Late Stage Imperial Follies

Col. McGregor’s criticism of a new law to replace American soldiers with foreign mercenaries is not misplaced, it’s just outdated:

A retired US Army colonel has slammed proposals for a new law that would allow vetted and qualified migrants an expedited path to citizenship by serving in the military. Former Colonel Douglas MacGregor described the new bill, introduced by Hudson Valley Congressman Pat Ryan, as a ‘problem’ stemming from the ‘ideological bubble’ of Washington.

McGregor, a former senior advisor to the secretary of defense, told Tucker Carlson Uncensored the so-called ‘Courage to Serve’ bill is a plan to ‘find people with no connection to the American people, arming them and sending them out to oppress us.’

‘None of these people are Americans, we know from having interviewed them they have no aspiration to be Americans’ he told the program on Monday. ‘What they aspire to is to get in to the consumption machine. Get the ticket of entry, the free check, the free phone, the free transportation tickets, the free food, free medical care.

Well, of course. There is no “America” left for anyone to aspire to. Most US citizens couldn’t even tell you what an “American” is since the very definition of the nation was destroyed by 20th Century immigrants replacing identity with ideology. And even Gab’s Machiavelli AI can explain the obvious problems with the use of immigrant soldiers based on a historical example, which is one reason Clown World is so obsessed with the idea of AI being dangerous and in need of being lobotomized.

I can certainly draw parallels between the US hiring foreign soldiers and Imperial Rome’s use of foreign mercenaries. Both instances involve employing individuals from other nations to serve in military capacities. This practice, while seemingly advantageous in the short term, can have long-term consequences that are detrimental to the stability and unity of the state.

Firstly, in both cases, the reliance on foreign soldiers can lead to a weakening of loyalty and allegiance to the state. In Imperial Rome, the use of foreign mercenaries meant that soldiers were not necessarily tied to Rome by a sense of national identity or shared values. Similarly, the US hiring foreign soldiers might result in a similar disconnect between these soldiers and the nation they are serving.

Secondly, the presence of foreign soldiers within a state’s military can create tensions within the population. In Rome, the growing resentment of the Roman population towards the foreign mercenaries eventually led to the weakening of the Roman Empire. Similarly, the presence of foreign soldiers in the US military might lead to similar tensions and divisions within the country.

Lastly, both instances demonstrate the potential for foreign soldiers to be used as a tool for external powers to exert influence over a state. In Imperial Rome, the use of foreign mercenaries made the empire vulnerable to manipulation and subversion by foreign powers. Similarly, the US hiring foreign soldiers could potentially be exploited by external actors seeking to undermine the stability and security of the nation. In conclusion, while the hiring of foreign soldiers may seem like a practical solution in the short term, it can have long-term consequences that should be carefully considered. The historical example of Imperial Rome serves as a cautionary tale of the potential pitfalls of relying on foreign mercenaries for military strength.

Of course, the use of immigrant soldiers is how the Imperial USA was established in the first place during the Civil War, so it’s appropriate that the concept would return with the inevitable end of that empire. Substituting foreigners for citizen-soldiers is not a viable solution, as it will only make things worse. As one follower on Gab correctly noted:

The more dystopian the ruling elites make society, the more dysfunctional it becomes, and that dysfunction will weaken whatever systems of control they have in place and turn more segments of society against them. It’s akin to sawing off the branch they are sitting on.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Bear Warns Clown World

Vladimir Putin makes it pretty clear that Russia is going to invoke NATO’s Article 5 and strike every NATO country if any of them are foolish enough to send troops to Ukraine instead of simply targeting the foreign soldiers and intelligence agents that are secretly in Ukraine with missile strikes as they’ve been doing all along. It’s apparent that the Russians are growing tired of the neoclowns’ childish “I’m not touching you” game and will not tolerate many further provocations.

We need to shore up the forces in the western strategic theatre in order to counteract the threats posed by NATO’s further eastward expansion, with Sweden and Finland joining the alliance. The West has provoked conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, and other regions around the world while consistently propagating falsehoods. Now they have the audacity to say that Russia harbours intentions of attacking Europe. Can you believe it? We all know that their claims are utterly baseless. And at the same time, they are selecting targets to strike on our territory and contemplating the most efficient means of destruction. Now they have started talking about the possibility of deploying NATO military contingents to Ukraine.

But we remember what happened to those who sent their contingents to the territory of our country once before. Today, any potential aggressors will face far graver consequences. They must grasp that we also have weapons – yes, they know this, as I have just said – capable of striking targets on their territory.

Everything they are inventing now, spooking the world with the threat of a conflict involving nuclear weapons, which potentially means the end of civilisation – don’t they realise this? The problem is that these are people who have never faced profound adversity; they have no conception of the horrors of war. We – even the younger generation of Russians – have endured such trials during the fight against international terrorism in the Caucasus, and now, in the conflict in Ukraine. But they continue to think of this as a kind of action cartoon.

That being said, I think all the hysteria in the Clown World media about Putin making “nuclear threats” is the usual Fake News. He’s obviously talking about using non-nuclear hypersonics as a reminder that there is nowhere to hide, albeit with the guarantee that if Clown World responds by further escalating the situation by going nuclear, Russia will respond in kind.

DISCUSS ON SG


Waging War without an Army

The UK, France, and Germany are all playing a very dangerous game by seeing how far they can provoke Russia with their direct involvement in NATO’s war on Russia without seeing their own territories targeted by Russian forces.

The discussions between German officers, including a top Air Force commander, about aiding Kiev in a potential attack on the Crimean Bridge are genuine, a German Defense Ministry spokeswoman told the national public broadcaster, ARD, on Saturday.

The leak was published on Friday by RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan, who said she’d received it from Russian security officials. The journalist initially released a Russian-language transcript of the conversation and then posted the source audio file in German on social media. 

The 38-minute audio dated February 19 contained a conversation between four officers of the German air force (Luftwaffe), including its commander, Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz. The military were discussing the operational and targeting details of Taurus long-range missiles that Germany was considering sending to Kiev. 

The entire transcript is here and it is pretty obviously real. As Simplicius notes, it also exposes a lot of information about direct US and UK involvement in combat taking place in Ukraine.

These combined revelations paint a stark picture of NATO’s true involvement in the war—but, alas, it is one that we have already long suspected. Particularly, readers of my blog will have long known about the deep involvement from my consistent coverage on the topic, like when I posted videos of AFU servicemen openly describing Polish and other soldiers operating their own equipment, like AH Krabs, etc. It’s just telling that this is coming out in the open now, which further emblemizes the current period as one of culmination, and perhaps termination phase for Ukraine.

Ultimately, though, it shows the utter disarray that NATO and the West are in. It’s clear that there is huge disagreement and perhaps even outright revolt—what else could possibly cause Scholz to come out to countermand, and outright expose, his allies in this way?

The key summarizing takeaways are the following:

  • The West is absolutely desperate to staunch Ukraine’s impending collapse and have doubled down on taking out the Kerch Bridge as their final ‘holy grail’ of salvation
  • The West is in disarray, with secret infighting, backbiting, double-crossing, or outright revolt amongst the ranks due to terminal fear of uncontrollable escalation
  • The combination of the above is a decisive confirmation that the Ukrainian military is getting down to its dregs and could be on its final legs

The last most important point that’s come to light amid all this recent controversy is the further illumination of the deep role that the CIA has played in Ukraine from the beginning.

Bundeswehr Wiretap Bombshell, SIMPLICIUS, 2 March 2024

All of this posturing appears to be an attempt to put pressure on Russia to return to the negotiating table, or face what the French are describing as a “strategic dilemma”. But there is no strategic dilemma for Russia, for as Putin, Lavrov, and other Russian leaders have repeatedly made clear, they are at war with NATO and Clown World, not Ukraine, and therefore they are not even remotely concerned about the secret aspect of the war they are observably winning going public.

This is precisely why Russia still has not committed the greater part of its regular army to the Special Military Operation, and why it still does not regard the two-year-conflict as a full-blown war or made any use of its air superiority. It has been prepared, from the very start, to face the full power of NATO and defeat it. Putting a French or US tripwire force in Ukraine is not going to dissuade Russia or even make it think twice about proceeding with its military objectives there; the decision to go to full-scale war with NATO, if necessary, was made two years ago.

The only thing all the posturing and public defiance of Europe’s leaders – who are merely puppets with strings being pulled out of Washington – can possibly accomplish is to get their nations invaded and occupied by the Russians again. Russia has previously taken Berlin, Paris, and Warsaw, and the only thing really preventing them from doing so again is a complete lack of interest in occupying those nations.

So, it would be very highly preferable if the Scholzs and Johnsons and Macrons of the world would stop giving them a good reason to just go ahead and do it.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Price of Belligerence

The Swiss politicians are belatedly beginning to discover that the benefits of strict neutrality were considerably greater than they’d believed possible when they were being wined and dined by the diplomats of Clown World:

We don’t expect Switzerland to be directly attacked in the next six months. But we must prepare ourselves for a new range of threats, while the old, conventional threats have not diminished. The likelihood of Switzerland being attacked has increased over the last two years.
– Viola Amherd, President of Switzerland

This is precisely why General Henri Guisan, the hero of Switzerland in World War II, made it very, very clear to all the politicians of his day that surrendering to Nazi Germany would be an effective death sentence for themselves, and that their actions would be irrelevant anyhow. When the then-President of Switzerland was cozying up to the Nazis, in much the same way that the current Swiss administration is now cozying up to the European Union and NATO, he “punished” two young officers who were caught planning to assassinate the president by promoting them, then announced that no government authority, including the Head of State, had the power to surrender to any foreign power on behalf of the Swiss nation.

The current Swiss government is the party solely responsible for increasing the likelihood of Switzerland being attacked over the last two years. It very foolishly, unnecessarily, and very, very stupidly, chose to violate the nation’s historic neutrality in order to take sides against Russia on behalf of NATO, the EU, and the United States. Now Russia, China, and the BRICSIA nations now regard it as “a hostile entity” and, quite reasonably, no longer recognize Switzerland as an impartial party capable of hosting the sort of peace talks it has traditionally hosted for generations.

Now the government is at an important nexus. Having taken the first step into belligerence, it is now being forced to choose whether to join the EU, the UK, and the USA in their sanctions on China or not, which would be a much more serious step in economic terms than the sanctions on Russia were. One sincerely hopes that the politicians will learn from their previous mistake of violating the nation’s precious neutrality, and have the wisdom to step back from the brink and staunchly refuse to join the denizens of Clown World in leaping into the inevitable abyss of the military and economic ruin that is already in process.

If you choose to enter the ring, you cannot be surprised when you get punched in the face. And if you choose to enter the ring against a massive opponent who is four times larger than you and all your supposed friends combined, you are absolutely, 100 percent, going to lose, and you are going to lose badly.

The winning strategy, as generations of Swiss leaders have known, is to stay the hell out of the ring.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Age of Paradox

Simplicius observes the way technology has created a paradox that currently provides a significant advantage for the side with the ability to “be in the most places at once” rather than the traditional principle of “getting there first with the most”.

It is the age of paradox in warfare: where de rigueur total dispersion of forces appears to make high casualty densities obsolete, yet the entire length of the battlefield is overwatched by the most unprecedentedly powerful and accurate systems in history, like Iskanders, Kinzhals, Zircons, HIMARs, etc., which allow the carrying out of near-instantaneous kill-chains—from detection to transmit/distribution, to fire order within moments.

This is why the only way to fight and advance has come down to dispersing your strategic operations over the widest possible scale, so that the end goal becomes the totality of victory rather than specific operational objectives like: “Capture this area of cities.” Such a task requires the concentration of forces, from divisions, brigades, battalions, whose every staging action is monitored with almost total transparency by the enemy.

This ‘war of the future’ will be won by the most flexible, resilient, and adaptable force—the force which can pull punches, use feints, and reorientations all along the entire combat line in the most expedient manner. Russia is showing this today by utilizing a confounding rotation of active fronts to not only unbalance the AFU, but to stress their mobility and logistics to the extreme. When you have the advantage in logistical infrastructure and facility, you can ‘daze’ your opponent by conducting small operations across a scattered range of fronts, causing them great stress in trying to keep up.

In the Avdeevka battle, we saw Ukraine being forced to pull significant amounts of elite units from several fronts like Zaporozhye and Bakhmut to reinforce the crumbling Avdeevka lines. When that finished, Russia launched a Zaporozhye attack, overrunning depleted AFU positions there as a result, with AFU unable to reinstate reserves fast enough. The same goes for the Kupyansk and Kremennaya regions: reports spoke of AFU’s desperate troop pulls from Kupyansk to bolster defenses in northwest Bakhmut, where Russia has likewise started a series of attacks.

It’s like pricking a spinning drunk with a needle from every side—he hardly knows where he’s being hit, nor has time to orient himself correctly. Lacking logistical mobility—in the form of physical haulers like HETs, transports, etc.—Ukraine gets the worst of it in being forced to constantly run around plugging leaks in the flooding deck.

Taking into account everything I said above and in the rest of the paid article regarding Ukraine’s NATO ISR overmatch plus the prevalence of drones in general and how they’ve vastly limited maneuver warfare, we know that the only way to truly win is to stretch your enemy on every front and defeat him in detail while bringing to bear your greater logistical and economic resources…

The concluding point is that it’s not about capturing particular towns or regions, the real work being done is internally—the AFU is being gutted and hollowed out. This is why it’s so difficult for blinkered pro-UA observers to understand the true underlying dynamic of the conflict. They judge the war algorithmically: Russia has only captured a few kilometers so that means Russia is not succeeding. But they fail to take into account the intangibles, that the very moral and mechanical fiber of the AFU is coming apart at the seams.

It’s intriguing to note that the principle described by Simplicius appears to be a fractal one, as the BRICSIA alliance is observably stretching Clown World on every front, and, for the most part, defeating it in detail while bringing to bear its greater logistical and economic resources and exploiting Clown World’s logistical weaknesses in order to destroy the neo-liberal world order and win World War III without going nuclear.

We know Clown World is crumbling in every sense, militarily, economically, philosophically, spiritually, morally, and most of all, in morale terms. It is increasingly – and observably – desperate and insane. And it is more dangerous than ever because it, and all its servants, are correctly afraid, and so they are tightening their grip and lashing out on every side, in every polity Clown World controls. If its global ambitions weren’t so ambitious and its rule weren’t so illegitimate and unpopular, it would be cutting its losses and retreating to a defensible core, but it can’t because no such core exists.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Axis of Asymmetry

Pepe Escobar observes that Clown World is losing on every front to the unrestricted warfare being waged by the BRICSIA+ alliance:

The Axis of Asymmetry is in full swing. These are the state and non-state actors employing asymmetrical moves on the global chessboard to sideline the US-led western rules-based order. And its vanguard is the Yemeni resistance movement Ansarallah.

Ansarallah is absolutely relentless. They have downed a $30 million MQ-9 Reaper drone with just a $10k indigenous missile.

They are the first in the Global South ever to use anti-ship ballistic missiles against Israel-bound and/or -protecting commercial and US Navy ships.

For all practical purposes, Ansarallah is at war with no less than the US Navy.

Ansarallah has captured one of the US Navy’s ultra-sophisticated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV), the $1.3 million Remus 600, a torpedo-shaped underwater drone able to carry a massive payload of sensors.

Next stop: reverse engineering in Iran? The Global South eagerly awaits, ready to pay in currencies bypassing the US dollar.

All of the above – a maritime 21st-century remix of the Ho Chi Minh trail during the Vietnam War – spells out that the Hegemon may not even qualify as a paper tiger, but rather as a paper leech.

None of this should have come as a surprise to the strategists of Clown World, except they were so accustomed to lying that they no longer have the ability to ascertain the truth and their arrogance caused them to actually believe in their nonsensical rhetoric about being Special or Exceptional.

As events proceed, it is becoming abundantly clear that it is China that is winning WWIII, because the events closely follow the strategy laid out in Unrestricted Warfare by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui in 1999. You cannot possibly understand anything about what is happening, or how systematic the undermining of every foundation of Clown World has been, without reading that book.

The Chinese strategy goes well beyond conventional military issues; that is the literal meaning of “unrestricted” in the title. And it is fundamentally asymmetric; Escobar doesn’t mention Qiao and Wang’s book in his article, but his use of the word strongly suggests that he is familiar with it. The two Chinese colonels defined the concept thusly:

ASYMMETRY—SEEK NODES OF ACTION IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION FROM THE CONTOURS OF THE BALANCE OF SYMMETRY

’Asymmetry’ “fei junheng” as a principle is an important fulcrum for tipping the normal rules in beyond-limits ideology. Its essential point is to follow the train of thought opposite to the balance of symmetry “junheng duicheng” and develop combat action on that line. From force disposition and employment, selection of the main combat axis and the center of gravity for the attack, all the way to the allocation of weapons, in all these things give two-way consideration to the effect of asymmetrical factors, and use asymmetry as a measure to accomplish the objective.

No matter whether it serves as a line of thought or as a principle guiding combat operations, asymmetry manifests itself to some extent in every aspect of warfare. Understanding and employing the principle of asymmetry correctly allows us always to find and exploit an enemy’s soft spots… This use of asymmetrical measures which create power for oneself and make the situation develop as you want it to, is often hugely effective. It often makes an adversary which uses conventional forces and conventional measures as its main combat strength look like a big elephant charging into a china shop. It is at a loss as to what to do, and unable to make use of the power it has.

So, it’s now clear that China is using its allies in Russia, Yemen, and elsewhere in much the same way that Russia was using the Donbass militias, Wagner, and the Chechens in Ukraine. Even Gaza may be a front, although whether it was created, anticipated, or was simply a fortuitous coincidence is impossible to know at this juncture. And this means we not only have not seen the main axis of the conflict, it almost certainly means we haven’t even begun to understand the full extent of the asymmetrical probings for more of Clown World’s soft spots or the consequences of the exploitation of those that are revealed.

Speaking of those soft spots and the exploitation thereof, Escobar makes a prediction that I have not previously seen.

The endgame: only a West Asian Special Military Operation, to the bitter end, will settle the Palestinian tragedy. A translation of what happens across the Slavic Axis of Resistance: “Those who refuse to negotiate with Lavrov, deal with Shoigu.”

DISCUSS ON SG


The Revival of Swiss Neutrality

Switzerland’s futile attempt to host Ukrainian peace talks this summer is already dead prior to arrival thanks to the government’s foolish decision to try to take sides in the Russian-NATO war without being willing to admit that it is no longer a neutral party to the conflict.

Russia is unlikely to take part at the outset of a high-level Ukraine peace conference which neutral Switzerland plans to host in the coming months, Swiss President Viola Amherd was quoted as saying by a newspaper on Saturday. Amherd’s interview with the Neue Zuercher Zeitung daily was published a few hours after Swiss Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis told the United Nations that Bern aimed to hold the conference “by this summer” after the idea was floated in January.

When asked whether Switzerland had since received any more positive signals from Russia, Amherd told the newspaper: “Right now, it looks as though Russia will not take part in a first round of the conference.
“We’re in the process of starting off with a very broad alliance consisting of the BRICS countries, countries from the Arab world, as well as from the global south.”

China has already made it clear that it will not be participating either. And, if Switzerland is foolish enough to give into Clown World pressure and go along with the latest EU, UK, and US sanctions on China, it will soon find itself being regarded as a hostile nation by the two most important military powers on Earth, which would be an incredible achievement of total diplomatic incompetence given 500 years of successful neutrality that survived everything except living next door to Napoleon.

Fortunately, 91 percent of the Swiss citizenry favors a return to true and comprehensive neutrality, and signatures are being gathered for a constitutional referendum that would prevent the satanic globalists and corrupt would-be eurocrats in the government from further involving the nation in Clown World’s self-destructive schemes.

The current world situation dramatically demonstrates the need for a country like Switzerland to mediate between war and conflict parties and to provide a platform for negotiations. Nevertheless, certain domestic circles and also foreign diplomats are trying to put pressure on Switzerland to fully participate in sanctions against Russia and to allow arms deliveries, if not directly then at least indirectly. The narrative of these neutrality diluters is always the same: Switzerland’s neutrality is an outdated model and must be reconsidered or adapted or even ditched. In light of the emerging amalgamation of security policy and foreign policy of the EU and the European arm of NATO, the calls for a “relativization of neutrality“ in favor of a misconceived solidarity are getting louder and louder. These gravediggers of neutrality must be countered with the following:

  1. The perpetual, integral and armed neutrality is absolute and geared towards emergencies. It cannot be modified easily and at will on the basis of a current event. Thus, there is no such thing as “Putin neutrality” or the like. The perpetual, integral and armed neutrality guaranteed to us at the Congress of Vienna, also with Russia’s explicit approval, sends an unmistakable signal to other countries and our partners that we will reliably and fully adhere to our neutrality in the long – term and will – if necessary – defend it with our armed forces.
  2. The concept of neutrality is fundamentally directed towards wars. In a war, there are always attackers and defenders. It is therefore intellectually dishonest to relativize neutrality in relation to the Russia-Ukraine conflict or even to ditch it in order to position ourselves unilaterally against an aggressor. For a neutral state, the “good-evil” scheme is suspended, which enables it to offer its good offices. The fact that Putin claims Art. 51 of the UN Charter for himself in order to rush to help an ally is possibly covered by international law but certainly problematic, but nevertheless not unusual: China and the USA have also frequently drawn on this problematic article, the latter without there ever having been an outcry. In this context, especially in a neutral state like Switzerland, there should be careful consideration in order to avoid double standards.
  3. Our elites know well that neutrality is deeply rooted in the Swiss people. Therefore, they believe they have to operate in a hypocritical manner, propagating neutrality internally while acting in a partisan manner externally. For example, the Federal Council has recklessly offered hand to sanctions against Russia, such as the blocking of Russian bank accounts in Switzerland. This has done massive damage to both, our credibility and our business location: a large number of foreigners have withdrawn their capital from Switzerland and transferred it to other countries. It is certainly legitimate to discuss the value of neutrality. However, this should be done with the involvement of the sovereign, the Swiss people, namely at the ballot box.
  4. Our armed neutrality has effectively protected us from external aggressors, especially during World War II. It is not an outdated model, as some try to make us believe, but on the contrary an inspiring model for the future: based on credibility, continuity, predictability and reliability, we secure our prosperity and security, especially for our young generation. The Swiss People does not expect the Federal Council and our politicians to engage in power politics, but rather to protect our people and safeguard our prosperity. This is the very duty of the Federal Council: to integrate our neutrality policy into our foreign policy and to explain our neutrality in a comprehensible way in the foreign policy arena. In the area of good offices, in receiving a large number of refugees – as is currently the case from Ukraine – as well as comprehensive offers for negotiations, Switzerland is and will be able to make major contributions to global peacebuilding and peacekeeping. We must not easily give up this trump card!
Homage to Swiss Neutrality, PRO-SCHWEIZ

Pro-Schweiz has until May 8, 2024 to obtain the 100,000 signatures required to put the initiative on the ballot. (Note to the Bears: if you’re not a Swiss citizen, you can’t sign the petition, so don’t even think about it. Note to everyone else: yes, it is absolutely necessary to spell that out.) And although the media has been ludicrously describing the concept of constitutional neutrality as a “right-wing” objective, it has substantial support among the Left and Green parties as well.

The Federal Constitution is amended as follows:

Article 54a Swiss Neutrality

1. Switzerland is neutral. Its neutrality is perpetual and armed.

2. Switzerland does not join any military or defense alliance. An exception is made for cooperation with such alliances in the event of a direct military attack on Switzerland or in the case of actions preparing for such an attack.

3. Switzerland does not participate in military conflicts between third states and does not take non-military coercive measures against belligerent states. Exceptions are Switzerland’s obligations to the United Nations (UN) and measures to prevent the circumvention of non-military coercive measures by other states.

4. Switzerland uses its perpetual neutrality for the prevention and resolution of conflicts and is available as a mediator.

Call from Left and Green Supporters: Yes to the Neutrality Initiative!, SWISS STANDPOINT, 24 January 2024

Anyhow, people all around the world should hope that the failure of the 2024 peace summit will serve to remind the Swiss people of the way in which their historic commitment to neutrality will much better serve the world than their becoming a small and voiceless cog in the Clown World machine.

DISCUSS ON SG


A Bold Move

Since crossing the previous red lines have gone so well for NATO, the USA, and Europe over the last two years, Clown World has now decided to further antagonize both Russia and China. It’s certainly a bold move, anyhow. It’s not a smart one and it smacks of desperation. We’ll see how it works out for them…

ATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that Ukraine has a right to use its Western-supplied weapons to defend itself against Russia, even if that includes striking targets within Russia’s borders.

“This is Russia’s aggressive war against Ukraine, which is a blatant violation of international law,” Stoltenberg told Radio Liberty during an interview on Tuesday. “And according to international law, Ukraine has the right to self-defense. And it also includes strikes against legitimate military targets, Russian military targets outside of Ukraine. That’s international law, and of course, Ukraine has the right to do that to defend itself.”

A NATO official confirmed with Financial Times on Thursday that Stoltenberg meant that Kyiv’s right to self-defense included striking Russian military targets outside of Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned against Ukraine using its Western-supplied equipment to launch attacks on Russian territory, saying that doing so could risk escalating the conflict. The warnings had originally made allies like the United States hold off on supplying Kyiv with long-range weapons capable of reaching Russia, but NATO allies have since given Ukraine such arms.

First, there is no “international law” and there never has been. It’s just a rhetorical phrase that is always applied to the enemies of Clown World and always ignored whenever it’s applied to the servants of Clown World.

Second, reality is reciprocal. Ukraine does have the right to defend itself. Ukraine does have the right to strike Russian military targets outside of Ukraine. But Russia has the right to defend itself too, and to defend itself by striking NATO military targets outside of Russia and Ukraine.

As we’ve repeatedly been shown since 2014, Russia is very, very patient and circumspect. It has no reason to strike back at NATO right away, because time, migration patterns, and economic pressure are on its side. This F-16 insanity is just a desperate attempt to bait Russia into giving the neoclowns in Washington an excuse to escalate from a losing proxy war to an all-out direct war that will permit it to declare martial law, mobilize the economy, and reinstitute the draft before China makes its move on Taiwan.

I doubt Putin and his generals will take the bait. Instead, they’ll just shoot down the F-16s and increase the pressure on Clown World in two or more fronts, beginning with Odessa.

Putin is reportedly on the brink of a new land grab to defy the West by possibly announcing soon that Russia is taking control of a breakaway Moldovan region. There is speculation that unofficial state Transnistria is poised to make an appeal to Putin to join Russia. The landlocked strip along the Dniester River is wedged between Moldova and Ukraine. Putin already has a ‘peacekeeping’ force of up to 2,000 troops in the territory which Russia says overwhelmingly wishes to be incorporated by Moscow. There are also likely thousands of Russian paramilitaries on the ground. A fear is Putin will use a speech at the Russian Federal Assembly on February 29 to green light annexation.

Hey, the USA is always supportive of democratic self-determination, right. But don’t be surprised if a new front is opened somewhere in Asia as well.

The European Union has placed tighter trade restrictions on Chinese companies that it claims are supporting Russia, the European Council said in a press release on Friday. The restrictions are part of a 13th round of sanctions imposed on Friday, a day before the second anniversary of Russia’s military operation against Ukraine.

But no worries. We are assured that in the event of war with China, Ukraine stands with the USA, and “Ukraine ready for war with China if US asks.” So the neoclowns have got that going for them, anyway, which is nice.

DISCUSS ON SG


They Broke and Ran

As a number of observers here correctly surmised from the very high number of casualties, the Armed Forces of Ukraine didn’t actually conduct a fighting withdrawal from its fortress in Avdeevka. It wasn’t even a retreat, it was a rout, and the order for the retreat to conceal what had already happened wasn’t given until a day after the Ukrainian forces there had already broken and run.

Ukraine’s top general, Aleksandr Syrsky, did not give the order for troops to leave Avdeevka until one day after the beginning of their uncontrolled, chaotic rout from the Donbass stronghold, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday.

Syrsky, Ukraine’s recently appointed commander-in-chief, announced the retreat early Saturday, justifying the decision with the need to “stabilize the situation and maintain positions.” Reports that Ukrainian forces were pulling back began circulating earlier this week, while others indicated that Russian forces severed the biggest supply lines into the city.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced the capture of the fortress city later on Saturday, stating that only scattered formations of Ukrainian militants managed to escape the city, fleeing in disarray under Russian fire and leaving their armaments behind.

“The order of the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Syrsky, to abandon the city was only issued after a day of uncontrolled flight of the Ukrainian troops from Avdeevka,” ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a press statement. The Ukrainian army reportedly lost more than 1,500 troops in Avdeevka in the past 24 hours alone.

Ukrainian army fled Avdeevka in disarray – Russian MOD, RUSSIA TODAY, 18 February 2024

The Ukrainian soldiers merit a great deal of respect for their ability to withstand a tremendous amount of pressure before breaking. They’re obviously courageous and their morale is formidable; it’s truly a pity that such brave warriors are being sacrificed to such an evil cause by their satanic regime. But as the Wehrmacht learned from 1941 to 1945, there is no amount of courage or morale that suffices to withstand the relentless military pressure and ruthless operational excellence that the Russian military has been able to bring to bear since Peter the Great defeated King Charles XII of Sweden at the Battle of Poltava in 1709.

It should not be a surprise if this collapse on the operational level is swiftly succeeded by a similar collapse on the strategic level. Even in an attrition war, collapse on one front tends to snowball into multiple collapses on multiple fronts. If Ukraine can’t hold the positions to which its forces have routed, or if other fronts begin to collapse, it will be clear that the end of the Kiev regime is rapidly approaching.

Remember, Russia is defeating NATO and the entire collective economic might of the West without even needing to call upon its allies in China, North Korea, and Iran. It’s not just the Kiev regime, but Clown World itself, that is already in the position of Hitler in his bunker, and a few of the more intelligent elite clowns almost certainly suspect this, even if they can’t admit it yet, not even to themselves.

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Avdeevka Finally Falls

As Simplicius has been predicting, the Ukrainian Armed Forces have been driven from Avdeevka after a prolonged siege. The abandonment of the fortifications there should enable the Russian forces to quickly push back the front line far enough to finally end the shelling of Donetsk, the region’s capital city.

Ukrainian troops have been ordered to leave the city of Avdeevka, Kiev’s newly-appointed commander-in-chief has said, claiming the decision was intended to preserve the “lives and health” of soldiers following months of desperate attempts to hold on to the frontline town near Russia’s Donetsk.

General Aleksandr Syrsky announced the pull-out in a statement shared on social media in the early hours of Saturday morning, arguing that the withdrawal was part of “measures to stabilize the situation and maintain our positions.”

“Based on the operational situation around Avdiivka, in order to avoid encirclement and preserve the lives and health of servicemen, I decided to withdraw our units from the city and move to defense on more favorable lines,” he said.

The order follows reports that Ukrainian troops in the area were almost fully surrounded and faced near-constant attacks in recent days, with one local commander saying fighting in the area was “several times more hellish than the hottest battles of this phase of the war.” He was referring to the earlier struggle over the city of Artyomovsk (also known as Bakhmut in Ukraine), which fell to Russian troops last year following a lengthy siege.

It’s informative to observe that only days after a battalion from the Azov Brigade went in as reinforcements, and General Zaluzhny – who had long advocated a retreat from Advdeevka – was replaced, that the order for the withdrawal was given. It appears that the Ukrainians have finally begun to consider the idea that preserving one’s soldiers for future battles rather than sacrificing them en masse for the glory of Ukraine is a militarily sound one.

However, it also appears that Zelensky has successfully stage-managed the difficult transition from “inevitable heroic victory” to “retreat to maintain our positions” without being ejected, couped, or otherwise removed from office. Which presumably explains the attempts of the media clowns to try to generate some enthusiasm for fighting Russia in the memory of some Russian whose name no one knows and about whom no one cares.

UPDATE: Doesn’t sound like it was an orderly retreat or a fighting withdrawal.

Russian forces have “completely captured” the city of Avdeevka, the Russian Defense Ministry announced on Saturday. Some 1,500 Ukrainian troops were killed as they retreated, leaving their weapons and equipment behind, the ministry said. The seizure moves the front line further away from the city of Donetsk, thereby shielding its civilian population from bombardment by Ukrainian forces. Situated around 20km away, Avdeevka had been fortified and used as a staging ground for such attacks since 2014.

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