Putin’s Scuttled Peace Initiative: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

On his first foreign visit to Belarus on Tuesday since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin explained during a joint press conference with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko that the time frame of the military offensive in Ukraine was determined by the intensity of hostilities and Russia would act according to its plan.

“I often get these questions, can’t we hurry it up?’ We can. But it depends on the intensity of hostilities and, any way you put it, the intensity of hostilities is directly related to casualties,” said the Russian president. “Our task is to achieve the set goals while minimizing these losses. We will act rhythmically, calmly, and according to the plan that was initially proposed by the General Staff.”

On the fateful day of Feb. 24, in a three-pronged blitz from the north, east and south, Russian ground forces, backed by close air support and volleys of cruise missiles launched by Russian naval forces deployed in the Black Sea, overran Ukraine and laid siege to the capital, Kyiv, whose impending fall in days was predicted even by the mainstream media.

It has become clear now the “40-mile-long Trojan Horse” of battle tanks, armored vehicles and heavy artillery that descended from Belarus in the north and reached the outskirts of Kyiv in the early days of the war without encountering much resistance en route the capital was simply a decoy astutely designed as a diversionary tactic by Russia’s military strategists in order to deter Ukraine from sending reinforcements to Donbas in east Ukraine where real battles for territory were actually fought and scramble to defend the embattled country’s capital instead.

Except in the early days of the military campaign when Russian airstrikes and long-range artillery shelling targeted military infrastructure in the outskirts of Kyiv to degrade the combat potential of Ukraine’s armed forces, the capital did not witness much action during the month-long offensive. Otherwise, with the tremendous firepower at its disposal, the world’s second most powerful military force had the demonstrable capability to reduce the whole city down to the ashes.

Despite having immense firepower at its disposal that could readily turn the tide in conflicts as protracted as Chechnya and Syria wars, Russian advance in Ukraine was slower than expected according to most estimates because the Kremlin did all it can to minimize collateral damage, particularly needless civilian losses in the former Soviet republic whose majority population is sympathetic to Russia.

This is precisely what Putin explained at a press conference in Belarus Tuesday that “the time frame of the military offensive in Ukraine is determined by the intensity of hostilities,” but “the intensity of hostilities is directly related to the number of casualties,” and “Russia’s task is to achieve the set goals while minimizing the losses.”

In other words, with the tremendous firepower at the disposal of Russian forces, it was as easy to capture Kyiv as vanquishing entrenched jihadist militants by Russia’s air force and long-range artillery in Aleppo in Syria or Grozny in Chechnya.

But the indiscriminate bombardment of the densely populated Ukrainian capital and the ensuing urban warfare against heavily armed Ukrainian militias nurtured by NATO patrons would inevitably have caused thousands of needless civilian casualties. Therefore, the Russian peacemaker decided to spare the rest of the embattled country and restricted the Russian military offensive on liberating Russian-majority Donbas region in east Ukraine.

Putin reiterated that Russia’s actions in several regions of Ukraine, implying diversionary tactics deployed by Russian forces in Kyiv and Chernihiv in the north, were intended only “to tie down enemy forces” and carry out missile strikes with the purpose of “destroying the Ukrainian military’s infrastructure,” so as to “create conditions for more active operations on the territory of Donbas.”

In a momentous announcement on March 29, Russian Deputy Defense Minister Alexander Fomin, leading the Russian peace delegation in Istanbul talks, told reporters: “In order to increase mutual trust and create the necessary conditions for further negotiations and achieving the ultimate goal of agreeing and signing an agreement, a decision was made to radically, by a large margin, reduce military activity in the Kyiv and Chernihiv directions.”

The generous Russian offer scaling back its blitz north of the capital and focusing instead on liberating Russian-majority Donbas region in east Ukraine, a task that has already been accomplished in large measure, was a major unilateral concession ending the month-long offensive in Ukraine.

Whereas the Ukrainian delegation’s “wish-list” at the Istanbul peace negotiations, naively insisting on the EU membership in the midst of the war and demanding security guarantees in terms similar to Article 5 of the NATO charter, the collective defense clause of the transatlantic military alliance, was inconsequential details that could have been discussed later, either bilaterally between Russia and Ukraine, or on international forums, such as the UN Security Council or General Assembly.

In any case, Russia has already accomplished its strategic objectives in Ukraine, as the Crimean Peninsula and the Donbas region are now de facto independent territories where Russian peacekeeping forces have been deployed to maintain peace and stability.

Since the withdrawal of Russian forces from north Ukraine, although NATO’s policymakers are predicting “a major new Russian offensive in east Ukraine” in order to hype the threat, Russia now intends only to consolidate its territorial gains achieved in the Donbas region in the month-long blitz.

On Wednesday, Russian forces triumphantly announced the complete liberation of strategically significant port city Mariupol, the second-largest city in the Donetsk Oblast in east Ukraine and the hub of CIA-trained neo-Nazi militias, thus claiming a major strategic victory in the Russo-Ukraine War.

Ukraine’s infamous Azov Battalion, widely acknowledged as a neo-Nazi volunteer paramilitary force connected with foreign white supremacist organizations, was initially formed as a volunteer group in May 2014 out of the ultra-nationalist Patriots of Ukraine gang, and the neo-Nazi Social National Assembly (SNA) group.

As a battalion, the group fought on the frontlines against pro-Russia separatists in Donbas, the eastern region of Ukraine, and rose to prominence after recapturing the strategic port city of Mariupol from the Russia-backed separatists.

The militant outfit was officially integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine on November 12, 2014, and exacted high praise from then-President Petro Poroshenko. “These are our best warriors,” he said at an awards ceremony in 2014. “Our best volunteers.”

In June 2015, both Canada and the United States announced they would not support or train the Azov regiment, citing its neo-Nazi connections. The following year, however, the US lifted the ban under pressure from the Pentagon, and the CIA initiated the clandestine program to nurture ultra-nationalist militias in east Ukraine in order to mount a war of attrition against Russia.

In one of the most critical battles of the Russo-Ukraine War, Russia’s defense ministry claimed Wednesday 1,026 soldiers from Ukraine’s 36th Marine Brigade, including 162 officers, holed up in the Azovstal industrial district, the lynchpin dividing Russian-held areas to the west and east of the city, had “voluntarily laid down their arms” and surrendered the last bastion of militancy in Mariupol to Russian forces.

Mariupol’s capture would help Russia secure a land corridor between the Donetsk and Luhansk republics in Donbas and Crimea, which Moscow annexed in 2014, following the Maidan coup toppling pro-Russia Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

The Guardian reported Wednesday: “Military experts say local support, logistics, the terrain in the region and the appointment by Moscow of a new senior general, Aleksandr Dvornikov [a decorated war hero and the former commander of Russian forces in Syria] as overall commander of Russian forces in Ukraine, could improve the performance of a force that Britain’s defense ministry said on Wednesday had so far been hampered by an inability to cohere and coordinate.”

Local support of the native population to the Russian forces in the Russian-majority region is the key element here, that even the mainstream media unwittingly acknowledged, as ethnic Russians in east Ukraine, relentlessly persecuted for eight long years by Ukraine’s security forces and allied neo-Nazi militias, have by and large welcomed Russian liberators in Donbas.

To return the favor of halting Russian military campaign north of the capital and focusing on liberating Russian-majority Donbas in east Ukraine, practically spelling an end to Russia’s month-long offensive in the embattled country, NATO powers have announced transferring heavy weapons, including tanks, armored personnel carriers, artillery and even helicopters, to Ukraine to escalate the conflict.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on April 7, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley revealed that US and NATO countries have collectively provided roughly 60,000 anti-tank weapons and 25,000 anti-aircraft weapons during NATO’s “weapons for peace” program to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.

The Biden administration announced an additional $800 million in military assistance to Ukraine on Wednesday. The package, which brings the total military aid since Russian forces invaded in February to more than $2.5 billion, includes artillery systems, artillery rounds, armored personnel carriers and unmanned coastal defense boats.

The new package includes 11 Mi-17 helicopters that had been earmarked for Afghanistan before the US-backed government collapsed last year. It also includes 18 155mm howitzers, along with 40,000 artillery rounds, 10 counter-artillery radars, 200 armored personnel carriers, 500 Javelin anti-tank missiles, and 300 additional Switchblade drones.

The new military assistance package to Ukraine will be funded using Presidential Drawdown Authority, or PDA, in which the president can authorize the transfer of articles and services from US stocks without congressional approval in response to an emergency.

As news of the latest security assistance came out, executives from the top US weapons-makers met with Pentagon officials to expedite NATO’s “weapons for peace” program in Ukraine. These included executives from BAE Systems, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Huntington Ingalls Industries, Harris Technologies, Boeing, Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman.

But in a significantly escalatory move, virtually scuttling the Russian peace initiative to Ukraine announced at the Istanbul talks on March 29 and the subsequent withdrawal of Russian forces from the embattled country, Ukraine's Operational Command South announced Thursday that it hit a Russian warship with a “Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship missile” off the coast of Odesa in southeast Ukraine and that it had started to sink.

“In the Black Sea operational zone, Neptune anti-ship cruise missiles hit the cruiser Moskva, the flagship of the Russian Black Sea Fleet—it received significant damage,” the Ukrainian statement said. “A fire broke out. Other units of the ship’s group tried to help, but a storm and a powerful explosion of ammunition overturned the cruiser and it began to sink.”

Russia's defense ministry claimed the “accidental fire” on the Soviet-era guided-missile cruiser Moskva had been contained, but left the ship badly damaged, though it “remains afloat” and measures were being taken to tow it to port. The ministry said the crew had been safely evacuated to other Black Sea Fleet ships in the area.

Russian news agencies said the 611-foot-long (186 meters) Moskva, with a crew of almost 500, was commissioned in 1983 and refurbished in 1998. The Moskva was armed with a range of anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles as well as torpedoes and naval guns and close-in missile defense systems, including 16 anti-ship Vulkan cruise missiles with a range of at least 700 km (440 miles).

Although Ukraine claimed the Russian warship was struck by a “Ukrainian-made Neptune anti-ship missile,” developed domestically based on the Soviet KH-35 cruise missile that became operational in the Ukrainian naval forces just last year, Politico reported on March 16 that Kyiv had specifically demanded “long-range anti-ship missiles” from Washington, and the Russian guided-missile cruiser was most likely destroyed by long-range anti-ship missiles provided to Ukraine by the United States.

“A Western diplomat familiar with Ukraine’s requests said Kyiv specifically has asked the US and allies for more Stingers and Starstreak man-portable air-defense systems, Javelins and other anti-tank weapons, ground-based mobile air-defense systems, armed drones, long-range anti-ship missiles, off-the-shelf electronic warfare capabilities, and satellite navigation and communications jamming equipment.”

In response to escalation of hostilities by Ukraine and its international backers, despite the Russian peace initiative announced at the Istanbul talks on March 29, Russian Ministry of Defense spokesperson Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov warned in a statement:

“We see attempts of sabotage and strikes by Ukrainian troops on objects on the territory of the Russian Federation. If such cases continue, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation will strike at decision-making centers, including in Kyiv, from which the Russian army has thus far refrained.”

During the course of the war, Russia has struck military targets in regions as far away as cities in west Ukraine bordering Poland. On March 13, Russian forces launched a missile attack at Yavoriv Combat Training Center in the western most part of the country.

The military facility, less than 25 km from the Polish border, is one of Ukraine's biggest and the largest in the western part of the country. Since 2015, US Green Berets and National Guard troops had been training Ukrainian forces at the Yavoriv center before they were evacuated alongside diplomatic staff in mid-February.

The training center was hit by a barrage of 30 cruise missiles, killing at least 35 people, though Russia's defense ministry claimed up to 180 foreign mercenaries and large caches of weapons were destroyed at the training center.

Russia obviously has the cutting-edge military technology, including Kinzhal hypersonic missiles and Kalibr cruise missiles, to easily eliminate not only the top brass of Ukraine’s largely conscript military but also the perfidious political class, claiming to represent Ukraine’s masses while taking dictates from NATO’s puppet masters.

But taking mercy on the powerless stooges, Putin spared the lives of comic actor-turned-politician Zelensky and his duplicitous associates, because he wanted to resolve the Ukraine conflict politically and diplomatically instead of using brute military force. But it seems Ukraine’s myopic leadership and its devious international backers are leaving Russia no other choice than to go for the jugular.

Russia’s Strategic Victory and NATO’s Chemical Weapons Psyops

While Russian forces appear on the verge of liberating strategically significant port city Mariupol, the second-largest city in the Donetsk Oblast in east Ukraine, thus claiming a major strategic victory in the Russo-Ukraine War, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss resorted to the oldest trick in the NATO’s psyops’ playbook of accusing adversaries of staging chemical weapons attacks and tweeted Monday:

“Reports that Russian forces may have used chemical agents in an attack on the people of Mariupol. We are working urgently with partners to verify details. Any use of such weapons would be a callous escalation in this conflict and we will hold Putin and his regime to account.”

Inanely parroting the unsubstantiated claim by the NATO patrons, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy alleged Monday night that Russia could resort to chemical weapons as it massed troops in the eastern Donbas region for an assault on Mariupol.

Ukraine’s Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Malyar said the government was checking “unverified information” that Russia might have used chemical weapons while besieging Mariupol. “There is a theory that these could be phosphorous munitions,” Malyar said in televised comments.

The self-styled governor of the eastern Donetsk region appointed by Kyiv, Pavlo Kyrylenko, said he had seen incident reports on possible chemical weapons use in Mariupol but could not confirm them. “We know that last night around midnight a drone dropped some so-far unknown explosive device, and the people that were in and around the Mariupol metal plant, there were three people, they began to feel unwell,” he told reporters. They were taken to hospital and their lives were not in danger, he added.

Although Russia unequivocally denied using chemical weapons in Mariupol, in any case the use of white phosphorous is not banned under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). In fact, the United States itself used plenty of white phosphorus munitions in its campaign against the Islamic State in Syria’s Raqqa in 2017. White phosphorus is mainly used for lighting up the night sky in conflict zones to prevent hit-and-run tactics adopted by insurgent groups in the dark of the night against regular military forces.

But the real reason the dubious allegation of use of chemical weapons by Russian forces has been leveled by Ukraine’s security forces and their international backers is that the battle for Mariupol has reached a decisive phase, with Ukraine’s CIA-trained neo-Nazi militias holed up in the Azovstal industrial district and considering laying down their heavy weapons in exchange for getting a safe corridor for evacuation from the battle zone.

Should the Russian forces seize Azovstal, they would be in full control of Mariupol, the lynchpin between Russian-held areas to the west and east, and would proclaim a major strategic victory against Ukraine’s security forces and allied ultra-nationalist militias.

It’s obvious much like her suave American counterpart, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who has made more asinine gaffes in his yearlong diplomatic career than “Sleepy Joe” made in over forty-year political career, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss isn’t much of a news junkie, either.

Otherwise, before resorting to the absurd allegation that Russian forces might have used chemical agents in Mariupol, she would certainly have recalled that in a bombshell NBC scoop published April 7, the authors of the report alleged that US spy agencies used deliberate and selective intelligence leaks to mainstream news outlets to mount a disinformation campaign against Russia during the latter’s month-long military offensive in Ukraine, despite being aware the intelligence wasn't credible.

The US intelligence assessment that Russia was preparing to use chemical weapons in the Ukraine War, that was widely reported in the corporate media previously and once again being resorted to by Ukraine’s politicians and their NATO patrons, was an unsubstantiated claim leaked to the press as a tit-for-tat response to the damning Russian allegation that Ukraine was pursuing an active biological weapons program, in collaboration with Washington, in scores of bio-labs discovered by Russian forces in Ukraine in the early days of the military campaign.

The NBC report notes: “It was an attention-grabbing assertion that made headlines around the world: US officials said they had indications suggesting Russia might be preparing to use chemical agents in Ukraine. President Joe Biden later said it publicly. But three US officials told NBC News this week there was no evidence Russia had brought any chemical weapons near Ukraine. They said the US released the information to deter Russia from using the banned munitions.

“Multiple US officials acknowledged that the US had used information as a weapon even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high. Sometimes it had used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect, as with chemical agents, and other times, as an official put it, the US was just ‘trying to get inside Putin’s head.’”

Among other revealing facts, the NBC report noted a charge that Russia had turned to China for potential military help lacked hard evidence, a European official and two US officials told the news outlet’s correspondents.

“The US officials said there were no indications China was considering providing weapons to Russia. The Biden administration put that out as a warning to China not to do so, they said. The European official described the disclosure as ‘a public game to prevent any military support from China.’”

Thus, niftily forestalling the likelihood of strengthening of mutually beneficial bonds between China and Russia when the latter is badly in need for economic relief, the United States pre-emptively accused China of pledging to sell military hardware to Russia, when the latter, itself one of the world’s leading arms exporters, didn’t even make any such request to China.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan held an intense seven-hour meeting in Rome with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi on March 15, and warned China of “grave consequences” of evading Western sanctions on Russia. Besides wielding the stick of economic sanctions, he must also have dangled the carrot of ending trade war against China, initiated by the Trump administration and continued by the Biden administration, until Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.

As far as military power is concerned, Russia with its enormous arsenal of conventional as well as nuclear weapons more or less equals the military power of the United States. But it’s the much more subtle and insidious tactic of economic warfare for which Russia seems to have no answer following the break-up of the Soviet Union in the nineties and consequent dismantling of the once-thriving communist bloc, spanning Eastern Europe, Latin America and many socialist states in Asia and Africa in the sixties.

The current global neocolonial order is being led by the United States and its West European clients since the signing of the Bretton Woods Accord in 1945 following the Second World War. Historically, any state, particularly those inclined to pursue socialist policies, that dared to challenge the Western monopoly over global trade and economic policies was internationally isolated and its national economy went bankrupt over a period of time.

But for once, it appears quite plausible that in its relentless efforts to internationally isolate Russia, the Biden administration is likely to unravel the whole neocolonial economic order imposed on the world after the signing of the Bretton Woods Accord in 1945 after European powers devastated by the war reluctantly accepted Washington’s diktat of pegging their currencies to the US dollar, backed by gold reserves, a practice that has since been abandoned in the seventies, thus conceding the dollar hegemony in the global financial system.

Ukraine’s infamous Azov Battalion, widely acknowledged as a neo-Nazi volunteer paramilitary force connected with foreign white supremacist organizations, was initially formed as a volunteer group in May 2014 out of the ultra-nationalist Patriots of Ukraine gang, and the neo-Nazi Social National Assembly (SNA) group.

As a battalion, the group fought on the frontlines against pro-Russia separatists in Donbas, the eastern region of Ukraine, and rose to prominence after recapturing the strategic port city of Mariupol from the Russia-backed separatists. The militant outfit was officially integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine on November 12, 2014, and exacted high praise from then-President Petro Poroshenko. “These are our best warriors,” he said at an awards ceremony in 2014. “Our best volunteers.”

In June 2015, both Canada and the United States announced they would not support or train the Azov regiment, citing its neo-Nazi connections. The following year, however, the US lifted the ban under pressure from the Pentagon, and the CIA initiated the clandestine program of nurturing ultra-nationalist militias in east Ukraine in order to mount a war of attrition against Russia.

Speaking to CNN’s Dana Bash on April 3, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that “NATO allies have supported Ukraine for many, many years,” adding that military aid has been “stepped up over the last weeks since the invasion.” The official clarified that “NATO allies like the United States, but also the United Kingdom and Canada and some others, have trained Ukrainian troops for years.”

According to Stoltenberg’s estimates, “tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops” had received such training, and were now “at the front fighting against invading Russian forces.” The secretary general went on to credit the Brussels-based alliance with the fact that the “Ukrainian armed forces are much bigger, much better equipped, much better trained and much better led now than ever before.”

In addition to a longstanding CIA program aimed at cultivating an anti-Russian insurgency in Ukraine, Canada’s Department of National Defense revealed on January 26, two days following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that the Canadian Armed Forces trained “nearly 33,000 Ukrainian military and security personnel in a range of tactical and advanced military skills.” While The United Kingdom, via Operation Orbital, trained 22,000 Ukrainian fighters, as noted by NATO’s informed secretary general.

In an explosive scoop, Zach Dorfman reported for the Yahoo News on March 16: “As part of the Ukraine-based training program, CIA paramilitaries taught their Ukrainian counterparts sniper techniques; how to operate U.S.-supplied Javelin anti-tank missiles and other equipment; how to evade digital tracking the Russians used to pinpoint the location of Ukrainian troops, which had left them vulnerable to attacks by artillery; how to use covert communications tools; and how to remain undetected in the war zone while also drawing out Russian and insurgent forces from their positions, among other skills, according to former officials.

“When CIA paramilitaries first traveled to eastern Ukraine in the aftermath of Russia’s initial 2014 incursion, their brief was twofold. First, they were ordered to determine how the agency could best help train Ukrainian special operations personnel fight the Russian military forces, and their separatist allies, waging a grinding war against Ukrainian troops in the Donbas region. But the second part of the mission was to test the mettle of the Ukrainians themselves, according to former officials.”

Besides the CIA’s clandestine program for training Ukraine’s largely conscript military and allied neo-Nazi militias in east Ukraine and the US Special Forces program for training Ukraine’s security forces at Yavoriv Combat Training Center in the western part of the country bordering Poland that was hit by a barrage of 30 cruise missiles killing at least 35 militants on March 13, Dorfman claims in a separate January report that the CIA also ran a covert program for training Ukraine’s special forces at an undisclosed facility in the southern United States.

“The CIA is overseeing a secret intensive training program in the U.S. for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel, according to five former intelligence and national security officials familiar with the initiative. The program, which started in 2015, is based at an undisclosed facility in the Southern U.S., according to some of those officials.

“While the covert program, run by paramilitaries working for the CIA’s Ground Branch — now officially known as Ground Department — was established by the Obama administration after Russia’s invasion and annexation of Crimea in 2014, and expanded under the Trump administration, the Biden administration has further augmented it.”

By 2015, as part of this expanded anti-Russia effort, CIA Ground Branch paramilitaries also “started traveling to the front in eastern Ukraine” to advise and assist Ukraine’s security forces and allied neo-Nazi militias there. The multiweek, US-based CIA program included “training in firearms, camouflage techniques, land navigation, tactics like cover and move, intelligence and other areas.”

One person familiar with the program put it more bluntly. “The United States is training an insurgency,” said a former CIA official, adding that the program has taught the Ukrainians how “to kill Russians.” Going back decades, the CIA had provided limited training to Ukrainian intelligence units to try and shore up a US-allied Kyiv and undermine Russian influence, but cooperation ramped up after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 following the Maidan coup toppling pro-Russia Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a former CIA executive confided to Dorfman.

Russian Peace Initiative and NATO’s S-300 Delivery to Ukraine

In order to scuttle the Russian peace initiative to Ukraine announced at the Istanbul talks on March 29, halting Russian military campaign north of the capital and focusing on liberating Russian-majority Donbas in east Ukraine, practically spelling an end to Russia’s month-long offensive in the embattled country, NATO powers have announced transferring heavy weapons, including tanks and S-300 air defense system, to Ukraine to further escalate the conflict.

Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, April 7, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley revealed that US and NATO countries have collectively provided roughly 60,000 anti-tank weapons and 25,000 anti-aircraft weapons to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24.

“The Russian air force has not even today established air superiority let alone air supremacy, which is one of the reasons why they are having great difficulty on the ground,” the ambitious four-star general, who appears to have sights set on the presidential office after retirement, like Dwight Eisenhower, boasted before the committee.

“So the air superiority mission over Ukraine’s airspace has not been achieved, why is that? It’s because of the survival of the air defense systems, both the MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) that we have been providing – stingers and the like from other NATO countries – plus the longer range SAMs (surface-to-air missiles) that have been provided and that they already had.”

“We are providing Ukrainians intelligence to conduct operations in the Donbas, that's correct,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confessed publicly for the first time that the US is providing intelligence to Ukrainian forces in response to the question from Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas.

“We continue to provide useful information and intelligence to the Ukrainian Armed Forces in their fight,” a senior defense official acknowledged after Austin's remarks. “As that fight migrates more to the Donbas region, we will adjust our information content and flow as required.”

In most cases, two sources familiar with the intelligence-sharing system told CNN, the intelligence being shared involved information about Russian force movements and locations, as well as intercepted communications about their military plans. And it is typically provided to Ukrainian officials as quickly as within 30 minutes to an hour of the US receiving it, making it nearly real-time intelligence sharing.

Literally fawning over the top Pentagon officials, Sen. Roger Wicker, an establishment Republican, asked Austin on why all of $3 billion in congressional authorization for US arms to Ukraine previously pledged by the Biden administration has yet to be provided. “We've only used $900 million of this – less than a third of the amount authorized. Why hasn't the administration provided the full $3 billion?”

US security assistance is flowing into Ukraine “faster than most people would have ever believed conceivable,” Austin told the committee on Thursday – at times arriving in Ukraine within days of receiving authorization, he said. “From the time authorization is provided, four or five days later we see real capability begin to show up,” Austin said during the hearing on the Defense Department’s whopping $773 billion budget request.

Asking for permanent US military presence in Central Europe to deter Russia, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs proposed before the House Armed Services Committee: “My advice would be to create permanent bases but don’t permanently station (forces), so you get the effect of permanence by rotational forces cycling through permanent bases,” he said. “I believe that a lot of our European allies, especially those such as the Baltics or Poland and Romania, and elsewhere — they’re very, very willing to establish permanent bases. They’ll build them, they’ll pay for them.”

“I do think this is a very protracted conflict and I think it’s at least measured in years. I don’t know about decades, but at least years for sure,” said Milley. “I think that NATO, the United States, Ukraine and all of the allies and partners that are supporting Ukraine are going to be involved in this for quite some time.”

“We are now facing two global powers: China and Russia, each with significant military capabilities both who intend to fundamentally change the rules based current global order. We are entering a world that is becoming more unstable and the potential for significant international conflict is increasing, not decreasing,” Gen. Milley said.

Czechoslovakia used to have the most advanced military-industrial complex in Central Europe during the Soviet era. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union and subsequent separation of the “conjoined twins” in 1993, the Czech Republic has inherited the Soviet weaponry. Famous of its arms black market, Czech weapons have been found in war theaters as far away as Syria, Libya and South Sudan.

The Czech Republic had delivered tanks, multiple rocket launchers, howitzers and infantry fighting vehicles to Ukraine among military shipments that had reached hundreds of millions of dollars and would continue, two Czech defense sources confided to Reuters.

Defense sources confirmed a shipment of five T-72 tanks and five BVP-1, or BMP-1, infantry fighting vehicles seen on rail cars in photographs on Twitter and video footage this week. “For several weeks, we have been supplying heavy ground equipment – I am saying it generally but by definition it is clear that this includes tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, howitzers and multiple rocket launchers," a senior defense official said.

“What has gone from the Czech Republic is in the hundreds of millions of dollars.” The senior defense official said the Czechs were also supplying a range of anti-aircraft weaponry. Independent defense analyst Lukas Visingr said short-range air-defense systems Strela-10, or SA-13 Gopher in NATO terminology, had been spotted on a train apparently bound for Ukraine.

One agreed shipment authorized by the German government includes 56 Czechoslovak-made infantry fighting vehicles that used to be operated by East Germany. Berlin passed the IFVs on to Sweden at the end of the 1990s, which later sold them to a Czech company that now aims to sell them to Kyiv, according to German Welt am Sonntag newspaper.

But in a significantly escalatory move, virtually scuttling the Russian peace initiative to Ukraine announced at the Istanbul talks on March 29 and the subsequent withdrawal of Russian forces from the rest of the embattled country, excluding Russian-majority Donbas in east Ukraine, Slovakia has struck a deal with NATO for transferring its Soviet-era S-300 air defense system to Ukraine in return for the transatlantic military alliance delivering four Patriot missile systems to Slovakia.

“I can confirm that Slovakia donated the S-300 air defense system to Ukraine based on its request to help in self-defense due to armed aggression from the Russian Federation,” Slovakian Prime Minister Eduard Heger announced Friday.

Although NATO has provided thousands of anti-aircraft MANPADS to Ukraine’s security forces and allied neo-Nazi militias, those were portable shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles, whereas S-300 air defense system, equivalent in capabilities to American Patriots, is a vehicle-mounted advanced system that could practically enforce a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine’s airspace, a longstanding demand of Ukrainian politicians, within the range of the battery. The Slovak army website said its version of the S-300 battery had a range of 75 km and could strike targets up to 27 km above ground.

Negotiations for the transfer of S-300 air defense system to Ukraine had been going on for weeks. The Dutch government announced on March 18 it would send a Patriot missile defense system to Sliac, Slovakia, as part of NATO moves to strengthen air defenses in Eastern Europe. “The worsened safety situation in Europe as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine makes this contribution necessary,” Dutch Defense Minister Kajsa Ollongren said in a statement. In addition, Germany also sent two Patriot missile systems to Slovakia.

Along with the Patriot batteries, the Dutch also announced sending a contingent of 150-200 troops, who would operate and also train Slovak forces in operating the American air defense system, as the security forces of Slovakia as well as Ukraine are only trained to operate Russian-made military equipment, which many NATO countries that are former Soviet states possess.

Texas Rep. Mike McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Politico on March 16: “The U.S. was working with allies to send more S-300 surface-to-air missile systems to Ukraine. The country has had the S-300 for years, so troops should require little-to-no training on how to operate the Soviet-era anti-aircraft equipment. CNN reported that Slovakia had preliminarily agreed to transfer their S-300s to Ukraine.

“A Western diplomat familiar with Ukraine’s requests said Kyiv specifically has asked the U.S. and allies for more Stingers and Starstreak man-portable air-defense systems, Javelins and other anti-tank weapons, ground-based mobile air-defense systems, armed drones, long-range anti-ship missiles, off-the-shelf electronic warfare capabilities, and satellite navigation and communications jamming equipment.”

To further help, there is a push to get Eastern European allies to send new air defense systems to Ukraine that the US doesn’t have. At the top of the list are mobile, Russian-made missile systems such as the SA-8 and S-300. Like the S-300, Ukraine also possesses SA-8s. The SA-8 is a mobile, short-range air defense system still in the warehouses of Romania, Bulgaria and Poland. The larger, long-range S-300 is still in use by Bulgaria, Greece and Slovakia.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s trip to Europe in mid-March included not only NATO headquarters in Brussels, but also stops in Bulgaria and Slovakia — countries that own S-300s and SA-8s — before heading back to Washington.

Previously, Slovakia’s defense minister said on March 17 that the country was willing to give Ukraine its S-300 surface-to-air missile defense systems if it receives a “proper replacement.” Speaking at a press conference in Slovakia alongside US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Slovak Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad said Slovakia was discussing the S-300s with the US and Ukraine. “We’re willing to do so immediately when we have a proper replacement. The only strategic air defense system that we have in Slovakia is S-300 system,” he added.

Lloyd Austin declined to say whether the United States might be willing to fill the gap. “I don’t have any announcements for you this afternoon. These are things that we will continue to work with all of our allies on. And certainly, this is not just a US issue. It’s a NATO issue,” Austin said while diplomatically evading confirming the barter deal for which he had traveled all the way from Washington to Eastern Europe.

NATO member Slovakia had one battery of the S-300 air defense system, inherited from the Soviet era after the break-up of Czechoslovakia in 1993. Following the Slovakia visit, Lloyd Austin also visited Bulgaria on March 18. Bulgaria has S-300 systems, but the country made it clear it had no plans to send any to Ukraine.

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev prudently said that any arms supplies to Ukraine were equivalent to the country being dragged into war. Ultimately, he said, such an issue should be decided by the parliament. He also said that Bulgaria needed its S-300 for its own air defense, particularly for the Kozlodui nuclear power plant.   

Slovakian Prime Minister Eduard Heger said Slovakia would receive additional equipment from NATO allies to make up for the transfer. Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad subsequently announced that Slovakia would receive the fourth Patriot missile system from the United States next week.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the United States would place one Patriot system in Slovakia in the coming days and it would be operated by US troops. “Their deployment length has not yet been fixed, as we continue to consult with the Slovakian government about more permanent air defense solutions,” Austin said in a statement.

“As the Russian military repositions for the next phase of this war, I have directed my administration to continue to spare no effort to identify and provide to the Ukrainian military the advanced weapons capabilities it needs to defend its country,” President Joe Biden said while thanking Slovakia for sending its S-300 system to Ukraine.

In a spirit of reconciliation, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday Russia’s military “operation” in Ukraine could end in the “foreseeable future” as goals were being reached and negotiations were ongoing. “The operation continues; the goals are being achieved. Substantive work is being carried out both through the military in terms of advancing the operation, and through the negotiators who are in the negotiation process with Ukrainian counterparts,” Peskov told reporters. “We are talking about the foreseeable future,” he added when asked for a timeline.

Dismissing Russia’s peace overtures to Ukraine as “nothing more than a smokescreen,” however, US and European officials voiced skepticism over Russia’s “sincerity and commitment” towards the peace talks, underlining that only a full ceasefire, troop withdrawal and return of captured territory to Ukraine would be enough to trigger discussions over lifting sanctions on Russia’s economy.

“The notion that you would reward Putin for occupying territory doesn’t make sense … it would be very, very difficult to countenance” a senior EU official confided to the Financial Times. “There’s a disconnect between these negotiations, what really happens on the ground, and the total cynicism of Russia. I think we need to give them a reality check,” the official added.

Advising Ukrainians to hold out instead of rushing for securing peace deal with Russia, the Sunday Times reported, senior British officials were urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to instruct his negotiators to refuse to make concessions during peace negotiations with Russian counterparts.

A senior government source said there were concerns that allies were “over-eager” to secure an early peace deal, adding that a settlement should be reached only when Ukraine is in the strongest possible position.

In a phone call, Boris Johnson warned President Zelensky that President Putin was a “liar and a bully” who would use talks to “wear you down and force you to make concessions.” The British prime minister also told MPs it was “certainly inconceivable that any sanctions could be taken off simply because there is a ceasefire.” London was making sure there was “no backsliding on sanctions by any of our friends and partners around the world,” he added.

How US Intelligence Leaks to Media Backfired in Ukraine War?

In a bombshell NBC scoop published Wednesday, the authors of the report alleged that US spy agencies used deliberate and selective intelligence leaks to mainstream news outlets to mount an information warfare campaign against Russia during the latter’s month-long military offensive in Ukraine, despite being aware the intelligence wasn't credible.

The US intelligence assessment that Russia was preparing to use chemical weapons in the Ukraine War, that was widely reported in the corporate media and confirmed by President Biden himself, was an unsubstantiated claim leaked to the press as a tit-for-tat response to the damning Russian allegation that Ukraine was pursuing an active biological weapons program, in collaboration with Washington, in scores of bio-labs discovered by Russian forces in Ukraine in early days of the military campaign.

The crux of the NBC report, however, isn’t what’s being disclosed but rather what’s still being withheld by the US intelligence community that the mainstream news outlets are not at liberty to report on.

Despite being aware of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s major unilateral concession to Kyiv, halting Russian offensive north of the capital and focusing on liberating Russian-majority Donbas in east Ukraine, practically spelling an end to Russia’s month-long offensive in Ukraine, US security officials are still deceptively asserting that Russia’s pullout from areas around Kyiv “wasn’t a retreat but a strategic redeployment” that signals a “significant assault on eastern and southern Ukraine,” one that US officials believe could be a “protracted and bloody fight.”

Regarding the malicious disinformation campaign mounted by Western media on behalf of NATO powers, the report notes: “The idea is to pre-empt and disrupt the Kremlin’s tactics, complicate its military campaign, undermine Moscow’s propaganda and prevent Russia from defining how the war is perceived in the world, said a Western government official familiar with the strategy.”

It has become clear now the “40-mile-long Trojan Horse” of battle tanks, armored vehicles and heavy artillery that descended from Belarus in the north and reached the outskirts of Kyiv in the early days of the war without encountering much resistance en route the capital was simply a power projection gambit astutely designed as a diversionary tactic by Russia’s military strategists in order to deter Ukraine from sending reinforcements to Donbas in east Ukraine where real battles for territory were actually fought and scramble to defend the embattled country’s capital instead.

But US security agencies insidiously kept feeding false information of impending fall of the Ukrainian capital to the mainstream media throughout Russia’s month-long military campaign in Ukraine. Only two conclusions could be drawn from this scaremongering tactic: either it was a massive intelligence failure and Western security agencies weren’t aware the “40-mile-long Trojan Horse” approaching the capital was a ruse; or the NATO’s spy agencies had credible intelligence since the beginning of Russia’s military campaign that real battles for territory would be fought in Donbas in east Ukraine and the feigned assault on the capital was simply a diversionary tactic but they exaggerated the threat in order to vilify Russia’s calculated military offensive in Ukraine, and win the war of narratives that “how the war is perceived across the world.”

Except in the early days of the military campaign when Russian airstrikes and long-range artillery shelling targeted military infrastructure in the outskirts of Kyiv to degrade the combat potential of Ukraine’s armed forces, the capital did not witness much action during the month-long offensive. Otherwise, with the tremendous firepower at its disposal, the world’s second most powerful military force had the demonstrable capability to reduce the whole city down to the ashes.

By mid-March, after the “40-mile-long” column of armored vehicles that created panic in the rank and file of Ukraine’s security forces and their international backers and that didn’t move an inch further after reaching the outskirts of Kyiv in the early days of the war, it became obvious even to the lay observers of the Ukraine War that it was evidently a diversionary tactic.

But Western security agencies and the corporate media kept propagating the myth that the purported assault on the Ukrainian capital was stalled by alleged “fierce Ukrainian resistance,” and if it were up to Russian forces, they would “ransack the capital Kyiv” and “overrun the whole territory” of the embattled country.

Even a week after the unilateral Russian peace initiative on March 25, scaling back its blitz north of the capital and focusing instead on liberating Russian-majority Donbas region in east Ukraine, a task that has already been accomplished in large measure, Western intelligence community and the mainstream media kept warning the gullible audience Russia’s pullout from areas around Kyiv “wasn’t a retreat but a strategic redeployment” and that Russian forces had withdrawn back into Belarus and Russia simply to “regroup, refit and resupply.”

Last week, US officials told reporters they had intelligence suggesting “Putin was being misled” by his own advisers, who were “afraid to tell him the truth.” “The degree to which Putin is isolated or relying on flawed information can’t be verified,” Paul Pillar, a retired career US intelligence officer, confided to NBC. “There’s no way you can prove or disprove that stuff,” he said.

Two US officials said the intelligence about whether “Putin’s inner circle was lying to him wasn’t conclusive” — based more on “analysis than hard evidence.” Multiple US officials acknowledged that the US had used “information as a weapon” even when “confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high.” Sometimes it had used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect, as with chemical agents, and other times, as an official put it, the US was just “trying to get inside Putin’s head.”

While attempting to play mind games with Putin, the US intelligence community must’ve overlooked “an inconsequential detail” that before venturing into politics, Putin himself led the Cold War’s premier Russian intelligence agency, the KGB, for many years, and the puerile psyops orchestrated by the CIA and NSA were nothing more than child’s play for the seasoned Russian strongman.

Based on declassified intelligence, The New York Times reported last week: “The Russian military’s stumbles have eroded trust between Mr. Putin and his Ministry of Defense. While Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu had been considered one of the few advisers Mr. Putin confided in, the prosecution of the war in Ukraine has damaged the relationship. Mr. Putin has put two top intelligence officials under house arrest for providing poor intelligence ahead of the invasion, something that may have further contributed to the climate of fear.”

Other American officials, as reported in the mainstream media, had said that “Putin’s rigid isolation during the pandemic” and willingness to publicly “rebuke advisers who did not share his views” had created a degree of wariness, or even fear, in senior ranks of the Russian military. Officials believe that Putin had been getting “incomplete or overly optimistic reports” about the progress of Russian forces, “creating mistrust with his military advisers.”

The corporate media’s psychological warfare campaign, in collaboration with Western intelligence community, after the successful culmination of Russia’s month-long military offensive in Ukraine must have upset the Russian leader to the extent that instead of summarily sacking and court-martialing the military’s top brass, he has decided to celebrate May 9 as the Victory Day by announcing to organize a Russian Armed Forces parade in Moscow, and is reportedly considering rewarding battlefield commanders who valiantly fought in the Russo-Ukraine War with promotion in ranks and pecuniary benefits.

All the media hype in order to misguide gullible audiences following the stellar Russian victory in the Ukraine War aside, the fact remains it’s old wine in new bottles. The intelligence wasn’t declassified last week, it was declassified a month ago, but nobody paid much attention to the asinine assertion of an alleged rift between Putin and the Russian military leadership.

The Politico reported as early as March 8, in an article titled “Putin is angry,” that the US intelligence heads warned before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence during the panel’s annual hearing on worldwide threats that Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine was not going as planned and it could “double down” in Ukraine.

“Although it still remains unclear whether Russia will pursue a maximalist plan to capture all or most of Ukraine, Director National Intelligence Avril Haines said, such an effort would run up against what the U.S. intelligence community assesses is likely to be a persistent and significant insurgency by Ukrainian forces.”

Clearly, DNI Avril Haines spilled the secret before the House Select Committee on Intelligence that the US intelligence was in dark whether the Russian forces would overrun the whole of Ukraine, or the Russian blitz north of the capital was only a diversionary tactic meant for tying up Ukrainian forces in the north, while Russia concentrated its efforts in liberating Donbas in the east.

Echoing the “recently declassified intelligence” disclosed by NYT the preposterous claim that Putin’s rigid self-isolation during the COVID pandemic allegedly created a rift between him and Russia’s military leadership, the Politico report from a month ago presciently endorsed the inane intelligence assessment:

“William Burns, the CIA director, portrayed for lawmakers an isolated and indignant Russian president who is determined to dominate and control Ukraine to shape its orientation. Putin has been ‘stewing in a combustible combination of grievance and ambition for many years. That personal conviction matters more than ever,’ Burns said.

“Burns also described how Putin had created a system within the Kremlin in which his own circle of advisers is narrower and narrower — and sparser still because of the Covid-19 pandemic. In that hierarchy, Burns said, ‘it’s proven not career-enhancing for people to question or challenge his judgment.’”

The most notable success of the US information warfare campaign based on misleading declassified intelligence to media outlets, as claimed by the NBC report, may have been delaying the invasion itself by weeks or months, which officials believe they did with accurate predictions that Russia intended to attack, based on definitive intelligence. By the time Russia moved its troops in, “the West presented a unified front.”

“A former U.S. official said administration officials believe the strategy delayed Putin’s invasion from the first week of January to after the Olympics and that the delay bought the U.S. valuable time to get allies on the same page in terms of the level of the Russian threat and how to respond.”

Contradicting the NBC claim, however, The Intercept reported on March 11, citing “credible intelligence sources,” that despite staging a massive military buildup along Russia’s border with Ukraine for nearly a year, “Russian President Vladimir Putin did not make a final decision to invade until just before he launched the attack on February 24,” senior current and former US intelligence officials told the Intercept. “It wasn’t until February that the agency and the rest of the US intelligence community became convinced that Putin would invade,” the senior official added.

Last April, US intelligence first detected that “the Russian military was beginning to move large numbers of troops and equipment to the Ukrainian border.” Most of the Russian soldiers deployed to the border at that time were later “moved back to their bases,” but US intelligence determined that “some of the troops and materiel remained near the border.”

In June 2021, against the backdrop of rising tensions over Ukraine, Biden and Putin met at a summit in Geneva. The summer troop withdrawal brought a brief period of calm, but “the crisis began to build again in October and November,” when US intelligence watched as Russia once again “moved large numbers of troops back to its border with Ukraine.”

Extending the hand of friendship, Russia significantly drawdown its forces along the western border before the summit last June. Instead of returning the favor, however, the conceited leadership of supposedly world’s sole surviving super power turned down the hand of friendship and haughtily refused to concede reasonable security guarantees demanded by Russia at the summit that would certainly have averted the likelihood of the war.

After perusing such contradictory reports, citing “credible intelligence estimates,” it appears the US intelligence community has developed a novel espionage technique of playing both ends against the middle. The world’s leading US spy agencies seem to have this uncanny ability of predicting with absolute certainty that an event is as likely to happen as it is likely that it may not happen. And since the media watchdog has been tamed to the point where it dares not question the authority, therefore security agencies would get the credit whether or not they performed their duties diligently.

Friends, not Masters: Can Zelensky Offer Sanctions Relief to Russia?

In the spirit of apparent “reconciliation and multilateralism” defining the Biden administration’s approach to conducting international diplomacy, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken handed over the “power of attorney” to the Ukrainian president to offer Russia relief from international sanctions in exchange for ending its military offensive in Ukraine.

On Sunday, April 3, confirming in an NBC News interview that Zelensky—one of the most ambitious emerging new leaders in Central Europe, not to be mistaken for an imperialist stooge—had the ability to negotiate sanctions relief for peace, Blinken, while assuming the air of magnanimity and rapprochement, revealed that President Joe Biden’s administration would support whatever the Ukrainian people wanted to do to bring the war to an end.

“We’ll be looking to see what Ukraine is doing and what it wants to do,” Blinken said. “And if it concludes that it can bring this war to an end, stop the death and destruction and continue to assert its independence and its sovereignty – and ultimately that requires the lifting of sanctions – of course, we will allow that.”

Blinken argued with overtones of diplomatic sophistry that although Putin had allegedly “failed to accomplish his objectives” in Ukraine – “subjugating Kyiv, demonstrating Russia’s military prowess and dividing NATO members” – he said it still made sense to pursue a negotiated settlement.

“Even though he’s been set back, even though I believe this is already a strategic defeat for Vladimir Putin, the death and destruction that he’s wreaking every single day in Ukraine … are terrible, and so there’s also a strong interest in bringing those to an end.”  

Lending credence to ostensible “American neutrality” and “hands-off approach” to the Ukraine crisis, the Wall Street Journal—the official voice of establishment Republicans, owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch, that has taken the lead in publishing insider scoops during the tenure of the Biden administration while the Democratic shills, the New York Times and Washington Post, have taken a backseat out of deference for self-styled “progressives” in the White House—published a misleading report on April Fools’ Day that German chancellor Olaf Scholz had offered Volodymyr Zelensky a chance for peace days before the launch of the Russian military offensive, but the Ukrainian president turned it down.

The newly elected chancellor told Zelensky in Munich on February 19 “that Ukraine should renounce its NATO aspirations and declare neutrality as part of a wider European security deal between the West and Russia,” the Journal revealed. The newspaper also claimed that “the pact would be signed by Mr. Putin and Mr. Biden, who would jointly guarantee Ukraine’s security.”

However, Zelensky rejected the offer to make the concession and avoid confrontation, saying that “Russian President Vladimir Putin couldn’t be trusted to uphold such an agreement and that most Ukrainians wanted to join NATO.”

Following the announcement of partial drawdown of Russian forces in Ukraine, specifically scaling back Russian offensive north of the capital, by the Russian delegation at the Istanbul peace initiative on March 29, the Ukrainian delegation, among other provisions, demanded “security guarantees in terms similar to Article 5,” the collective defense clause of the transatlantic NATO military alliance.

CNN reported on April Fools’ Day that Western officials were taken aback by “the surprising Ukrainian proposal.” “We are in constant discussion with Ukrainians about ways that we can help ensure that they are sovereign and secure,” White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said. “But there is nothing specific about security guarantees that I can speak to at this time.”

“Ukraine is not a NATO member,” Deputy Prime Minister Dominic Raab told the BBC when asked whether the UK is prepared to become a guarantor of Ukrainian independence. “We're not going to engage Russia in direct military confrontation,” he added.

While noting that Russian peace negotiations were “nothing more than a smokescreen,” Western diplomats contended that an Article 5-type commitment to Ukraine was unlikely given that the US and many of its allies, including the UK, were not willing to put their troops in direct confrontation with Russian forces. The theory that Russia would not attack Ukraine if it had Western security guarantees appears to still be a bigger risk than the US and its allies are willing to take.

As a way for Russia to “save face in the negotiations,” the Ukrainians even went to the extent of suggesting that any such security guarantees would not apply to the separatist territories in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. However, a number of US and Western officials have taken a skeptical approach to potential security guarantees, with many saying it is still premature to discuss any contingencies as the negotiations proceed.

Contradicting the misleading reports hailing Ukraine’s imperialist stooges as purported “masters of their own destinies,” President Joe Biden told the EU leaders at a summit last month in Brussels that “any notion that we are going to be out of this in a month is wrong”, and that the EU needed to prepare for a long-term pressure campaign against Russia.

US and European officials voiced skepticism over Russia’s “sincerity and commitment” towards the peace talks, underlining that only a full ceasefire, troop withdrawal and return of captured territory to Ukraine would be enough to trigger discussions over lifting sanctions on Russia’s economy.

“The notion that you would reward Putin for occupying territory doesn’t make sense … it would be very, very difficult to countenance” a senior EU official confided to the Financial Times. “There’s a disconnect between these negotiations, what really happens on the ground, and the total cynicism of Russia. I think we need to give them a reality check,” the official added.

Western countries were discussing both “enforcement of existing sanctions” and drawing up “potential additional measures” to increase pressure on Russian president Vladimir Putin, senior EU and US officials told the British newspaper. They were not discussing a possible timeframe for easing sanctions, they said.

Advising Ukrainians to hold out instead of rushing for securing peace deal with Russia, the Sunday Times reported, senior British officials were urging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to instruct his negotiators to refuse to make concessions during peace negotiations with Russian counterparts.

A senior government source said there were concerns that allies were “over-eager” to secure an early peace deal, adding that a settlement should be reached only when Ukraine is in the strongest possible position.

In a phone call, Boris Johnson warned President Zelensky that President Putin was a “liar and a bully” who would use talks to “wear you down and force you to make concessions.” The British prime minister also told MPs it was “certainly inconceivable that any sanctions could be taken off simply because there is a ceasefire.” London was making sure there was “no backsliding on sanctions by any of our friends and partners around the world,” he added.

Speaking to CNN’s Dana Bash on Sunday, April 3, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that “NATO allies have supported Ukraine for many, many years,” adding that military aid has been “stepped up over the last weeks since the invasion.” The official clarified that “NATO allies like the United States, but also the United Kingdom and Canada and some others, have trained Ukrainian troops for years.”

According to Stoltenberg’s estimates, “tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops” had received such training, and were now “at the front fighting against invading Russian forces.” The secretary general went on to credit the Brussels-based alliance with the fact that the “Ukrainian armed forces are much bigger, much better equipped, much better trained and much better led now than ever before.”

In addition to a longstanding CIA program aimed at cultivating an anti-Russian insurgency in Ukraine, Canada’s Department of National Defense revealed on January 26, two days following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that the Canadian Armed Forces had trained “nearly 33,000 Ukrainian military and security personnel in a range of tactical and advanced military skills.” While The United Kingdom, via Operation Orbital, had trained 22,000 Ukrainian fighters, as noted by NATO’s informed secretary general.

A “prophetic” RAND Corporation report titled “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia” published in 2019 declares the stated goal of American policymakers is “to undermine Russia just as the US subversively destabilized the former Soviet Union during the Cold War,” and predicts to the letter the crisis unfolding in Ukraine. RAND Corporation is a quasi-US governmental think tank that receives three-quarters of its funding from the US military.

While designating Russia as an “intractable adversary,” the report notes that “Russia has deep seated anxieties” about Western interference and potential military attack. These anxieties are deemed to be “a vulnerability to exploit.”

The RAND report lists several “provocative measures” to insidiously “destabilize and undermine” Russia. Some of the steps include: repositioning bombers within easy striking range of key Russian strategic targets; deploying additional tactical nuclear weapons to locations in Europe and Asia; increasing US and allied naval force posture and presence in Russia’s operating areas (Black Sea); holding NATO war exercises on Russia’s borders; and withdrawing from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

Almost all the provocative actions recommended in the RAND report have practically been implemented by the successive Obama, Trump and Biden administrations since the 2014 Maidan coup, toppling Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and consequent annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia.

The full RAND report says: “While NATO’s requirement for unanimity makes it unlikely that Ukraine could gain membership in the foreseeable future, Washington’s pushing this possibility could boost Ukrainian resolve while leading Russia to redouble its efforts to forestall such a development.”

In November 2021, the US and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership. The agreement confirmed “Ukraine’s aspirations for joining NATO” and “rejected the Crimean decision to re-unify with Russia” following the 2014 Maidan coup.

In December 2021, Russia proposed a peace treaty with the US and NATO. The central Russian proposal was a written agreement assuring that Ukraine would not join the NATO military alliance. When the proposed treaty was contemptuously rebuffed by Washington, it appeared the die was cast.

The Intercept reported on March 11 that despite staging a massive military buildup along Russia’s border with Ukraine for nearly a year, “Russian President Vladimir Putin did not make a final decision to invade until just before he launched the attack on February 24,” senior current and former US intelligence officials told the Intercept. “It wasn’t until February that the agency and the rest of the US intelligence community became convinced that Putin would invade,” the senior official added.

Last April, US intelligence first detected that “the Russian military was beginning to move large numbers of troops and equipment to the Ukrainian border.” Most of the Russian soldiers deployed to the border at that time were later “moved back to their bases,” but US intelligence determined that “some of the troops and materiel remained near the border.”

In June 2021, against the backdrop of rising tensions over Ukraine, Biden and Putin met at a summit in Geneva. The summer troop withdrawal brought a brief period of calm, but “the crisis began to build again in October and November,” when US intelligence watched as Russia once again “moved large numbers of troops back to its border with Ukraine.”

Extending the hand of friendship, Russia significantly drawdown its forces along the western border before the summit last June. Instead of returning the favor, however, the conceited leadership of supposedly world’s sole surviving super power turned down the hand of friendship and haughtily refused to concede reasonable security guarantees demanded by Russia at the summit that would certainly have averted the likelihood of the war.

Considering this backdrop of the Russo-Ukraine War deliberately orchestrated by NATO powers to insidiously destabilize and internationally isolate Russia, it stretches credulity that the Ukrainian president “wields veto power” over NATO’s decision offering Russia relief from international sanctions in exchange for ending its military offensive in Ukraine, as contended by the charismatic albeit devious secretary of state.

Are readers gullible enough to assume the Ukrainian proposals for a peace treaty with Russia were put forth without prior consultation with NATO patrons and the latter cannot exercise enough leverage to compellingly persuade the impervious Ukrainian leadership to reach a negotiated settlement with Russia, particularly after the Russian peacemaker has unilaterally offered a major concession to Kyiv, focusing on liberating Russian-majority Donbas region in east Ukraine and scaling back Russian offensive in the rest of the embattled country?

About the author:

Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the Af-Pak and Middle East regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to alternative news media.

6 April 2022.

Will Biden Shoot Himself in the Foot to Impose Sanctions on Russia?

On Thursday, President Joe Biden ordered the largest release ever from the US emergency oil reserve in a futile attempt to bring down gasoline prices that have soared to record levels following the Russo-Ukraine War. Starting in May, the United States will release 1 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil for six months from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), amounting to 180 million barrels in total, which is equivalent to only two days of the global demand.

Invoking the fabled trope of American patriotism, Biden urged the consumers not to hesitate from paying twice the amount while filling gas tanks in order for the military-industrial complex to reap billions of dollars windfalls by providing anti-aircraft and anti-armor munitions to NATO’s proxies in Ukraine. “This is a moment of consequence and peril for the world, and pain at the pump for American families. It’s also a moment of patriotism,” Biden said at an event at the White House.

The US announcement came a day before the International Energy Agency member countries were set to meet on Friday to discuss a further emergency oil release that would follow their March 1 agreement to release about 60 million barrels that would cover only two-third of a single day’s oil demand, as the global net oil consumption per day is over 90 million barrels. With over 10 million barrels daily oil production capacity, Russia, alongside Saudi Arabia, is the world’s largest oil producer accounting for providing over 10% of the world’s crude oil demand.

As far as military power is concerned, Russia with its enormous arsenal of conventional as well as nuclear weapons more or less equals the military power of the United States. But it’s the much more subtle and insidious tactic of economic warfare for which Russia seems to have no answer following the break-up of the Soviet Union in the nineties and consequent dismantling of the once-thriving communist bloc, spanning Eastern Europe, Latin America and many socialist states in Asia and Africa in the sixties.

The current global neocolonial order is being led by the United States and its West European clients since the signing of the Bretton Woods Accord in 1945 following the Second World War. Historically, any state, particularly those inclined to pursue socialist policies, that dared to challenge the Western monopoly over global trade and economic policies was internationally isolated and its national economy went bankrupt over a period of time. But for once, it appears Washington might shoot itself in the foot by going overboard in its relentless efforts to punish Russia for invading Ukraine.

On March 17, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, two British-Iranian nationals held in Iran since 2016 and 2017, respectively, were unexpectedly set free and were permitted to travel to the United Kingdom. In return, the British government, in what gave the impression of a ransom payment, triumphantly announced it had settled a £400m debt owed to Iran from the seventies.

The thaw in the frosty relations between the Western powers and Iran signaled that a tentative understanding on reviving the Iran nuclear deal was also reached behind the scenes, particularly in the backdrop of the Ukraine crisis and the Western efforts to internationally isolate Russia. After sanctioning Russia’s 10 million barrels daily crude oil output, the industrialized world is desperately in need of Iran’s 5 million barrels oil production capacity to keep the already inflated oil price from causing further pain to consumers.

Last month, Venezuela similarly released two incarcerated US citizens in an apparent goodwill gesture toward the Biden administration following a visit to Caracas by a high-level US delegation, despite the fact that Washington still officially recognizes Nicolas Maduro’s detractor Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s “legitimate president.” Nonetheless, Venezuela is one of Latin America’s largest oil producers and opening the international market to its heavy crude might provide a welcome relief in the time of global oil crunch.

Niftily forestalling the likelihood of strengthening of mutually beneficial bonds between China and Russia when the latter is badly in need for economic relief, the United States pre-emptively accused China of pledging to sell military hardware to Russia, when the latter, itself one of the world’s leading arms exporters, didn’t even make any such request to China.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan held an intense seven-hour meeting in Rome with his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi on March 15, and warned China of “grave consequences” of evading Western sanctions on Russia. Besides wielding the stick of economic sanctions, he must also have dangled the carrot of ending trade war against China initiated by the Trump administration and continued by the Biden administration until Russia invaded Ukraine in late February.

Despite vowing to treat the Saudi kingdom as a “pariah” in the run-up to Nov. 2020 presidential elections, the Wall Street Journal reported last month the White House unsuccessfully tried to arrange calls between President Biden and the de facto leaders of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as the US was working to build international support for Ukraine and contain a surge in oil prices.

“Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the U.A.E.’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan both declined U.S. requests to speak to Mr. Biden in recent weeks, the officials said, as Saudi and Emirati officials have become more vocal in recent weeks in their criticism of American policy in the Gulf.

“‘There was some expectation of a phone call, but it didn’t happen,’ said a U.S. official of the planned discussion between the Saudi Prince Mohammed and Mr. Biden. ‘It was part of turning on the spigot [of Saudi oil].’

“But the Saudis and Emiratis have declined to pump more oil, saying they are sticking to a production plan approved by OPEC. Both Prince Mohammed and Sheikh Mohammed took phone calls from Russian President Vladimir Putin last week, after declining to speak with Mr. Biden.”

To add insult to the injury, Saudi Arabia has reportedly invited Chinese President Xi Jinping for an official visit to the kingdom that could happen as soon as May, and is also considering pegging its vast oil reserves in yuan, a move that could spell end to the petrodollar hegemony.

The United States and Britain were ramping up pressure on Saudi Arabia to pump more oil and join efforts to isolate Russia, while Riyadh had shown little readiness to respond and had revived a threat to ditch dollars in its oil sales to China, Reuters reported last month.

“If Saudi Arabia does that, it will change the dynamics of the forex market,” said a source with knowledge of the matter, adding that such a move—which the source said Beijing had long requested and which Riyadh threatened as far back as 2018—might prompt other buyers to follow.

Trump aptly observed: “Now Biden is crawling around the globe on his knees begging and pleading for mercy from Saudi Arabia, Iran and Venezuela.” It appears quite plausible that in its relentless efforts to internationally isolate Russia, the Biden administration is likely to unravel the whole neocolonial economic order imposed on the world after the signing of the Bretton Woods Accord following the Second World War in 1945.

In order to bring home the significance of the Persian Gulf’s oil in the energy-starved industrialized world, here are a few stats from the OPEC data: Saudi Arabia has the world’s largest proven crude oil reserves of 266 billion barrels and its daily oil production is 10 million barrels; Iran and Iraq each has 150 billion barrels reserves and has the capacity to produce 5 million barrels per day each; while UAE and Kuwait each has 100 billion barrels reserves and produces 3 million barrels per day each; thus, all the littoral states of the Persian Gulf, together, hold 788 billion barrels, over half of world’s 1477 billion barrels proven oil reserves.

In many ways, the current oil crunch caused by Washington’s unilateral decision to impose economic sanctions on Russia’s vital energy sector is similar to the oil crisis of 1973. The 1973 collective Arab oil embargo against the West following the Arab-Israel War lasted only for a short span of six months during which the price of oil quadrupled, but Washington became so paranoid after the embargo that it put in place a ban on the export of crude oil outside the US borders, and began keeping sixty-day stock of reserve fuel for strategic and military needs dubbed the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR).

Regarding the reciprocal relationship between Washington and the Gulf’s autocrats, it bears mentioning that in April 2016, the Saudi foreign minister threatened that the Saudi kingdom would sell up to $750 billion in treasury securities and other assets if the US Congress passed a bill that would allow Americans to sue the Saudi government in the United States courts for its role in the September 11, 2001 terror attack – though the bill was eventually passed, Saudi authorities have not been held accountable for nurturing terrorism.

It’s noteworthy that $750 billion was only the Saudi investment in the United States, if we add its investment in the Western Europe and the investments of the oil-rich UAE, Kuwait and Qatar in the Western economies, the sum total would amount to trillions of dollars of Gulf’s investments in the economies of North America and Western Europe.

Additionally, regarding the Western defense production industry’s sales of arms to the Gulf Arab States, a report authored by William Hartung of the US-based Center for International Policy found that the Obama administration had offered Saudi Arabia more than $115 billion in weapons, military equipment and training during its eight-year tenure.

Similarly, the top items in Trump’s agenda for his maiden visit to Saudi Arabia in May 2017 were: firstly, he threw his weight behind the idea of the Saudi-led “Arab NATO” to counter Iran’s influence in the region; and secondly, he announced an unprecedented arms package for Saudi Arabia.

The package included between $98 billion and $128 billion in arms sales and, over a period of 10 years, total sales could reach $400 billion, as Donald Trump himself alluded to in his conversations with American journalist Bob Woodward described in the book “Rage.”

President Donald Trump boasted that he protected Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman from congressional scrutiny after the brutal assassination of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.

“I saved his ass,” Trump said in 2018, according to the book. “I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.” When Woodward pressed Trump if he believed the Saudi crown prince ordered the assassination himself, Trump responded: “He says very strongly that he didn't do it. Bob, they spent $400 billion over a fairly short period of time,” Trump said.

“And you know, they're in the Middle East. You know, they're big. Because of their religious monuments, you know, they have the real power. They have the oil, but they also have the great monuments for religion. You know that, right? For that religion,” Trump noted. “They wouldn't last a week if we're not there, and they know it,” he added.

In this reciprocal relationship, the US provides security to the ruling families of the Gulf Arab States by providing weapons and troops; and in return, the Gulf’s petro-sheikhs contribute substantial investments to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars to the Western economies.

All the recent wars and conflicts aside, the unholy alliance between the Western powers and the Gulf’s petro-monarchies is much older. The British Empire stirred uprising in Arabia by instigating the Sharifs of Mecca to rebel against the Ottoman rule during the First World War, as the Ottoman Empire had sided with Germany during the war.

After the Ottoman Empire collapsed following the war, the British Empire backed King Abdul Aziz (Ibn-e-Saud) in his violent insurgency against Sharif of Mecca Hussein bin Ali, because the latter was demanding too much of a price for his loyalty, the unification of the whole of Arabian peninsula, including the Levant, Iraq and the Gulf Emirates, under his suzerainty as a bribe for stabbing the Ottoman Empire in the back during the First World War.

Consequently, the Western powers abandoned the Sharifs of Mecca, though the scions of the family were rewarded with kingdoms in Iraq and Jordan, imposed the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916 dividing Arabs into small states at loggerheads with each other, and lent their support to the nomadic Sauds of Najd.

King Abdul Aziz defeated the Sharifs and united his dominions into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932 with the financial and military support of the British Empire. However, by then the tide of the British Imperialism was subsiding and the Americans inherited the former territorial possessions of the British Empire.

At the end of the Second World War on 14 February 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt held a historic meeting with King Abdul Aziz at Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal onboard USS Quincy, and laid the foundations of an enduring alliance which persists to this day. During the course of that momentous meeting, among other things, it was decided to set up the United States Military Training Mission (USMTM) to Saudi Arabia to “train, advise and assist” the Saudi Arabian Armed Forces. 

Aside from USMTM, the US-based Vinnell Corporation, which is a private military company based in the US and a subsidiary of the Northrop Grumman, used over a thousand Vietnam War veterans to train and equip 125,000 strong Saudi Arabian National Guards (SANG) which is not under the authority of the Saudi Ministry of Defense and acts as the Praetorian Guards of the House of Saud.

In addition, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Force, whose strength is numbered in tens of thousands, is also being trained and equipped by the US to guard the critical Saudi oil infrastructure along its eastern Persian Gulf coast where 90% of 266 billion barrels Saudi oil reserves are located.

Currently, the US has deployed tens of thousands of American troops in aircraft carriers and numerous military bases in the Persian Gulf that include sprawling al-Dhafra airbase in Abu Dhabi, al-Udeid airbase in Qatar and a naval base in Bahrain where the Fifth Fleet of the US Navy is based.