Tag: war

UKRAINE Shuts Off Europe’s Gas

Ukraine is proving to be a less-than-trustworthy ally for the European nations:

Ukraine’s operator OGTSU announced it would halt further deliveries starting May 11, due to the presence of “Russian occupiers.”

Gas Transit Services of Ukraine (OGTSU) declared force majeure on Tuesday, saying that it was impossible to continue the transit of gas through a connection point and compressor station located in the Lugansk area. As OGTSU personnel “cannot carry out operational and technological control” over the Sokhranovka connector point and Novopskov compressor station, the company cannot continue to fulfill its contract obligations, it said.

Gas from this connection will not be accepted into the transit system of Ukraine starting at 7 am on Wednesday, OGTSU said. Sokhrankovka accounts for almost a third of the Russian gas that transits through Ukraine to Europe – up to 32.6 million cubic meters per day – according to the operators.

This would appear to indicate either a) an increasing level of desperation on the part of the Ukrainians, or b) the determination of the neocons to trigger a hot war between Russia and the USA. Cutting off the supply of gas to Europe is supposed to one of Russia’s trump cards, so Ukraine preemptively playing it – if only in part – is surprising.

Sure, it’s only a third of the supply so far. But if the desired results aren’t achieved, it’s obvious that the percentage will rise.

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Countdown to WWIII

Fake President Biden signs a bipartisan lend-lease act that historical precedent suggests is likely to precede a hot war with the Sino-Russian alliance within one year.

Washington sought to portray a united front against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Monday as President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan measure to reboot the World War II-era “lend-lease” program, which helped defeat Nazi Germany, to bolster Kyiv and Eastern European allies.

The signing comes as the U.S. Congress is poised to unleash billions more to fight the war against Russia — with Democrats preparing $40 billion in military and humanitarian aid, larger than the $33 billion package Biden has requested.

From Infogalactic:

The Lend-Lease policy, formally titled An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States, (Pub.L. 77–11, H.R. 1776, 55 Stat. 31, enacted March 11, 1941)[1] was an American program to defeat Germany, Japan and Italy by distributing food, oil, and materiel between 1941 and August 1945.

Less than eight months later, the USA was formally at war with Japan and Germany.

UPDATE: According to the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, Russia is now engaged in military conflict “with Ukraine and the West”.

Notably, while the EU and US have been rocked by soaring inflation and record gas prices, the White House has until now insisted that Americans will not experience food shortages. Haines’ statement marks the first time that a US official has acknowledged that this may be a reality. Haines also referred to the situation in Ukraine as Russia’s “military conflict with Ukraine and the West,” an apparent acknowledgment of the US’ role as a participant. In the eyes of Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the West is already “essentially going to war with Russia through a proxy” due to its sharing of arms and intelligence with Kiev.

The neocons finally get their war. It’s not the war they ideally wanted, but hey, when you’re shopping with someone else’s credit card, you have to buy whatever is available while it still works.

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Foreign Legion Fail

A Canadian sniper returns from Ukraine, unimpressed:

Once lauded by the international media, a Canadian sniper known as ‘Wali’ has returned from Ukraine to Quebec, telling local media that his experience there was a “terrible disappointment.” He claimed there was inadequate weaponry, poor training and heavy losses, as well as profiteering and desertion in the ranks.

When ‘Wali’ answered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call in March and volunteered to fight for Ukraine, he was given lavish coverage by the Western media. A former Canadian soldier who had also volunteered to fight with Kurdish militants in Iraq, Wali was described by Spanish media as “the best sniper in the world,” celebrated by American military bloggers for “hilariously troll[ing]” Russia and praised by the New York Post for “grabbing anti-tank missiles in a warehouse to kill real people.”

However, he said that reality left him disillusioned. Back home in Quebec, Wali told La Presse on Friday that his Ukrainian commanders initially “didn’t know what to do” with foreign fighters like himself. Tired of waiting for an opportunity to fight, Wali joined the ‘Norman Brigade,’ a private unit led by another former soldier from Quebec.

However, several members of this brigade told La Presse that weapons and armor promised by the brigade’s head never showed up, and some of its members found themselves near the front lines with no protective equipment. Around 60 members of the brigade have since deserted, its commander told La Presse, and some soldiers “schemed” to steal a $500,000 shipment of American-supplied weapons and form their own unit.

Wali eventually joined a Ukrainian unit fighting near Kiev, and described having to seek out weapons, food and gasoline. “You had to know someone who knew someone who told you that in some old barbershop they would give you an AK-47,” he recounted. “Even for the meals, it is often the civilians who provide them.”

In the end, Wali said that he ended up firing two bullets into windows “to scare people,” and decided to come home shortly after two Ukrainian conscripts he was posted with in the Donbass region exposed themselves to a Russian tank and received “highly accurate” shell fire in return.

I’m surprised he managed to survive. Of course, simply telling the truth about his experience will almost certainly get him banned from social media for “disinformation”.

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Australia Threatens Invasion

The utter hypocrisy of the globohomogenized remnants of the West could not be more clearly demonstrated than the difference in the reactions to a) Russia’s response to Ukraine’s attempt to join NATO and b) Australia’s response to the Solomon Islands agreeing to a security pact with China:

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has urged the Solomon Islands’ leader Manasseh Sogavare to remain “calm” after he said his country was being “threatened with invasion” over a security pact it signed with China.

“We need to be calm and composed when we deal with these issues,” Morrison said on Thursday, insisting the relationship between Australia and the Solomon Islands remained friendly even while acknowledging he was concerned over “security” in the region following Sogavare’s decision to sign the “secret arrangement” with China.

Sogavare has criticized both the US and Australia’s response to the security pact his island recently inked with Beijing, insisting there is “nothing to be concerned about” and that the island nation is “insulted” by the West’s response to the move.

“We are being treated as kindergarten students walking around with Colt 45s in our hands” who “need to be supervised,” Sogavare complained, insisting his country was being “threatened with invasion” over the controversial pact and that Australia’s response demonstrated a “lack of trust.” Sogavare said on Tuesday that there had been a “warning of military intervention” in the Solomon Islands if other countries’ security goals were undermined. “We are threatened with invasion,” he warned. “Now, that is serious.”

Morrison insisted that Australia remained Honiara’s “primary security partner,” and that his country trusted the island nation as an equal.

No final version of the pact between the island nation and China has yet been published, though a draft leaked in March mentioned Chinese warships were to be given safe harbor in the islands. Morrison had previously warned that a Chinese military base in the Solomon Islands would be considered a “red line” for Canberra.

Australia reacts to ‘invasion’ threat claim, 5 May 2022

So, we’re supposed to believe that Ukraine attempting to join NATO and threatening to put nuclear missiles on Russia’s border is not a casus belli, but the Solomon Islands permitting China to put a military base over a thousand miles away from Australi is.

Inversion is always a certain sign of evil.

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US Targeting Russian Generals

And yet, we can be confident that the US military is going to screech like a violated owl when the Russians and/or the Chinese return the favor and strike back at its generals.

The United States has provided intelligence that has helped Ukrainian forces kill several Russian generals since Vladimir Putin’s troops invaded the country, senior US officials said.

The US officials said that of the approximately 12 Russian generals killed by Ukrainian forces, ‘many’ had been targeted with the help of US intelligence, reports the New York Times.

Washington has provided Ukraine real-time battlefield information on Russia’s expected troop movements and the location about Russia’s mobile military headquarters, which relocate often.

Ukraine has combined those details with its own intelligence, which includes intercepted communications that reveal whether senior officers are located within a base, to conduct artillery strikes and other attacks that have killed Russian generals.

We knew the neocons wanted war with Russia. What we didn’t know was that the US military has degenerated to the point that its leadership appears to want it too.

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You Don’t Say

The former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO says the quiet part out loud.

“I think we are in a proxy war with Russia. We are using the Ukrainians as our proxy forces.”

Philip Breedlove, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Minister let a little something slip out too.

“So what if Zelenskyy is Jewish? The fact does not negate the Nazi elements in Ukraine. I believe that Hitler also had Jewish blood. It means absolutely nothing. The wise Jewish people said that the most ardent antisemites are usually Jews.”

Wait, what?

Oh, that’s right. Of course Hitler is Jewish. After all, we’re all one race, the human race.

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China Prepares for Decoupling

Recent Chinese actions on the financial front make it appear stage two of the Great Bifurcation is incoming, and it looks as if it’s going to be on a scale much larger than most observers of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict were prepared to believe.

The Chinese government reportedly held an internal conference with officials from foreign and local banks as the nation seeks to protect overseas assets from US sanctions over potential military tensions in Taiwan. The meeting between officials from China’s Central Bank and Finance Ministry, as well as executives from foreign and domestic lenders, was held on April 22, FT reported on Sunday, citing people familiar with the discussion.

“If China attacks Taiwan, decoupling of the Chinese and western economies will be far more severe than [decoupling with] Russia, because China’s economic footprint touches every part of the world,” one of the people briefed on the meeting told the media.

Chinese officials are reportedly worried that penalties similar to those imposed on Russia over the military operation in Ukraine could be introduced against China in the event of a regional military conflict or other crisis.

China summons banks over sanctions fears, 1 May 2022

I very much doubt that the Chinese officials are worried in the slightest. They have clearly intended the break with the neo-liberal financial system for at least a decade, it’s only the preferred timing that is unknown. For me, the only serious question here is whether the Chinese will wait for the neo-liberal financial order to make a partial break in reaction to something, as per the article, or whether they prefer to make a preemptive break themselves. The evidence of prior Chinese behavior, including the erection of the Great Firewall of China, tends to indicate the latter, especially since their ability to choose the timing of the decoupling would permit the Chinese to create maximum disruption in the West while minimizing the disruption to the East.

Furthermore, the delicacy of the Russians in pursuing the moral and rhetorical high ground has gone mostly unrewarded, so there isn’t much tangible benefit to the Chinese in being able to proclaim that they are being further victimized by the imperialist colonial forces. A preemptive move would not only be materially beneficial, but would also be a powerful psychological blow to a Western elite that perceives itself to be dictating reality by calling all the shots.

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The Russians are Doomed Again

Obviously, I’m very skeptical of the pro-NATO interpretation of events, but since I believe it’s important to always pay attention to what those with different perspectives think, this is one of the more relevant anti-Russian arguments presented, given that it focuses on the perceived logistics issues faced by the Russians in their special military operation. As it is said: “Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics.”

Of course, on social media, amateurs talk tactics, strategy, logistics, and geopolitics, and all of it is nonsense. And the incessant, and ever-nonsensical propaganda from the so-called “military experts” on Fox News and CNN doesn’t help. But this logistical analysis comes with a concrete prediction, so it is worth noting.

This tweet in the thread talks about Russian Army units being tied to supply dumps closer & closer to the front lines. This is consistent & expected with high levels of attrition, both combat & operational, in the Russian Army tactical truck fleet. As the Russian tactical truck fleet diminishes, the depth of Russian break-ins gets shallower & the chance of any sort of breakthrough followed by mobile operations disappears.

“Still-continued logistics problems” boils down to not enough tactical trucks, efficiently used. The pace of operation the Putin regime insists upon means Russia simply cannot change over non-mech to mechanized logistics in the middle of the Ukraine war.

At the start of the war Russian had MTLB tracked fighting vehicles being used as ambulances. Now they are using unmarked civilian cars with a sunroof for the same role. This is the bleeding out of Russian Army vehicle fleet & the Russian economy too. These symptoms are consistent with my “Russian truck fleet dead from Operational Attrition in six-to-eight weeks” prediction.

It doesn’t look like Russia’s current rates of loss will get to ‘immobilization from a lack of trucks level’. 1701 trucks isn’t even 50% of 4,000. This is part of the issue of making prediction based on straight line projections. The people you are predicting about will make changes in their operations to avoid that predicted disaster.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to be wrong at the middle-May end date of my projection, but doing a straight line projection from now says I will be. Call it a less than 25% possible outcome. We shall see in two weeks.

The fundamental problem with this truck-based analysis is that it is predicated on the same assumption that every single pro-NATO analysis I have seen contains: the idea that the Russians have thrown 100 percent of their military assets into the Ukrainian battle. This has always struck me as highly unlikely, given that even Russia’s Chinese allies are aware that the real conflict is with NATO and the neocons, that the Russians have utilized significantly fewer BTGs than originally reported, and there has been very little use of the Russian Air Force in either tactical or strategic operations.

If mobility logistics are the limiting factor, then one presumes the Russians can figure out how to obtain vehicles from their primary ally, who happens to produce 48 percent of all the heavy trucks manufactured in the world.

My assumption is that the Russian strategists are smarter and better-informed than I am. Most of the so-called “expert” analysis I have seem appears to be predicated on the idea that the Russian strategists are ill-informed and too stupid to recognize the obvious. Time will tell whose position is closer to the truth.

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The Second Front

The Chinese clearly understand that the Russian Special Military Operation in Ukraine is just a small part of a much bigger conflict with the armed forces of the neo-liberal world order:

My colleagues and I have repeatedly pointed out that the conflict may appear to be a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, but in fact it is one between Russia and the US-led NATO. The EU should reflect on who is benefiting from this war, who has been turned into a battlefield in this war, and who has suffered the biggest loss during this war….

The US breached its assurances and continuously promoted the eastward expansion of NATO, which is undoubtedly responsible for the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis. The Russia-Ukraine conflict has triggered an unprecedented refugee crisis as more than five million Ukrainians entered neighboring European countries, while the US is staging a political stunt in accepting refugees. Only 12 Ukrainians entered the US through the refugee program in March. As the UN and the international community call for an early end to the conflict, the US continues to add fuel to the fire, clamoring for a fight “to the last Ukrainian”. Besides, the US keeps providing funding and arms to Ukraine. What it is really trying to achieve here is not peace, but the continuation the conflict so that Russia will be weakened, as admitted by the US. 

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian’s Regular Press Conference on April 29, 2022

It’s rather fascinating to see how the Chinese are talking openly about a reality at which the entire Western media has barely even begun hinting. It’s going to be fascinating to see how the media propagandists attempt to ignore their previous narrative, just as they’ve completely ignored the fact that their military experts were telling us that the Russian military was going to run out of arms and ammunition within 10 days about 45 days ago.

The Russians have been using far fewer troops than was originally assumed and reported, and I very much doubt this is because they have a much smaller military than was previously thought. They have also been using second-line troops and older armor. Which makes it obvious that Russia knew, from well before the start of the initial operations, that NATO was the actual enemy for whom it had to be prepared.

And it’s now equally clear that China knew it too. Which raises the obvious question: when is China going to open the second front?

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Congress Goes to War

Karl Denninger points out that under long-established international law, the US Congress has effectively declared the United States to be in a state of war with Russia:

Congress has explicitly authorized, and Biden will sign, this bill that specifically permits the transfer to Ukraine of basically anything other than nuclear material. Seriously folks — that’s the only real exception found in the referenced definition.

By agreeing to provide direct weaponry that can be and will be used in the waging of war by one of the two parties to same we have entered the conflict. That our GIs are not directly involved there is of no consequence. This is no different than shipping arms to Britain during WWI in the Lusitania or the lend-lease provisions in early WWII that ultimately led us to get involved there in Europe. Indeed Pelosi directly referenced those early WWII provisions indicating that she knows damn well the implications of what Congress just did.

In fact it was lend-lease of March 1941 that led Hitler to come after the United States; we had entered the war as a belligerent by officially agreeing to supply war material to Britain.

In those two wars there was no realistic means for the Germans or other Axis powers to hit us directly on our own soil. But they did in fact do that in response when they sunk the Lusitania, which had a bunch of Americans on board. They could reach that ship, did reach it, and did sink it. They did so because we were supplying England with munitions.

We claimed at the time we were not, we were lying and that is now established as a historical fact.

The Germans hit a legitimate military target despite our and Britain’s claims at the time otherwise.

Today the situation is different. Russia can hit us here and not just with nukes. They can hit American assets that are by any reasonable international standard military targets all over the world and that includes military command and control which by our Constitution includes all members and facilities of both Houses of Congress along with the Executive, never mind obvious things like the Pentagon.

I don’t think Putin is crazy enough to do it right up front but do not mistake “doesn’t” tomorrow morning for “can’t” — the door is open.

Don’t kid yourselves folks; such a strike, if it occurs, is entirely legal from an international law perspective under the laws of war. It is legitimate for a belligerent to strike the military elements, direct and indirect, of an entity supplying its opposing military.

We are now a belligerent in this conflict having crossed the line when we went from providing food, medical assistance and similar to military goods and the definition in this act does not draw a distinction, not that there really is one that is internationally recognized in the first place, between offensive and defensive arms.

The neocons wanted their war with Russia. Looks like they’re getting it, and it won’t be even remotely surprising if they get it good and hard. It’s worth noting that it was just nine months from FDR’s establishment of Lend-Lease to formal war with Germany; if a similar time frame holds, the USA will be openly at war with Russia by January, just in time for General Winter.

But legalities and diplomacies aside, the USA is already observably at war with Russia, given that it is already spending 6x more on the Russo-NATO war than the entire Ukrainian military budget. All the endless word games and legal posturings about the expansive redefinition of neutrality and what is justified in response to the illegality of war aren’t going to prevent a single missile from being fired against a legitimate target in a belligerent state.

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