Shamelessly stolen from Wikipedia:
The Soledar Salt Mines (also called Artyomsol Salt Mines after the State Enterprise Association Artyomsol that operates the mines) are located in the city/suburb of Soledar in the Bakhmut municipality in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine. The scale of the mines is vast. The mines have 125 miles of tunnel, are at a depth of 288m, and many of the chambers are 30 meters in height, The largest resembles a hangar of about 100 meters long and 40 meters width and 40 m height, and has accommodated soccer matches and the inflation of a hot air balloon.
On the 5th of January, 2023, the Wagner Group and Russian Armed Forces took parts of Soledar’s east, forcing the Armed Forces of Ukraine to step back and take up defenses further west and in the central parts of Soledar. The salt mine has since become a critical point for Ukrainian defense of Soledar and Bakhmut, utilizing the deep tunnels of the salt mine to maintain a defensive line in Soledar, as well as to keep stockpiles of supplies and launch attacks on Russian positions from their rear.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we’ve collected.
January 9th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 10th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 11th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 13th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
January 14th’s update is here on the site and here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia’s youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are fairly brainworm-free and good if you don’t want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. The Duran, of which he co-hosts, is where the chuddery really begins to spill out.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR’s former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR’s forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ Now rebranded as Battlefield Insights, they do infrequent posts on the conflict.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster’s telegram channel.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it’s a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of the really big pro-Russian (except when they’re being pessismistic, which is often) telegram channels focussing on the war. Russian language.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a ‘propaganda tax’, if you don’t believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Any Western media outlet that is even vaguely liberal (and quite a few conservative ones too).
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week’s discussion post.
Update for January 9th
Events
Globally
Common Dreams: Billions in Global South Face Looming Wave of Austerity in 2023
Europe
RT: Key Russian ally legalizes digital piracy
Belarus has temporarily legalized the use of digital content from ‘unfriendly countries’ without the consent of copyright holders, according to a decree signed by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and published on the country’s official portal of legal information.
WSWS: UK rail workers speak from the picket lines during most sustained action since start of dispute
Rail workers completed five days of strike action this week in their continued fight against £2 billion of cuts by the Conservative government, Network Rail and the private train operators.
The strikes were the most sustained action across the network since the beginning of the national dispute last June against a pay freeze extended into its third year and the overturning of terms and conditions at the expense of safety and thousands of jobs.
Reuters: UK PM Sunak says he is open to discussing pay rises for nurses
Reuters: Macron presses ahead with pension reform as French discontent swells
AA: 1 in 2 French people want ‘social explosion,’ ‘new protest movement’: Survey
As the details of the French government’s controversial new pension reform plan become clearer, a poll found that 52% of those asked said they would like to see France experience a “social explosion” in the coming months with the rise of a "Yellow Vests-type movement.”
This is the conclusion of a survey conducted Thursday by the French polling institute Ifop, which also found that 79% of the respondents also consider the scenario of an imminent “social explosion” including a new protest movement, to be realistic.
It is the second highest figure ever recorded by the polling institute since it was founded in 1998.
Only in November 2020 was the figure higher, at 85%. At that time, it was due to the government’s strict coronavirus restrictions, including a second lockdown.
RT: Belgrade is the new Casablanca – Vucic
Serbia has seen a record influx of foreign spies, with the country’s capital city Belgrade swarming with them amid the New Year’s Eve celebrations, President Aleksandar Vucic has said, likening the city to Casablanca during World War II.
“This New Year’s Eve, Belgrade has become the new Casablanca. We regularly receive these reports, there were no spies who would not check in our hotels, there have never been so many spies,” Vucic told TV Pink on Sunday.
FT: Sweden warns it cannot meet Turkey’s demands for backing Nato bid
Sweden has said Turkey is demanding concessions that Stockholm cannot give to approve its application to join Nato as the prime minister insisted the country had done all it could to meet Ankara’s concerns.
Ulf Kristersson, the new centre-right leader, on Sunday threw down the gauntlet to Turkey in the clearest indication yet from Stockholm that it could no do no more to help persuade Turkey to drop its opposition to Sweden and neighbouring Finland joining the western military alliance.
East Asia and Oceania
AA: Chinese Weibo bans over 1,000 accounts over coronavirus policy criticism
How authoritarian. Over here, we let scientists freely criticize pandemic response policy. …and then kill millions of people instead of listening to them, but the important thing is that people are free to speak their mind, not that they’re alive.
Reuters: Financing for Chinese real estate firms jumps 33% year-on-year in December
Chinese property companies raised a total of 101.8 billion yuan ($14.9 billion) in December, up 33.4% year on year, driven by more state support for the highly indebted sector, according to market researcher CRIC.
Nikkei Asia: India tops Japan to become world’s No. 3 auto market
India’s sales of new vehicles totaled at least 4.25 million units, based on preliminary results, topping the 4.2 million sold in Japan.
In 2021, China continued to lead the global auto market, with 26.27 million vehicles sold. The U.S. remained second at 15.4 million vehicles, followed by Japan at 4.44 million units.
RT: Asian country looks to buy Israeli drone-tracking system – media
RT is usually okay as a news source on Russian and regional issues when taking bias in mind, but my god does it have some clickbait shit.
South Korea’s military, which is under pressure to shore up its air defenses after failing to intercept five North Korean drones that flew around for hours in Seoul’s airspace, is reportedly considering the purchase of an Israeli system that detects unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).
The South Korean defense ministry may buy an “electric eye” system, also known as Sky Spotter, on an accelerated basis, Yonhap News reported on Sunday, citing an unidentified military official. Sky Spotter is built by Israeli defense contractor Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and is designed to provide early detection of drones, balloons and other flying objects.
Reuters: Magnitude 7.2 earthquake strikes near Vanuatu - USGS
Central Asia and the Middle East
Reuters: Alibaba plans $1 billion investment in Turkey, Sabah reports
Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding Ltd is planning a logistics hub at Istanbul Airport and a data centre near the Turkish capital Ankara with an investment of more than $1 billion, its president, Michael Evans, was cited as saying.
The Cradle: US on alert as UAE seeks to join Turkish-Syrian reconciliation talks
The Syrian-Turkish rapprochement via declared Russian mediation was paralleled by Emirati-Syrian rapprochement – the latest of which was a “brotherly” meeting aimed at strengthening cooperation and restoring historical relations between Assad and Foreign Minister of the UAE Abdallah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, according to SANA.
Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that the UAE seeks “to join Russia in sponsoring Syrian-Turkish relations at a high level,” noting that the Emirati foreign minister’s visit to Damascus sought to arrange Turkiye’s participation in the tripartite meeting of Syrian-Turkish-Russian foreign ministers, making it a quadripartite meeting.
Eurasianet: Azerbaijan enjoys surging hydrocarbon revenues amid Ukraine war
Azerbaijan has been enjoying a huge boost in revenues from its oil and gas exports, thanks to a deal it made with the European Union last year amid Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting sanctions.
According to the latest data from Azerbaijan’s State Customs Committee, the country earned $33.6 billion solely from oil and gas exports in the first 11 months of 2022, which is 2.2 times greater than revenues for the same period of 2021.
The same data reaffirmed the Azerbaijani economy’s overwhelming dependence on oil and gas revenues, which amounted to 92.6 percent of the country’s total revenues in that period.
Jesus christ, that’s an even higher percentage than Saudi Arabia.
Common Dreams: Thousands in Israel March Against ‘Fascism and Apartheid’ at Anti-Netanyahu Protests
Africa
AfricaNews: Inflation persists in Congo despite measures
The rise in food prices in the Republic of Congo continues despite the measures taken by the government to combat the high cost of living.
AfricaNews: Zimbabwe : new african agricultural power house
With 375 thousand tons of wheat harvest registered for 2022, Zimbabwe is set to become a self-sufficient agricultural powerhouse. A unique performance in Africa.
The harvest in 2022 was 13% higher than the previous year, breaking a half-century old record.
The area sown to wheat has increased by 10% and, above all, the state has set up a policy of distributing fertilizer and buying crops via a public body, the Grain Marketing Board, which has won over farmers.
The country no longer needs to import wheat to meet its needs, saving up 300 million dollars in import costs.
AllAfrica: Zambia: Climate Change Action Could Set Off a Copper Mining Boom - How Zambia Can Make the Most of It
At last year’s US Africa leaders summit in Washington the US signed an historic memorandum of understanding with Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo to develop an electric vehicle battery supply chain.
At the summit, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema also announced that Kobold metals, an exploration firm backed by billionaires Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, will invest US$150 million to develop a new mine in Zambia.
Zambia is particularly well positioned to supply what the world needs. It has substantial reserves of copper and cobalt, critical metals for the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Due to their broad uses in wind and solar powered technology and electric vehicle production, these metals will play a crucial role in a low carbon future.
Copper demand is expected to increase up to threefold by 2040 while cobalt demand is expected to rise over 20 fold.
North America
Reuters: U.S. new drug price exceeds $200,000 median in 2022
After setting record-high U.S. prices in the first half of 2022, drugmakers continued to launch medicines at high prices in the second half, a Reuters analysis has found, highlighting their power despite new legislation to lower costs for older prescription products.
CPR: Corrected ozone data estimate fracking and drilling produce more emissions than every Front Range vehicle
To explain Colorado’s consistent smog problem, regulators and scientists often point to two main sources of local air pollution: traffic and oil and gas.
…
New calculations predicted nitrogen oxide emissions from drilling and hydraulic fracturing expected in 2023 were likely nearly double the state’s original estimates. As a result, those two activities alone appeared likely to account for more ozone-causing emissions than all cars and trucks along the Front Range.
Common Dreams: Researchers Warn Great Salt Lake’s Retreat Threatens Crucial Ecosystem, Public Health
Scientists are warning Utah officials that the Great Salt Lake is shrinking far faster than experts previously believed, and calling for a major reduction in water consumption across the American West in order to prevent the lake from disappearing in the next five years.
Reuters: At least 29 killed in Mexico capture of Chapo’s son
South America
Reuters: Honduras extends, expands state of emergency meant to fight crime
The Honduran government on Saturday extended a state of emergency declaration for 45 days, expanding it to additional areas of the country in an effort to fight criminal gangs amid high levels of violence.
The state of emergency, in place since Dec. 6 in 165 areas of Honduras’ largest two cities, Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula, has been expanded to 235 of the country’s 298 municipalities, the national police said.
FT: Maduro strengthens his hand as Venezuela’s opposition government crumbles
“This marks the end of the US strategy of ‘maximum pressure’ on Venezuela,” said Francisco Rodríguez, professor of public affairs at the University of Denver. “The great majority of the opposition understood that it would lead nowhere. The interim government was clearly weakening, with fewer and fewer countries supporting it.”
Now approaching a decade in power with continued backing from Russia, China, Cuba and Iran, Maduro looks stronger than ever as he approaches the next presidential election, scheduled for 2024.
TeleSUR: President of Venezuela Receives Colombian Colleague in Caracas
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro received this Saturday his Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro in Caracas, where both presidents will hold an extraordinary bilateral meeting, the second meeting held in the Caribbean country since the reestablishment of diplomatic relations last August.
TeleSUR: Protesters Maintain Roadblocks in Peru
The Ombudsman’s Office has put the number of roads blocked in the country at 62 to demand the resignation of President Boluarte, the end of the Congress and the call for a constituent assembly, among other demands.
Common Dreams: With Echoes of Jan. 6, Thousands of Bolsonaro Supporters Storm Presidential Offices
The Ukraine Proxy Conflict
Andrew Korybko: Ukraine Humiliated Western Propagandists After Its Defense Minister Admitted It’s A NATO Proxy
The US-led West’s Mainstream Media (MSM) has insisted over the past 10,5 months that President Putin is supposedly insane for considering Ukraine a NATO proxy whose close military ties with that explicitly anti-Russian bloc pose a serious threat to his country’s national security red lines. Their perception managers subsequently expanded upon their gaslighting operation to discredit Russia’s special operation on the false basis that it’s driven by so-called “imperialism” and not self-defense.
Every single one of the countless information warfare products that they’ve since created was just exposed as fraudulent by none other than Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexei Reznikov, who admitted during an appearance on national TV on Thursday that their country is indeed a NATO proxy. In his own words, “Today, Ukraine is addressing [the] threat (of Russia). We’re carrying out NATO’s mission today, without shedding their blood. We shed our blood, so we expect them to provide weapons.”
Reznikov’s description of the Ukrainian-NATO relationship perfectly aligns with Merriam-Webster’s definition of a proxy. Their official website informs readers that “A proxy may refer to a person who is authorized to act for another or it may designate the function or authority of serving in another’s stead.” The objectively existing military-strategic dynamics of the Ukrainian Conflict coupled with Reznikov’s candid admission therefore leave no doubt about the fact that Ukraine is a NATO proxy by definition.
This senior official likely didn’t intend to discredit his patrons’ “official narrative” for redistributing approximately $100 billion of their taxpayer-provided wealth to Ukraine and thus vindicate everything that President Putin said about why he commenced Russia’s special operation. What appears to have happened is that Reznikov lost his cool after becoming frustrated that NATO isn’t giving Kiev all the weapons that it demands, hence why he spilled the beans in an attempt to put pressure on them.
Indian Punchline: Biden’s existential angst in Ukraine
Analysis
Retrospectives, History, Theory, and Technology
Technology Review: What’s next for quantum computing
For years, quantum computing’s news cycle was dominated by headlines about record-setting systems. Researchers at Google and IBM have had spats over who achieved what—and whether it was worth the effort. But the time for arguing over who’s got the biggest processor seems to have passed: firms are heads-down and preparing for life in the real world. Suddenly, everyone is behaving like grown-ups.
As if to emphasize how much researchers want to get off the hype train, IBM is expected to announce a processor in 2023 that bucks the trend of putting ever more quantum bits, or “qubits,” into play. Qubits, the processing units of quantum computers, can be built from a variety of technologies, including superconducting circuitry, trapped ions, and photons, the quantum particles of light.
IBM has long pursued superconducting qubits, and over the years the company has been making steady progress in increasing the number it can pack on a chip. In 2021, for example, IBM unveiled one with a record-breaking 127 of them. In November, it debuted its 433-qubit Osprey processor, and the company aims to release a 1,121-qubit processor called Condor in 2023. But this year IBM is also expected to debut its Heron processor, which will have just 133 qubits. It might look like a backwards step, but as the company is keen to point out, Heron’s qubits will be of the highest quality.
Inside the Imperial Core
IntelliNews: Emerging Europe backs nuclear power to solve energy needs
Nuclear power is roaring back in Central Europe, with advanced plans for new reactors in Hungary, Czechia, Poland, Slovakia and Romania, as well as tentative plans for small modular reactors (SMRs) across the region beginning in the 2030s.
Nuclear is seen by many countries as the solution to growing energy demand – due to the development of electromobility – and the need over the next few decades to replace ageing nuclear plants built with Soviet technology.
It is often the preferred solution because of the drawbacks of other forms of energy generation. Emerging Europe needs to end its heavy dependence on coal- and gas-fired power plants to meet its climate change commitments. This drive has been accelerated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has hiked gas and coal prices and pushed countries to cut their worrying reliance on imported Russian energy sources.
At the same time, renewable energy is seen as only part of the solution in many countries, because of the low potential for solar and wind power.
Nuclear power is already a big component of the energy mix in Central Europe, with Slovakia, Czechia and Hungary depending on it for more than a third of their consumption. In Southeast Europe it is less present: Romania’s Cernavoda and Bulgaria’s Kozloduy and Slovenia’s Krsko are the only nuclear power plants in the region.
Central European countries such as Czechia were therefore insistent that nuclear should be considered part of the European Union’s green taxonomy, meaning that private investors will have EU backing to invest in certain types of nuclear projects in the medium term.
The Lever: How Big Pharma Actually Spends Its Massive Profits
Between 2012 and 2021, the 14 largest publicly-traded pharmaceutical companies spent $747 billion on stock buybacks and dividends — substantially more than the $660 billion they spent on research and development, according to a new study by economists William Lazonick, professor emeritus of economics at University of Massachusetts, and Öner Tulum, a researcher at Brown University.
Outside the Imperial Core
Valdai Club: A New Era of De-Westernization Has Begun
Indian Punchline: India’s got the BRICS blues
AllAfrica: HIV Remains a Leading Killer in Africa Despite Medical Breakthroughs - How to Eliminate It
About 38 million people around the world are living with HIV. About 70% of them live in Africa. This shows that there is no solution to the AIDS pandemic without a solution in Africa. In 2021, there were 1.5 million new cases of HIV - just over 4,000 cases per day around the world. At the same time, close to 700,000 people died. The big challenge is to address the dual realities of people still dying from HIV in large numbers, and the large numbers of new infections. The upside is that there is a clear plan with clear goals on how to address this. In 2016, countries came together at the United Nations to agree on what the world’s strategy should be. The goal is to end AIDS as a public health threat by 2030. We spoke with leading scientist Professor Salim Abdool Karim about how to close the gaps.
Scheerpost: The Sino-Russian Summit You Didn’t Read About
I’ll be posting this one in the megathread, as it’s too long to really put here but deserves attention.
I Love My Trans Comrades!
Central European countries such as Czechia were therefore insistent that nuclear should be considered part of the European Union’s green taxonomy, meaning that private investors will have EU backing to invest in certain types of nuclear projects in the medium term.
If there is one silver lining to this meat grinder, let it be a nuclear revival. No one is going to consume less, and we can’t afford to wait for fusion. Burn the rocks now.
First? And as always, :rat-salute-2: to my news mega comrades
@cynesthesia mentioned this post from Bhadrakumar near the end of last thread, but I thought I would post it here too so that more can see.
(I also really like the image he chose. Putin in that image could practically be an emote here.)
Biden’s existential angst in Ukraine
The bipartisan consensus in the Beltway on the United States being the ‘indispensable’ world power is usually attributed to the neocons who have been the driving force of the US foreign and security policy in successive administrations since the 1970s.
The op-end in the Washington Post on Saturday titled Time is not on Ukraine’s side, coauthored by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in George W. Bush presidency and Defence Secretary Robert Gates (who served under both Bush and Barack Obama), highlights this paradigm.
Rice and Gates are robust cold warriors who are enthusiastic about NATO’s war against Russia. But their grouse is that President Biden should ‘dramatically’ step up in Ukraine.
The op-ed harks back to the two world wars that marked the US’ ascendance as world power and warns that the US-led ‘rules-based order’ since 1990 — code word for US global hegemony — is in peril if Biden fails in Ukraine.
Rice and Gates indirectly acknowledge that Russia is on a winning streak, contrary to the western triumphalist narrative so far. Evidently, the expected Russian offensive ahead is rattling their nerves.
Equally, the op-ed is contextual to American politics. The House speaker stalemate and its dramatic denouement in a bare-knuckle political fight among Republicans presages a dysfunctional Congress between now and 2024 election.
Kevin McCarthy, who had former president Donald Trump’s backing, finally won but only after making a series of concessions to the populist wing of the GOP, which has weakened his authority. The AP reported, “Fingers were pointed, words exchanged and violence apparently just averted… It was the end of a bitter standoff that had shown the strengths and fragility of American democracy.”
A senior Kremlin politician already commented on it. McCarthy himself, in his statement after election as the new House speaker, listed as his priorities the commitment to a strong economy, counteracting illegal immigration through the Mexican border and competing with China, but omitted any reference to the Ukraine situation or providing funds to Kiev.
Indeed, earlier in November, he had asserted that the Republicans in the House would resist unlimited and unjustified financial aid to Ukraine.
Now, Rice and Gates refuse to march in lockstep with Trump. But, although a diminished player, Trump still remains an active player, a massive presence and exercises functional control and is by far the largest voice in the Republican Party. Arguably, what defines the GOP today is Trump. Therefore, his backing for McCarthy is going to be consequential.
Biden understands that. Conceivably, the Rice-Gates op-ed was mooted by the White House and the US security establishment and scripted by the neocons. The op-ed appeared on the day after the January 5 joint statement by Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz underscoring their ‘unwavering solidarity’ with Ukraine.
Under immense pressure from Biden, Germany and France caved in last week to provide Ukraine with Infantry Fighting Vehicles. Scholz also agreed that Germany will supply an additional Patriot air defense battery to Ukraine. (A top SPD politician in Berlin has since voiced reservations.)
On the same day as the op-ed appeared, Pentagon arranged, unusually for a Saturday, a Press briefing by Laura Cooper, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia. Cooper stated explicitly that the war in Ukraine threatens the US’ global standing:
“From an overall strategic perspective, it is hard to emphasise enough the devastating consequences if Putin were to be successful in achieving his objective of taking over Ukraine. This would rewrite international boundaries in a way that we have not seen since World War II. And our ability to reverse these gains and to support and stand by the sovereignty of a nation, is something that resonates not just in Europe, but all around the world.”
The cat is out of the bag, finally — the US is fighting in Ukraine to preserve its global hegemony. Coincidence or not, in a sensational interview in Kiev, Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov also blurted out in the weekend that Kiev has consciously allowed itself to be used by NATO in the bloc’s wider conflict with Moscow!
To quote him, “At the NATO Summit in Madrid (in June 2022), it was clearly delineated that over the coming decade, the main threat to the alliance would be the Russian Federation. Today Ukraine is eliminating this threat. We are carrying out NATO’s mission today. They aren’t shedding their blood. We’re shedding ours. That’s why they’re required to supply us with weapons.”
Reznikov, an ex-Soviet army officer, claimed that he personally received holiday greeting cards and text messages from Western defense ministers to this effect.The stakes couldn’t be higher, with Reznikov also asserting that Ukraine’s NATO membership is a done thing.
Indeed, on Saturday, Pentagon announced the Biden Administration’s single biggest security assistance package for Ukraine so far from the Presidential Drawdown. Evidently, the Biden Administration is pulling out all the stops. Another UN Security Council meeting has been scheduled for Jan. 13.
But Putin has made it clear that “Russia is open to a serious dialogue – under the condition that the Kiev authorities meet the clear demands that have been repeatedly laid out, and recognise the new territorial realities.”
As for the war, the tidings from Donbass are extremely worrisome. Soledar is in Russian hands and the Wagner fighters are tightening the noose around Bakhmut, a strategic communication hub and lynchpin of Ukrainian deployments in Donbass.
On the other hand, contrary to expectations, Moscow is unperturbed about sporadic theatrical Ukrainian drone strikes inside Russia. The Russian public opinion remains firmly supportive of Putin.
The commander of the Russian forces, Gen. Sergey Surovikin has prioritised the fortification of the so-called ‘contact line,’ which is proving effective against Ukrainian counterattacks.
Pentagon is unsure of Surovikin’s future strategy. From what they know of his brilliant success in evicting NATO officers from Syria’s Aleppo in 2016, siege and attrition war are Surovikin’s forte. But one never knows. A steady Russian build-up in Belarus is underway. The S-400 and Iskander missile systems have been deployed there. A NATO (Polish) attack on Belarus is no longer realistic.
On January 4, Putin hailed the New Year with the formidable frigate Admiral Gorshkov carrying “cutting-edge Zircon hypersonic missile system, which has no analogue,” embarking on “a long-distance naval mission across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, as well as the Mediterranean Sea.”
A week earlier, the sixth missile-carrying strategic nuclear-powered submarine of the Borei-A class, The Generalissimus Suvorov, joined the Russian Navy. Such submarines are capable of carrying 16 inter-continental ballistic missiles Bulava.
The fog of war envelops Russian intentions. Rice and Gates have warned that time works in favour of Russia: “Ukraine’s military capability and economy are now dependent almost entirely on lifelines from the West — primarily, the United States. Absent another major Ukrainian breakthrough and success against Russian forces, Western pressures on Ukraine to negotiate a cease-fire will grow as months of military stalemate pass. Under current circumstances, any negotiated cease-fire would leave Russian forces in a strong position.”
This is a brutally frank assessment. Biden’s call to Scholz on Friday shows the angst in his mind, too. With the fragmentation of the political class within America, Biden can ill afford cracks in allied unity as well.
Curiously, this was also the main thrust of an article a fortnight ago by a top Russian pundit Andrey Kortunov in the Chinese Communist Party daily Global Times titled US domestic woes could push Ukraine to sidelines of American public discourse.
Kortunov wrote: “Putting emotions aside, one has to accept that the conflict has already become existential not only for Ukraine and Russia, but for the US as well: the Biden administration cannot accept a defeat in Ukraine without facing major negative implications for the US positions all over the world.”
Kortunov was writing almost a fortnight before Rice and Gates began getting the same metaphysical perception. But the neocons aren’t yet prepared to accept that the choice is actually staring at them — Biden swimming alongside Putin toward a multipolar world order, or sinking in the troubled waters.
Unprovoked!
by Consortium News.
In an interview with the Useful Idiots podcast not too long ago, Noam Chomsky repeated his argument that the only reason we hear the word “unprovoked” every time anyone mentions Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the mainstream news media is because it absolutely was provoked, and they know it.
“Right now, if you’re a respectable writer and you want to write in the main journals, you talk about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you have to call it ‘the unprovoked’ Russian invasion of Ukraine,” Chomsky said.
“It’s a very interesting phrase; it was never used before. You look back, you look at Iraq, which was totally unprovoked, nobody ever called it ‘the unprovoked invasion of Iraq.’ In fact, I don’t know if the term was ever used — if it was it was very marginal. Now you look it up on Google, and hundreds of thousands of hits. Every article that comes out has to talk about the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.”
“Why? Because they know perfectly well it was provoked,” Chomsky said. “That doesn’t justify it, but it was massively provoked. Top U.S. diplomats have been talking about this for 30 years, even the head of the C.I.A.”
Chomsky is of course correct here. The imperial media and their brainwashed automatons have spent many months mindlessly bleating the word “unprovoked” in relation to this war, but one question none of them ever have a straight answer for is this: if the invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked, how come so many Western experts spent years warning that the actions of Western governments would provoke an invasion of Ukraine?
Because, as Chomsky notes, that is indeed the case. A few days after the invasion began in February of last year a guy named Arnaud Bertrand put together an extremely viral Twitter thread that just goes on and on and on about the various diplomats, analysts and academics in the West who have over the years been warning that a dangerous confrontation with Russia was coming because of NATO advancements toward its borders, interventionism in Ukraine and various other aggressions.
