Today (Tuesday) marks the largest Russian bombardment of Ukraine with precision guided missiles and drones. The Ukrainian equivalent of the Pentagon was reported struck in Kiev. And Western media now is reporting frantically that Russia fired a missile at a target in Poland. Russia denies it vehemently and initial pictures of the “device” that landed in Poland appear to show a S-300 anti-air defense missile.
The big unanswered question is whether this was an error, i.e., Ukraine fired at incoming Russian missiles and the S-300 missed its target and fell inside Polish territory, or was it an attempt to manufacture a false flag, i.e., blame Russia for firing the missile and create a pretext to invoke Article 5 of the NATO treaty and bring the rest of NATO into the war to stop Russia. The jury is still out.
The picture below shows first, one of the fragments of the S-300 that landed in Poland with a bang, and second, a fully intact S-300 rocket.
Neither Poland nor the Brits appear inclined to wait for facts to develop and are rattling swords about the need to invoke article 5 of the NATO Charter.
The United States, by contrast, is exercising great caution. Part of the reason for that hesitancy is the financial collapse of FTX, which is exposing evidence that the Democrats, some Republicans, the Ukrainians and FTX organized an elaborate financial kickback scheme. The scheme involved promising members of Congress who sent money to Ukraine a hefty contribution in turn from a Democrat benefactor. In this case, the owner of FTX. Once the U.S. dollars were credited to Ukraine’s account, President Zelensky and his partners diverted some of the proceeds to purchase crypto currency from FTX. FTX, in turn, sent some of that funds back to the cooperating members of Congress and the Democrat National Committee. This scheme is unraveling. The dummies mistakenly believed that crypto is untraeable. Nope. Thanks to block chain, eminently traceable.
If article 5 is invoked because of the alleged attack on Poland then we are facing a major, dangerous escalation of the war in Ukraine. A lot of Polish troops have been killed in Ukraine over the last month and I doubt the leaders in Warsaw are in the mood to negotiate.
Meanwhile, President Zelensky gave a schizophrenic speech about the missiles smashing throughout Ukraine.
On the one hand he acknowledges that the Russian missiles have knocked out electrical power in many cities, which also affects the ability to supply water and heat to more than 10 million Ukrainians. But then he makes this odd claim, i.e., boasting that Western air defense systems have shot down most of these Russian missiles. Really? Take a look at these two successive missiles striking Kiev earlier today:
I don’t know where the NSAAMs are deployed, but they certainly were not in a position to stop these strikes in Kiev.
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Ukraine’s Epic Fail At Manufacturing a False Flag
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I believe the evidence is overwhelming that Ukraine tried and failed to manufacture a “Russian” attack on Poland that would have justified NATO coming to Poland’s defense under Article 5 of the NATO Treaty and solved Kiev’s dilemma over how to replace the massive number of Ukrainian soldiers that were killed or wounded in combat during the past two months. It is a whopper of a number. And Ukraine is in desperate need of reinforcements that are not available if they rely on only drafting Ukrainians.
Here is the evidence that the S-300 missile that landed in Poland was a false flag.
The missile was a S-300. Originally manufactured in the Soviet Union in the late 1970s.
The closest Russian ground forces, who in theory could have launched this missile, are located east of Kherson. The distance from Przewodow to Kherson is 613 miles. That distance exceeds the capability of the S-300 by a factor of 3.5.
The S-300 was fired by Ukrainian forces located somewhere to the west of Kiev. It is highly likely that U.S. and Russian satellites recorded this launch. In other words, both sides know where the S-300 originated.
It is highly unlikely — hell, impossible — that this was an “errant” missile that Ukraine fired in a moment of desperation trying to take down an in bound Russian missile. Why? The Russian missiles are flying from the south to the north or from the east to the west. That means if Ukraine is firing an anti-missile defense system at those inbound missiles the Ukrainian missile would travel from west to east.
But that is not what happened here. The S-300 traveled east to west. Unless the Ukrainian operator who launched the S-300 was drunk on his ass, it is impossible to “accidentally” fire this air defense missile in the wrong direction.
Then you have Zelensky’s adamant refusal to accept the evidence.
But repeating a lie does not make it true. You may insist that the Sun rises in the West, but no matter how loud you shout or how many times you repeat that nonsense, it is not true. Same principle applies here. An anti-air defense missile fired at missiles coming from the east and the south does not magically travel in the opposite direction.
I believe this is another indicator of Zelensky’s growing desperation. Think about it for a moment. If Ukraine really had Russia on its heels, why fabricate an easily disproved claim that Russia attacked Poland with a missile? This was sloppy trade-craft. If Ukraine had used another Russian missile capable of flying the distance from current Russian lines to that farm in Poland, then the circumstantial evidence might have ignited the desired fire among the NATO members.
I think one of the reasons the US Department of Defense was so quick to agree with the Russians about the origin of the missile is that the technical data from the National Reconnaissance Office pin pointed the launch location. It the NRO knows then the Russians, who have similar capabilities, would know.
I also think that Ukraine and Poland cooked up this plan without telling Demented Joey Biden. The incident was timed to coincide with the G-20 meeting in Bali. Hence, my title — Epic Fail.
I discussed the failed provocation and other matters with Ryan Dawson on Wednesday evening:
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• Strategic retreat or disaster? The Kherson withdrawal by various observers
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DIVERSE OPINIONS
OPEDS
Andrew Korybko Newsletter
There’s No Denying That The Partial Pullback From Kherson Has Uncomfortable Political Optics
No matter how one tries to spin it, a setback is still a setback and shouldn’t ever be covered up with conspiracy theories like many in the Alt-Media Community are prone to do. Such developments must be directly addressed, albeit properly presented in the grand strategic context of the New Cold War.
The Russian Ministry of Defense’s decision to partially pull back their troops from the right bank of the Dnieper River in the newly reunified region of Kherson undeniably carried with it very uncomfortable political optics. After all, that former part of Ukraine recently voted to join the Russian Federation, yet now its new homeland’s military forces were compelled to pull out of several thousand square kilometers that Moscow officially regards as its own.
Nevertheless, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reaffirmed that the Kherson Region’s constitutional status hasn’t changed, thus meaning that it still remains an official part of Russia despite the fact that Moscow lost control over some of its land. This creates the regrettable situation wherein that newly restored world power’s territory is temporarily occupied by foreign forces fully backed by NATO, whose raison d'être has always been anti-Russian.
The preceding observation is fully factual and shouldn’t be sugarcoated with ridiculous “5D chess” conspiracy theories spewed by those in the Alt-Media Community (AMC) who claim to support Russia. Nobody who sincerely stands in solidarity with the GlobalRevolutionaryMovement’s (GRM) de facto leader should deny this objective reality. Rather, they should place this setback in its appropriate context prior to calmly explaining it to their audience so that they can better understand it all.
There was no way that the Russian Armed Forces could retain control of the right bank of Kherson Region with Kiev’s Damocles’ sword of a terrorist attack against the nearby Kakhovka Dam hanging over their heads. That being the case, the highest priority was understandably to preserve the lives of this newly reunified region’s people and the military forces tasked with protecting them. Accordingly, the former began evacuating last month while the latter just completed their corresponding pullback.
Keeping in mind what Peskov recently confirmed, nobody should doubt the Kremlin’s political commitment to liberating Kherson Region sometime in the future even if it currently lacks the military means to do so and might thus not be able to accomplish this objective for the foreseeable future. Those who predict that Russia will launch a large-scale counteroffensive there over the winter once the ground freezes are likely just indulging in wishful thinking since Kiev will certainly fortify the region.
Furthermore, its adversaries are much better equipped than they were at the start of the specialoperation eight months ago and after receiving comprehensive strategic support from their Western patrons. The prior predictions about a similar such supposedly impending large-scale counteroffensive in Kharkov Region following Russia’s related pullback two months ago also failed to unfold for precisely the same reason. The military fact is that Russia is now fighting a defensive conflict, not an offensive one.
That’s not necessarily a negative development though since “Russia Will Still Strategically Win Even In The Scenario Of A Military Stalemate In Ukraine”, thus meaning that all it has to do is retain the existing Line of Control (LOC) or at least as much of it as is realistically possible under the circumstances. Those aforesaid circumstances refer to Kiev’s growing military strength as a result of NATO’s comprehensive strategic support, which has turned its troops into forces to be reckoned with.
To be clear, had it not been for that selfsame support, the Armed Forces of Ukraine (UAF) would have collapsed long ago. This means that they’re presently just a Ukrainian-fronted but fully NATO-backed fighting force, hence why it’s misleading to even refer to them as “Ukrainian” since the essence thereof is completely Western at this point. Upon accepting this description as accurate, it can then be concluded that NATO is the one de facto militarily occupying part of Kherson Region, not the “UAF”.
This comparatively cushions the political blow from the latest military development in Russia’s special operation since it’s understandable that Moscow would temporarily experience a serious setback in the face of fighting a coalition of over two dozen countries that have coalesced into the “UAF”. The hitherto false framing of this conflict as supposedly only being between Russia and Ukraine resulted in the political blow to Moscow misleadingly appearing much more powerful than it actually was.
That said, a setback is still a setback and shouldn’t ever be covered up with conspiracy theories like many in the AMC are prone to do. Such developments must be directly addressed, albeit properly presented in the grand strategic context of the New Cold War. Remembering that Russia only has to reach a military stalemate in Ukraine in order to strategically win, the doom-and-gloom scenarios that some have recently embraced due to perceived desperation become discredited.
As the de facto leader of the GRM, Russia’s newfound role in the world is to accelerate the global systemic transition to multipolarity, to which end simply ensuring its geostrategic survival in spite of politically uncomfortable setbacks like the latest one in Kherson Region is all that’s required. This is because that outcome keeps overarching multipolar trends on track, which will in turn result in achieving this grand strategic goal with time due to the rise of China, India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkiye.
Removing Russia from that geopolitical equation would immediately derail everyone else’s rise, after which a dark period of unipolarity would once again descend on the world for the indefinite future, one that in all likelihood might ultimately end up being irreversible. If Russia calculated that it’s better to temporarily leave part of Kherson Region while still retaining the latter’s constitutional status as a constituent part of the country, then it did so for the purpose of ensuring Russia’s long-term survival.
Anyone can argue over whether it was avoidable had different decisions been made in the past, but decisionmakers clearly agreed that this move was necessary in order to prevent much more serious problems in the future had they remained on the right bank of the Dnieper River. Everyone should remember that the goal right now is ensuring Russia’s continued existence, which isn’t under threat in any case despite Western fantasies to the contrary, in order to complete the global systemic transition.
That being the case, the Kremlin appears to have accepted the Kherson Region’s temporary military occupation by NATO as a trade-off for achieving that grand strategic goal. It’ll never rescind its claims to that territory since it’s a constituent subject of the country following the state’s official recognition of September’s referendum, and the constitution explicitly prohibits giving away any Russian land. For the foreseeable future, it’ll thus likely remain occupied just like other disputed territories across the world.
Once again, despite the uncomfortable optics inherent in the aforementioned trade-off, it shouldn’t be forgotten that Russia’s political loss in this particular battle doesn’t mean its strategic loss in the New Cold War. The global systemic transition continues accelerating towards multipolarity exactly as Moscow expected, which thus leads to the zero-sum strategic losses piling up for Washington. So long as one doesn’t lose sight of this view, doom-and-gloom will be averted and morale thus maintained.
Andrew Korybko is a Russo-American geopolitical analyst residing in Moscow.
by Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted
Deal or no deal, General Winter is coming to town – ready to entertain his guest of honor Sun Tzu with so many new dishes at their dinner table.
The announcement of the Kherson Retreat may have signaled one of the gloomiest days of the Russian Federation since 1991.
Leaving the right bank of the Dnieper to set up a defense line on the left bank may spell out total military sense. General Armageddon himself, since his first day on the job, had hinted this might have been inevitable.
As it stands in the chessboard, Kherson is in the “wrong” side of the Dnieper. All residents of Kherson Oblast – 115,000 people in total – who wanted to be relocated to safer latitudes have been evacuated from the right bank.
General Armageddon knew that was inevitable for several reasons: no mobilization after the initial SMO plans hit the dust; destruction of strategic bridges across the Dnieper – complete with a three-month methodical Ukrainian pounding of bridges, ferries, pontoons and piers; no second bridgehead to the north of Kherson or to the west (towards Odessa or Nikolaev) to conduct an offensive.
And then, the most important reason: massive weaponization coupled with NATO de facto running the war translated into enormous Western superiority in reconnaissance, communications and command and control.
In the end, the Kherson Retreat may be a relatively minor tactical loss. Yet politically, it’s an unmitigated disaster, a devastating embarrassment.
Kherson is a Russian city. Russians have lost – even if temporarily – the capital of a brand new territory attached to the Federation. Russian public opinion will have tremendous problems absorbing the news.
The list of negatives is considerable. Kiev forces secure their flank and may free up forces to go against Donbass. Weaponizing by the collective West gets a major boost. HIMARS can now potentially strike targets in Crimea.
The optics are horrendous. Russia’s image across the Global South is severely tarnished; after all, this move amounts to abandoning Russian territory – while serial Ukrainian war crimes instantly disappear from the major “narrative”.
At a minimum, the Russians a long time ago should have reinforced their major strategic advantage bridgehead on the west side of the Dnieper so that it could hold – short of a widely forecasted Kakhovka Dam flood. And yet the Russians also ignored the dam bombing threat for months. That spells out terrible planning.
Now Russian forces will have to conquer Kherson all over again. And in parallel stabilize the frontlines; draw definitive borders; and then strive to “demilitarize” Ukrainian offensives for good, either via negotiation or carpet bombing.
It’s quite revealing that an array of NATO intel types, from analysts to retired Generals, are suspicious of General Armageddon’s move: they see it as an elaborate trap, or as a French military analyst put it, “a massive deception operation”. Classic Sun Tzu. That has been duly incorporated as the official Ukrainian narrative.
So, to quote Twin Peaks, that American pop culture subversive classic, “the owls are not what they seem”. If that’s the case, General Armageddon would be looking to severely overstretch Ukrainian supply lines; seduce them into exposure; and then engage in a massive turkey shoot.
So it’s either Sun Tzu; or a deal is in the wings, coinciding with the G20 next week in Bali.
The art of the deal
Well, some sort of deal seems to have been struck between Jake Sullivan and Patrushev.
No one really knows the details, even those with access to flamboyant 5th Column informants in Kiev. But yes – the deal seems to include Kherson. Russia would keep Donbass but not advance towards Kharkov and Odessa. And NATO expansion would be definitely frozen. A minimalist deal.
That would explain why Patrushev was able to board a plane to Tehran simultaneous to the announcement of the Kherson Retreat, and take care, quite relaxed, of very important strategic partnership business with Ali Shamkhani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
The deal may have also been the inbuilt “secret” in Maria Zakharova’s announcement that “we’re ready for negotiations”.
The Russians will leave the Dnieper riverbank in a managed military retreat. That would not be possible without managed military-to-military negotiations.
These back channel negotiations have been going on for weeks. The messenger is Saudi Arabia. The US aim, in the short term, would be towards a sort of Minsk 3 accord – with Istanbul/Riyadh attached.
No one is paying the slightest attention to coke clown Zelensky. Sullivan went to Kiev to present a fait accompli – of sorts.
The Dnieper will be – in thesis – the settled and negotiated frontline.
Kiev would have to swallow a frozen line of contact in Zaporizhye, Donetsk and Lugansk – with Kiev receiving electricity from Zaporozhye, hence cease shelling its infrastructure.
The US would come up with a loan of $50 billion plus part of the confiscated – i.e. stolen – Russian assets to “rebuild” Ukraine. Kiev would receive modern air defense systems.
There’s no doubt Moscow will not go along with any of these provisions.
Note that all this coincides with the outcome of the US elections – where the Dems did not exactly lose.
Meanwhile Russia is accumulating more and more gains in the battle for Bakhmut.
There are no illusions whatsoever in Moscow that this crypto-Minsk 3 would be respected by the “non-agreement capable” Empire.
Jake Sullivan is a 45-year-old lawyer with zero strategic background and “experience” amounting to campaigning for Hillary Clinton. Patrushev can eat him for breakfast, lunch, dinner and late night snack – and vaguely “agree” to anything.
So why are the Americans desperate to offer a deal? Because they may be sensing the next Russian move with the arrival of General Winter should be capable of conclusively winning the war on Moscow’s terms. That would include slamming the Polish border shut via a long arrow move from Belarus downwards. With weaponizing supply lines cut, Kiev’s fate is sealed.
Deal or no deal, General Winter is coming to town – ready to entertain his guest of honor Sun Tzu with so many new dishes at their dinner table.
Pepe Escobar is a world-renowned independent anti-imperialist correspondent.
Top Russian general announces retreat from key city of Kherson Nov 10, 2022
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Scott Ritter: America’s Hubris is Stunning and a Threat to World Peace
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Finian Cunningham interviews Scott Ritter
Consciously stoked by the ruling elites, more than 200 years of nonstop narcissistic propaganda has become a de facto national creed enslaving the American mind to a malignant foreign policy.
In a wide-ranging interview with Finian Cunningham, former US military intelligence analyst Scott Ritter calls out a complex of American-made problems threatening world peace.
The Ukraine war is just one symptom of a bigger disease. The war in Ukraine began with the 2014 US-backed coup d’état in Kiev and the weaponizing by the United States and NATO of an anti-Russian regime over eight years.
“Absurd disconnect” in US foreign policy, “extraordinary provocations” toward Russia, the “scam” of nuclear weapons and US military defense doctrine, and the “stunning hubris” of American national myth-making propaganda invoking a “God-given right to control the world”. This is the scope of US problems that threaten world peace.
Former Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter served as a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s following the First Gulf War. He controversially challenged the official US and British narrative back then claiming Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Those claims were later exposed as lies and fabrications but they were used to launch the Second Gulf War in 2003. A criminal war with massive repercussions that still haunts today.
In this interview, Ritter calls out the absurdity of the United States voicing concerns about the danger of nuclear conflict with Russia while at the same time fueling a war in Ukraine on Russia’s doorstep.
“One has to question who is the power seeking to turn this into a nuclear conflict. Because I don’t think it’s Russia.”
He says the US has abandoned diplomacy and respect for other nations. “We view Russia as a defeated enemy from the Cold War… we want to dictate to Russia” and others.
Ritter compares the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and the present tensions and dangers between the United States and Russia. He says it’s like comparing a knife fight with a machine-gun battle in the present. “We had a handful of nukes back then which would have destroyed cities. We now have nation-destroying nuclear arsenals that would end the planet”.
Ritter says the US leadership no longer fears or respects Russia as the John F Kennedy administration and previous administrations did. The “stunning hubris” in Washington makes the danger of war spinning out of control.
He also calls out the policy of ambiguity about under what circumstances the US would use nuclear weapons as a form of “terroristic” behavior. Unlike Russia or China, the US deliberately refuses to adopt a sole-use purpose for defense and deterrence. This preemptive-use option is a form of blackmail on the rest of the world. Ultimately, the logic being used is: “Do what we say or we’ll nuke you.”
Ritter warns that America has to shed its supremacist thinking in the same way it has struggled for generations to overcome systematic racist attitudes. “Until we stop viewing ourselves as the 'exceptional people' and start viewing ourselves as just another person, there isn’t going to be peace and harmony in the world.”
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Oligarchy Wins Big As Democrats Pretend Losses Are Victories
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The Jimmy Dore Show
Jimmy's brilliant broadside against the upholders and spreaders of delusions about the biggest fraud of them all, "American democracy".
We all lost!
Oligarchy Wins Big As Democrats Pretend Losses Are Victories
Dateline: Nov 10, 2022
As the final counting takes place in the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats are already crowing about holding off a supposed “red wave” even though they may yet lose the House and Senate. But independent of the outcome in the blue vs red contest, the clear winners will be, as they always are, the oligarchs representing Wall Street, Big Pharma, Big Oil, the heathcare industry and Silicon Valley. Jimmy and his panel of Revolutionary Blackout Network host Nick Cruse and Americans’ Comedian Kurt Metzger break down the results of the midterm elections and how fascism and oligarchy managed to eke out yet another electoral victory.
Bill Maher Gets B*tch Slapped By Jimmy Dore (Nov 12, 2022)
Well deserved.
About the author
About The Jimmy Dore Show: #TheJimmyDoreShow is a hilarious and irreverent take on news, politics and culture featuring Jimmy Dore, a professional stand up comedian, author and podcaster. The show is also broadcast on Pacifica Radio Network stations throughout the country.
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