-French security guarantees given to Poland prior to World War II. In light of the strategic brilliance exhibited thus far by the Russian strategists, I cannot imagine that this thought has not occurred to Putin or any of his generals. They know there is no need to sweep across Eastern Europe to shatter NATO and render all of its promises null and void. A simple incursion in force that destroys a few NATO bases would almost certainly suffice to accomplish their objectives without risking World War III.
Words are often no more than just that, words. And history demonstrates that the average military treaty is worth less than the paper on which it was signed. NATO is a literally paper tiger, and it is in the Russian interest to demonstrate that to its members.
And I, quite clearly was not. I was under the impression that Russia was content to permit Ukraine to keep running its “Russia is going to attack, send us money and arms that we can sell on the black market” grift while making serious bank on the rising oil and natural gas prices as long as the globohomo governments were willing to fund it. But what I failed to account for was the active threat that was being posed by the Ukrainian forces with their constant attacks on the two Donbass republics, or the significance of the civilian evacuations there.
To his credit, the Saker saw the Russian operation coming the day before it happened.
Until the time of writing this, the Ukronazis have continued shelling and shooting, but there has been no fullscale ground attack (yet!). The Ukie special services have sent a few diversionary groups into the LDNR and even into a small strip of Russian land. These groups were detected and intercepted by the Russian Border Guards. The Ukies tried to send a BMP few infantry fighting vehicle to rescue their soliders only to have them destroyed by the Russian military’s anti-tank weapons.
Today the Ukies continued to direct their artillery attacks and diversionary groups at the LDNR. Water and electricity are off in some parts of the LDNR. People are still dying every day and there is no signs of the Ukie bombardments abating. Especially violent combats are taking place near the town of Nikolaevka.
The Ukies have also declared a state of emergency (to be approved by the Rada) and are now making more and more noises about re-arming themselves with nuclear weapons. Smart move when Putin says that the Ukraine must be disarmed… Frankly, I think that the Ukies are terrified.
I know I sure would if I was in their place.
They cannot simply retreat, there is no way Ze can order that and not be overthrown.
They cannot attack because now it is too late, all these force comparisons between the Banderastani forces and the LDNR forces have become, if not irrelevant, than at least a lot less relevant now that Putin has basically prepared both the military and the legal conditions necessary for any kind of Russian military operation, from strikes with standoff weapons, to a ground and/or amphibious assault. All he has to do now is say “go”. Judging by his tone yesterday, not only do I feel that he is willing to give that order, but I also think that he has accepted that this is the “least bad” option for Russia and the LDNR.
Again, Putin said that he fully intends to disarm the Ukraine, at least from all her heavy weapons. Since the Ukies won’t give them up, I see only one way to achieve this: disarm them by force.
So, in one way or another, I expect major combat action in the Eastern Ukraine in the next couple of days.
Keep in mind that the West’s response to Putin’s words and actions only serve to further convince Russia that 1) more sanctions and subversion is inevitable 2) violence is unavoidable.
Remember these famous words by Putin: “Fifty years ago, the streets of Leningrad taught me one thing: If a fight’s inevitable, you must strike first“?
It appears to me that the Kremlin has concluded that a violent fight is, indeed, inevitable. You figure out the rest 🙂
So where do we go from here?
I would say that major combat operations against the Ukie forces in the LDNR republics are probably inevitable and, barring some last minute miracle, the Russians will soon disarm a good part of the Ukie forces. Remember that Putin specifically added the disarmament of the Ukraine as one of his demands.
Does anybody think that anybody can stop the disarmament (we are talking about major weapon systems, not AKs) of the Ukraine by Russia in the near/middle term?
I don’t.
Next, I think that Putin will successfully impose all his demands upon the Ukraine, which means two things:
The Kiev regime will collapse, at least de facto. The rest of Banderastan will eventually break-up into different regimes and successor states.
It will remain to be seen how extensive the Russian operation – which, contra the mainstream media reports, is clearly not “a full-scale invasion” yet – turns out to be. However, I am very, very dubious that NATO, the USA, or any European government is going to send any troops to Ukraine, because that would not only guarantee the very full-scale invasion it was supposed to prevent, but increase the risk of Russia declaring war on the governments responsible.
That being said, the Saker was correct about the timing of the operation and its focus on disarming the Ukrainian forces. So, perhaps he is correct about the US/NATO being foolish enough to attempt a military intervention. Regardless, I think he is absolutely right about the threat that the Russian demonstration of force poses to the existence of NATO, and perhaps even the EU as well.
I think that there is a high probability that the US/NATO will move some forces into western Ukraine, to “protect their people and infrastructure” in and around Lvov, and to declare that “their show of unity and determination stopped Russia from invading the entire Ukraine”. I don’t think that Russia will object too much against any NATO move inside and limited to the Lvov/Ivano-Frankovsk region. These are not historically Russian lands and they are basically irrelevant to Russia.
If the US wants to Poles to oppress the Ukronazis in their own western Ukraine, nobody in Russia will care.
As for the West, to take credit for a defeat is a long US/NATO tradition, so such an operation can be used to save NATO’s face.
But that won’t be enough.
The West has already been beaten politically, and now a military defeat of some kind is probably inevitable.
I am not talking about an invasion of the entire Ukraine (God forbid!) but it will be clear to all that the Russian bear forced NATO to retreat, politically and militarily. The Anglos are too smart to volunteer for a war with Russia. The Polaks are, as always, only hiding behind the backs of their latest masters. The Balts are irrelevant.
So the only option is to fight the Russians down the the last Ukrainian and when that happens, it might not be an “NATO defeat” legally speaking, but like on 08.08.08 it will be a crushing defeat for NATO publicly. Maybe not as bad as Kabul, but much worse than Georgia in 08.08.08.
At that point, a lot of folks will be wondering if NATO is worth the money spent on. And once that process begins, there will be no stopping it.
The former Russian president explains the difference between meaningless sanctions and massive leverage to the feckless European lapdogs of the Imperial USA.
Europeans will soon have to pay €2,000 ($2,200) per thousand cubic meters of natural gas, former Russian president and current deputy chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev tweeted on Tuesday. The warning comes after Germany ordered a halt to Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline certification.
“German Chancellor Olaf Scholz ordered to stop the certification of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Well, welcome to the new world, in which Europeans will soon pay €2,000 per thousand cubic meters of gas!” Medvedev wrote in a half-ironic Twitter post.
Earlier on Tuesday, Chancellor Scholz said that the German government was stopping the months-long certification process of the Russia-backed Nord Stream 2 pipeline project in light of the current standoff between Russia and Ukraine over the Donbass regions.
Late on Monday, Russia officially recognized the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics of the breakaway region, sparking criticism from Western countries and claims that Russia is attempting to unlawfully invade Ukraine.
Chancellor Scholz said he had asked the German economy ministry to make sure the pipeline’s certification could not take place at the moment. “That sounds technical, but it is the necessary administrative step so there can be no certification of the pipeline and without this certification, Nord Stream 2 cannot begin operating,” the Chancellor stated.
The 12-billion-dollar pipeline, which is majority-owned by Russia’s state energy giant Gazprom is capable of transporting 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually from Russia to Germany. The pipeline could have been the answer to Europe’s current energy crisis and help refill the continent’s gas storage facilities, which had less than 5% of gas left in them last week.
However, while having been completed in August last year, the pipeline has since hit the wall of European bureaucracy, and has not delivered a single cubic meter yet pending certification. The US and Ukraine, as well as several other Eastern European states, have been voicing protests against the pipeline’s launch, arguing that it would allow Moscow to exert political leverage over Europe.
Nordstream 2 is not the leverage. The supply-demand equation is the leverage. The fact that US and European decision makers do not understand the difference is why there is very little chance they will come out on top in the current conflict with Russia.
The Great Negotiator gets it.
If properly handled, there was absolutely no reason that the situation currently happening in Ukraine should have happened at all. I know Vladimir Putin very well, and he would have never done during the Trump Administration what he is doing now, no way! Russia has become very very rich during the Biden Administration, with oil prices doubling and soon to be tripling and quadrupling. The weak sanctions are insignificant relative to taking over a country and a massive piece of strategically located land. Now it has begun, oil prices are going higher and higher, and Putin is not only getting what he always wanted, but getting, because of the oil and gas surge, richer and richer. The U.S. was energy independent under the Trump Administration, an independence that we had never obtained before, and oil prices would have remained low.
President Donald Trump, 22 February 2022
As I predicted, Austria is relaxing its Covid restrictions rather than enforcing its much-ballyhooed vaccine mandates:
Austria will lift most of its remaining COVID-19 restrictions by March 5, including scrapping an earlier closing time of midnight for bars and restaurants and allowing nightclubs to reopen, Chancellor Karl Nehammer said on Wednesday.
The government said the steps were being taken cautiously with daily new infections hovering below their record peak and a manageable situation in hospitals due to the smaller incidence of severe cases in the latest wave of the coronavirus, dominated by the highly contagious Omicron variant.
Most, though obviously not all, vaccine mandates were nothing more than a bluff. Remember, evil always prefers your consent through submission. Threatening consequences, but not following through on the threat, has proven to be a moderately effective way to obtain compliance among the weak-willed and weak-minded.
Learn to recognize the patterns. Pattern recognition is prediction.
Only makes it stronger. The Axis of Antichrist discovers Nietzschean economics:
Russia has done far more to build resilience to Western sanctions than the European Union has to improve its ability to survive disruptions in the gas supply chain, the EU high representative for foreign affairs said on Sunday.
Writing in his weekly blog, Josep Borrell accused Moscow of using energy supplies for “political purposes” and suggested any further measures against the Kremlin have serious blowback effects for the EU, including a reduction of gas available to the bloc. His comments came ahead of a meeting of the EU-US Energy Council, due to be held on Monday, in America.
“Energy prices have surged due to global supply and demand issues,” Borrell wrote. “With the severe crisis that we are currently going through with Russia, it has become not only a price issue but also a matter of security of supplies.”
According to the Eurocrat, over 40% of EU gas imports come from Russia, while the EU provides over 60% of Russia’s import revenues.
“However, in recent years, Russia has enhanced its resilience against economic sanctions, by increasing its foreign currency reserves, more than we have done to enhance our capacity to face potential gas supply cuts,” he explained, calling on the bloc to begin developing EU strategic gas reserves and boost investment in renewable sources of energy.
Russia faces the same challenge as every Western dissident, albeit on a much larger scale. China knows it will too, which is why both nations are not only building their own platforms, but assiduously refusing to use the platforms and products of their evil enemies in the West.
As countries around the world abandon all their Covid restrictions, Austria is mandating the vaxxes:
This week, Austria made Covid-19 vaccines mandatory for all citizens aged 18 and over, which has sparked protests across the country.
Austrian citizens could be fined from €600 (£503) to €3,600 (£3,023) for failing to comply with the mandate, punishments which are set to come into effect from mid-March, according to reports from Austrian paper Kleine Zeitung.
From March 15th, police will start verifying the vaccination status of people they stop in their regular patrols. Following this, more thorough checks will begin at a later stage in the third phase once the vaccination register is up and running.
“I hope that we will not need Phase 3 at all. If (health) experts say that in their assessment it is not necessary, if constitutional lawyers say it is not proportionate, Phase 3 will not happen,” Health Minister Wolfgang Mueckstein told ORF radio hours before the upper house passed the bill by 47 votes to 12.
Now why would the Austrian population be singled out for this unsafe and ineffective poisoning?
It is believed that Germany is set to follow in the footsteps of Austria as the country has begun debating a potential vaccine mandate. Germany revealed that it had missed its target to have 80% of the population vaccinated with at least one dose of the covid jab by the end of January.
So, Germany too, despite it being completely unnecessary. Now, is there a powerful group of people that particularly hates the Austrian and German people? And do they have any connection to these “vaccines”?
I suspect they’ll back down before mid-March. This just strikes me as one last push before they give it up. Regardless, not one single Austrian or German should submit to these evil mandates.