On February 24,2022, Russia launched special military operation aimed at De-militarization and De-nazification of Ukraine. Russia blames the West for provoking a coup d’etat in 2014 which has overthrown democratically elected president Yanukovitch by color revolution led by nazi militants. The new regime has been installed thanks to the support of the USA, namely by Victoria Nuland and the European Union. Considering the new regime set up in Kiev as a western puppet, the Russian speaking populations in Donbass snubbed the new authorities and decided to take in hand their destiny by setting up independent administrations. It was the beginning of civil war that lasted eight years killing 15000 civilians.
The question that begs : why Ukraine? What are its core causes ? The answer is giving by leading French historian Annie Lacroix Riz explaining the origins and development of the ongoing conflict between Russia and the West.
Obviously, comparaison is not reason, but it is not irrelevant to compare the motives that drive Russia to launch its military operation in Ukraine and those that triggered NATO’s bombing of Serbia in 1999 and Libya in 2011.
Here are the motives that NATO put forward to justify Serbia’s bombing.
NATO has been leading a peace-support operation in Kosovo – the Kosovo Force (KFOR) – since June 1999.
KFOR was established when NATO’s 78-day air campaign against Milosevic’s regime, aimed at putting an end to violence in Kosovo, was over.
The operation derives its mandate from United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 (1999) and the Military-Technical Agreement between NATO, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Serbia.
KFOR’s original objectives were to deter renewed hostilities, establish a secure environment and ensure public safety and order, demilitarise the Kosovo Liberation Army, support the international humanitarian effort and coordinate with the international civil presence.
Today, KFOR continues to contribute towards maintaining a safe and secure environment in Kosovo and freedom of movement for all.
NATO strongly supports the Belgrade-Pristina EU-brokered Normalisation Agreement (2013).
Aiming at regime change in the rich oil Libya, fomenting violence and demonstrations behind the scene in the city of Benghazi starting on February 17,2011, the USA, France,UK and their lackeys in the Arab world and in Africa, have used the United Nations as tool to impose a no fly zone in the North African nation and providing a veneer of legality to their war of aggression by invoking humanitarian interventionism and the responsibility to protect civilians threatened by horrible dictator.
On 17 March 2011, the Security Council adopted Resolution 1973 authorizing the use of force in Libya.2 While Germany, Brazil, China, India, and Russia abstained, the resolution drafted by France and the United Kingdom and cosponsored by Lebanon and the United States received ten favourable votes out of fifteen (South Africa, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, France, Gabon, Lebanon, Nigeria, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States).
Focusing on protecting the civilian population, Resolution 1973 called for an immediate cease-fire and the complete cessation of violence against civilians. It authorized Member States to take all necessary measures to protect civilians under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, while excluding any form of occupation of Libyan territory.3 In addition, it allowed Member States to take all measures required to implement the flight ban over Libyan airspace (the ‘No-Fly Zone’). Finally, the text strengthened the arms embargo, banning flights of Libyan airlines and freezing Libyan financial assets such as those already defined in Resolution 1970 of 26 February 2011. Implicitly underlying this call for the protection of civilians was the concept of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), although the R2P concept was not always explicitly raised in the debates leading to the adoption of the resolutions.
Russia’s humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect of civilian population in Ukraine’s Donbass
Russia’s military operation in Ukraine a month ago, on February 24 provoked hysteric response in the West denouncing Putin’s invasion and his so called war crimes. If we compare NATO’s bombing of Serbia and Libya in the name of humanitarian interventionism and the responsibility to protect, one can observe Putin has used the same humanitarian interventionism and the responsibility to protect as justification to intervene militarily in Ukraine.
President Putin announced on February 24 that in response to a request by the heads of the Donbass republics he had made a decision to carry out a special military operation in Ukraine in order to protect people « who have been suffering from abuse and genocide by the Kiev regime for eight years. »
The situation on the line of engagement in Donbass escalated on February 17. At that time, Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) reported the most massive bombardments by the Ukrainian military over past months, which damaged civilian infrastructure and caused civilian casualties. On February 21, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree recognizing the sovereignty of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Subsequent treaties of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance were signed with their leaders.
NATO’s relentless and pervasive propaganda wants us to make believe its bombing of Serbia and Libya has been motivated by mere humanitarian and moral principles while Putin’s military intervention in Ukraine is presented as a war of aggression and invasion of «independent state». In fact, Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine has really the form of humanitarian intervention and applying the principle of the responsibility to protect the civilian population in the two popular republics in Donbass and by no means invasion and war of aggression according to NATO’s motives by bombing Serbia and Libya. In looking at things in this way, Imperial west shows its binary mind and the dominance of the principle of double standard when it comes to protect its strategic and economic interests all over the world, to perform a regime change or to topple recalcitrant leaders looking for a genuine independence and development of their nation.
One month ago, February 24, Russia’s Putin launched what Moscow called a limited military operation with two main objectives, to disarm and denazify Ukraine. In order to brainwash the western public opinions, to manufacture consent and to silence dissenting opinions, NATO imposed unprecedented censorship of all media banning Russian outlets medias, RT and Sputnik among others. Control of narrative on Ukraine is aiming at slashing from the collective memory all deadly and bloody wars waged by NATO since 30 years all over the world and by focusing only on the ongoing «war of agression» and «invasion» of «independent state» by «Putin’s army»
For western propaganda, Putin is presented as crazy and mindless by ordering military operation in neighbouring Ukraine. It will be unthinkable that the man who ruled the destiny of Russia during 22 years ordered the military to take action without a context and circonstances pushing to send Russian armed forces there. Instructed by the history of the collapse of the Soviet Union on one hand and by the current encirclement of Russia’s borders by NATO’s bases in eastern Europe, Putin has took the right decision at the appropriate moment to quell agressive and expansionist western hybrid war. This is global conttext that pushed Putin to move against Ukraine. But there is another factor that played key role in Russian military operation, often hidden from the public eye, a planned and already attack by NATO against Russian territory through Ukraine used as a rear base.
In fact, during a briefing on Thursday,Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Washington’s was enraged because the plan to turn Ukraine into anti-Russia » and use it as a bridgehead for delivering all types of strikes » on the territory of the Russian Federation failed. »
« Apparently, it was not expected that Russia would withstand this blow, and the aggressive rhetoric and personal insults reflect internal turmoil, uncertainty, irritation with the fact that it did not work out, as it always worked before, and as it was planned this time, » the diplomat noted.
Russia’s military exercices that took place during the weeks preceding military operation were but a response to NATO’s already planned attack on Russian territory since 2014 coup d’etat and the integration of Crimea into the Russian federation.
On February 19 in Munich, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy made his threat to deploy nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory. He expressed this as his unilateral revocation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, although Ukraine was not a signatory of the agreement. Two days later on the evening of February 21, Putin made his speech recognizing the sovereign independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, and the start of the military campaign in the Ukraine. He explicitly referenced Zelenskyy’s Munich nuclear weapons pledge: “This is not empty bravado,” Putin stressed in his speech.
It now begins to become more clear that Putin had serious reason to react at the Ukraine nuclear threat. A Ukrainian nuclear missile within six minutes of Moscow would present existential danger whether Ukraine were in NATO or not.
The primary bomb research facility was located at the National Scientific Center, “Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology.” As of this writing reports of fierce fighting underway between Russian forces and neo-nazi Ukrainian Azov fighters who reportedly are planning to blow up the research reactor site and blame it on Russia. [v] The battle for control of the large Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is also apparently part of the attempt to conceal the illegal Ukraine bomb project.
For years Washington moved one after the other former Warsaw Pact countries including Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, Baltic States into NATO and closer to striking distance to Russia.After the demise of the USSR, Nato’s members passed from 16 to 30 members.
Kiev coup regime proceeded after February 22, 2014 to wage a war of extermination and ethnic cleansing of Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine, led to a large degree by a private army of literal neo-nazis from Pravy Sektor (Right Sector), the same ones who ran security in Maidan Square and launched a reign of terror against Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Battalions were formed of neo-nazi mercenaries. They were given official state status as “Ukrainian National Guard” soldiers, the Azov Battalion, financed by Ukrainian mafia boss and billionaire oligarch, Ihor Kolomoisky, the financial backer of Zelenskyy as president.
There was more. Ukrainian press reported a year ago about new Western-built de facto NATO naval bases in Ochakov and Berdyansk as, “modern infrastructure facilities capable of receiving ships of all types, equipped according to NATO standards and built with the money of the alliance countries.” The media boasted, “In three years we will be able to strike at Russian ships in the Black Sea with our mosquito fleet. And if we combine with Georgia and Turkey, the Russian Federation will be blocked,’ Ukrainian military experts boasted.
There was more. Ukrainian press reported a year ago about new Western-built de facto NATO naval bases in Ochakov and Berdyansk as, “modern infrastructure facilities capable of receiving ships of all types, equipped according to NATO standards and built with the money of the alliance countries.” The media boasted, “In three years we will be able to strike at Russian ships in the Black Sea with our mosquito fleet. And if we combine with Georgia and Turkey, the Russian Federation will be blocked,’ Ukrainian military experts boasted. “ [vi]
In addition, the US Pentagon had no less than eight, perhaps as many as 30 top-secret bioweapons research labs across Ukraine testing DNA of some 4,000 military volunteers. Once Russian soldiers moved to secure the evidence, the US Embassy in Kiew deleted previous mention of the sites from its website, and Ukrainians reportedly moved to destroy the lab evidence. Ukrainian labs in Kharkiv and elsewhere were operating in cooperation with the United States. Stocks of such weapons were being secretly stored in direct violation of international conventions.
A full month before the Russian military action on 22 February in Ukraine, independent biowarfare researcher, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, obtained documents detailing “US Pentagon biological experiments with a potentially lethal outcome on 4,400 soldiers in Ukraine and 1,000 soldiers in Georgia. According to the leaked documents, all volunteer deaths should be reported within 24 h (in Ukraine) and 48 h (in Georgia).” She details the human experiments, which include testing for antibodies against some 14 pathogens including Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Borrelia species (Lyme disease) and others. According to the documents the labs in Ukraine and Georgia are part of a Pentagon “$2.5 billion Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Biological engagement program which includes research on bio agents, deadly viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”
Of course, NATO is not engaged directly in Ukraine, it is arming Ukrainian Armed forces and training foreign mercenaries brought in the country to fight the «invaders», the so called «Putin’s army». But NATO’s non lethal weapon that annihilated Russia, is the infowar and the western unrivalled and unparalleled methods and techniques of propaganda that have been improved and developed thanks to the endless wars waged by the United States and its allies since the end of the WWII and chiefly since the demise of the USSR 30 years ago.
By listening to the western propaganda,especially during prime time,we have in the menu of TV news, the evil and crazy Putin, inefficiency and disorganized Russian army killing innocent civilian, sowing death and destruction in the besieged city of Mariupol, and but least not last, the heroic resistance of Ukrainian people who don’t hesitate to bear arms to fight the «Russky». Military high ranking, paid journalists list the Russian human and material losses presented in such a way obliging the viewers or the listeners to draw the inevitable and previsible conclusion that the Russian army has bogged down and even has lost the «war». This is psychological warfare waged by the West in order to hide its powerless and its incapacity to influence the course of events on the theatre of operations while in the past it was the west that commanded the course of events.
Over the past days, we are witnessing the latest hype of western propaganda fabricated by the US Pentagon according to which, Ukraine’s armed forces not only resist to the Russians advance but they take the initiative to contain and even to attack Russian armed forces.
Don’t be fooled by western narrative and its powerful psychological warfare. The Russian armed forces have achieved complete theatre control in many key areas, destroying the capacity of the Ukrainian armed forces to operate the types of major coordinated defensive and counter-offensive operations that would be necessary to reverse this fact. Even if major ground operations were successful, a large part of Ukraine’s heavy military equipment has been destroyed and the Russians will still have complete air superiority. The destruction of NATO tarining center in Ivarivo is an example of Russian control of Ukraine’s space.
Western media outlets harbour the illusions that the Russians can be defeated militarily and that NATO will protect and support them. Meanwhile, the longer and more intense the futile resistance of what remains of the Ukrainian armed forces goes on, the greater and more enduring the destruction and suffering will be. The only winner will be the United States and NATO , its military wing that caused the ongoing conflict with Russia and responsable for huge destruction and death in Ukraine.
Western propaganda doesn’t recognize the existence of neo nazi groups nor nazi ideology that became since the coup d’etat of 2014 fomented by the West through its proxy and neo nazi stooges, throwing democratically elected president and neutralist Viktor Yanokuvich. Instead of Nazism or neo nazi militants, western propaganda has to resort to a euphemism by using nationalism and nationalists. A genuine nationalist is who refuses to align with one side against another one and in that regard,we can say without being fooled that the toppled president Yanukovich was a genuine nationalist as he refused to sign a leonine treaty of 500 pages with the European Union and the International Monetary fund seeking systematically to bleed the country. These were the real reasons behind the coup d’etat of 2014.
Since the 2014 regime-change in Ukraine, Ukraine is ruled by U.S.-installed nazis; and they became immediately installed in the new government’s top ‘national security’ posts, and every elected leader in Ukraine now knows that to oppose their (those nazis’) demands would lead to the Ukrainian official’s overthrow and even to the person’s possible assassination by Ukraine’s nazi forces. The new regime installed in Kiev after 2914 was overtly neo nazi inspiration as the first measure implemented was to crush any dissent by prohibiting like Hitler regime after 1933, the Communist party and a dozen of opposition parties and then by fighting Russian speaking Ukrainians,those who massively voted for Yanukovich in the Donbass region and in North-eastern and south-eastern region. The Kiev regime started its pogrom on May 2,2014 in the trade Union House in Odessa where more than 52 people were burned alive.The responsable of the tragedy is Azov Battalion, a Neo-Nazi outfit which sports swastikas. They are fascists and murderers. And they have been integrated in Ukraine’s Armed Forces at the nod of the Pentagon.
The very nature of Kiev regime ideology may be seen through the UN resolutions condemning any sort of racism, including Nazism. The first such vote at the U.N. occurred just months after the regime-change in Ukraine, and was taken on 21 November 2014. Only 3 Countries, the US, Ukraine and Canada backed officially at U.N. Nazism & Holocaust-Denial; Germany Abstained After the 16 November 2017 U.S. backed once more Nazism as Trump Continued Obama’s nefarious Support of Nazism. The latest such vote occurred on 16 December 2021.
Current Russophobic hysteria speaks volumes about the dissemination and the widespread of Nazi ideology among Ukrainians as well among the country’s leadership as among the populace. The West was behind the nazification of Ukraine as many of its NGO and organizations invested Ukraine after the coup of 2014 brainwashing the Ukrainians and rewriting the history by glorifying nazi past represented by the infamous Ukrainian nazi, Stepen Bandera and minimizing or bluntly slashing the glorious Soviet victory over Nazism during the WWII where the URSS has paid costly price in terms of human losses and injuries estimated at 27 million people.
26 days ago, Russia launched special military operation with two main objectives: disarming and denazification of Ukraine. Belying western propaganda inventing fake resistance and fake heroes, the military objective was achieved as Ukraine main military infrastructure and equipment were destroyed. It remains the denazification whose stronghold in Mariupol is besieged but refuses to surrender which will be a matter of days. But Mariupol surrender is not all, and even with the fall of the next third city of Odessa will not give Russia full satisfaction as long as the puppet government originating in the coup d’etat of 2014 remains in position. To really denazify Ukraine, Russia has no choice but to change regime in kiev and to install new leadership vowed to pick up the pieces and to restart a long process that will take time and perseverance.
Following Russia’s special operations in Ukraine, NATO is using like in its previous wars in Yugoslavia and Libya, what we can call it,information bomb or non lethal weapons. NATO’s strategy of deception,propaganda and psychological warfare take root in Goebbels’s basic principles, propaganda minister for Hitler Third Reich. When reading these propaganda principles, keep in mind that they were applied in wartime (WWII) and involve issues that don’t arise otherwise. It’s a long list, but Goebbels was dealing with the complexity of an all-out war. While reading them you may realize that some of the principles are generally applicable and not limited to wartime. Some might be quite familiar today.
Those basic principles can be summarized as follow:
1 -Avoid abstract ideas – appeal to the emotions.
Constantly repeat just a few ideas.
Use stereotyped phrases.
4-Give only one side of the argument.
5-Continuously criticize your opponents.
6-Pick out one special « enemy » for special vilification.
The objectives to be achieved are :
Hide economic and strategic interests at stake
Obscure history of the conflict
Demonize and transform victim into aggressor
Monopolise the airwaves
Prevent debate and silencing dissent
RUSSIA’S SECURITY CONCERNS AT THE ORIGINS OF PUTIN’S DECISION
The starting point of Putin’s decision is the coup carried out in 2014 followed with all those events in Crimea and in the south-east of Ukraine, in the Donbass, where people did not support the coup
The Kiev authorities began to conduct military operations on those territories. There were « two punitive operations » conducted, during which the squares of Donetsk were shelled directly, but both of those campaigns failed;
3-Afterwards, the Minsk Accords were signed, which showed a way to a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Russia was trying to make the process develop in this direction, in order to restore the territorial integrity of Ukraine and protect the interests of the people, who demanded most simple things: the right to speak their native Russian language and live within their own culture.
4- Instead, the Ukrainian authorities announced the blockade of these territories in response, disconnected them from the banking system, food supplies, pensions and benefits.
Since 2014, between 13,000 and 14,000 people were killed in the Donbas during the years of the conflict, while the civilized West preferred not to notice that.
7-the Kiev authorities started declaring bluntly that they were not going to comply with the Minsk agreements. On top of that, they were accusing Russia of unwillingness to implement the Minsk agreements..
8-Then they started talking about Ukraine’s possible membership at NATO. In this case, other members of the alliance will have to support the country, which could spark a war between Russia and all of NATO.
9-To crown it all, Ukraine raised the topic about a possibility to acquire nuclear weapons. They said that Ukraine would receive support from across the ocean.
And from that moment on, the fate of Russia will be completely different. Because then Russia’s strategic adversaries do not even need to have intercontinental-range ballistic missiles. They would be able to keep us at gunpoint with nuclear weapons right here, and that was all.
The two main objectives of Russia’s special operations in Ukraine are : Denazification and demilitarization as the two main conditions to address Russia’s security concerns.
Putin’s decision to launch military special operations in Donbass and Ukraine did not come out from nowhere.
On Monday, February 21st President Putin, also acting on the request of the Donbass Republics, and the recommendation of the Russian Security Council, made the momentous and logical decision to do exactly that.The Minsk Agreements, though supported by Russia, were being impeded and sabotaged by some European nations, by the Kiev regime and the USA. Since 1999,Putin witnessed the dismembrement of Yugoslavia,bombing by NATO of Serbia in 1999, American invasion of Afghnaistan in 2001,Iraq invasion in 2003,color revolution in Georgia in 2004 and in Ukraine the same year, color revolution in Georgia in 2008, the so called Arab Spring in 2011 used by the US and NATO to topple Libyan regime and the Syrian regime. Putin witnessed also NATO expansion in Eastern Europe whose members went from 16 after the demise of the USSR to 30 today.
The Americans and their satellites states go further and claim a right to expand their alliance, but on what legal, moral or security grounds this right is based they cannot say. They claim that nations have the right to join NATO of their own free will, but this again is a distortion of the facts. The NATO Treaty states that accession to the Treaty is by invitation only. So there is no right of any nation to freely choose to join NATO. That is a decision ultimately controlled by NATO, by the United States in fact, not the nation seeking to join.
Earlier this year President Putin sent to the American president a proposal for a Treaty which would guarantee the peace in Europe. The offer was met with contempt and rejected out of hand by the Americans who played games with the text and offered to negotiate on peripheral items, while ignoring Russia’s demands that NATO cease its expansion, withdraw American nuclear weapons from Europe, dismantle the bases and equipment it has placed all over eastern Europe in preparation for war on Russia and agree not to place missile systems close to Russia’s borders.
On December 17, 2021, the Russian Foreign Ministry released draft agreements on the security guarantees that Moscow expects to receive from Washington and NATO. The documents clearly require that NATO cease its eastward expansion and return its military infrastructure to the 1997 borders.The proposed measures include guarantees that NATO will not advance eastward, including the accession of Ukraine and other countries into the alliance, as well as non-deployment of serious offensive weapons, including the nuclear one
The United States and NATO handed their written responses to Russia’s security proposals over to Moscow on January 26, 2022 without any crucial concession.
Moscow’s reaction to Washington’s response on security guarantees published on February 17 underscored that the US provided no response to Russia’s proposal to bring back nuclear weapons to its soil, but just agreed to deal with the issue of non-strategic nuclear weapons without taking into account the specifics of its location
On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation based on a request from the heads of the Donbass republics. The Russian leader stressed that Moscow had no plans to occupy Ukrainian territories and the goal was to demilitarize and denazify the country.
On the morning of February 24, Russia officially launched a « special military operation » against Ukraine, designed, as Russian President Vladimir Putin explained, to « demilitarize » and « denazify » the neighboring state. The goal of the operation is to protect the people of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), he said. The Ukrainian authorities subsequently severed diplomatic ties with Russia, urging its partners to create an « anti-Putin » coalition against the Russian troops entering Donbass and shelling military infrastructure facilities throughout the country. On the evening of February 24, the press service of the Ministry of Defense reported that DPR and LPR troops advanced 6-8 km from the front line with the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and the Russian armed forces completed all the tasks assigned for that day. Also, two Su-27 and two Su-24 aircraft, as well as one helicopter and four Bayraktar TB-2 UCAV belonging to Ukraine were shot down, and 83 ground military infrastructure facilities of Ukraine were incapacitated.
So far, the US, its satellites states and NATO are waging hysterical propaganda against Russia and Putin becoming in the West Putler(Putin = Hitler) The question of when the DPR and LPR will liberate their territories within the borders of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, as written in their Constitutions, remains open. In addition, Russia’s military operations should should change regime in Kiev and set up buffer zone including the entire left bank of Ukraine, as well as its Black Sea regions. Dnepr, Zaporozhye, Mariupol, Odessa, Ochakov, Nikolaev, Kherson, and other cities that have industrial and defense enterprises essential to the Russian Federation. If they are controlled by Moscow, this means that Russia has defeated the West and taken its Slavic partner out of the sphere of influence of the United States and NATO.
Like in all previous wars waged by the United States,its proxy allies and NATO, since the collapse of the USSR, it is the same strategy of deception implemented, aiming à brainwashing the masses in the West,making believe that their deadly and bloody wars of agression against targeted nations have only double objective :getting rid of vilain dictators who were massacring and killing their people, and making the world safe for democracy.
The current war in Ukraine provoked by NATO expansionism since the collapse of the Soviet Union on one hand and Maidan neo nazi coup in 2014 toppling democratically elected president who refused to bind to drastic conditions imposed by the USA,European Union and International Monetary Fund. The main architect of Maidan neo nazi coup was Victoria Nuland, wife of the neoconservative Paul Kagan.The Maidan coup was openly supported and financed by NATO as a way of undermining any Russian influence in Moscow’s own strategic environment. The aim was to make Ukraine a puppet state, commanded from Washington, ending any link with Russia. There was not only the objective to annihilate political, economic, and diplomatic relations between Kiev and Moscow, but also to eliminate cultural, ethnic, religious, and linguistic ties between both nations.
In the wake of Maidan coup d’etat, an anti-Russian junta took power and institutionalized a racist and anti-Russian ideology.Kiev’s coup in 2014 is but a contemporary copy of Hitler’s Berlin, but that the neo-Nazi element is a fundamental point of post-2014 Ukraine.
Following Maidan’s coup, neo nazi militias became key points in the defense of the new Ukrainian regime. Groups such as the Azov Battalion, C14 and the armed militias of rightist parties such as Pravyy sektor and Svoboda operate freely in Ukraine and are most responsible for the extermination of ethnic Russians in the Donbass. The exaltation of Stepan Bandera (Ukrainian anti-Soviet nationalist leader who collaborated with Nazi Germany) is one of the symptoms of this. Before the Maidan, Bandera was a name like any other in Ukrainian history, but he came to be remembered and venerated as a national hero by neo-Nazis and anti-Russian politicians. These groups act with more violence and using more sophisticated equipment than the Ukrainian armed forces themselves, being the real face of Kiev’s anti-Russian brutality. As neo-Nazis, these militias have no obstacles in complying with the government’s objective of destroying any ties between Russians and Ukrainians.
The inspiration for Maidan neo nazi militias comes from the original Nazism: the Schutzstaffel (SS), one of the largest German armed political forces during the 1930s and 1940s, but the group was not part of the German Armed Forces, but a paramilitary militia instrumentalized by the government apart from the official troops. There was a major strategic objective with this: while the German military was commanded by the government, the SS fought for the Nazi Party and for Hitler – that is, if Germany surrendered, the SS would declare war on the German military. This type of “double-shielded” military system is the same one that Kiev has implemented: one can observe the same phenomenon in current war in Ukraine where neo nazi militias continue fighting the Russian forces in Kiev, in Dombass, in Mariopul and other regions albeit the entire destruction of Ukraine’s air forces.
Putin’s war over Ukraine is not war of agression like all NATO’s since 1991 mais it is the right response to denazify a neighbour country and to replace it a friendly regime. It is a measure that should be taken in coalition by several countries. In the West, Nazism has been rehabilitated and nazi groups and parties are encouraged as a mean to stand in the way of genuine left wing parties like in France with Le Pen. Russia is simply no longer willing to put up with crimes being committed by neo-Nazis against its people and there is nothing wrong with that decision
In 2018, the United States government has declassified its Indo-Pacific strategy initially set to be released to the public at the end of 2042. The strategy was initially devised throughout 2017, going on to be approved and enforced by President Donald Trump in 2018 shortly after the US National Defense Strategy was finalised. At its heart, the strategy highlights a deep concern with China’s rising influence in the Western and Central Pacific and plans to deal with an increasingly belligerent North Korea, while seeking to use its South-East Asian allies to contend with China and North Korea and to strengthen India to counter Chinese military power.
Countering China in the South China Sea
The strategists highlight China’s growing dominance in the Indo-Pacific and consider Beijing as is the United State’s primary adversary and strategic opponent in the area. While the document does not mention the South China sea dispute, it reflects a concern over China’s claims there and in other parts of the Western Pacific. The strategy to counter China aims to build US capabilities until they are “capable of, but not limited to” denying China control of the air and the sea in the “first island chain”, referring to a string of Pacific islands surrounding China that include Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula, Japan, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam. China claims most of these waters. Second, it emphasizes the strategy emphasizes the need to defend the first island chain, and dominate all areas outside it.
disputed zones in the South China Sea
A US Navy oceanographic survey
Since last September, a US Navy oceanographic survey ship has been conducting extensive activities in a large area of the South China Sea to collect underwater geographical and hydrological data to support its submarine warfare in the region against China.
This situation also drew attention from some military observers after a US nuclear-powered attack submarine struck an unidentified underwater object in the South China Sea earlier this month, which again highlighted the US Navy’s need to learn more about the region.
The USNS Mary Sears (T-AGS 65), a Pathfinder-class oceanographic survey ship, entered the South China Sea on September 26 and started extensive surveys. From October 1 to 4, the ship operated in waters south of China’s Hainan Island, from October 5 to 9, it approached the coastline of Vietnam, and by Sunday it had arrived in waters near the Nansha Islands. The Pathfinder-class oceanographic survey ship is specialized in the detection and surveying of underwater terrain, meteorology and hydrology.
The USNS Mary Sears (T-AGS 65)
While the ship seems to be conducting scientific research, its true mission is to support submarine and anti-submarine warfare, the USS Connecticut, a Seawolf-class nuclear-powered attack submarine, struck an underwater object in the South China sea on October 2.
the USS Connecticut, a Seawolf-class nuclear-
This accident means the sea map the submarine was using was outdated, and the US Navy was conducting scientific research to draw underrates maps with the mission to support submarine and anti submarine warfare and help navigate friendly submarines or place detection device to locate hostile submarines.
Countering China and Russia in the Middle East
President Joe Biden’s Interim National Security Strategic Guidance Lt. Gen. Ronald Clark, who spoke at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference Oct. 12 emphasized the challenges of strategic competition with Russia and China to American interests, including nonmilitary events taking place across the Middle East. The major challenges to the command’s operations are China, Russia, Iran and “violent extremist organizations around the world,” he said. But the commander primarily cited Russia and China, which he said are making moves in the Middle East to “set conditions for future operations.”
Both nations blur the lines between competition, crisis and conflict. While it falls short of actual conflict, Clark said these actions are a part of strategic competition and will shape future conflicts in the Middle East and beyond. “Events in one theater will spill over — undoubtedly — to another,” he said. “Bottom line: All of our competitors are setting conditions in the [command’s area of responsibility] right now that we need to respond to.”
Middle East map
For example, China engages in unrestricted warfare, which consciously expands the battlefield from traditional domains such as land, air and sea to social spaces, politics, culture and economics. An important piece of that in the Middle East is the Belt and Road Initiative, which consists of a number of economic investments by the Chinese government and Chinese-owned companies in foreign countries. “The Belt and Road Initiative touches virtually every country in [the command’s area of responsibility],” said Clark, pointing to a $300 billion investment by a Chinese-owned company into the port of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates. China continues to import massive amounts of oil from the Middle East, helping Iran build a new export facility that will allow it to continue pumping oil past the Strait of Hormuz.
Hormuz Strait
Meanwhile, Russia is practicing its own form of hybrid warfare using nonmilitary means to create an operational environment where a smaller military force can come in and achieve its objective, Clark said. For example, a 2017 deal allowed Russia to expand the Port of Tartus in Syria, and it can now hold up to 12 nuclear-powered ships or submarines, he added. “That now allows the Russians — if they want to — to project power into the Mediterranean and into Eastern Europe,” he said.
Syria’s Tartus port
The US Central command’s area of responsibility is vast. It includes 21 countries that make up more than 4 million square miles and are home to 550 million people in 22 ethnic groups speaking 20 different languages.
Oil locations in the Middle east
Importantly for American interests, he added, it’s also home to vast oil reserves. Nearly 30 percent of the petroleum and crude oil products from around the world flow through three chokepoints that fall under the command’s purview. Clark pointed to when the supercargo ship Ever Given recently clogged up the Suez Canal for days as an example of the importance of those chokepoints. That incident disrupted 12 percent of global trade with an estimated cost of $9 billion.
In Poland’s capital, Warsaw, took place the Warsaw Security Forum convened by the Casimir Pulaski Foundation (Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego, FKP) presenting itself as independent, non-profit, and non-partisan think tank based in Warsaw, but it is in fact an Atlantist organization funded by NATO members and the EU with the main objective, disseminating anti Russian propaganda by exaggerating Russia’s threat used as pretext for arms race and more military spending.
Speaking at the the Warsaw Security Forum, an event organized by the Casimir Pulaski Foundation think tank, Polish President Andrzej Duda said Oct. 5 that closer ties between NATO and the EU are required to combat Russia’s military-driven expansionism : “We need a strong partnership between NATO and the European Union that ensures a synergy of both organizations,” Duda said. “Russia is expanding its military presence and it endangers NATO not only from the east, but also from the north and south.”
Polish president Duda
The president’s remarks were echoed in the speech by Paweł Soloch, the head of Poland’s National Security Bureau.
“There is an ongoing development of the military potential of the Russian Federation. On our part, this creates a need for a further adaptation of NATO’s capacities, also with the use of the instruments held by the European Union,” Soloch said. “Naturally, NATO has a significantly larger potential than Russia, but on the alliance’s borders, the forces accumulated by Russia give a tactical, and, for a defined time, also an operational advantage to this country.” He added, Europe “needs to have a single strategy that merges the potential of NATO and the European Union”
Croatia’s President Zoran Milanovic, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda and U.S. President Joe Biden pose for a family photo as part of the NATO summit at the Alliance’s headquarters, in Brussels, on June 14, 2021
Speaking during a panel at the Warsaw Security Forum on Wednesday, Lt. Gen. Tomasz Piotrowski, who leads Poland’s Armed Forces Operational Command, said the exercise enabled Moscow to test offensive measures against the alliance’s Eastern European members. The Polish commander has said Russia’s Zapad 2021 military drill with Belarus featured a wide range of hybrid warfare tools that Moscow is using to advance its regional influence.
NATO Headquarter in Brussels
According to Piotrowski, this year’s edition of Zapad “was bigger than Zapad 2020 and 2019 — not by the number of troops, but for sure by the capabilities that were used, types of units, such as airborne, special forces, maritime and others.”
RUSSIA AND BELARUS ZAPAD 21
The Russian military “announced already in January 2021 that the Zapad exercise had begun. Land exercises will take place until October 2021,” he added.
Russian government news agency Tass reported July 2 that the country’s National Guard would hold the Zaslon 2021 drill later that month as part of the overarching Zapad exercise.
Putin and the defense minister during ZAPAD drill 2021
Russia’s Defence Ministry described the exercise as “strategic,” stating that more than 200,000 troops from Russia and Belarus participated.
However, Lt. Gen. Andreas Marlow, commander of the 1st German-Dutch Corps in Münster, Germany, said during the same panel that one of the challenges NATO faces is “a difference of threat perception.”
NATO’s STOOGES IN THE EASTERN EUROPE
Last May took place in Tapa, Estonia, large-scale exercise titled Spring Storm (Kevadtorm) with the participation of NATO troops and the Estonian Defence Forces (EDF) “Last May, we announced that, together with our neighbors Latvia and Lithuania we will buy the MLRS for our militaries,” Laanet told Defense News during the first day of the Warsaw Security Forum, an event organized by the Casimir Pulaski Foundation think tank. “My opinion is that the Baltic states should have common capabilities to fight, but also deter any aggressor, so that they have to take us seriously.”
WARSAW, Poland — Estonia is developing its defense capacities in response to Russia’s actions in the region, with multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), air defense systems, coastal missile defense systems as well as unmanned and cyber defense capabilities ranking high in its acquisition plans, according to Estonian Defense Minister Kalle Laanet.
NATO’s presence in the eastern Europe
In 2017, Lithuania signed a deal with Norway’s Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace to acquire the network centric air defense system (NASAMS). Under Estonia’s National Defence Development Plan for the years 2017 to 2026, the country is also planning to purchase a similar short- to mid-range air defense system. New unmanned capacities for the Estonian armed forces, and investing in cyber defense capabilities, developed by Estonian company Milrem Robotics producing unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) that could be supplied to the country’s military. A pilot project to build unmanned vessels for the Estonian Navy. A consortium of defense companies has been put together, and the first vessel of this type is expected to be launched in 2026.
NATO’s Baltic Air Policing mission was launched on 30 March 2004, one day after the three countries joined the alliance. Today, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania still depend on other allies, as they lack their own fighters that could be deployed to such missions.
UK’s MILITARISM IN EUROPE AND THE INDO PACIFIC REGION
The chairman of a parliamentary defense panel Tobias Ellwood insists London is not losing sight of its own backyard in Europe, and therefore should increase defense spending “We don’t have the luxury to work independently given the challenges we all face,” Tobias Ellwood told Defense News during the second day of the Warsaw Security Forum, an event organized by the Casimir Pulaski Foundation think tank. He added that London is intensifying efforts to boost its space and cyber capacities “But we also need a bigger Navy, and we are investing in it.”
Tobias Ellwood
However, more funds are also required to expand the U.K.’s capabilities in other fields amid cuts to some programs. Budget cuts have already forced the country to reduce its initial F-35 fighter jet order from 138 to 48 aircraft, he noted, and the British-led effort for a sixth-generation combat jet, dubbed Tempest, is still in flux. BAE Systems is developing the aircraft in partnership with Leonardo UK, Rolls-Royce and MBDA UK.
“Britain is only spending 2 percent of its [gross domestic product] on defense. But the threats ahead are collectively greater than the ones from the Cold War when we were spending 4 percent,” Ellwood said
