As oil companies seek to profit off of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) is calling for officials to place a tax on oil profits and implement price controls in order to lessen the effects of the crisis on the public.
“We can no longer allow big oil companies, huge corporations and the billionaire class to use the murderous Russian invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing pandemic as an excuse to price gouge consumers,” Sanders wrote over the weekend. “It is time to enact a windfall profits tax and reasonable price controls.”
Crude oil prices have been jumping since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine last week, with corresponding soaring prices at the pump for consumers. According to surveys, the national average is now $3.61 per gallon, which is almost a dollar higher than the average this time last year.
But even before the invasion, retail prices were steadily rising. As inflation has risen precipitously over the past few months, oil and gas companies have taken the opportunity to raise prices to compensate for rising production or other costs – and to make even greater profits.
A windfall tax would levy a tax on profits made by fossil fuel companies in response to the invasion, and possibly also tax profits made as inflation has risen. This could potentially discourage fossil fuel companies from artificially inflating prices in response to the crisis.
In 2020, Sanders introduced similar legislation, which sought to capture 60 percent of the skyrocketing wealth increases that billionaires have been raking in during the pandemic in order to fund universal health care. If such a tax had been implemented from then until now, it would have raised trillions of dollars with essentially no impact on billionaires’ lifestyles.
A tax on Big Oil could be similarly fruitful for the government. Last year, a report found that top oil and gas companies made $174 billion in the first nine months of 2021, while raising dividends and paying CEOs tens of millions of dollars. Companies posted similarly high profits in the fourth quarter of 2021, with Exxon Mobil reporting profits of $8.9 billion, its highest earnings in seven years.
Lawmakers like Sanders have noted that prices are rising in part because companies are trying to rake in profits at consumers’ expense; in November, President Joe Biden asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether oil and gas companies are engaging in antitrust behaviors in order to pad profits under the guise of inflation. Before winter set in last year, reporters found gas companies were sending large amounts of gas abroad in order to limit supply and raise prices for heating bills.
For an oil company, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the potential impacts to fossil fuel supplies could be an opportunity to price gouge. In an attempt to preempt this last week, Biden warned companies against raising prices, saying they should “not exploit this moment to hike their prices to raise profits.” But so far, he hasn’t taken further action to discourage companies from doing so.
Meanwhile, pro-fossil fuel groups wasted no time saying that oil production should increase now, even though the country is already producing close to its limit. Less than 24 hours after the invasion – and, in the American Petroleum Institute’s case, just as the invasion was being announced – extremist right-wing politicians, conservative pundits and influential oil groups jumped on the crisis. Oil cronies insisted that more drilling is the only way to achieve energy independence, even though climate advocates have pointed out that 100 percent energy independence could have been achieved years ago if the country relied on renewable sources instead.
Increasing drilling is also a terrible, near-genocidal idea in terms of the climate. In a report released on Monday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the effects of continuing on the current path of the climate crisis will lead to food and water shortages, mass migration and death, especially in poor nations. Even more traditionally conservative energy organizations have directed governments and oil companies to stop pursuing new fossil fuel projects immediately in order to avert disaster.
Sanders’s suggestion to cut into oil and gas profits could not only help reduce costs for consumers, but also help to mitigate the climate crisis. The profitability and influence of fossil fuel companies, which receive trillions of dollars in subsidies from world governments, are part of what’s keeping them going – for now.
Not wanting to sound hyperbolic, but I am starting to conclude that the nuclear madmen running the U.S./NATO New Cold War they started decades ago are itching to start a nuclear war with Russia. Their hypocrisy and nihilistic thirst for death and destruction are so extreme that it boggles my mind. They accuse Russia of starting a New Cold War when they did so decades ago and have been pushing the envelope ever since. Now they act shocked that Russia, after many years of patience, has struck back in Ukraine.
In 2017, Oliver Stone released his four part interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Putin Interviews were conducted between 2015, the year after the U.S. engineered the coup d’état in Ukraine installing Nazis to power in that country bordering Russia, and 2017. Stone was, of course, bashed for daring to respectfully ask questions and receive answers from the Russian leader who the American media has always cast, like all the mythic bogeymen, as the new Hitler intent on conquering the world, when it is the United States, not Russia, that has over 750 military bases throughout the world and has attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria – the list is endless.
In his Putin interviews, Oliver Stone, a man of truth and honor, lets viewers catch a glimpse of the real Vladimir Putin and the matters that concern him as the leader of Russia. In 2018, I wrote of those interviews:
. . . he [Putin] makes factual points that should ring loud and clear to anyone conversant with facts. One: that the U.S. needs an external enemy (“I know that, I feel that.”). Two: the U.S.A. engineered the coup d’état in the Ukraine on Russia’s border. Three: the U.S. has surrounded Russia with US/NATO troops and bases armed with anti-ballistic missiles that can, as Putin rightly says to Stone, be converted in hours to regular offensive nuclear missile aimed at Russia. This is a factual and true statement that should make any fair-minded person stand up in horror. If Russia had such missiles encircling the United States from Cuba, Mexico, and Canada, what American would find it tolerable? What would CNN and The New York Times have to say? Yet these same people readily find it impossible to see the legitimacy in Russia’s position, resorting to name calling and illogical rhetoric. Russia is surrounded with U.S/NATO troops and missiles and yet Russia is the aggressor.
In the years since those interviews, U.S./NATO has consistently tightened the noose around Russia, including fueling the Ukrainian attacks on the Donbass, killing thousands, all the while pleading innocent and expecting no reply. Now the reply has come.
Although I have no inside information, I get the sense that the Western Empire is planning/initiating counter-measures far more extreme than the highly publicized economic sanctions. While it is true, as many commentators such as Ray McGovern and Pepe Escobar have pointed out, that a paradigm shift is underway and the once dominant U.S./NATO bully boys must now contend with the Sino-Russian alliance that has ushered in a dramatic change, nevertheless, as in the past decades, the so-called leaders of the U.S. are a dumb bunch driven by unquenchable demons. As McGovern says:
Yet, there remain unsettling indications coming from Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, Antony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan that senior administration ‘dolts’ (copyright North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) in the Washington Swamp still don’t get it.
I’m afraid they don’t and never will. That is what frightens me. While it seems counterintuitive and totally irrational that these people would be planning to use some type of nuclear weapon in this current situation, I am not so sure. They obviously pushed Russia to have no alternative but to attack Ukraine, and now that they have accomplished that goal, it seems to me that they will up the ante. Diplomacy is not their way; violence is.
This is what happens when a bunch of ragged hyenas, jackals and tiny rodents poke The Bear: a new geopolitical order is born at breathtaking speed.
From a dramatic meeting of the Russian Security Council to a UN history lesson delivered by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the subsequent birth of the Baby Twins – the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk – all the way to the breakaway republics’ appeal to Putin to intervene militarily to expel the NATO-backed Ukrainian bombing-and-shelling forces from Donbass, it was a seamless process, executed at warp speed.
The (nuclear) straw that (nearly) broke the Bear’s back – and forced it to pounce – was Comedian/Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelensky, back from the Russophobia-drenched Munich Security Conference where he was hailed like a Messiah, saying that the 1994 Budapest memorandum should be revised and Ukraine should be nuclear-rearmed.
As usual, his analysis is correct, but it may fail to grasp the unspeakable nature of the madness that drives desperadoes. If those running U.S. foreign policy feel that a new geo-political order is being born “at breathtaking speed” as a result of Russia’s move into Ukraine, then they are capable of extreme acts. And they have all the mainstream western media behind them, barking out their non-stop propaganda.
We are inexorably moving toward a global war that will become nuclear if an international movement doesn’t quickly arise to stop it. Most people bemoan the thought of such a war to end all wars, but refuse to analyze the factors leading to it. It seems so unimaginable, but It happens step-by-step, and many steps have already been taken with more coming soon. It’s so obvious that most can’t see it, or don’t want to. The corporate main stream media are clearly part of the continuation of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, and those who still rely on them for the truth are beyond reach. We need to use all alternative means to raise the alarm and make sure the ultimate nightmare never occurs.
Perhaps hyperbole is the only way to do so, for it may be closer to the truth than we want to believe.
In 2019, the RAND Corporation tentacle of the U.S. Military Industrial Congressional “Intelligence” Media Academic “Think” Tank Complex published a report claiming to have “conducted a qualitative assessment of ‘cost-imposing options’ that could unbalance and overextend Russia.”
Here was one of the “cost-imposing options,” one that U.S. President Barack Obama had been refusing, but in 2019, RAND was preparing for a regime change at home: “Providing lethal aid to Ukraine.”
Doing that, RAND said, “would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability. But any increase in U.S. military arms and advice to Ukraine would need to be carefully calibrated to increase the costs to Russia of sustaining its existing commitment without provoking a much wider conflict in which Russia, by reason of proximity, would have significant advantages.”
Thus far the calibration seems to be OK, as a “much wider conflict” has not yet happened. But Congress/Parliament Members, weapons dealers, and enthusiastic numbskull onlookers are pushing for it in the United States, other NATO nations, and Russia. The notion of being able to properly “calibrate” these things has been disproven thousands of times. The disgusting arrogance of the RAND report recommending increased military and nuclear threats to Russia illustrates how blind people can be to the risks they are creating.
So, yes, it’s wonderful to have the U.S. corporate media suddenly against a war and in support of protests, and in sympathy with victims. One might have thought the U.S. media incapable of such things after all of these years and all of these wars. But remember that a pleasant sounding report on “cost-imposing options” was a plan to risk the murder of little children in Ukraine.
And, yes, the criminal thugs running the Russian government and military are, amazingly enough, responsible for their criminal thuggery.
The Ukrainian government choosing to meet violence with violence, after having largely initiated the increase in violence in Donbass last week, is also responsible for that.
But the steps that the U.S. government, the Ukrainian government, and NATO allies took in recent months, years, and decades to get to this point, the refusal to meet perfectly reasonable Russian demands, the ever-escalating militarization — those governments remain responsible for those things too.
The RAND report hoped for nonviolent protests in Russia. That Russians now protesting their government over its latest atrocity are doing what RAND hoped for does not mean they are doing the wrong thing. It just means to watch out for the manipulation of the outcome.
If the U.S. government can orchestrate a coup in Kyiv in 2014, where ordinary people also had — as they always do — legitimate grievances, and then erase that history almost entirely within eight years, then it can also orchestrate the outcome of a Russian revolution, something it attempted unsuccessfully in 1919 and has been attempting ever since — something else that it has effectively erased from history books.
Preemptive war, whether in Iraq or Ukraine, is a war crime. It does not matter if the war is launched on the basis of lies and fabrications, as was the case in Iraq, or because of the breaking of a series of agreements with Russia, including the promise by Washington not to extend NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany, not to deploy thousands of NATO troops in Eastern Europe, not to meddle in the internal affairs of nations on the Russia’s border and the refusal to implement the Minsk II peace agreement. The invasion of Ukraine would, I expect, never have happened if these promises had been kept. Russia has every right to feel threatened, betrayed, and angry. But to understand is not to condone. The invasion of Ukraine, under post-Nuremberg laws, is a criminal war of aggression.
In a major development crucial for peace in the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia, both the parties started negotiations in Gomel in Belarus, near the Ukrainian and Russian, borders on Monday, February 28. The delegates of the two countries reached Gomel early after initial hiccups regarding the venue of the talks.
A Russian delegation consisting of “representatives of foreign ministry, the defense ministry and other agencies, including the presidential administration” arrived to Belarus according to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Preskov, Russian news agency TASS reported.
Ukraine claimed it is seeking immediate ceasefire and withdrawal of Russian troops in the talks. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in a phone conversation with UK prime minister Boris Johnson claimed that the next 24 hours are crucial for the war.
Vladimir Putin is a madman. He’s lost it. At least that is what the leaders of the West would like you to believe. According to their narrative, Putin — isolated, alone, confused, and angry at the unfolding military disaster Russia was undergoing in Ukraine — lashed out, ostensibly threatening the entire world with nuclear annihilation.
In a meeting with his top generals on Sunday, the beleaguered Russian president announced, “I order the defense minister and the chief of the general staff of the Russian armed forces to put the deterrence forces of the Russian army into a special mode of combat service.”
The reason for this action, Putin noted, centered on the fact that, “Western countries aren’t only taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic sphere, but top officials from leading NATO members made aggressive statements regarding our country” in relation to the ongoing situation in Ukraine.
The U.S. and its proxies in the EU and elsewhere have put up very harsh sanctions on Russia to damage its economy.
The final intent of this economic war is regime change in Russia.
The likely consequence will be regime change in many other countries.
This war is waged at a financial size that is unprecedented. The consequences in all markets will be very significant to extreme. But experience from Iran shows that such financial wars have their limits as the targeted country learns to survive. Moreover Russia is in a much stronger position than Iran ever was and is better prepared for the consequences.
The rubel fell some 30% today but Russia’s central bank immediately more than doubled its interest rate to 20%.
Minneapolis, MN – Fight Back! News interviewed Meredith Aby-Keirstead, a founding member of the MN Anti-War Committee, on February 27 for her anti-war perspective on the crisis in the Ukraine and the proxy war developing between the U.S./NATO and Russia.
Fight Back!: Why should Americans join with the anti-war movement right now?
Meredith Aby-Keirstead: This is a critical time to stop the U.S. as it fans the flames of war. Both Democrats and Republicans in Congress want to send more weapons and more military support to Ukraine, which would be like pouring gasoline on this fire. Not only would it kill any diplomatic solutions, U.S. weapons would end up in the hands of right-wing Nazi militias who will use them to attack ethnic Russians. This would also further inflame tensions.
As the Russian military continues tomount rocket attacks that target Ukraine’s airports and military installations, and as its ground troops advance, reportedly firing missiles and long-range artillery, what can the United Nations do to stop the violence, protect civilians and work to achieve a diplomatic path to peace?
The UN Security Council is not able to act to restore international peace and security due to Russia’s veto of its resolution. But given the fact that Russia did not act in self-defense or with Security Council approval — and thus its military actions constitute illegal aggression – there is a step that the UN General Assembly could and should take immediately to promote a ceasefire, a withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine, and the pursuit of a diplomatic solution.
Under the Uniting for Peace resolution, when the Security Council is unable to act due to the lack of unanimity of its five permanent members, the General Assembly can take up the matter to restore international peace and security, even ordering the use of force. On February 27, the Security Council referred the matter of Ukraine to the General Assembly under Uniting for Peace.
Roots of the Current Conflict
In order to understand the full picture of the conflict in Ukraine and how the General Assembly could possibly act effectively to stop the fighting, it is necessary first to consider some basic structuring realities of the geopolitical dynamics that brought the conflict to this point.
As I explained in my Truthout column of February 23 (the day before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine), some of the conflict’s roots can be traced to the expansion of the US-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) since the fall of the Soviet Union. Although the United States promised the USSR it would not expand NATO eastward, 11 former Soviet republics or members of the Warsaw Pact have joined NATO. Russia considers NATO missiles in Poland, Romania and the Baltics a threat to its national security. “If Russia faces such a threat as Ukraine’s admission to the North Atlantic Alliance, to NATO, then the threats to our country will increase many times,” Putin said, citing Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty “from which it is clear that all the countries of the alliance must fight on the side of one of their members if one Ally is considered as under attack.”
In December 2021, Russia proposed two treaties to provide Russian security guarantees, deliver assurances that Ukraine will never join NATO, and protect the region from nuclear war. The treaties stipulate the withdrawal of NATO forces and missiles from Eastern Europe as well as limits on offensive weapons and intermediate-range missiles. But the United States and NATO rejected Russia’s treaty proposals, sent more forces to Eastern Europe and are shipping heavy weapons to Ukraine. NATO continued to promise a path to membership for Ukraine. Moreover, Ukraine and the United States have resisted compliance with the Minsk II agreement, which Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany agreed to in 2015 to help end the war in the Donbas region.
Nevertheless, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine constitutes aggression prohibited by the United Nations Charter, and it is the responsibility of the UN General Assembly to take action in response.
Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Constitutes Unlawful Aggression
Ukrainian health minister, Viktor Lyashko, said on February 26 that 198 people, including three children, had been killed since the Russian invasion began. He added that 1,115 people, including 33 children, had been wounded. The UN refugee agency reported that over a half a million people have fled Ukraine.
“The military actions taken by the Russian military against the territorial integrity of Ukraine” have led to a “grave threat to international peace and security,” the International Association of Democratic Lawyers said in a statement. “There is no legal justification under Article 51 of the UN Charter for the military actions Russia has taken against Ukraine. There being no basis to claim self-defense, the actions by the Russian military represents an illegal aggression against the territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
Article 2(4) of the UN Charter states, “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”
Article 39 provides, “The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
An “act of aggression” is the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine clearly falls into this category.
Russia Vetoes Security Council Resolution
On February 25, Albania and the United States proposed a draft UN Security Council resolution, supported by 81 UN member states. It condemned Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and stated that it violated Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. Although the draft originally said that the UN Security Council would be acting under Chapter VII of the UN Charter – which would allow the Security Council to order forceful measures – it was changed to Chapter VI – authorizing non-forceful measures – in an attempt to secure China’s vote.
The draft resolution affirmed the Security Council’s assurance of Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. It condemned Russia’s military operation and exhorted Russia to immediately stop its use of force against Ukraine and completely withdraw its military forces from Ukraine. The draft resolution also deplored Russia’s recognition of the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and said Russia should reverse that decision and work toward implementation of the Minsk agreements. In addition, the draft resolution expressed concern about reported civilian casualties and called for humanitarian access and respect for international human rights and international humanitarian law.
As expected, the Russian Federation vetoed the resolution. Eleven UN Security Council members voted in favor of it, one (Russia) voted against it, and three members (China, India and the United Arab Emirates) abstained from voting.
In explaining the Russian Federation’s veto, Russia’s delegate claimed that the draft resolution contravenes the interests of the Ukrainian people, arguing that the resolution omits reference to the shelling of the people of Donetsk and Luhansk by those who seized power in the 2014 coup, that Ukraine didn’t implement the Minsk agreements, and that neo-Nazis and militias are killing civilians. He also claimed that Russian troops are not bombing cities or targeting civilians and they can’t compete with the United States, which “is in no position to moralize” due to its numerous invasions.
Although Russia’s claims about Ukraine’s refusal to enforce the Minsk agreements and the proliferation of U.S. invasions are true, it is less clear whether those who took power after the 2014 coup are actually attacking Donetsk and Luhansk or that neo-Nazis in Ukraine are killing civilians.
The General Assembly Should Use “Uniting for Peace” to Stop Russia’s Aggression
The Security Council has referred the Ukraine situation to the General Assembly (GA) under GA resolution 377 (v) of 3 November 1950, called “Uniting for Peace.” Under Uniting for Peace, the General Assembly is empowered to take measures to restore international peace and security when the Security Council is unable or unwilling to do so. Either seven members of the Security Council or a majority of the General Assembly members can invoke Uniting for Peace. A Uniting for Peace resolution, which requires a two-thirds vote, has greater force than other General Assembly decisions.
If the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with a view to making appropriate recommendations to Members for collective measures, including in the case of a breach of the peace or act of aggression the use of armed force when necessary, to maintain or restore international peace and security.
The United States spearheaded the enactment of the Uniting for Peace resolution in 1950. After North Korea invaded South Korea, the U.S. (because of the Soviet veto) was unable to obtain Security Council approval for a U.S.-led military operation to invade North Korea. Then Secretary of State Dean Acheson secured the passage of the Uniting for Peace resolution.
But before George W. Bush invaded Iraq in 2003, the United States launched a preemptive campaign to prevent the General Assembly from convening under Uniting for Peace to stop the invasion. “The United States is putting a lot of pressure on many countries to resist,” Jan Kavan, then-president of the General Assembly, said at the time. “My gut feeling is if it is put to a vote, I think a majority would hold for a resolution that would be critical of military action.”
The Bush administration sent a communication to UN representatives around the world, stating, “Given the highly charged atmosphere, the United States would regard a General Assembly session on Iraq as unhelpful and as directed against the United States. Please know that this question as well as your position on it is important to the US.” The U.S. campaign to prevent the GA from convening under Uniting for Peace was successful.
In the case of Ukraine, a Uniting for Peace resolution in the General Assembly should call for an immediate ceasefire, withdrawal of Russian troops and weapons from Ukraine, and a diplomatic solution. The U.S. and NATO should remove heavy weapons and missiles from the Russian border areas and pledge that Ukraine will not join NATO. Both sides must comply with international humanitarian law and human rights law and provide access to humanitarian assistance. The Minsk II agreement should be enforced to guarantee the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, which would remain neutral.
Russia May Be Committing War Crimes in Ukraine
Beyond the Uniting for Peace resolution, Russian leaders could be charged with war crimes if they intentionally target civilians. The following are considered grave breaches of the Geneva Convention and therefore constitute war crimes: “wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.”
Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions defines as grave breaches, and thus war crimes: “making the civilian population or individual civilians the object of attack” and “launching an indiscriminate attack affecting the civilian population or civilian objects in the knowledge that such attack will cause excessive loss of life, injury to civilians or damage to civilian objects.”
On February 25, Amnesty International declared that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “has been marked by indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas and strikes on protected objects such as hospitals” that may constitute war crimes. Amnesty’s Crisis Evidence Lab analyzed digital evidence—including videos, photos and satellite imagery— of three attacks, in Vuhledar, Kharkiv and Uman, which were conducted early in the Russian invasion on February 24.
“The Russian military has shown a blatant disregard for civilian lives by using ballistic missiles and other explosive weapons with wide-area effects in densely populated areas,” said Agnès Callamard, Amnesty’s Secretary General. “The Russian troops should immediately stop carrying out indiscriminate attacks in violation of the laws of war. The continuation of the use of ballistic missiles and other inaccurate explosive weapons causing civilian deaths and injuries is inexcusable.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denied that Russian forces were targeting civilians. “No strikes against civilian infrastructure are being carried out,” he said. “No strikes are being carried out on locations of Ukrainian army personnel in dormitories or other places not associated with military facilities.” However, Lavrov’s claims are belied by evidence amassed by Amnesty International and the UN High Commissioner. By February 27, more than 350 civilians had been killed in Ukraine.
War crimes can be punished by the International Criminal Court or by individual countries under the well-established principle of universal jurisdiction.
Unilateral Coercive Sanctions Violate the UN Charter
The United States and other European countries have imposed illegal unilateral coercive measures – sanctions – on Russia. On February 26, the Biden administration and close allies said they would expel some Russian banks from the SWIFT financial messaging system, which will essentially bar them from international transactions. The move will “effectively block Russian exports and imports,” according to Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. It stops short of a blanket removal of Russia from SWIFT, a move that would sever Russia from a large section of the global financial market.
However, only the UN Security Council has the authority to order the use of sanctions. That means the United States and other countries cannot unilaterally impose sanctions against other countries without the approval of the Council. Article 41 of the Charter says: “The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.”
But although the sanctions have been touted as punishing Russian leaders, they will harm the Russian people who are already suffering economically. “Diplomacy, not sanctions, is where the solution lies,” said CodePink. “Sanctions on the entire Russian economy will only hurt ordinary Russians and will spread economic hardship to Europe and potentially, the global community—including here at home with energy prices rising ever higher than they are now.”
Meanwhile, delegations from Russia and Ukraine are holding peace talks near the Ukrainian-Belarusian border.
The situation is extremely dangerous, as it could trigger a nuclear war between Russia and NATO countries. For the first time in its history, NATO has activated and deployed NATO’s 40,000-troop Response Force. On February 25, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg declared that NATO would protect and defend all of its allies, including Ukraine. Meanwhile, Western officials are calling for a no-fly-zone which, together with the deployment of NATO’s Response Force, could lead to a nuclear conflagration.
People worldwide are mobilizing to demand peace in Ukraine. The past week has seen protests in countries around the world, including Russia. Two thousand people throughout the globe attended an emergency online discussion organized by an anti-war coalition on February 26 and are planning an international day of peace in Ukraine on March 6.
According to Ian Cobain in his article published in the Guardian in September 2016, it is a fact that Britain has been to war more than any other country in history. True to type, instead of de-escalating the crisis in Ukraine, leading politicians in its centre of power are now upping the stakes against Russia: “The British government has played a provocative role in the present crisis, talking up war, decrying diplomacy as appeasement and escalating arms supplies and military deployments to Eastern Europe.”
Yahoo news has posted the question: “what would happen if Britain went to war with Russia?” Answer: 3 Missiles would take out this little island.
Russian intervention came after the Ukraine army’s openly Nazi “special forces” like the swastika-toting Azov Battalion have been shelling Russian speaking communities in Donetsk for 8 years.
Following a wave of peace rallies held across the globe this weekend, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has agreed to diplomatic talks with Russia. This comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin placed Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert on Sunday, citing increasingly tightened international sanctions. We speak with Anatol Lieven, senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, who says it’s not clear whether Putin is using a nuclear threat to topple the Ukrainian government or pressure them into a deal. Lieven also speaks about Belarus’s support of the Russian invasion and argues future protests inside Russia against the war will be greatly influenced by Western sanctions.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMYGOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.
As we continue to look at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the international response, we’re joined by Anatol Lieven, senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the author of numerous books on Russia and the former Soviet republics, including Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry.
Anatol, I want to begin by asking about Russian President Vladimir Putin placing Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert. He justified the move by citing the increasingly tightened international sanctions. This is Putin speaking Sunday.
PRESIDENTVLADIMIRPUTIN: [translated] Not only do Western countries take unfriendly measures against our country in the economic dimension — I mean the illegal sanctions that everyone knows about very well — but also the top officials of leading NATO countries allow themselves to make aggressive statements with regards to our country. This is why I order defense minister and chief of general staff to put Russian army deterrence forces on high combat alert.
AMYGOODMAN: Anatol Lieven, can you respond to the latest news and to Vladimir Putin’s statement?
ANATOLLIEVEN: Well, Putin is obviously trying to frighten the West, you know, to frighten the West into reducing aid to Ukraine, and also, of course, to make sure that there is no question of the West itself intervening militarily in Ukraine. But I suppose, I mean, that we might hope that this would create a backlash in Russia itself against Putin, because, after all, you know, this does raise the possibility of nuclear annihilation — not, I think, you know, that Putin has any intention of firing these missiles, but it certainly raises the rhetorical stakes very greatly.
AMYGOODMAN: Did you think he would launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine?
ANATOLLIEVEN: I was — I mean, it’s been clear, since the Russian forces were assembled on the border back in December, that this was a possibility. What has surprised me — because, frankly, it surprised all the analysts I know in Moscow — is the fact that instead of occupying limited areas of Russian-speaking Ukraine in the east and south, Putin has ordered the Russian army to go straight for Kyiv. Whether this is to try to overthrow and replace the Ukrainian government with a puppet government, or whether, in the first instance, Putin is hoping to put pressure on the Ukrainian government to make a deal with Russia, that’s not entirely clear. At least, I mean, it would seem from the talks in Belarus that Moscow hopes to be able to pressure the Ukrainian government into a kind of surrender on terms, but, of course, some — it is very unclear that that will be possible.
AMYGOODMAN: So, talk about the significance of the Belarus referendum this weekend and also the fact that it looks like Belarus is poised to send troops in, joining the Russian troops, and what it means for Ukraine to be meeting with Russia on Belarus soil, which initially Zelensky refused to do.
ANATOLLIEVEN: Well, ever since the major protests against Lukashenko’s regime in Belarus erupted in response to the last rigged Belarusian elections, and since the West supported those protests against Lukashenko, Lukashenko has clearly felt that he has absolutely no choice but to side completely with Putin and with Russia. Previously, Lukashenko tried to draw a certain distance between himself and Putin, and there were actually considerable tensions between them. But now Lukashenko seems to think that Putin is his only chance of survival. How much of the Belarusian army he will commit, I don’t know. I do not think that this will be at all popular in Belarus, if large numbers of dead bodies came back. But, once again, I mean, Lukashenko is under so much pressure, he may feel he has no choice.
The talks, well, the first Russian demand, that Ukraine should declare neutrality, I mean, to be completely honest, that ought not to be difficult for Ukraine to grant, for the simple reason that the West has stated absolutely clearly that it will never fight to defend Ukraine. It will never risk war with Russia to defend Ukraine. Well, at that point, the West will never admit Ukraine to NATO. You know, it’s a contradiction in terms. So that ought to be possible. And indeed, I mean, President Zelensky of Ukraine has complained in public, very understandably, about the West’s unwillingness to fight.
The other Russian conditions are more difficult, and one of those is what the Russians call denazification, which appears to mean that the Ukrainian government should itself suppress and crush the extreme nationalist forces that you mentioned, the Azov Battalion and others. Demilitarization means, of course, a complete break with any kind of military ties with the West.
And then there is the question — and we’re not sure whether this will be the case, but whether the Russians would insist on Ukrainian recognition of the Russian annexation of Crimea and the independence of the Donbas. That has not been part of the official Russian demand yet in public, but one can well imagine that that might be what the Russians would demand when the talks begin. And that would be — well, look, from a standpoint of reality, Ukraine is not going to get Crimea back ever and, indeed, would not know what to do with it if it did, because it would obviously increase, you know, a recalcitrant Russian population in Ukraine. And the only way it can get the Donbas back is on the basis of a treaty of federation with complete autonomy for the Donbas. And so far Ukraine has been completely unwilling to do that, either. Whether Ukrainian feelings are shifting on that, we will have to see.
And then we will have to see whether in fact the Russians will go on to try to create a puppet government in Kyiv. If they do, they will be total idiots, because, I mean, it’s absolutely clear that this will never work for Russia.
AMYGOODMAN: So, talk about the level of protest inside. I was talking about the spokesperson, 24-year-old daughter, Lisa Peskova, you know, “No to war,” issuing that on her Telegram. Six thousand Russians arrested in these massive protests across Russia. Berlin, what, somewhere between 100,000 and 500,000 people protesting. But the risks people are taking within Russia, did you expect this level of protest? And how will Putin deal with this? They’re trying to control the information enormously, what gets into Russia, but clearly that’s breaking down. You even have now Meta, Google, and I think it’s YouTube, that are cutting off Russian-paid — the Russian ad revenue from their sites, their platforms?
ANATOLLIEVEN: Yes, well, I did expect protests, but I think future protests will be greatly influenced by the Western sanctions that have been brought in, which will hit not just ordinary Russians but will really hit those educated Russians, you know, who have got used to traveling to the West, to studying in the West, to going on holiday in the West. And that, of course, includes the children of the Russian elites. And we should remember that it was the revolt of the children of the communist elites in the 1980s which helped bring down the Soviet Union. So I think this is something that Putin has to be very, very worried about.
And also, of course, you know, it’s one thing to arrest demonstrators on the street, but when the children of your top officials start cursing those officials over the breakfast table, then, of course, you might see the beginning of the crumbling of the regime from within, especially, of course, if the Russian economy really, as a whole, declines as a result of these Western sanctions, and if the Russian war on the ground, rather than producing the quick result which Putin obviously hoped for, in fact drags on into a bloody quagmire.
AMYGOODMAN: Finally, and we just have 30 seconds, do you see this as Putin rationally reacting to NATO expansion, or just Russian imperialism?
ANATOLLIEVEN: Well, I mean, it’s Russian nationalism. You know, let’s be fair: America has sometimes reacted very, very badly to what, objectively speaking, have been relatively minor threats. So, the question is just how committed the Russian elite, as a whole, is to what looks like becoming a horribly costly war for Russia.
AMYGOODMAN: Anatol Lieven, we thank you for being with us, senior fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, author of numerous books on Russia and the former Soviet republics, including Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry.
Coming up, President Biden nominates Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to become the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. Stay with us.
Each year on March 1, Marshallese around the world mark Nuclear Victims Remembrance Day to commemorate all who have suffered and seek justice following 67 U.S. nuclear weapons tests at Bikini and Enewetak Atolls in the Marshall Islands (1946-58).
On that day in 1954, the U.S. conducted its largest ever nuclear detonation, the Castle Bravo test, a 15-megaton thermonuclear bomb 1,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The Bravo shot caused widespread suffering in the Marshall Islands and spread radioactive fallout around the world.
Sixty-eight years later, the United States and eight other nations continue to spend extraordinary sums — over $72 billion total in 2020 — on maintaining, expanding and modernizing their nuclear arsenals. While the overall number of nuclear weapons has been reduced dramatically from a Cold War peak of more than 70,000, today the U.S. and Russia possess 90 percent of the approximately 12,700 remaining nuclear weapons.
With the Russian invasion of Ukraine and NATO forces deployed to the alliance’s eastern flank, concerns over nuclear risks rise to the fore. Matt Korda, senior research associate with the Federation of American Scientists’ Nuclear Information Project says that at the present moment, the conflict remains well below the nuclear threshold. “While many systems deployed to Ukraine are dual-capable — meaning that they can launch both conventional and nuclear weapons — there is no indication that nuclear weapons or nuclear custodial units have been deployed along with them,” Korda says.
He cautions that, as in any war, the risks of miscommunication and irrationality remain high, and told Truthout, “it’s incumbent on all sides to ensure that there is no danger of nuclear escalation.”
Even as U.S. presidents pay lip service to “a world without nuclear weapons,” the U.S. currently has an estimated total inventory of just over 5,400 nuclear weapons ranging from 0.3 kilotons up to 1.2 megatons. A warhead with a yield (amount of energy released by a nuclear explosion) of one kiloton is equivalent to 1,000 tons of TNT. One megaton equals 1 million tons of TNT.
A nuclear weapon’s yield dictates what type of target a particular weapon can threaten. The highest yield warhead in the U.S. arsenal is the B83-1, a 1.2-megaton strategic gravity bomb (80 times more destructive than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima). By contrast, the lowest-yield warhead in the U.S. stockpile is the B61-3, a 0.3-kiloton bomb with an adjustable yield that can be “dialed-up” to 170 kilotons.
Other U.S. nuclear warheads range from 5 to 455 kilotons. By comparison, the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki were approximately 15 and 21 kilotons respectively.
Although warheads today have a lower yield than those tested decades ago, most are far more destructive than the bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. Warheads with a lower yield pose their own unique risks, in particular because they may be considered to be “more useable.” A president may be reluctant to use a bomb 80 times more destructive than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, but perhaps less so for a 2 or 3-kiloton bomb.
Presently, the U.S. has approximately 1,740 warheads deployed and ready to launch at any time, according to the Nuclear Information Project. These warheads make up the U.S.’s nuclear triad — the three means of delivering nuclear weapons: by land (Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles or ICBMs), air (dropped or fired from aircraft or bombers) and sea (fired from submarines).
Nuclear Weapons in Europe
Susi Snyder, a financial sector coordinator with the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), specializes in untangling the complex web of public, private, and corporate firms and institutions that bankroll nuclear weapons. For Snyder, an American living in the Netherlands, nuclear weapons are not just a financial dragon to slay, they are an immediate and unwelcome neighbor.
Snyder points out that the U.S. has B61 gravity bombs deployed at six military bases in five NATO countries (Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Turkey). The currently estimated 100 B61-3 and -4 series have adjustable yield options from 0.3 kilotons to 170 kilotons and 50 kilotons respectively that can be delivered by multiple NATO aircraft, F-15s and F-16s.
Four B61 variants are slated to be replaced with the B61-12, currently in production. When complete, the B61-12 will become the first variable yield guided nuclear gravity bomb. Designed to be more accurate, two of its four settings will be “low-yield” (0.3 and 1.5 kiloton), with options to dial-up to 10 and 50 kilotons. It will be deliverable by seven types of aircraft, including the F-35A Lightning II and the new $200 billionB-21 stealth bomber.
Snyder says the term “low-yield” is misleading because even the lowest yield nuclear weapon is tremendously destructive. In 2014, Snyder coauthored a report which considered the humanitarian consequences of a 12-kiloton nuclear weapon being detonated at Europe’s largest port facility in Rotterdam.
In addition to the 60,000 people estimated to be killed within hours or days, many more would be exposed to lethal doses of radiation. An unprecedented disruption of transportation and services throughout Europe would follow as a trail of radioactive fallout spread across the rural “green heart” of central Holland and decimated the Netherland’s vital agricultural sector.
ICAN recently published a report which describes the severe vulnerabilities of health care systems around the world following the detonation of a single 100-kiloton airburst nuclear weapon, a mid-range yield in the arsenals of several countries. The report presents a series of disturbing scenarios in which doctors, nurses, hospitals and urban populations would be utterly incapable of adequately responding to the effects of a single nuclear blast.
A Grim Prospect
Other researchers have considered the effects of much smaller nuclear detonations in urban settings. Eva Lisowski, a member of the Nuclear Weapons Education Project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a nuclear science and engineering consultant in Tokyo, published her findings in two studies examining the possible impact of nuclear weapons being detonated on the Korean Peninsula and the Middle East. In “Grim Prospect: Low-Yield Nuclear Weapons in the Middle East,” Lisowski assesses the effects of a “low-yield” uranium device detonated at ground level in a densely populated city center with modern construction and population density.
Lisowski spent one year developing modeling exercises using population data, geographic information system (GIS) software and other data for five target cities: Tehran, Riyadh, Tel Aviv, Cairo and Dubai. In each case, the estimated deaths within 12 weeks from a 1-kiloton bomb detonated at ground level ranged from a low of 32,000 in Riyadh and 42,000 in Tel Aviv up to 137,000 in Tehran and 353,000 in Cairo. Lisowski details her findings at length in this review of her report.
In her simulations, she accounted for deaths due to bomb blast, heat, radiation, flying debris and structural collapse. Comparing a 1-kiloton blast to the September 11 attacks, she says, “It’s even more devastation. There’s going to be buildings coming down all over the place.”
“If you detonate at surface level, then the radiation, even in the city, can really have an effect. There could be death tolls that are comparable to Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Lisowski told Truthout. “One kiloton is a yield that we have to care about.”
Beyond Comparison
When examining the roster of past and present nuclear weapons, it’s tempting to compare their destructive capacity with non-nuclear human-made or natural explosions, but it’s complicated. Following the Hunga Tonga undersea volcano eruption in January, scientists at NASA compared the power of the eruption to a 10-megaton blast, close to the size of the United States’ first thermonuclear test at Enewetak Atoll in 1952. But volcanos are not nuclear bombs and direct comparisons can be misleading.
Science and Security Board member of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Steve Fetter says, “I think the best way to accurately compare the effects of nuclear weapons of various yields is to show the areas affected by various effects (blast, thermal, radiation) or over which various percentages of people would be killed or injured.”
He cautioned that comparisons between nuclear and other human-made or natural explosions are difficult. “Most importantly, nuclear (and other human-made) explosions are likely to kill more people than a natural explosion of far greater yield because they are far more likely to occur in or near densely populated areas.”
In 2020, when 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate exploded at the port of Beirut, more than 7,000 people were injured and over 200 were killed. Cell phones captured the violent blast which displaced 300,000 people and damaged buildings 12 miles away.
Peter Goldstein, a physicist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, studied the explosion and surrounding environment to reconcile varying estimates suggesting the blast may have been a few kilotons (or possibly much more) or it could have been as small as half a kiloton. Studying the size of the crater left by the explosion and seismic measurements, Goldstein concluded the chemical explosion was between 0.7 and 1.4 kilotons of TNT, significantly less than the 2.75 kilotons of material reportedly stored at the site.
One way to visualize what kind of damage a nuclear weapon can cause under specific conditions in a particular location, is with online simulators like Nuke Map and Outrider. Another is to read the findings of scientists and researchers who have examined the global impacts of a “limited” nuclear war between India and Pakistan.
But absent the tremendous roar, the blinding light, the painful wall of heat, the collapse of buildings, shattering of glass, and subsequent fires, blood, cries, and terrible darkening of the sky with soot, ash and smoke, the closest we can come to imagining a nuclear explosion is through the stories of hibakusha (nuclear survivors) who experienced it themselves in Japan, the Marshall Islands, Kazakhstan or within the United States.
From Deterrence to Intent to Use
Stephen Schwartz is a non-resident senior fellow at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Regarding the utility of more powerful nuclear weapons, he notes the irony that the U.S.’s largest nuclear weapon, the B83-1 gravity bomb, with a yield of 1.2 megatons, is considered too destructive to use. “In the minds of some, it would create too much devastation if used, and therefore, it would essentially be self-deterring,” Schwartz told Truthout. “We might, ourselves, decline to use it because it would destroy far more buildings and infrastructure and kill many more people than we had intended or desired.”
The idea that such a bomb could be used in battle is theoretical, what he called an “absurd state of affairs,” noting that, “we’ve never had a nuclear war. We’ve only used nuclear weapons twice and that was against a country that did not have nuclear weapons that it could fire back at us.”
Contrary to the oft-repeated 1985 joint Soviet-U.S. statement that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” (a declaration at least nominally reaffirmed by the original five nuclear weapons states earlier this year), the U.S. is investing heavily in “more usable” lower-yield nuclear weapons like the W76-2 and B61-12, a trend Schwartz calls a “huge problem” because it marks a shift from using nuclear weapons to deter to instead using them with the intent to fight.
If the Biden administration withdraws plans to further develop the W76-2, Schwartz says it would send a message that the U.S. is less interested in fighting a nuclear war than in trying to prevent one.
“We, in fact, are the ones that are moving with this W76-2, with the B61-12 which isn’t deployed yet, and with other strategies to make nuclear weapons more useable,” Schwartz says.
Does he think it’s possible nuclear weapons could be used?
“Yes, that’s the whole unfortunate essence of nuclear deterrence. You are prepared to utterly annihilate the world in order to prevent the world from being annihilated.” He adds, “We can speculate all we want about this, but the reality is that we are fully prepared, as is Russia, to use nuclear weapons 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
Hard to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
Melissa Hanham, an independent analyst and affiliate of Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, sees the greatest risk of nuclear weapons being used coming from a misunderstanding, miscalculation or accident. She says those risks can be reduced through the robust pursuit of arms control and diplomacy, adding that another important measure nuclear-armed states can take is to reduce stockpiles, starting with weapons deemed no longer necessary for specific missions.
Hanham points out that although there is acceptance from disparate quarters that both Russia and the U.S. can continue to reduce their overall nuclear stockpiles, mustering the political fortitude to do so remains elusive. For politicians to initiate a reduction in nuclear forces, there needs to be a political incentive backed up by sustained and strong public support.
One under-appreciated problem stemming from nuclear weapons is what to do with them once they are slated to be retired and dismantled. Hanham says we need to pay greater attention to logistical, technical and scientific challenges inherent in dismantling nuclear warheads.
She says it’s time to do the hard work of taking nuclear weapons apart, particularly those deemed no longer needed. Obstacles to doing so remain large, funding for research has dwindled, and it’s difficult to capture the public’s attention.
“In my generation, it’s not cool to build nuclear weapons anymore. No one wants to study how to do that, but you also need to know how to take them apart. These weapons were designed … with the intent of sending the political message that they will be used, not disassembled,” Hanham told Truthout.
Disassembly requires not only highly technical knowledge, but also specialized tools and secure facilities to do so. That technical expertise remains in older generations and isn’t trickling down, Hanham says, it’s atrophying.
“We literally have to design the tools to take them apart. You can’t just take a screwdriver and take it apart,” Hanham says. “And it’s expensive. Up front, it’s a lot of money. In the long run, maintaining that many weapons costs more.”
Today, the U.S. has around 1,720 nuclear weapons retired or waiting dismantlement and the Federation of American Scientists’ Korda says that rate has been slowing in recent years.
As society’s overall perception and understanding of nuclear weapons is diluted and fades, Hanham worries about a public that increasingly thinks of nuclear weapons as simply being much bigger and more powerful.
“Nuclear weapons are a completely different animal than an artillery rocket or conventional warhead,” she says. “Nuclear weapons are the most awful, most terrible weapon ever invented, and I do think it’s useful for humans to feel that seismic shift from what is just a large weapon to what is an existential threat to the existence of humans.”
Meanwhile, in the absence of significant mainstream media scrutiny or sustained public opposition, the United States continues to invest heavily in modernizing its nuclear weapons, both large and small. But, as Hanham says, “you can’t just nuke someone a little bit … once you start a nuclear war, it’s on.”
There is one question today that is more important than any other question that could possibly be asked, and it’s this:
“Is what the US and its allies are trying to accomplish in Ukraine worth continually risking nuclear armageddon for?”
Russian state media have confirmed that Vladimir Putin’s orders to move the nation’s nuclear deterrent forces into “special combat duty mode” have been carried out, citing “aggressive statements from NATO related to the Russian military operation in Ukraine.”
“Russia’s ground, air and submarine-based nuclear deterrent forces have begun standby alert duty with reinforced personnel, Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has informed President Putin,” Sputnik reports.
This comes days after Putin issued a thinly veiled threat of an immediate nuclear strike should western powers interfere in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, saying, “Whoever tries to hinder us, and even more so, to create threats to our country, to our people, should know that Russia’s response will be immediate. And it will lead you to such consequences that you have never encountered in your history.”
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so… the implications of an isolated, angry Putin presiding over a grinding, existential conventional war and an economy devastated by sanctions are really terrifying. The chances of his accepting "defeat" are far lower than the chances he escalates dramatically.
This also comes as the US and EU countries commit to sending fighter jets and stinger missiles to assist Ukraine in fighting an unwinnable war against a longtime target of the US empire, perhaps with the hope of dragging Moscow into a costly military quagmire like it deliberately worked to do in Afghanistan and in Syria.
This also comes as the ruble crashes following crushingsanctions and the banning of Russian banks from the international money transfer system SWIFT by the US and its allies. The economic hardship that follows will hurt ordinary people and may foment unrest, and it is here worth noting that in 2019 then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo admitted that the goal of brutal sanctions on Iran was to push people to rise up and overthrow their government.
We’re also seeing the all-too-familiar phrase “regime change” used in reference to Putin by prominent western narrative managers like Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haas, European Council on Foreign Relations Co-Chair Carl Bildt, Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institute and Hoover Institution, as well as USA Today.
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"This is the most dangerous situation since the Cuban Missile Crisis. How can we reduce the risk of catastrophic escalation?"
All of this has made nuclear war in the near term a whole lot more likely than it was just a few days ago… which is a really strange thing to type.
As I’m always saying, the primary risk of nuclear war is not that anyone will choose to start one, it’s that one could be triggered by any combination of miscommunication, miscalculation, misunderstanding or technical malfunction amid the chaos and confusion of escalating cold war tensions. This nearly happened, repeatedly, in the last cold war. The more tense things get, the greater the likelihood of an unthinkable chain of events from which there is no coming back.
Cold war brinkmanship has far too many small, unpredictable moving parts for anyone to feel confident that they can ramp up aggressions without triggering a nuclear exchange. Anyone who feels safe with these games of nuclear chicken simply does not understand them.
To get some insight into how easily an unpredictable scenario can lead to nuclear war I recommend watching this hour-long documentary or reading this article about Vasili Arkhipov, the Soviet submariner who single-handedly saved the world from obliteration during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was one of three senior officers aboard a nuclear-armed sub that was cornered near Cuba by US war ships who did not know the sub had a nuclear weapon on board.
The US navy was dropping explosives onto the sub to get it to surface, and the Soviets didn’t know what they were doing as they had cut off all communications. It took all three senior officers to launch the nuke their ship was armed with, and two of them, thinking this was the beginning of World War 3, saw it as their duty to use it. Only Arkhipov, who had witnessed the horrific effects that radiation can have on the human body during a nuclear-powered submarine meltdown years earlier, refused.
You, and everyone you know, exist because Arkhipov made that decision. Had his personal history and conditioning been a little bit different, or had another officer been on board that particular ship on that particular day, nothing around you right now would be there. We got lucky. So lucky it’s uncomfortable to even think about it. But it’s important to.
This again is just one of the many nuclear close calls we’ve experienced since our species began its insane practice of stockpiling armageddon weapons around the world. We survived the last cold war by sheer, dumb luck. We were never in control. Not once. And there’s no reason to believe we’ll get lucky again.
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one thing that's worryingly different now as opposed to during the cold war (as I understand it) is that thousands of people are just confidently yelling that Russia will never use nukes and therefore we should make aggressive moves against them
— i bless the rains down in castamere (@Chinchillazllla) February 28, 2022
So I repeat again the world’s most important question: is what the US and its allies are trying to accomplish in Ukraine worth continually risking nuclear armageddon for?
Well? Is it?
It’s not really a question you can just compartmentalize away from if you have integrity. It demands to be answered.
Is it worth it to continue along this trajectory? Is it? Is it really? Perhaps there might be some things that would be worth risking the life of every creature on earth to obtain, but is refusing to concede to Moscow’s demands in Ukraine one of them?
Whatever your values are, whatever your analysis is, whatever beliefs you’ve been holding to justify your support for the west’s side of this conflict, will you still proudly stand by them if you look outside and see a mushroom cloud growing in the distance?
Well? Will you?
Here’s a hint: if your answer to this question is premised on the assumption that nuclear war can’t or will never happen, then you don’t have a position that’s grounded in reality, because you’re not accounting for real possibilities. You’re justifying your position with fantasy.
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For those on this platform giddy about the plummet of the ruble, a word of caution: the severity of this will create forces beyond everyone's control. It could get very scary and not have the outcome you suspect.
I understand the argument that if we let tyrants do whatever they want just because they have nukes they’ll just do whatever they want. I understand the argument that if we don’t stop Putin now he’s going to take over all of Europe because he’s literally Hitler and blah blah blah. I understand why people ask “Well if we don’t stand up to him now, then when? Where is your line??” I really do.
But the US has been making risk-to-benefit calculations based on the fact that Russia has nuclear weapons every single day since Stalin got the bomb. There are things Russia has been permitted to do that weaker nations would have been forcefully stopped from doing, like annexing Crimea and intervening in Syria, exactly because they have nukes. If those weren’t the line, why specifically does Ukraine have to be? Surely there’s a line somewhere, but it would have to exist at a point where it would be worth risking the life of every living creature for.
So is it? Is keeping the possibility of NATO membership open and retaining control of the Donbas really so important that we should roll the dice on the existence of the entire human species on it? Is maintaining a hostile client state on Russia’s border truly worth gambling the life of every terrestrial organism for? Are the desperate unipolarist grand chessboard maneuverings of a few powerful people in Washington, Langley and Arlington really worth risking the life of everyone you know and love?
If the answer is no, then building some opposition to what we’re seeing here becomes a very urgent matter. Very urgent indeed.
____________________
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Amnesty International has condemned Russia’s reported use of cluster munitions in Ukraine, saying an attack on a pre-school “may constitute a war crime”.
“War crime”
The human rights charity said “a 220mm Uragan rocket dropped cluster munitions on the Sonechko nursery and kindergarten in the town of Okhtyrka in Sumy Oblast” on 25 February. It added:
The strike may constitute a war crime.
Amnesty said three people were killed in the attack, including a child, while another child was wounded. Cluster munitions scatter or release smaller munitions or bomblets over a wide area. This increases the potential for casualties and damage. More than 100 countries have committed never to use the weapons under the Convention on Cluster Munitions, including the UK. But neither Russia nor Ukraine have signed the agreement.
Agnes Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, said:
It is stomach-turning to see an indiscriminate attack on a nursery and kindergarten where civilians are seeking safe haven. Plain and simple, this should be investigated as a war crime.
As this human tragedy unfolds in Ukraine, any person who commits war crimes should be held individually accountable before the International Criminal Court (ICC) or another international criminal justice process at the national or international level.
It is imperative that UN member states and the ICC urgently consider how to ensure the timely and effective collection and preservation of evidence of any crimes under international law committed in Ukraine.
A preschool in north-eastern Ukraine was hit on 25 February with cluster munitions, killing 3, including a child & wounding another child. There is no possible justification for dropping cluster munitions in populated areas, let alone near a school.https://t.co/XG7hOjnXAc
Human Rights Watch said it has also identified examples of cluster munition use. On 25 February, it said the Russian military had used a cluster bomb the day before in the town of Vuhledar.
(PA Graphics)
Four civilians were killed in the attack, the organisation said.
Human Rights Watch describes the weapon as posing “an immediate threat to civilians during conflict by randomly scattering submunitions or bomblets over a wide area”.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence told the PA news agency:
As a state party to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, we oppose the use of cluster munitions and discourage all states from using them.
A Russian climate delegate apologized to his Ukrainian counterparts and other government officials on Sunday for the ongoing and deadly invasion, which he decried as wholly unwarranted.
“First of all, let me thank Ukraine and present an apology on behalf of all Russians who were not able to prevent this conflict,” Oleg Anisimov, the head of Russia’s delegation to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), said during a private virtual meeting.
“All of those who know what is happening fail to find any justification for this attack against Ukraine,” added Anisimov, a scientist at the state hydrological institute in St. Petersburg. “Since we are dealing with scientific issues, we have huge admiration for the Ukrainian delegation that was able to still do its work.”
Anisimov’s remarks, which attendees hailed as courageous and moving, came after Ukraine’s delegation to the IPCC was forced to briefly depart a meeting Thursday due to Russia’s attack, which has thus far killed an estimated 350 civilians and heightened the risk of a catastrophic nuclear war.
According to one human rights organization, thousands of Russian anti-war demonstrators have been arrested in recent days during demonstrations against the invasion.
The Daily Beastcharacterized Anisimov’s comments as “possibly the first instance of a Moscow official speaking out against the invasion.”
Government delegates to the IPCC gathered Sunday to put the finishing touches on the body’s latest scientific report, which is expected to show that the human-caused climate crisis is accelerating, sparking devastating extreme weather across the globe.
The report is set to be published early Monday.
Svitlana Krakovska, the leader of Ukraine’s delegation to the IPCC, reportedly used her remarks at Sunday’s IPCC meeting to link war and the climate emergency.
“Human-induced climate change and the war on Ukraine have the same roots — fossil fuels and our dependence on them,” Krakovska said, according to another government delegate in attendance.
Krakovska also reportedly voiced dismay that the IPCC’s vitally important findings will have to “compete for media space with war.”
Having worked inside mainstream U.S. media during the beginning of the “War on Terror” and run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the differences in today’s war coverage are dizzying to me.
Civilians
While covering Russia’s horrific aggression in Ukraine, there is a real focus — as there always should be — on civilian victims of war. Today, the focus on that essential aspect of the Russian invasion is prominent and continuous — from civilian deaths to the trauma felt by civilians as missiles strike nearby.
Unfortunately, there was virtually no focus on civilian death and agony when it was the U.S. military launching the invasions. After the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 on false pretenses — made possible by U.S. mainstream media complicity that I witnessed firsthand — civilian deaths were largely ignored and undercounted through the years.
Shortly after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, leaked directives from CNN’s management to its correspondents and anchors showed that the network was intent on playing down and rationalizing the killing and maiming of Afghan civilians by the U.S. military. One memo instructed CNN anchors that if they ever referenced Afghan civilian victims, they needed to quickly remind their audience that “these U.S. military actions are in response to a terrorist attack that killed close to 5,000 innocent people in the U.S.” Such language was mandatory, said the memo: “Even though it may start sounding rote, it is important that we make this point each time.”
A few weeks after 9/11, what CNN viewer had forgotten it?
Noting the cursory U.S. television coverage of Afghan civilian casualties, a New York Times reporter wrote: “In the United States, television images of Afghan bombing victims are fleeting, cushioned between anchors or American officials explaining that such sights are only one side of the story. In the rest of the world, however, images of wounded Afghan children curled in hospital beds or women rocking in despair over a baby’s corpse, beamed via satellite by the Qatar-based network, Al Jazeera, or CNN International, are more frequent and lingering.”
The near-blackout on coverage of the civilian toll continued for decades. In April of last year, NBC anchor Lester Holt did a summing-up report on Afghanistan as “America’s longest war” by offering one and only one casualty figure: “2,300 American deaths.” There was no mention of the more than 70,000 Afghan civilian deaths since 2001, and no mention of a UN study that found that, in the first half of 2019, due mostly to aerial bombing, the U.S. and its allies killed more civilians than the Taliban and its allies.
As the war on terror expanded to other countries, U.S. mainstream media remained largely uninterested in civilian victims of U.S. warfare and drone strikes.
International Law
Invasions and military force by one country against another are clearly illegal under international law, unless conducted in true self-defense (or authorized by the UN Security Council). In coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. mainstream media have correctly, repeatedly and without equivocation invoked international law and declared it illegal, as they did when Russia invaded Crimea in 2014.
By contrast, when the U.S. illegally invaded or attacked country after country in recent decades, international law has almost never been invoked by mainstream U.S. media. That was surely the case in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion — unlike in Britain, where major media prominently discussed the reality that invading Iraq would be a crime against international law unless authorized by a Security Council resolution. On a BBC television special six weeks before the invasion, for example, Tony Blair was cross-examined on that point by antiwar citizens.
In 1989, when the U.S. invaded Panama in perhaps the bloodiest drug bust in history, mainstream U.S. media made a concerted effort to ignore international law and its violation — as well as the slaughter of civilians.
Imperialism
Mainstream media in our country today are outraged by imperialism. Last Friday night, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell indignantly and repeatedly denounced “Russian imperialism.”
As a lifelong opponent of imperialism, I’m also indignant that a powerful country like Russia is using force to try to impose its will and its own chosen leadership on the Ukrainian people. But I’ve never heard O’Donnell or anyone at MSNBC denounce U.S. imperialism. Indeed, the existence of something called “U.S. imperialism” is so adamantly denied by mainstream U.S. media that the phrase doesn’t appear in print without scare quotes.
This stubborn unwillingness to recognize U.S. imperialism persists despite the fact that no other country (including Russia) has come close to ours in the last 70 years in imposing its will in changing the leadership of foreign governments, often from good to bad (for example, Iran in 1953; Guatemala in 1954; Congo in 1960; Chile, in 1973; Honduras in 2009). And that’s not to mention other U.S.-led regime changes (for example, Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011).
This denial persists despite the fact that the U.S. maintains 750 military bases in nearly 80 foreign countries (Russia has about 20 foreign bases, in half a dozen countries), that our military budget dwarfs that of every other country (it’s more than 12 times larger than Russia’s) and that the U.S. provides nearly 80% of the world’s weapons exports — including weapons sales and military training to 40 of the 50 most oppressive, anti-democratic governments on earth.
Speaking of U.S. imperialism, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been all over the news in recent days commenting on Ukraine and accurately denouncing Putin as anti-democratic. But her commentary reeks of hypocrisy on many grounds, one of those being her key role, largely ignored by mainstream U.S. media, in enabling the violent military coup regime that replaced elected Honduran President Manuel Zelaya in 2009. (You can read about it here and here.)
So as we rally to support Ukrainian civilians against great-power aggression from Russia, let’s do so with the understanding that imperialism should always be opposed, that all civilian victims of wars and violent coups are worthy, whether Iraqi or Honduran or Ukrainian, and that all criminals who violate international law should be held accountable, whether they’re based in Moscow or Washington.
Footage and reports suggest People of Colour trying to flee the Russian assault on Ukraine have been blocked from routes of escape. And some western media outlets have been grotesquely characterising the conflict as exceptional because it’s happening within a ‘civilised’ country.
These are some of the appalling examples of racist actions and rhetoric that have been on display amid the conflict.
“No Blacks”
Videos circulated on social media suggested that People of Colour trying to board trains or get through borders have been struggling to do so. The #AfricansinUkraine hashtag showed some distressing footage:
There have been reports of South Asian people struggling to escape Ukraine as well:
Both African & South Asian refugees are at the back of the new processing line that has now been set up by Ukraine to reach Poland. Both communities have been sharing experiences dealing with racism and double standards in getting to safety.#AfricansinUkraine#UkraineRussiaWarpic.twitter.com/LF9C15DScZ
Indian student describes (in English and Hindi) abuse that Indians are experiencing at the border, specifically by Ukrainian border guards. She alleges that women are also being assaulted, hair pulled & that some even have fractures as a result of the abuse. https://t.co/LHKTkJPFjI
A father-of-three trying to leave via bus, meanwhile, told the Independent that his family and others were forced to get off at a border crossing. He said he was told “no Blacks” and commented:
In all of my years as an activist, I have never seen anything like this. When I look into the eyes of those who are turning us away, I see bloodshot racism; they want to save themselves and they are losing their humanity in the process.
Some people have gone to get buses, but they’re not allowing Black people basically onto the buses. They’re prioritizing Ukrainians. That’s what they say
On Twitter, Sky described her and others’ efforts to leave Ukraine in detail. She said that during their long drives to border crossings, they encountered lots of police and military who regularly asked to see people’s documentation. At the border crossing into Romania, she said “local Ukrainians” were aggressive and trying to obstruct their journey onwards:
We have reached the actual border experiencing some threats of violence from some local Ukrainians who don’t believe we should enter. This man keeps circling our car pic.twitter.com/kWw5DjkcL0
Sky said the military ultimately turned them away:
The military just knocked on our window and told us to go now so we are moving the car. The locals are complaining about us to the military and the military is assisting them. We are being compliant in order to remain safe
Racism isn’t only apparent in the treatment of People of Colour trying to flee Ukraine, though. It’s also all over TV screens and in written reporting on the conflict.
Repeatedly, news reports have suggested there’s some kind of exceptionalism in the situation because white, western people are the victims. An ITV News reporter, for example, spoke about the “unthinkable” happening to Ukranians. She stressed that “this is not a developing, third world nation; this is Europe”:
'Now the unthinkable has happened to them, and this is not a developing, third world nation, this is Europe.' pic.twitter.com/BFYvql7iie
The CBS News correspondent, Charlie D’Agata, has since apologised.
The Telegraph, meanwhile, gave a platform to the UK peer Daniel Hannan to write about the conflict as an “attack on civilisation itself”. His article began with the words: “They seem so like us. That is what makes it so shocking”.
These commentators don’t seem to care that Iraq is widely known as the cradle of civilisation, as it’s where the first elaborate urban centres appeared.
An NBC News correspondent also asserted that Poland is welcoming many people fleeing Ukraine because they “are Christians, they’re white” and “not refugees from Syria”:
This was the coverage on why Poland is now openly accepting refugees:
Again sympathies with Ukrainian people but look how deeply racist Western media is, and they set high moral and democratic standards for themselves. https://t.co/mzfgpyE9mSpic.twitter.com/31hy9ufRz0
"We are in the 21st century, we are in a European city and we have cruise missile fire as though we were in Iraq or Afghanistan, can you imagine!?” pic.twitter.com/SzSlJJ9JfR
The BBC, meanwhile, failed to call out Ukraine’s ex-deputy prosecutor general David Sakvarelidze when he talked about how emotional it was to see “European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed”:
[Thread] The most racist Ukraine coverage on TV News.
1. The BBC – “It’s very emotional for me because I see European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed” – Ukraine’s Deputy Chief Prosecutor, David Sakvarelidze pic.twitter.com/m0LB0m00Wg
As one social media commentator highlighted, some are arguing that now ‘isn’t the time’ to raise the issue of racism:
I know I’ve tweeted a lot about the blatant racism and xenophobia that has been brought to light by the crisis in Ukraine, and I know a lot of you want to default to “now isn’t the time”. But it is, because governments are actively broadcasting their bias for white refugees.
But we must confront racism wherever, and whenever, it appears. And racism is very evident in the accounts from People of Colour about what they’re experiencing in Ukraine. It’s also apparent in the assertions being made in western outlets.
They’ve characterised the conflict as exceptional because of where, and to whom, it’s happening. And this fuels a narrative that it’s somehow less devastating or consequential when war strikes elsewhere, namely in poorer countries with majority populations of People of Colour.
In the meantime, the country has embarked on an often haphazard reform programme of its military which has made it — while still vulnerable in many vital respects — a rather more formidable force.
Since 2014-15, Ukraine has tripled its defence budget and attempted to modernise its forces — not only to defend themselves against Russia, but to comply with the standards demanded by Nato as an entry requirement.
The results have been mixed. On paper their army looks impressive — with 800 or so heavy tanks and thousands of other armoured vehicles protecting and transporting a regular force of about 200,000.
These are far better trained troops than in 2014. They have good leadership, especially in the crucial non-commissioned officer cadre — the backbone of any army. Vitally, most observers report high morale and motivation.
But this is only part of the story. Most of their armour and equipment is relatively old and, although factories have been turning out modernised versions of old models such as the T72 tank, these provide little in the way of effective opposition to the far more modern Russian tanks and armoured vehicles — some of which are equal or superior to the best Nato stock.
A Russian armoured personnel carrier crippled in the opening exchanges of the invasion. Image: Ukrainian Defence Ministry handout/EPA-EFE/
Further, the Ukrainian army is vulnerable both to Russian artillery, traditionally the Red Army’s most formidable arm, and the threat posed by Russian strike aircraft.
Ukraine’s air force possesses a considerable fleet of Cold War-era aircraft and personnel are well-organised and trained. But Russia has configured its “aerospace forces” to gain and maintain crucial control of the air using, among other systems, the fearsome S400 long-range anti-aircraft missiles.
These systems give the most advanced Nato air forces serious pause for thought, let alone the 1990s vintage fighters and bombers of Ukraine.
Advanced Russian fighters and missiles will dominate the sky in due course although the Ukrainians have achieved some successes against the expectations of many.
There are credible reports that Ukrainian fighters are still flying and remarkably have shot down several Russian jets. Their old — but in the right hands still effective — anti-aircraft missiles have also caused Russian losses, according to Ukrainian sources.
The navy is now militarily insignificant — the more so since much of it appears to have been sunk in harbour within 24 hours of the beginning of hostilities.
Strengths and weaknesses But this is not a foregone conclusion. Ukrainian generals are highly unlikely to play to Russian strengths and deploy forces to be obliterated by their artillery or air power.
They have seen all too much of that in the past. In July 2014 a formation of Ukrainian troops was destroyed by a rocket artillery strike in eastern Ukraine.
What was notable was the way the rockets were guided to their targets by drones operated by Russian-supported separatist troops.
Focusing on equipment quality or quantity alone is always a big mistake. In the UK, military thinking outlines “three components of fighting power”. These are the moral (morale, cohesion, motivation), conceptual (strategy, innovation and military “doctine”) and material (weaponry).
It is one thing having the advantage in the material component of war, it is quite another to turn it into success. The Ukrainians will try to exploit Russia’s vulnerability to having to wage a lengthy military campaign with the potential to sustain politically damaging heavy casualties.
Many Ukrainians have a basic awareness of weapon handling — the several hundred thousand reservists called up as Russia invaded certainly do. They may be light on modern tanks and sophisticated weaponry, but may well have the edge in the moral and conceptual domains.
There is a strong tradition of partisan warfare in Ukraine where ideas of “territorial defence” — insurgent groups fighting small actions on ground they know well backed up, where possible, by regular army units — are deeply ingrained.
In the early days of the Cold War after the country had been liberated from German occupation, the anti-Soviet “Insurgent Army” was only finally defeated in 1953. During this time they caused tens of thousands of casualties.
It may have been largely forgotten by the rest of the world, but this conflict is well remembered in Ukraine.
The vaunted Russian armed forces have already deployed a large proportion of their ground troops, and have a very limited capability either to occupy ground contested by insurgents or — even more importantly — to sustain operations beyond the first “break-in” phase of the war.
The last thing Putin wants is a protracted war, with bloody urban combat and echoes of Chechnya — which is what Ukrainian forces are likely to give him.
War takes its own course, but the likely and sensible Ukrainian approach will be to trade land for time. They will hope to inflict casualties and draw Russian forces into urban areas where their advantages are less pronounced.
In the event of defeat in the field, Ukraine’s defenders could well default to a well-armed, highly-motivated and protracted insurgency, probably supported by the West. This is Putin’s nightmare.
The other side of that particular coin is that Western support of such “terrorism” could attract an unpredictable and highly dangerous response.
In his “declaration of war” speech, Putin threatened “such consequences as you have never encountered in your history” to those who “try to hinder us”, clearly referencing Russia’s vast nuclear arsenal. In the face of defeat or humiliation rationality may be in short supply.
Biased reports, publications of old photographs, and even simulations and video games serve as “source” for the mainstream media and social media accounts of great influence. With the publication of fake news, they are trying to show an “indignation” against war, something that was never seen against all the atrocities perpetrated or promoted by governments such as that of the United States.
In the case of the conflict in Ukraine, one of the fake news that was dismantled hours after it was broadcast consists of images of bombings and the alleged activation of anti-aircraft defense systems in Ukrainian territory. It was revealed that the bombings were from scenes of a video game called ArmA 3.
Produced and presented by the Watchdog Media Institute, here is a chronological archive of events in Ukraine from the beginning of the Euromaidan protests in November 2013 to the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014. Hundreds of various sources are presented without commentary and in context, allowing the viewer to adequately interpret the information themselves.
The only item in there that is relevant with regards to Kiev is a Russian missile strike on the fuel depot of a military airport on the southern periphery of the city. The large fire and smoke could be seen from Kiev.
As Russia does not announce the progress of its campaign the ‘western’ news is projecting that it is losing the war. I see no evidence that this is the case and believe that it is far from reality. The lack of reliable reporting just makes it impossible to map out the current frontline.
The NATO military alliance’s de facto think tank, the Atlantic Council, promoted a notorious neo-Nazi militia in Ukraine, the Azov Battalion, in a 2014 article that depicted the fascist extremists as anti-Russian heroes. Azov preaches a white supremacist Nazi ideology that portrays Ukrainians as a pure white race fighting “Asiatic” Russians in a war to maintain racial purity. The battalion uses explicit Nazi symbols, including the German Wolfsangel and Black Sun.
Lobbyists are distancing themselves from foreign companies partnering on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline project after lobbying for them for a total of $17 million since 2017.
According to Politico, three lobbying firms severed ties with companies partnering on the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline.
The terminations bring a multimillion dollar lobbying push to a halt as President Joe Bidenannounces sanctions on the company constructing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and Germany pauses certification of the pipeline.
Foreign companies partnering on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 have spent heavily on lobbying around the pipeline project, which would deliver Russian natural gas to Germany while bypassing Ukraine. Those companies collectively spent more than $6.6 million on 2021 lobbying related to the pipeline and issues such as “natural gas as an element of European energy security.”
While Nord Stream is owned by the Russian state-run Gazprom, the Kremlin has insisted the pipeline is a “commercial project” and lobbyists for the pipeline were registered under the Lobbying Disclosure Act instead of FARA, keeping details of which government officials the lobbyists met with hidden from the public. Lobbyists for foreign clients can choose to register under the LDA so long as the “principal beneficiary” is not a foreign government or political party.
Biden waived Nord Stream sanctions in 2021 and administration officials reportedly urged senators to quash sanction measures unless the White House has the power to waive the congressionally-mandated sanctions.
Foreign companies partnering on Nord Stream spent more than $6.8 million lobbying against sanctions and other issues related to the pipeline project since the start of 2020 alone.
Roberti Global has been the top beneficiary of Nord Stream 2’s lobbying spending with more than $9.1 million in payments since 2017. About $2.4 million of that went to 2021 lobbying during Biden’s administration. The lobbying firm is run by Democratic donor and lobbyistVincent Roberti, who was an unofficial adviser to Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign
Nord Stream poured more money into lobbying with each passing year and companies partnering on the pipeline started to ramp up lobbying efforts in 2020.
BGR Group, which also terminated its contract with Nord Stream, has been paid about $1.6 million since the start of 2020.
Five foreign companies partnering with Gazprom on the pipeline — Austria’s OMV AG, the Netherlands’ Shell International, France’s ENGIE, and Germany’s Wintershall and Uniper SE — paid lobbyists at McLarty Inbound more than $1.6 million since the start of 2020.
The Democratic National Committeeannounced in May 2021 that Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign and its joint fundraising committee refunded contributions from McLarty managing partner Richard Burt, the former U.S. ambassador to Germany. The refunds followed OpenSecrets reporting that he was a registered lobbyist at the time of his donations, and Biden had pledged to reject lobbyist donations.
While firms have terminated contracts for lobbying on the Nord Stream pipeline, Russian interests have poured millions of dollars in spending into other foreign influence operations targeting the U.S. as well.
After Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his invading army to attack “from all directions,” Ukraine’s defense forces and civilian volunteers reportedly repelled an assault on Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city, but battles remain underway nationwide on Sunday as diplomatic efforts unfold.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced Sunday that Kyiv intends to send a delegation to the Ukraine-Belarus border to hold discussions with Moscow “without preconditions.”
Zelenskyy rejected Putin’s earlier offer to meet his delegation in Minsk — saying that talks there could have been possible had Russia not attacked Ukraine from Belarus — but agreed after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko assured him during a phone call that “all planes, helicopters, and missiles stationed on Belarusian territory remain on the ground during the Ukrainian delegation’s travel, talks, and return” from the border.
Just before the planned negotiations were announced, Putin ordered the Russian military to put its nuclear forces on “special alert.”
The move, made in response to what Putin called “aggressive statements” by members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), makes it easier to launch nuclear weapons more quickly, though it doesn’t necessarily mean that Russia intends to use them.
According toBBC security correspondent Gordon Corera, Putin is likely trying to “deter NATO support for Ukraine by creating fears over how far he is willing to go and creating ambiguity over what kind of support for Ukraine he will consider to be too much.”
Earlier Sunday, regional governor Oleh Sinegubov said that Ukrainian forces successfully expelled Russian troops following intense street fighting and are in full control of Kharkiv, a city roughly 300 miles east of the capital of Kiev, which is also still in Ukraine’s hands.
One video, verified by the BBC, shows a group of Ukrainian soldiers taking cover and launching missiles at Russian military vehicles in Kharkiv.
Residents described intense shelling, with one woman saying it was “something like Star Wars above your head.”
A nine-story residential tower was hit, emergency services said.
The building was severely damaged and an elderly woman was killed, according to emergency services. Rescuers said about 60 people were spared injury as they had taken refuge in the basement.
Ukrainian government ombudsman Lyudmyla Denysova said Sunday that more than 210 Ukrainian civilians have been killed and more than 1,100 wounded since the start of Russia’s invasion.
“With unseen cruelty, the enemy is destroying residential buildings, hospitals, kindergartens, and schools, taking away the right to live from the sons and daughters of Ukrainian land, including children,” she said in a social media post, according to the BBC.
Russia should be “punished severely for these crimes,” added Denysova. “Ukraine is noting down all these facts and will pass them on to the military tribunal in The Hague.”
Damage to homes and critical infrastructure has left hundreds of thousands of people in Ukraine without access to water and electricity, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
Russian forces blew up a gas pipeline in Kharkiv hours after bombing an oil terminal in Vasylkiv, 18 miles south of Kyiv, resulting in a huge explosion and toxic air warnings.
The residents of Kyiv, where fighting continues, have been directed by mayor Vitali Klitschko to remain underground, and a curfew is currently in place through 8 a.m. on Monday.
Ukraine’s deputy defense minister Hanna Malyar estimated Sunday that 4,300 Russian soldiers have been killed and dozens of pieces of military equipment — including planes, helicopters, tanks, armored vehicles, and cannons — destroyed since Putin ordered a full-scale invasion four days ago.
“Ukrainian civilians have also been attempting to block the advance of Russian forces peacefully,” the BBC reported. “One video, believed to be recorded in the Chernihiv region, shows local residents halting a convoy of Russian tanks by walking at them en masse.”
The number of people who have fled Ukraine to Poland, Hungary, Romania, Moldova, and other nations has grown to 368,000, according to U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. They are mostly women and children, as Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60 are ordered to stay and fight.
There have been mass protests in many Russian cities, with people demanding an end to the war against Ukraine. From Ukraine itself, people are being urged to take up arms. And there are several reports of cyber attacks against Russian targets.
Multiple mass protests
On 24 February, journalist Alejandro Alvarez posted on Twitter videos of mass protests in cities across Russia. In his Twitter thread they included: St Petersburg, Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaliningrad, and Volgograd. Those demonstrating could be heard shouting in Russian “No to war”:
Protests are erupting in several Russian cities tonight against Putin's large-scale invasion of Ukraine, along with attempts from police to forcibly suppress them. Here's his hometown of St. Petersburg. I'll be threading videos below as I find them. pic.twitter.com/B5MyG5E4ou
Many of the brave Russian protesters were arrested and under the notorious Russian prison system may face imprisonment, beatings or worse. Though they will no doubt inspire the people of Ukraine to stand fast in their opposition to Putin’s war.
Indeed, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy has urged the people of his country to rise up and take up arms against the invaders:
We will give weapons to anyone who wants to defend the country. Be ready to support Ukraine in the squares of our cities.
We are arming people who will be taking that fight to the Russians in every way. We are a nation of 40 million people and we are not going to just stand idly by as Russia does as it wants all across its borders.
We will fight with everything we have and all the support the world can provide us.
Cyber resistance
There are also reports that hacktivists have temporarily taken down the website of Russia Today (RT):
The #Anonymous collective has taken down the website of the #Russian propaganda station RT News.
Other Russian sites reportedly brought down include the Duma (Russian parliament), the Russian Ministry of Defence, and the Kremlin. There’s also a claim that the website of the Russian energy giant Gazprom was taken down.
Moreover, on 26 February, ‘Anonymous Ukraine’ issued a warning to Putin and put out a call to other Anonymous hacktivists to step up the attacks:
Meanwhile, Amnesty International reports that Russia may be guilty of war crimes. Indiscriminate attacks by Russian forces have included hits on civilian areas as well as hospitals.
Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary general, commented:
The Russian military has shown a blatant disregard for civilian lives by using ballistic missiles and other explosive weapons with wide area effects in densely populated areas. Some of these attacks may be war crimes.
Possible outcomes
One suggestion to how Putin’s war could end has come from former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis:
The only issue today should be to stop the war and to secure the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine. The only way that could happen is a Washington-Moscow agreement that Russia withdraws in exchange for a commitment of Ukrainian neutrality. Anything else is war mongering.
In the past, armed resistance groups made up of citizens around the world have supported the fight against authoritarianism. One example is the International Brigade in Spain in 1936-39.
Indeed, it’s now reported that Ukraine is setting up an “international” legion for foreign volunteers to join the Ukrainian army. Zelensky explained:
Every friend of Ukraine who wants to join Ukraine in defending the country please come over, we will give you weapons.
Though the details of how that would run are not clear. Nor how local democratically-organised militias would or would not fit in with this initiative. Also, the call out could easily attract the far-right from every corner of the globe. That is not an exaggeration, given the integration of ultra-nationalists such as the Azov Battalion into Ukraine’s military structure.
Another possible outcome is Russians deploying sheer people power to demand the end of the corrupt and autocratic Putin-led regime. But this would require protesters taking to the streets not in their thousands but in their millions – and in every city and town in Russia. In short, a real revolution – by the people, for the people.
Putin’s Achilles heel?
Russia knows too well that Ukraine has a proud history of resisting totalitarianism. The Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine (RIAU) consisted of a 100,000 strong army, led by anarchist insurrectionistNestor Makhno. The RIAU fought a campaign against the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the Communist revolution. In defence of the libertarian communes and “free soviets”, its long-term goal was to form a stateless, anarcho-communist society. That goal was never achieved.
As for the current conflict, Putin’s invasion of Ukraine may ultimately prove to be his greatest mistake. For in recent days, the Russian people may have tapped into hope for a real revolution.
“I’m concerned about Russian disinformation spreading online, so today I wrote to the CEOs of major tech companies to ask them to restrict the spread of Russian propaganda,” US Senator Mark Warner tweeted on Friday.
Since then YouTube has announced that it has suppressed videos by Russian state media channels so that they’ll be seen by fewer people in accordance with its openly acknowledged policy of algorithmically censoring unauthorized content, as well as de-monetizing all such videos on the platform. Google and Facebook/Instagram parent company Meta both banned Russian state media from running ads and monetizing on their platforms in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Twitter announced a pause on ads in both Russia and Ukraine.
“Glad to see action from tech companies to reign in Russian propaganda and disinformation after my letter to their CEOs yesterday,” Warner tweeted on Saturday. “These are important first steps, but I’ll keep pushing for more.”
For years US lawmakers have been using threats of profit-destroying consequences to pressure Silicon Valley companies into limiting online speech in a way that aligns with the interests of Washington, effectively creating a system of government censorship by proxy. It would appear that we’re seeing a new expansion of this phenomenon today.
Glad to see action from tech companies to reign in Russian propaganda and disinformation after my letter to their CEOs yesterday. These are important first steps, but I’ll keep pushing for more.
And the imperial media are pushing for more. Articles and news segments warning of the sinister threat posed by Russian propaganda to misinform and divide western populations using the internet are being churned out at a rate that’s only likely to increase as this latest narrative management campaign gets into full gear. The Associated Press has a new article out for example titled “War via TikTok: Russia’s new tool for propaganda machine“.
“Armies of trolls and bots stir up anti-Ukrainian sentiment. State-controlled media outlets look to divide Western audiences. Clever TikTok videos serve up Russian nationalism with a side of humor,” AP warns.
“Analysts at several different research organizations contacted by The Associated Press said they are seeing a sharp increase in online activity by groups affiliated with the Russian state,” AP writes. “That’s in keeping with Russia’s strategy of using social media and state-run outlets to galvanize domestic support while seeking to destabilize the Western alliance.”
The “different research organizations” AP ends up citing include “Cyabra, an Israeli tech company that works to detect disinformation,” as well as the state-fundedNATOnarrative management firm The Atlantic Council.
As tends to happen whenever a consensus begins to form that a certain category of speech must be purged from the internet, imperial spinmeisters are already working to expand the definition of “Russian propaganda” which must be purged from the internet to include independent anti-imperialist commentators like myself.
Dopey Louise Mensch wannabe NatSec LARPer calling for me to be labeled "State Affiliated Media" and de-platformed across all western social media because RT is one of the many outlets who occasionally republish my blogs for free. https://t.co/54yZtQUsFzpic.twitter.com/XKzLnwvAPs
Imperial narrative manager Robert Potter has a thread on Twitter currently calling for me and other anti-imperialist content creators to be labeled “State-Affiliated Media” on Twitter and ideally de-platformed across all western social media, in my case solely because RT is one of the many outlets who occasionally choose to republish some of my blog posts for free.
I am not as Potter claims “an OP Ed columnist for Russia Today.” I don’t work for RT, I don’t write for RT, I don’t submit articles to RT, and I’ve never been paid by RT or the Russian government. RT is just one of the outlets who sometimes avail themselves of my longstanding invitation for anyone who wants to to republish my work free of charge. That RT editors would find my daily rants against western imperialism agreeable is not scandalous or conspiratorial but normal and self-evident.
Yet for agents of imperial narrative control like Potter (who ironically works directly for the US State Department but thinks my posts should be labeled “State-Affiliated Media” by Twitter), even this is enough to justify complete silencing. I will not be in the slightest bit surprised to see a great deal more of these efforts as the new cold war continues to escalate.
The Center for Countering Digital Hate, an empire-loyal NGO ostensibly focused primarily on fighting racism and prejudice, has published a report accusing Facebook of failing to label Russian propaganda as such 91 percent of the times it occurs. The CCDH decried Mark Zuckerberg’s “failure to stop Facebook being weaponized by the Russian state”.
Retweet if you think RT, a propaganda arm of Putin’s Kremlin, should have its licence revoked by Ofcom.
This sudden narrative management thrust has also seen RT taken off the air in nations like Australia, Germany and Poland, with pressures mounting in France and the UK to follow suit.
This despite the fact that all western powers would have to do to eliminate RT completely is simply start allowing leftist and anti-imperialist voices to be heard on mainstream media platforms. It would immediately suck up RT’s entire foreign audience as people who’d previously needed to look outside the mainstream for sane perspectives gravitate toward media made with much better funding and a higher level of talent.
But of course we all know that’s never going to happen. The imperial media aren’t going to subvert RT by platforming voices who dispute the empire’s narratives no matter how badly they hate it, because the exact reason they hate RT is because it disputes the empire’s narratives. They’re not worried about Russian propaganda operations, they’re worried about someone else running interference on their own propaganda operations.
Nazis in Ukraine? Russian propaganda. US-backed coup in 2014? Russian propaganda. Donbas provocations? Russian propaganda. US/allies armed terrorists in Syria? Russian propaganda. Mass media is propaganda? Russian propaganda. The government's not your friend? Russian propaganda. https://t.co/OjtURhlht7
RT’s audience makes up about 0.04% of TV viewing in the UK. This isn’t about RT, it’s about the the agenda to continually expand and normalize the censorship of unauthorized speech. That’s what it was about when they were pretending it was about the need to fight Covid misinformation before that, and when they were pretending it was about the need to fight domestic US extremism before that, and when they were pretending it was about the need to defend election security before that, and when they were pretending it was about the need to fight Russian propaganda the first time before that one cycled back around again.
Whoever controls the narrative controls the world. Humans are storytelling creatures, so whoever can control the stories the humans are telling themselves about what’s going on in the world has a great deal of control over the humans. Our mental chatter tends to dominate such a large percentage of our existence that if it can be controlled the controller can exert a tremendous amount of influence over the way we think, act, and vote.
The powerful understand this, while the general public mostly does not. That’s all we’ve been seeing in these attempts to regulate ideas and information as human communication becomes more and more rapid and networked. An entire oligarchic empire is built on the ability to prevent us from realizing at mass scale that that empire does not serve us and inflicts great evil upon our world. The question of whether our species can awaken to its highest potential or not boils down to whether our dominators will succeed in locking down our minds, or if we will find some way to break free.
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The Russian Federation has launched a full-scale attack upon Ukraine.
The World Socialist Movement is not concerned with the supposed rights and wrongs of this war, whether the niceties of international law were breached or if the sovereignty of Ukraine was disregarded. As workers, we are painfully aware that it will be fellow workers who will pay the blood price of the geo-political games played out by the Great Powers.
Ukraine isn’t the “democracy” that Western politicians and media like to give the impression it is. In fact, the political and economic superstructure of Ukraine is not very much different from that of Russia. So the argument that it is “democratic” while Russia isn’t and that “we” must support it to defend “democratic values” is false.
The history of conflicts between states has left a legacy of antagonism between different groups, so they identify with their “nation-state” and the interests of its rulers rather than with their fellow workers in other states. Ukrainian nationalism has an ugly history. Before WW1 what is now Ukraine was divided between the Austrian-Hungarian and the Russian Empires and after it between Poland and Soviet Russia. Lviv, the centre of the pro-West faction in Ukraine, was a major Polish city. During this period the Ukrainian-speakers were discriminated against by the Polish government. Under the Nazi-Soviet Pact the Polish part was annexed by Russia including Lviv. When Germany invaded Russia in 1941 many living in this part welcomed the Germans as liberators and many fought on the German side. Some served as concentration camp guards. The trouble for our fellow workers living in Eastern Europe is that history has dealt them a bad hand — no choice but to be dominated either by the EU-US or by Russia. It seems that the population of Ukraine is still divided over which, so providing both sides with pawns to play to further their interests.
Once again, it is incumbent upon ourselves to affirm that not a drop of working people’s blood should be shed in supporting either side of this capitalist conflict of which bloc can claim territory as part of its sphere of influence. Whether it is the Ukrainian nation or the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, it is not worth the sacrifice of our fellow workers’ lives. Who cares which parasitic class claims to own which patch of dirt?
Capitalism operates according to its own logic and confrontation among capitalists is a normal process that has been taking place since the emergence of the capitalist system.
The WSM condemns the attitude of all those prepared to see towns and cities littered with the corpses of hundreds or thousands of working men, women and children. For what? To prevent what would be in the main merely a change of rulers. Unlike others, we are willing to conceive of Ukraine losing its “independence” if it means that our Ukrainian fellow workers and Russian Donbas fellow workers are not sacrificed for such spurious concepts as “democracy” and “freedom”.
The World Socialist Movement issues our declaration of peace.
It is of course the worst for the direct victims of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, but the very courageous people who stand up against the autocratic government and nationalistic media in Russia deserve all our attention. On 26 February 2022, Human Rights Watch wrote “Russia: Arbitrary Detentions of Anti-War Protesters“:
Police arbitrarily detained hundreds of peaceful protesters across Russia on February 24, 2022, at rallies in solidarity with Ukraine and against the war, Human Rights Watch said. The authorities also arrested at least two human rights defenders who spoke up against Russia’s full-scale invasion in Ukraine, threatened to block mass media outlets in case their reporting on the war differed from the official narrative, and demanded that foreign social media platforms stop restricting reports from Russian state media.
“For years, Russian authorities have been suppressing free speech and peaceful protests to stifle critical voices,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Now the government is silencing all those who speak out against the war with Ukraine.”
According to OVD-Info, an independent human rights project working to protect freedom of assembly in Russia, by the evening of February 25, police had detained at least 1,858 people for participation in anti-war protests in 57 cities, including Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Krasnodar, Ekaterinburg, Saratov, Nizhny Novgorod, and Voronezh. Some of detained protesters stood in single pickets and held posters saying “no to war, do not be silent,” “stop the war,” and other similar slogans.
At around 3 p.m. on February 24, the police detainedMarina Litvinovich, a human rights activist, in Moscow after she had made a call over social media to “come out and say we are against war.” She was released several hours later, pending a court hearing and the next day was fined for violating the rules on public gatherings. https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-litvinovich-fined-ukraine-invasion-protest/31723131.html
In response to calls for peaceful protests, Russia’s Investigative Committee published a news release with a warning that organizing unsanctioned gatherings is a prosecutable offense and threatening “harsh punishment” for organization of “mass riots.”
In the evening of February 24, protesters gathered in different cities across Russia to demonstrate against war. According to OVD-Info, more than 1,000 protesters were arbitrarily detained in Moscow and around 400 in Saint Petersburg where the biggest protests took place.
Human Rights Watch analyzed and verified 27 videos recorded north of the Gostinny Dvor metro station in Saint Petersburg and close to Pushkinskaya Square in Moscow that were published on social media on February 24. The vast majority document brutal arrests of peaceful activists by police officers. In at least four cases, videos show police officers beating protestors, pushing them to the ground, dragging them, grabbing them by the head, and choking them.
Mass media and OVD-Info also reported other cases of excessive use of force by the police, refusal of medical assistance, and denial of access to lawyers. At night, at least six police stations in Moscow, and some stations in Saint Petersburg, Saratov, Voronezh and Ekaterinburg refused access to outside visitors after initiating the “Fortress” protocol, authorized for a situation of potential attack, which meant lawyers were denied access to their clients for hours. On February 25, OVD-info reported they could not get in touch with three of the detainees on their list.
Russian public figures, journalists, scientists, activists, and average social media users have been publicly expressing their shock and indignation at the full scale Russian military operations in Ukraine and calling for the hostilities to end. Thousands used the hashtag #нетвойне (#notowar).
Lev Ponomarev, a prominent human rights defender and the founder of the Movement for Human Rights, initiated a petition “against war,” calling on the Russian military to withdraw from Ukraine and inviting people to join the peaceful anti-war movement. The police detained Ponomarev on February 24 and charged him with organizing unsanctioned protests in connection with the petition, which had gathered over 550,000 signatures by the evening of February 25.
On February 24, the internet regulator Roskomnadzor published a warning to mass media disseminating “unverified” and “false” information, claiming that only information from official sources can be used when reporting on the “special operation” in Ukraine. The authorities also said that all “false” information would be instantly blocked and warned about fines for disseminating “fake” news.
Roskomnadzor also sent official letters to Facebook (Meta) demanding that it should lift restrictions imposed by the social media platform on official pages of state and government mass media. The authorities said that Facebook had marked them as “untrustworthy” and hid their publications from the platform’s search. Roskomnadzor also called on Russian users to switch to national internet resources and social networks due to “unfounded blockings by foreign platforms.”
On February 25, the Office of the Prosecutor General, in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, accused Facebook of being “involved in violation of fundamental human rights and freedoms” and imposed restrictions on access to the platform in Russia.
The authorities’ actions to prevent people from participating in peaceful public protests and freely expressing their opinions violate fundamental rights, including those to freedom of expression and assembly and the prohibition on arbitrary detention, guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and Russia’s own Constitution.
“The ability to express disagreement in a peaceful way is crucially important in any society that respects human rights and rule of law,” Williamson said. “This abusive crackdown on a peaceful anti-war movement is yet further proof, if more was needed, of the government’s intolerance of independent voices.”
On the other hand, in a post of 25 February 2022, Brian Dooley of Human Rights First relates what human rights defenders in Ukraine are telling about the immediate impact on them of the Russian invasion.
O would some Power the gift to give us To see ourselves as others see us!
— Robert Burns, To a Louse, 1786
This famous quote by the great Scottish poet Robert Burns stands as one of the clearest reminders of a precondition for any matured identity.
Burns understood that without having learned to use our God-given ability to place ourselves in the shoes of another, then those powers needed to self-examine our false prejudices, exercise humility (upon which creative insight is premised) and correct our false motives, actions and beliefs would be completely lost.
It is thus disappointing, albeit no small surprise, that those basic tools of self-criticism are entirely non-existent when one listens to the gossipy make-believe speeches of so many helmsmen manning today’s ship of fools, sometimes known as the Trans Atlantic “rules-based international order”.
A Clash of Paradigms
After seven years of civil war in East Ukraine, 14 thousand casualties, broken peace deals and countless appeals by those living in the Lugansk and Donetsk Republics for independence from the Nazi-infested militias embedded in the Kiev defense forces, Russia decided to finally recognize the East Ukrainian republics as sovereign nations. A few days later, Russia unleashed a program of de-militarization and de-Nazification of Ukraine featuring targetted military strikes that (as of this writing) have annihilated over 74 military bases, US biolabs and entrenched radical neo-nazi forces that have been entrenched in the Ukrainian military since 2014.
But despite this completely understandable humanitarian intervention which is provably NOT an annexation, we see endless instances of western sock puppet statesmen denouncing Russia’s imperial ambitions and antagonism to western democratic values.
From Canada, where Justin Trudeau and his handlers have used an Emergency Measures Act to justify the violent crushing of peaceful protestors in Ottawa (including the freezing of bank accounts of hundreds of citizens who donated money to a freedom convoy), we hear only buzzing threats of anti-Russian sanctions and pompous condemnation of “Russian aggression” with more comparisons of Adolph Hitler to Putin than one can count.
In response to Russia’s recognition of the East Donbass republics, Justin stated “Canada and our allies will defend democracy”. Referring to the wide array of sanctions and Canadian troop deployments to Latvia, Trudeau said “we are taking these actions to stand against totalitarianism.”
He then stated “the people of Ukraine, like all people must be free to determine their own future”. This last remark implies that the people in East Ukraine who have been demanding independence are not actually people.
These remarks are coming from a Canadian regime that had only days earlier arrested nearly 200 people for the terrible crime of “causing mischief” in Ottawa and freezing bank accounts using “secret information” which none of those representatives or Senators expected to vote for the act were allowed to see. Deputy Prime Minister Freeland herself (who has more than a few uncomfortable connections with outright pro-Nazi Ukrainian networks) has even publicly stated that many extraordinary powers created under ‘emergency conditions’ should be continued indefinitely after the emergencies act is revoked. 1
Across the Trans-Atlantic Five Eyes cage, similar virtue signalling in defense of “democracy” has resounded with the USA, European Union and UK moving in lockstep to condemn Russian aggression, and impose similar sanctions on Russian parliamentarians, businessmen and banks, with the USA and UK joining Canada in sending troops to Russia’s border.
While an energy crisis has already made a hard life harder for millions of Europeans struggling with a self-induced economic crisis under pandemic conditions, the German government has been pressured to accelerate its own self-destruction by cancelling the desperately needed Nord Stream 2 in order to “punish” Russia.
Nazis and Operation Gladio
European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans has demonstrated the typical level of over-exaggerated hypocrisy asserting that February 22 was “one of the darkest days in Europe’s history” apparently forgetting that WWI or WWII happened.
Timmermans is a character who has distinguished himself as a technocratic sock puppet by pushing anti-Russian sanctions for 8 years beginning with the highly flawed MH-17 bombing investigation in 2014, while covering up the true Kiev-connected hands behind that atrocity. Amidst his current crocodile tears over the “darkest days” Europe has ever faced, Timmermans appears oblivious to the mass atrocities committed by Nazi “stay behinds” used by western intelligence operations under Operation Gladio during the Cold War. This is especially strange since it was during Timmermans’ time as Deputy Chair on the Commission of Foreign Affairs in the Netherlands that an extensive 2005 report on Nazi stay-behinds was published by the Dutch Ministry of Defense.
After having been established by the CIA, NATO and MI6 in 1956, Operation Gladio saw hundreds of terrorist cells deployed by former leaders of Nazi intelligence embedded across Europe who were used to kill civilians and troublesome politicians while stoking the fires of anarchy along the way. These acts of terror were in turn used to justify the excessive “emergency management” by oligarchically captured trans Atlantic nations throughout the Cold War based upon the logic that “the war against communism justifies everything… including fascism”.
While some say that the Gladio Operations were cancelled when the Soviet Union disintegrated, evidence points to a very different picture.
One particularly loud case is found in the figure of Andriy Parubiy, founder of the neo-Nazi Social-National Party of Ukraine who was appointed to serve as Secretary of the National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU) in the post-regime change putsch managed by Victoria Nuland and overseen by Joe Biden.
Canadian officials who met with members of a Ukrainian battalion linked to neo-Nazis didn’t denounce the unit, but were instead concerned the media would expose details of the get-together, according to newly released documents. The Canadians met with and were briefed by leaders from the Azov Battalion in June 2018. The officers and diplomats did not object to the meeting and instead allowed themselves to be photographed with battalion officials despite previous warnings that the unit saw itself as pro-Nazi. The Azov Battalion then used those photos for its online propaganda, pointing out the Canadian delegation expressed “hopes for further fruitful co-operation.
Then-Deputy Chairman of Ukraine’s Parliament, Andriy Parubiy, visited Ottawa in February 2016, meeting with the prime minister. At that meeting (from left) are Ukraine’s Ambassador to Canada Andriy Shevchenko, Verkhovna Rada Deputy Chairman Andriy Parubiy, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Member of Parliament Borys Wrzesnewskyj.
It is thus no small irony that among those “liberal democracies” of Canada, the USA, UK and EU, we have repeated evidence of actual neo-Nazi collaboration both past and present as well as fascist behavior deployed against the people living in and around those very liberal democracies. Among these self-professed bastions of freedom and democracy, we have numerous cases of torture (Guantanamo Bay), illegal arrests of dissidents who participated in January 6 Washington rallies or Ottawa anti-medical dictatorship mandates, unlawful freezing of bank services for those whose political views are deemed unacceptable to a governing elite, and the imprisonment of whistleblowers.
What is clear is that those managerial technocrats processed through World Economic Forum training camps are generally entirely incapable of self-criticism or recognizing their own hypocrisy. They are wired to move in echo chambers of self-congratulatory flattery without every confronting points of disagreement that need to be dealt with through dialogue or reason. The typical unipolarist automaton is entirely incapable of basic fundamental human character traits that allows each of us to see and judge ourselves from the standpoint of people outside of our class, group, or even cultural matrix choosing instead to expect everyone and even the universe itself, to fit into those ivory tower models and values which are wired into the mind of any Davos creature.
At the end of the day, those statesmen who are unencumbered by such mechanical handicaps as those suffered by Davos creatures, have access to a much greater degree of insight, and creative flexibility to lawfully break the rules of rigged games in ways that those control freaks sitting in ivory towers can ever comprehend. It is precisely this incapacity to either comprehend creative human thinking or self-criticize their own false thinking that creates those systemic conceptual blind spots which will ultimately prove their own undoing.
Thankfully, pushback from a few courageous Senators and Members of Parliament (as well as certain financial institutions petrified of an immanent bank run) have induced the Canadian government to pull back from the act on February 23 although an Orwellian “war on disinformation and hate” and a new level of integration between banks and intelligence agencies has now been put into motion.
Russian president Vladimir Putin on Friday, February 25, said that he is prepared to send a delegation to Minsk to discuss Ukraine’s neutrality, media reports said. This follows a call by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy who urged Putin to sit down for talks even while calling on the people of the country to keep fighting. Meanwhile, media reports say fighting is taking place around Ukraine’s capital Kiev, as well as other cities in Ukraine.
A preschool in north-eastern Ukraine was hit on 25 February with cluster munitions, killing 3, including a child & wounding another child. There is no possible justification for dropping cluster munitions in populated areas, let alone near a school.
(@korrinesky) 
(@morganlowe813) 
(@anonukr) 
