Russia’s defence ministry claims it has used hypersonic missiles for the first time ever in combat. It said Russian forces had destroyed an underground Ukrainian missile depot in the Ivano-Frankovsk region yesterday. The region of Ivano-Frankivsk shares a 40 kilometers long border with NATO member Romania.
"Russia Desk"
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PHILIP GIRALDI—There is also more than a measure of hypocrisy in the Biden Administration taking the lead on punishing Russia for aggression. The United States has gone to war with a non-threatening Vietnam and has destroyed governments and engaged in completely illegal military occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and Syria. It has assassinated senior officials from Iran. It has not been punished for any of those actions. Its ally Israel bombs Syria on nearly a daily basis, engages in assassinations, kills Palestinian children, and annexes Arab land that it has obtained by force on the Golan Heights and West Bank, dispossessing the original inhabitants. When that happens, the US Congress and White House look the other way. All the Israeli war crimes as well as those being carried out by the Saudis against Yemen’s Houthis have been endorsed by the successive Bush, Obama, Trump and now the Biden administrations.
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From the Black Sea to the East Med, do not poke The Russian Bear
13 minutes readPEPE ESCOBAR—The Putin doctrine privileges the asymmetrical – and that applies to the near abroad and beyond. Putin’s body language, in his last two crucial interventions, spell out nearly maximum exasperation. As in realizing, not auspiciously, but rather in resignation, that the only language those neo-con and “humanitarian” imperialist psychos in the Beltway understand is heavy meal thunder (they are definitely deaf, dumb and blind to History, Geography and Diplomacy, for that matter. No to mention they never accepted their defeat in Syria.)
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Leading geopolitical analyst Gilbert Doctorow sorts out the clash between Russia and “the West”
87 minutes read“In conclusion, the negotiations will be very interesting. In the West, they have not understood that the rules of the game have changed. This is not Russia backed into a corner. We have set the rules now. If there are separate meetings with the OSCE and with NATO, these will be one time meetings only, without any continuation. We meet and part ways, because we have nothing further to discuss with one another. As for the US-Russian talks, they will continue, because the Americans are not ready to say “no.” If they wanted to say “no,” they would have done so already. They haven’t decided what they want to extract for themselves from all this. Do they want Russia to slam the door and solve its problems with Ukraine by military means, in which case everyone will pile on sanctions against Russia. There are many in Washington who would like this…”
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The Russian website GEOFOR interviews The Saker
40 minutes readTHE SAKER—There is a certain specificity of American politics in this. Very often, American diplomats come to Moscow and say one thing, then when they come back, they are attacked by the media and Congress. Both the media and the Congress are totally in the hands of the “War Party” here. Accusations of weakness, softness, cowardice, etc. follow and here they need to show their “coolness”.
So, for example, Trump acted when he negotiated with the Russian side, and then declared: “There were no agreements.”
Therefore, it remains to be seen whether Biden will be able to withstand the onslaught of the “War Party” now. If he can do it, say, in the next 2-3 weeks, then I would say that for him this conversation was a clear and undoubted success.