Tag: Russia

No Gas for Germany

Germany is going to have to wave the white flag if it wants to get through the winter. And winter is coming.

Germany’s natural gas reserves are not enough to see the country through next winter without purchasing additional Russian gas, the top official in charge of electricity and gas networks has told the media.

In an interview with Germany’s Bild am Sonntag, published on Sunday, Klaus Muller warned that while “gas reservoirs are nearly 65% full,” and “it’s better than in the previous weeks” it is still not sufficient to “go through the winter without Russian gas.”

Muller, who is president of Germany’s Federal Network Agency, added that much now depends on whether maintenance work on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline concludes as expected on Thursday.

When asked how long it would take before energy prices for consumers in Germany are further raised, in case of a complete stoppage of Russian gas deliveries, Muller said no decision has yet been made. However, he offered reassurances, noting that “there hasn’t been any significant price surge this week, even though the Nord Stream 1 was shut off.” The official suggested this may be a sign that “markets have already internalized the loss of Russian gas supplies and we’ve reached a gas-price-plateau.”

The energy regulator president insisted that Germans “shouldn’t succumb to panic,” assuring that “private households have the least reason of all to worry,” and will be provided with gas far longer than industry.

Keep in mind that this situation is without Russia taking any aggressive or punitive steps to intentionally reduce Europe’s energy needs or otherwise harm the European economies. I expect that situation will change following the next Russian ultimatum.

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“All Hell Will Break Loose”

ITEM: “We should understand that amid the world war – because all the talks that it is a regional or a local war must be dropped – the entire Western world is fighting against Russia via Ukrainians. It is a global conflict.” – Aleksandar Vucic, President of Serbia

ITEM: “I know what awaits us. As soon as Vladimir Putin has done his work in Seversk, Bakhmut and Soledar, after reaching the second line Slaviansk-Kramatorsk-Avdeevka, he will come up with a proposal. And if they [the West] don’t accept it, – and they won’t – all hell will break loose.” – Aleksandar Vucic, President of Serbia

ITEM: US President Joe Biden’s administration has green-lighted a new arms sale to Taiwan, including armored vehicle parts and technical assistance, potentially ratcheting up tensions with China over the breakaway republic. The US State Department approved the transaction, which is valued at up to $108 million, at Taiwan’s request, the Pentagon revealed on Friday. The blanket order will include parts for tanks and other combat vehicles, as well as technical and logistical support services provided by the US government and its contractors.

ITEM: Chinese mainland experts on Saturday slammed the latest US deal featuring a package involving spare parts for tanks and combat vehicles plus technical assistance worth $108 million, saying it exposed the US’ two-faced nature and its failure to honor its own words. China no longer has unrealistic illusions over the US, and the PLA is preparing for the worst-case scenario in which a cross-Straits conflict would take place in order to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity, analysts said.

My interpretation is that the Russians will give the European governments one chance to surrender and break from the US-imposed war with Russia. And their decision will determine the next stage of WWIII, which will almost certainly involve multiple fronts, some of which are outside the range of current discussion.

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Russia Won the Oil War

This was already obvious, but the latest additions to BRICSIA will make it undeniable.

Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt plan to join BRICS, and their potential membership bids could be discussed and answered at next year’s summit in South Africa, Purnima Anand, the president of the BRICS International Forum, told Russian media on Thursday.

“All these countries have shown their interest in joining and are preparing to apply for membership. I believe this is a good step, because expansion is always looked upon favorably; it will definitely bolster BRICS’ global influence,” she told Russian newspaper Izvestia.

The BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) account for over 40% of the global population and nearly a quarter of the world’s GDP.

Saudia Arabia is the literal headline, but the more intriguing potential addition here is Turkey. How does Turkey remain a member of both BRICSIATES and NATO when the economic blocs are at war with each other? The logical conclusion: it doesn’t, it leaves NATO.

Which is why we should watch for an “unexpected” announcement that the EU has suddenly approved Turkey’s application for membership after 23 years of sitting on it. I doubt that will be enough to convince the Turks to stay on board with the globalists after decades of being treated like third-class non-citizens, but you never know.

Turkey leaving NATO would be a serious hammer blow to NATO’s credibility and stability, as adding Finland and Sweden but losing Turkey would completely change the strategic situation in Europe. Instead of Russia being surrounded on three sides, it would be the US-occupied European nations that are pinned against the Atlantic Ocean.

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Fighting on Two Fronts

In the aftermath of the defeat in Afghanistan, it belatedly occured to the neocons that the US military was unable to fight a two-front war against adversaries more capable than Grenada and Iraq.

THE GREATEST risk facing the twenty-first-century United States, short of an outright nuclear attack, is a two-front war involving its strongest military rivals, China and Russia. Such a conflict would entail a scale of national effort and risk unseen in generations, effectively pitting America against the resources of nearly half of the Eurasian landmass. It would stretch and likely exceed the current capabilities of the U.S. military, requiring great sacrifices of the American people with far-reaching consequences for U.S. influence, alliances, and prosperity. Should it escalate into a nuclear confrontation, it could possibly even imperil the country’s very existence.

Given these high stakes, avoiding a two-front war with China and Russia must rank among the foremost objectives of contemporary U.S. grand strategy. Yet the United States has been slow to comprehend this danger, let alone the implications it holds for U.S. policy. So far, Washington’s efforts to grapple with the “simultaneity” problem (as it’s called in Pentagon circles) have been overwhelmingly focused on the military side of the problem. The 2018 National Defense Strategy (NDS) replaced the two-war standard with a laser focus on fighting one major war with America’s most capable adversary—China. In its wake, a debate has erupted among defense intellectuals about how to handle a second-front contingency.

By comparison, there has been much less discussion of how, if at all, U.S. diplomacy should evolve to avert two-front war and, more broadly, alleviate the pressures of strategic simultaneity. While the Trump administration rightly inaugurated a more confrontational approach toward China, this was not accompanied by a rebalancing of diplomatic priorities and resources in other regions to complement the NDS’ justified focus on the Indo-Pacific. Nor does the Biden administration appear to be contemplating a redistribution of strategic focus and resources among regions. This misalignment in the objects of U.S. military and diplomatic power is neither desirable nor sustainable. America will have to limit the number of active rivalries requiring major U.S. military attention, improve the functionality of its existing alliances for offsetting the pressures of simultaneity, or significantly grow defense budgets—or some combination of the three.

In the current budgetary environment, though, the most likely outcome could well be the worst of all worlds—namely, that America will continue to try to overawe all threats without significantly improving the performance of its alliances while reducing real defense spending. Such an approach keeps U.S. power thinly spread and limits Washington’s bandwidth for managing policy tradeoffs among regions. This creates an ideal setting for an increasingly aligned Russia and China to conduct repeated stress tests of U.S. resolve in their respective neighborhoods and, when conditions are ripe, make synchronous grabs for, say, Taiwan and a Baltic state.

Averting such scenarios should not only or primarily be a concern for the U.S. military; it is also the job of U.S. diplomacy. Indeed, diplomacy in its highest form has historically been used for precisely this purpose, as an instrument for rearranging power in space and time to avoid fighting numerous enemies at once. This role—the sequencing of rivalries—should be the central preoccupation of American diplomacy today. Rather than trying to contain Russia and China simultaneously, the United States needs to find a way to stagger its contests with these two powers to ensure that it does not face both at the same time in a war.

So clever! Surely neither the Russians nor the Chinese will figure out this very cunning scheme to first defeat one enemy, than the other! The fact that the neocons STILL didn’t realize, as of August 2021, that China has been actively engaged in unrestricted warfare against the USA since 1999 and that the Russians had been preparing for its special military operation against the NATO-Nazis since at least 2008 means that all of their strategic contemplations were outdated, wildly off-base, and therefore doomed to failure.

What their review of the available options amounts to this: scare the other Asian countries with anti-Chinese rhetoric while convincing Russia to focus its “expansionary” efforts toward Asia rather than Europe by comprehensively defeating Russia in Ukraine by relying more heavily upon European military forces. “To work, the strategy would require the door to [Russian] westward expansion to be slammed—hard.”

Seriously, that was the grand strategic plan. To say that it did not work is not sufficient; it could not have even begun to work given that 11 months later, it can be seen that the first requirement is already a complete failure. Russia defeated Europe without needing to send a single troop onto European soil; the only question is whether the Europeans will surrender before or after their economies completely collapse.

This means that the USA has not only lost the narrative, as the EU recently complained, it has lost the initiative as well. The only way the US military can avoid fighting a two-front war against Russia and China is if one of its two enemies refuse to engage with it. And considering the way in which all of the BRICSIA nations are eager to escape the globalist hegemony and the Calvinball rules of the liberal world order, it appears highly unlikely that either of the two major powers will elect to refrain from that engagement.

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A Dire Situation

The head of the Swiss gas industry, André Dosé, warns about the dangerous energy and electricity situation facing Europe in the aftermath of the self-destructive decision on the part of the European governments to go to war with Russia and China on the orders of the US-based neocons. Of course, if the Swiss had maintained their historical neutrality, they could simply ask the Russians for help, but instead they’re being retaught the painful lesson of a) taking sides and b) aligning with the losers.

How dire is the situation?

We have a huge problem. There are currently increasing signs that no more gas will flow from Russia to Europe via Nord Stream 1 after the maintenance in July. The gas shortage in Germany could be declared in the next few days. Coal-fired power plants are now being used in Germany to produce electricity. At the same time, 40 to 45 percent of the nuclear power plants in France are out of operation. And the world’s largest gas supplier, Uniper, has asked the state for stabilization measures because of liquidity problems. Under these conditions, it takes very little for energy to run out in winter.

Does that also apply to Switzerland?

Yes. We depend on year-round gas imports and electricity imports in winter. This crisis in Switzerland is largely self-inflicted. The Energy Strategy 2050 is built on sand. It was assumed that there was no population growth, the population reduced electricity consumption. Likewise, electromobility was not included in the scenarios when voting. It was a dream that would never have worked one way or the other. The Ukraine war is now forcing us to rethink dramatically.

What must Switzerland do now?

There is no short-term solution. The expansion of photovoltaics is all right and good – but it won’t get us through the winter. Switzerland lags behind other countries in Europe. In addition, we do not have an electricity agreement with the EU, which does not improve our situation.

The “Perfect Storm”.

Yes, unfortunately. And I don’t have the impression that people in this country are aware of how dangerous the situation is. If the population is now called upon to take a shower instead of a bath, then the scope of our problems is fundamentally misunderstood.

André Dosé zur Energiekrise: «Man ist sich in der Schweiz nicht bewusst, wie gefährlich die Situation ist», NZZ, 6 July 2022

The situation is economically catalysmic, and may even prove to be societally cataclysmic. Three years ago, a megawatt hour of gas cost EUR 7. The price is now EUR 175, and is expected to rise to at least 250.

Spot electricity and gas markets are blowing up. But, less noticed, so are 2023 and 2024 gas prices.

Germany’s gas situation is dire. They are issuing official warnings about rationing. Lots of manufacturing will get turned off. People who hedged forward will face massive margin calls. Industry experts are predicting governments will have to do bailouts.

I do not think Europe will sustain its current position on UKR/Russia through this winter. And Putin can squeeze much harder. European voters will not support large hits to their living standards to fund turnign UKR into rubble and fighting between people screaming in Russian at each other.

The media and much of academia has cheered for the war so it’s very hard for them to cover this story…

The war against Russia was always and obviously going to be a complete disaster, without even taking China and the other BRICSIA nations into account. The European countries absolutely need to surrender now, before the weather turns cold and their need for heat and electricity rises. But as with the defeated Ukrainian military forces, it is unlikely that their globalist masters will permit them to do so. After all, the globalist elite doesn’t care about freezing Poles, Germans, or Swiss any more than they do about their starving Ukrainian cannon fodder.

What a pity the Swiss media didn’t seek to interview me about relevant topics like this instead of seeking to dig up material for the 473rd failed hit piece about me.

UPDATE: Today’s NZZ is discussing the possibility that Switzerland will lose 30 to 40 percent of its power this winter. It seems to me that the wisest approach to the incipient crisis would be a) declaring permanent neutrality, b) unfreezing and restoring all Russian assets, and c) sending a delegation to Moscow to apologize to the Russian people and request assistance.

UPDATE: French authorities are preparing for a complete suspension of gas supplies from Russia, according to the country’s Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, who sees such a full shutdown as the “most likely scenario.”

DISCUSS ON SG

What a Fren We Have in Russia

Even in the midst of his war against Clown World, Vladimir Putin has not forgotten about the oppressed nations of the occupied West.

If the West wanted to provoke a conflict in order to move on to a new stage in the fight against Russia and a new stage in containing our country, we can say that it has succeeded to a certain extent. A war was unleashed, and the sanctions were imposed. Under normal circumstances, it would probably be difficult to accomplish this.

But here is what I would you like to make clear. They should have realised that they would lose from the very beginning of our special military operation, because this operation also means the beginning of a radical breakdown of the US-style world order. This is the beginning of the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multipolar world based not on self-serving rules made up by someone for their own needs, behind which there is nothing but striving for hegemony, not on hypocritical double standards, but on international law and the genuine sovereignty of nations and civilisations, on their will to live their historical destiny, with their own values and traditions, and to align cooperation on the basis of democracy, justice and equality.

Everyone should understand that this process cannot be stopped. The course of history is inexorable, and the collective West’s attempts to impose its new world order on the rest of the world are doomed.

At the same time, I want to say and emphasise that we have many supporters, including in the United States and Europe, and even more so on other continents and in other countries. And there will be more, no doubt about that.

To reiterate, even in the countries that are still satellites of the United States, there is a growing understanding that their ruling elites’ blind obedience to their overlord, as a rule, does not necessarily coincide with their national interests, and most often simply and even radically contradicts them. Eventually, everyone will have to face this growing sentiment in society.

Today, these ruling elites are raising the degree to which they manipulate the public consciousness right before our eyes. The ruling classes of the Western countries, which are supranational and globalist in nature, realised that their policies are increasingly detached from reality, common sense and the truth, and they have started resorting to openly despotic methods.

The West, which once declared such principles of democracy as freedom of speech, pluralism and respect for dissenting opinions, has now degenerated into the opposite: totalitarianism. This includes censorship, media bans, and the arbitrary treatment of journalists and public figures.

These kinds of prohibitions have been extended not only to the information space, but also to politics, culture, education, and art – to all spheres of public life in the Western countries. And, they are imposing this on the world; they are trying to impose this model, a model of totalitarian liberalism, including the notorious cancel culture of widespread bans.

However, the truth and reality is that the people in most of these countries do not want this life or this future, and really do not want the formal semblance of sovereignty, they want substantive, real sovereignty and are simply tired of kneeling, of humiliating themselves before those who consider themselves exceptional, and of serving their interests even to their own detriment.

Today we hear that they want to defeat us on the battlefield. Well, what can I say? Let them try.

Vladimir Putin’s special military operation was never about Ukraine, anymore than World War II was about Manchuria. Nor was it about his ego or his desire to resurrect the long-defunct Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. To the contrary, it has always been a war of a sovereign nation against the globalist army of NATO-Nazis, and if the nations of the world are very fortunate, the liberation of Luhansk will eventually be followed by the liberation of Eastern Europe, Western Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Japan.

The key phrase: “Everyone should know that, by and large, we have not started anything in earnest yet.”

When China opens the second front, followed by the opening of third front in either North America or the Middle East, what I and other devotees of military history have been saying for months will become retroactively obvious to everyone.

DISCUSS ON SG

Lugansk is Liberated

Today, on July 3, 2022, the Minister of Defence of the Russian Federation General of the Army Sergey Shoigu reported to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Federation Armed Forces, V.Putin, on the liberation of the Lugansk People’s Republic.

One down, one to go. It’s fascinating, is it not, that the USA, which once claimed to have sent its troops “over there” in order to defend the self-determination of peoples, is now fighting a war to prevent self-determination on the part of the people of the Donbass.

DISCUSS ON SG

Iron Curtain 2.0

The USA is establishing a military base in Poland and NATO is increasing its high-alert troops from 30,000 to 400,000. It’s probably nothing, right?

America will deploy thousands more troops to Europe along with fighters, air defences and ships, Joe Biden announced today, as NATO reinforces its eastern flank in a new Iron Curtain to protect the continent from Russia.

Joe Biden, speaking at a NATO summit in Madrid today, announced the creation of a new base for the US Fifth Army Corps in Poland – the first permanent American base in the country – along with 3,000 extra soldiers to be sent to Romania and ‘enhanced’ troop rotations for the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Two more squadrons of F-35 fighters will be deployed to the UK, Biden added, along with additional air defence systems for Germany and Italy, and another two destroyers which will be stationed at Rota Naval Station in Spain, bringing the total to six.

Meanwhile NATO formally invited Finland and Sweden to join the alliance after Turkey dropped its opposition, and announced it will boost troops on its eastern flank by almost 4,000 compared to March this year.

It comes after alliance chief Jens Stoltenberg yesterday announced NATO’s high-alert force – troops which are not deployed but can be quickly sent into battle in the event of war – is being increased from 40,000 to 300,000.

The question is: how are these 400,000 troops going to be armed when NATO is already running out of ammunition after sending its existing stocks to the Ukrainian military? Too bad the greater part of the manufacturing capabilities of the Arsenal of Democracy was moved to Mexico and China, while the quality of the labor force has declined precipitously since 1940.

Anyhow, this puts the ball squarely in the Sino-Russian court. Even though time is on their side, it might make more sense to get things rolling before NATO actually finishes its mobilization. My guess is that Russia would prefer to let China make the next move and open up the second front before it strikes NATO directly, and it’s not in China’s interest to let Russia get too weakened before it gets involved.

DISCUSS ON SG

Denazification

When the Russians talk about de-nazifying Ukraine and the West, they aren’t talking about a long-defunct German political party that has been dead for nearly 80 years. They’re talking about this:

And that is why the neo-liberal, rules-based world order – aka GloboHomo – is so desperate to convince the world that the Russians are failing, because they know the Russians know exactly what they are and whom they serve.

DISCUSS ON SG

Canada is at War with Russia

A Canadian observes that despite not declaring war, Canada is actively at war with Russia, complete with troops on the ground.

Canada is at war with Russia. But the government doesn’t want to talk about it.

On Saturday The New York Times reported that Canadian special forces are part of a NATO network providing weapons and training to Ukrainian forces. The elite troops are also in the country gathering intelligence on Russian operations.

The Department of National Defence refused Ottawa Citizen military reporter David Pugliese’s request for comment on the US paper’s revelations. But in late January Global News and CTV reported that the usually highly secretive special forces were sent to Ukraine. (Canadian special forces have been dispatched secretly to many war zones.)

Alongside special forces, an unknown number of former Canadian troops have been fighting in Ukraine. There have been a bevy of stories about Canadians traveling to Ukraine to join the fight and organizers initially claimed over 500 individuals joined while the Russian government recently estimated that 600 Canadians were fighting there (Both the Canadian organizers and Moscow would have reasons to inflate the numbers). Early on, Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly and Defence Minister Anita Anand both encouraged Canadians to join the fight, which may have violated Canada’s Foreign Enlistment Act.

Top commanders have also joined the war. After more than 30 years in the Canadian Forces lieutenant-general Trevor Cadieu retired on April 5 (amidst a rape investigation) and was in Ukraine days later.

Troops on the ground prove Canada is at war with Russia, 26 June 2022

And, of course the New York Times article to which he refers proves that the USA is also actively at war with Russia.

As Russian troops press ahead with a grinding campaign to seize eastern Ukraine, the nation’s ability to resist the onslaught depends more than ever on help from the United States and its allies — including a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training, according to U.S. and European officials.

Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials.

At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine. The United States withdrew its own 150 military instructors before the war began in February, but commandos from these allies either remained or have gone in and out of the country since then, training and advising Ukrainian troops and providing an on-the-ground conduit for weapons and other aid, three U.S. officials said.

Few other details have emerged about what the C.I.A. personnel or the commandos are doing, but their presence in the country — on top of the diplomatic staff members who returned after Russia gave up its siege of Kyiv — hints at the scale of the secretive effort to assist Ukraine that is underway and the risks that Washington and its allies are taking.

Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say, The New York Times, 25 June 2022

The wordspellers seem to imagine that as long as they don’t actually say the magic word – war – and as long as they call their soldiers things like “commandos” and “special forces operators” and “advisers” and “intelligence agents”, they can pretend they don’t actually have “soldiers” engaging in hostilities against the Russian forces.

But war is not rhetoric. Russia is now perfectly entitled to start firing hypersonic missiles at Canada and the USA, and doing to Toronto and Washington DC what they’ve already done to Lysychansk.

DISCUSS ON SG