Tag: Russia

BRICS or Sanctions

Aspiring members cannot choose both, thereby preventing countries like France, which has previously expressed an interest in joining the growing trade bloc, from obtaining membership:

BRICS applicants can’t join in sanctions against any of the economic bloc’s member states, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said on Thursday, outlining one of the conditions for joining the club.

The group that started as an informal association of Brazil, Russia, India and China has since expanded to nine member states and is expected to discuss further enlargement at its summit in Kazan, Russia later this month.

”One needs to pursue a sovereign policy, have a significant role in international and regional affairs, build good-neighborly and friendly relations with the BRICS countries, and not join in illegitimate sanctions against members of the association,” Ryabkov said at a press conference in Moscow on Thursday, when asked about conditions for aspiring members.

This underlines the absolute and utter stupidity of formerly neutral countries like Sweden and Switzerland giving in to US and EU pressure, abandoning their historical neutralities, and taking sides against Russia. Because now, it’s clear that they’re going to end up losing access to most of the world’s population and half the world’s GDP.

Current BRICS member countries account for about 46% of the world’s population and over 36% of global GDP. At least 34 countries have expressed interest in joining the organization.

It’s a real loss for Switzerland, which has already lost a substantial amount of its historical gold trade to Dubai. True neutrality would have put Switzerland in an ideal position to serve as an economic bridge between the US bloc and the China-Russia bloc, but by choosing to side with the former, they have sacrificed the opportunity to do for global trade what they once did for global diplomacy.

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IDF Attacks Russia?

I assumed this report of an Israeli attack on a Russian air base in Syria had to be some sort of war-porn fiction.

ISRAEL is reportedly hitting “terrorist targets in western Syria and along the Syria coastline.”

So far they’ve hit in Latakia and Tartus, home ports of the Russian Mediterranean Flotilla.

Also the Russian Hmeimim Air Base.

The Russian ammo stockpile there is exploding.

Russian air defenses are reportedly firing at Israeli aircraft.

The strikes occurred an hour after the arrival of an Iranian plane belonging to “Qashim Fars” airline.

The source of the bombing is not yet confirmed, but it reportedly involved 30 missiles fired from naval battleships between 3:55 and 4:41 AM.

However, the mainstream reports do at least confirm that the IDF attacked a weapons depot “near” the Russian air base.

Israeli conducted strikes near the Syrian coast this morning, with explosions reported in the vicinity of the Russian-operated Khmeimim Air Base, near the city of Latakia. At this stage, it’s not clear if the Russian airfield was actually hit, deliberately or otherwise — which would be a first. Either way, however, the attacks represent a notable escalation in terms of Israel’s willingness to prosecute targets that are very close to this key Russian military facility in Syria and a major point of pride for Moscow.

Initial accounts from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a U.K.-based information office, describe attacks in the coastal Latakia province, with targets including an ammunition warehouse said to be near Jablah city, not far from Khmeimim Air Base. Weapons supplied by Iran and destined for Hezbollah, its Lebanese ally and proxy, often are delivered first to Syria, for onward transit to Lebanon. The suggestion here is that Iranian munitions headed for the militant group were targeted soon after they arrived in Syria.

So, it’s unclear. And while Russia Today doesn’t have anything about the attack – or near-attack – this announcement today may be related.

The Russian ambassador to Israel, Anatoly Viktorov, has urged Russian citizens to leave the Jewish state in view of the increasing tensions in the region.

They may have invented the word, but I find it very, very difficult to imagine that the Israelis would be so full of chutzpah that they would choose to go hot with the Russians. Even the US neocons have had more sense than to push for that. I mean, I don’t see how the IDF can even hope to handle the Iranians with or without the US military.

I sincerely hope this is an exaggeration, if not a complete fabrication.

UPDATE: It was an exaggeration. But it was pretty close, being only 1.5 kilometers away from the base.

Reports of the Russian Hmeimim Military Base being hit by an Israeli airstrike are false. We have geolocated the video and photo. The photo was taken from the second or third floor of ‘al-Salom Gym’, 35.3721083, 35.9250677, Jableh, Syria. The most likely areas of target are shown on the map as “1” and “2” – although the Russian base (shown on the map) is approximately 1,500 meters away from either target site.

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The Expansion of BRICS

BRICS will be growing significantly next month.

The next wave of BRICS expansion will be announced at the group’s annual summit in the Russian city of Kazan in October, Belarusian Foreign Minister Maxim Ryzhenkov has claimed. Speaking on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, Ryzhenkov predicted that BRICS could add at least ten new members, while expressing optimism that his own country’s application for membership will be approved.

“The first wave of enlargement, as we all expect – those who have submitted such applications – will take place at the Kazan summit,” Ryzhenkov told RIA Novosti. Russia is “formulating the list of these countries that will be in the first wave of enlargement,” he added.

As the current holder of the BRICS chairmanship, Russia will host the group’s annual summit in Kazan from October 22 to 24. Earlier this month, Belarusian First Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Lukashevich said his country is in the first pool of BRICS candidates, along with Algeria, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Bolivia, Venezuela, Vietnam, Cuba, Honduras, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Morocco, Nigeria, Palestine, Senegal, and Thailand.

Several other countries, including Türkiye, Zimbabwe, and Burkina Faso, have also shared their intent to join. Founded in 2006 by Russia, China, India, and Brazil, the organization accepted South Africa as a member in 2011. Earlier this year, it expanded to welcome four new member states – Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the UAE. So far, at least 34 countries have expressed interest in joining, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated at a senior BRICS meeting earlier in September.

The three most significant countries in that first set are Vietnam, Indonesia, and Nigeria. Clown World has been working hard to try to separate Vietnam from China, and “the Prussians of Asia”, as Lee Kwan Yew described them, are historically the most aggressive nation in Asia. Indonesia is the largest Muslim country and is closely tied economically to China, and Nigeria is the most populous and most advanced African state. Between them, just those three countries have 150 million more people than the entire European Union.

The inclusion of Palestine is also significant, as while BRICS is not a military alliance, the economic power it wields is already formidable, and a boycott by BRICS would be potentially be more devastating than the US sanctions regime on Russia have been. The biggest news, of course, would be if Türkiye is allowed to jump the queue, especially if it exits NATO in the process.

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Russia Changes Nuke Doctrine

President Putin’s decision to make public what is usually done behind closed doors is a clear warning to the USA, the UK, and others waging proxy war on Russia:

In the updated version of the document, aggression against Russia by any non-nuclear state, but with the participation or with the support of a nuclear state It is proposed to consider as their joint attack on the Russian Federation.

The conditions for Russia’s transition to the use of nuclear weapons are also clearly recorded. We will consider this possibility already at obtaining reliable information about the massive start of funds aerospace attack and their intersection of our state borders. I mean strategic and tactical aviation aircraft, cruise rockets, drones, hypersonic and other aircraft.

We reserve the right to use nuclear weapons in case of aggression against Russia and Belarus as a member of the Union State. With the Belarusian side, with the President of Belarus, all these issues are agreed. Including if the enemy, using conventional weapons, creates a critical threat to our sovereignty.

It’s evident that the Russians are getting very tired of the childish “I didn’t actually touch you” dance that the proxy warriors are utilizing via Ukraine. The Russians know how many “advisors” and “technicians” and “mercenaries” are fighting against them, and with the USA now committing 10-15 percent of its army to the Middle East, this is as good a time as any to escalate the indirect conflict into a direct one, especially with the Ukrainians getting ever more desperate as their defensive fronts are finally beginning to collapse.

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Clown Nose On

Israel appears to be on the verge of openly taking up arms against Russia:

Israel is becoming a “party” to the Ukraine war.

Intelligence Community information indicates Israel is setting-up “Iron Dome-type” missile defenses in and around Kiev and Nikolaev, to fight-off Russian Missiles. Here’s the rub: The systems WILL BE CONTROLLED EXCLUSIVELY BY ISRAEL.

Moreover, Israel will be implementing “mobile radar installations” in support of these missile defenses, and their (very quietly kept) intention is to “gather as much data as possible on Russian missiles because . . . . they expect Iran to have such technology soon, if not already.”

I wouldn’t say I consider the source to be particularly reliable, but things were always bound to reach this point eventually. Clown World revolves around the Tel Aviv – New York – London axis, and so despite the historical ties between the Soviet Union and Israel, Israel was always going to find itself in opposition to Iran’s allies in Russia and China.

Given the Iron Dome’s inability to stop missiles from Gaza, Hezbollah, and Yemen, I very much doubt the Israeli assistance is going to delay the fall of the Kiev regime by so much as a single day. But it would definitely make sense for them to gather as much data on the Russian missile systems as possible before Jerusalem or Tel Aviv are the targets.

One by one, the veils are being removed. It may not be too long now before the gloves start coming off, and the next phase of WWIII begins in earnest.

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Putin Gives Clear Warning

If NATO assists in any long-range attacks on Russia, Russia will strike NATO directly. The problem is that the neoclowns desperately want the war between Russia and NATO to go hot because it’s the only path that might give them sufficient cover to permit them to escape the inevitable wrath of the West that they have abused and misruled for the last 40 years.

Some very consequential statements and movements today. The biggest — and most alarming — comes from Vladimir Putin. He minces no words — any attack inside Russia with Western precision missiles will be treated as an act of war and Russia will respond accordingly.

This should be setting off alarm bells at the Pentagon and USEUCOM (US European Command) and NATO. But, I think that the military lightweights infesting these various commands have persuaded themselves that Moscow is just blowing hot air. This is the kind of miscalculation that can lead to reckless decisions on the part of NATO and Ukraine.

While Putin is leaving no doubt about the position of Russia if such weapons are used, the reality on the ground in Ukraine is turning more dire for Ukraine with each passing day. Russia is announcing the capture of at least three settlements a day in the Donbass and is moving forward with determined lethality in the Kursk region. There is nothing that Ukraine can do, even with support from NATO, to alter the path to defeat

It’s not that the military lightweights in command have persuaded themselves, it’s the clowns giving them their orders who have told them that Putin wouldn’t dare to attack the NATO countries waging war on Russia. The fact that these are the exact same people who said Putin wouldn’t dare to attack Ukraine, that he was going to be thrown out of power, run out of ammunition, and die of cancer tends to strongly suggest that they are wrong.

Putin’s precise words were as follows:

“There is an attempt to substitute concepts. Because we are not talking about allowing or prohibiting the Kiev regime to strike at Russian territory. It is already striking with the help of unmanned aerial vehicles and other means. But when it comes to using high–precision long-range Western-made weapons, it’s a completely different story. The fact is that, as I have already said, and any experts will confirm this (both here and in the West), the Ukrainian army is not able to strike with modern high-precision long-range systems of Western production. It can’t do that. This is possible only with the use of satellite data, which Ukraine does not have — this is data only from satellites of either the European Union or the United States, in general, from NATO satellites. This is the first one. 

“The second, and very important, perhaps key, is that flight missions to these missile systems can, in fact, only be carried out by military personnel of NATO countries. Ukrainian servicemen cannot do this. And therefore, it is not a question of allowing the Ukrainian regime to strike Russia with these weapons or not to allow it. It’s about deciding whether NATO countries are directly involved in a military conflict or not. If this decision is made, it will mean nothing more than the direct participation of NATO countries, the United States, and European countries in the war in Ukraine. This is their direct involvement.

“And this, of course, significantly changes the very essence, the very nature of the conflict. This will mean that NATO countries, the United States, and European countries are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the very essence of this conflict, we will make appropriate decisions based on the threats that will be created to us.”

It’s clear that Putin and the rest of Clown World’s enemies are waiting for something. Russia, China, Iran, and Hezbollah are all being very patient and passing up numerous justifiable opportunities to respond to various provocation after provocation by the clowns. The Narrative insists that they are all afraid of the mighty US Navy and the IDF, but that doesn’t make any sense in light of what we’ve been witnessing for the last two years.

To me, it’s looking more like one of two things. Either they are waiting for something to happen within Clown World, such as a structural collapse or some sort of palace coup that they support, or they are going to hit in one massive simultaneous multi-front offensive that will cause Clown World to collapse in shock. It might even be a case of Plan A and Plan B; it would be very surprising if astute Sigma leaders like Xi and Putin did not have contingency plans, and contingency plans for those contingency plans, already agreed upon and in place.

Fortunately for those of us who are in, but not of, Clown World, it’s clear that both the Russian and Chinese leaders view military force as a last resort, and not a first one. Which is a good thing, because the Ukrainian strategy, such as it is, is total fucking amateur hour.

The West must guarantee to be prepared to get more involved by sending ground troops to certain parts of Ukraine to free up Ukraine’s manpower which could be sent to the front lines. Zelensky believes after this campaign Russia would be forced to retreat, at some point Putin’s leadership would be destabilized and replaced, with the new leadership signing a peace deal.

As I have repeatedly pointed out, any military strategy that relies upon the enemy leadership being “destabilized and replaced” is retarded, wrong, inept, and historically ignorant. It simply doesn’t happen in real warfare. The proposed victory condition is intrinsically expeditionary, and falls within the realm of spycraft, not war. What we’re seeing now is the difference between real war conducted by well-schooled general staff and expeditionary war conducted by intelligence agencies.

Zelensky said that in two days he will present Joe Biden with a “plan for victory over Russia.” The latecomer said the plan would be, in particular, psychological and political in nature.

In times of war, being clever with the word spells and the psychobabble is no substitute for industrial capacity.

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Clowns are Falling

Sweden’s Foreign Minister unexpectedly resigned on the same day that the Kiev regime fired what seems to be about half of its cabinet.

Tobias Billstrom, who oversaw Sweden’s accession to NATO, has announced his resignation as foreign minister and retirement from politics, offering no reason for the move. Billstrom, 50, was first elected to the Swedish parliament in 2002 and was appointed foreign minister in 2022… As his biggest achievement over the past two years, Billstrom listed Sweden’s abandonment of its 200-year neutrality to join NATO “after a long and sometimes challenging process.”

I suspect the reason for his sudden resignation is that more Swedish “instructors” were killed in the recent double-Iskander missile strike in Poltava than have been reported. The number of KIA is officially 41, but Ukrainian locals are reporting up to 760 bodies in the morgue. To go from 200 years of safe neutrality to losing dozens of military officers in a single Russian strike is a catastrophe that the leading advocate of abandoning neutrality would have to be held responsible.

One hopes that the utterly deluded Swiss politicians who are so desperate to follow Sweden’s lead will learn from Billstrom’s example and abandon their insane campaign to sign Switzerland up for the same sort of military and economic devastation that is facing the NATO slave-nations.

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William Lind Wept

I have read The Maneuver Warfare Handbook. I know what maneuver warfare is. And Simplicius is correct, what we’re seeing in the disastrous invasion of Russia by the Ukrainian Armed Forces is not maneuver warfare:

Ukraine choosing a lightly guarded, strategically trivial rural border area to send a shock fist of their most elite brigades through against a bunch of unarmed conscripts is not the highpoint of “maneuver warfare”, and in no conceivable way heralds its return. Anyone can send a couple light cavalry battalions to go romping through an undefended countryside to temporary effect—but that is not at the heart of maneuver warfare’s basest definition.

The primary importance behind maneuver warfare in operational art revolves around defeating enemy armies. When you’re maneuvering around a place where no army even exists, you’re not really accomplishing much. If Ukraine had truly revived the art then it would have been able to effect this discipline against Russian reserves which subsequently arrived to dig in. But what happened? Ukrainian forces hit a wall and became quickly stalled by the slightest resistance from actual professional troops.

Anyone can “maneuver” around a small token complement of conscripts when they’re outnumbered five to one. The reason maneuver warfare was deemed dead on the main contact lines was because there, both sides are of comparable strength and armament—albeit sometimes asymmetrically.

The Kursk invasion was a move born of political desperation, there was no military justification for it nor was there even the most remote chance of somehow achieving either a tactical or a strategic advantage from it. And now that it has obviously failed, all that is left is attempting to provoke Russia into an escalation that will necessitate the entrance of the USA into a hot war against Russia.

But Russia already knows that, which is why neither Russia nor Iran has been responding in kind to Ukrainian and Israeli provocations.

Ukraine and Israel are trying to spark major regional wars which they believe will solve their own problems at the expense of others, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

When attrition, industrial capacity, and demographics are all on your side, there is no need for escalation.

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Weimar Britain

And no, this isn’t a result of Brexit. Germany is in even worse shape. But regardless, it is clear that the decision to back Ukraine has been a fatal one for the British economy, the coming collapse of which is becoming increasingly obvious in the wake of Ukraine’s recent defaulting on its massive debt:

22 July 2024: we have a deal!
Almost as soon as Zelensky’s visit in London concluded, the Government of Ukraine announced that a deal was reached with its main bondholders to restructure the country’s near-$20 billion worth of bonds, including a 37% reduction of the amounts owed. But this was only “an agreement, in principle,” reached with an “ad-hoc creditor committee,” and it wasn’t binding on all the bondholders. Instead, it imposed on Ukraine’s government “the Restructuring as soon as practicable,” to be implemented through a “consent solicitation.” In other words, Ukraine was expected to chase after its creditors and beg them to accept the deal, even offering them a 1.25% “consent fee.” Well, things were about to take a sharp turn for the worse…

24 July 2024: Ukraine strikes the Fitch iceberg
Only two days after Ukraine announced the deal with their bondholders, Fitch downgraded Ukraine’s credit rating from CC to C, reflecting extreme credit risk reserved for countries that “entered default or default-like process.” Significantly, Fitch made it explicit that “the publication of sovereign reviews is subject to restrictions and must take place according to a published schedule…”

31 July 2024: Zelensky ‘temporarily’ suspends debt repayments
Zelensky signed a law enabling Ukraine to suspend payments of external debts for two months (or longer).

Thursday, August 1 2024: debt repayments freeze takes effect
Bondholders’ grace period expires; Zelensky’s unilateral debt repayments freeze takes effect.

What’s peculiar about the British financial system is that the taxpayers are obliged to reimburse the Bank of England for any losses it sustains on its balance sheet assets. If the price of gilts on the bank’s balance sheet collapses, British taxpayers must cover those losses and make the bank whole. So, what kind of money are we talking about? As the the FT reported last July, the BOE has estimated it will require the Treasury to transfer a total of £150 billion by 2033 to cover expected losses on the central bank’s quantitative easing program.

So how much is £150 billion? Provided that things haven’t deteriorated since July 2023 (they have), we’re talking £2,240 per man, woman and child in Britain. Stand and deliver: that’s the ransom that the BOE is claiming from them! But given that the British workforce is only about half the population, and that private enterprise accounts for less than 55% of the British GDP, this sum represents nearly £10,000 per employee working in the private sector.

In all, the situation is impossible and all the cabinet reshuffles and cosmetic patches changed nothing of substance in the UK; they amounted to a sort of rearranging the deck-chairs on the Titanic as the ship is already sinking.

Translation: Ukraine is bankrupt and can’t even pretend that it’s going to repay all of its massive war-related debts after defeating the Russians. The economic collapse of the Ukrainian government will lead to a political collapse and the military collapse of its armed forces; Russia’s increasingly rapid advances in the Donbass are in part due to the beginning stages of the latter. And the surrender of Ukraine may lead directly to the economic collapse of Britain as well as several countries inside the EU, most likely those most deeply invested in Ukraine, which includes the Baltics, Germany, and Poland.

28 August 2024: Game Over? Ukraine Announces Partial Halt to Payments on Its Gargantuan Debt

This is the genius of Putin’s patient multi-front attritional strategy and why he has an economist running the Russian Ministry of Defense. He never needed to bomb Britain or Berlin in order to comprehensively defeat them. And as for the USA, well, China and Iran are taking the lead with regards to the Clown World’s major stronghold.

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Kursk was a UK Operation

Andrei Martynov and others have gradually come to the conclusion that the US military was actually not involved in the debacle of the Kursk invasion:

Many online commentators were surprised when footage of the Challenger 2 in action in Kursk began to circulate widely on August 13th. Furthermore, numerous mainstream outlets dramatically drew attention to the tank’s deployment. Several were explicitly briefed by British military sources that it marked the first time in history London’s tanks “have been used in combat on Russian territory.” Disquietingly, The Times now reveals this was a deliberate propaganda and lobbying strategy, spearheaded by Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

Prior to the Challenger 2’s presence in Kursk breaking, Starmer and Defence Secretary John Healey had reportedly “been in talks about how far to go to confirm growing British involvement in the incursion towards Kursk.” Ultimately, they decided “to be more open about Britain’s role in a bid to persuade key allies to do more to help – and convince the public that Britain’s security and economic prosperity is affected by events on the fields of Ukraine.” A “senior Whitehall source” added:

“There won’t be shying away from the idea of British weapons being used in Russia as part of Ukraine’s defence. We don’t want any uncertainty or nervousness over Britain’s support at this critical moment and a half-hearted or uncertain response might have indicated that.”

In other words, London is taking the lead in marking itself out as a formal belligerent in the proxy war, in the hope other Western countries – particularly the US – will follow suit. What’s more, The Times strongly hints that Kursk is to all intents and purposes a British invasion. The outlet records:

“Unseen by the world, British equipment, including drones, have played a central role in Ukraine’s new offensive and British personnel have been closely advising the Ukrainian military…on a scale matched by no other country.”

Britain’s grand plans don’t stop there. Healey and Foreign Secretary David Lammy “have set up a joint Ukraine unit,” divided between the Foreign Office and Ministry of Defence. The pair “held a joint briefing, with officials, for a cross-party group of 60 MPs on Ukraine,” while “Starmer has also asked the National Security Council to draw up plans to provide Ukraine with a broader range of support.” On top of military assistance, “industrial, economic, and diplomatic support” are also being explored.

It’s becoming more and more obvious that Martyanov’s observation that neither the British nor the US militaries have any idea of how to fight a war on this scale was spot-on. How the British think they can fund, plan, and help execute attacks on Russian soil without the world endorsing Russian reprisals on British soil is entirely beyond me. I mean, there is no amount of conceptual redefining and word magic that is going to defend these clearly belligerent actions and redefine them as non-belligerent.

The only thing I can come up with is that Britain is playing the same game with Russia that Israel is playing with Iran, which is “Mom, He Hit Me First”, in the hopes that provoking a reprisal will commit the USA to fighting the war for them. Unfortunately, neither the British nor the Israelis appear to understand that the global superpower days are over and the USA is no longer capable of successfully fighting Russia in Russia or Iran in Iran.

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