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Putin Conducts Tests On Nuclear Capable Missile - 21-4-22

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The CIA in Ukraine BY ERIC DRAITSER

MARCH 22, 2022

 It is claimed that the CIA-USA have been training Ukraine Military Forces

and have been training Ukraine Military

in the use of high tech war weapons since around 2014/2015, and

this continues to train Ukraine Military in the USA in 2022

If this is true it could be claimed that the Russian War against Ukraine

is very much a war against the USA and the CIA

Eric Draitser is an independent political analyst and host of CounterPunch Radio. You can find his exclusive content including articles, podcasts, audio commentaries, poetry and more at patreon.com/ericdraitser. You can follow him on Twitter @stopimperialism.

Putin officials 'increasingly worried' he could unleash limited nuclear weapon

CIA Director William Burns said Putin could turn to using a tactical or low-yield nuclear weapon out of "potential desperation” to claim a small victory.(AP)

 

Vladimir Putin has been ignoring those in his inner circle who warn of economic ruin if his invasion of Ukraine continues, it has been claimed. (AP)

 

 

Putin cancels military onslaught on Mariupol's last line of defence

Yahoo News UK KATE BUCK 21 April 2022

 https://www.aol.co.uk/news/putin-cancels-military-onslaught-mariupols-082658418.html

 

Vladimir Putin has ordered his troops to cancel plans to seize the last main stronghold of resistance in besieged city of Mariupol, instead ordering it to be blockaded so tightly that "a fly cannot pass through".

Russian forces have launched a relentless bombing campaign in the southern port, and had been planning to take over the strategically important Azovstal steel works by Thursday.

However, Putin gave the order to his defence minister Sergei Shoigu, who had previously told Putin that more than 2,000 Ukrainian fighters were still holed up in the sprawling underground complex

"I consider the proposed storming of the industrial zone unnecessary," Putin told Shoigu in a televised meeting at the Kremlin. "I order you to cancel it."

Putin said his decision not to storm the Azovstal plant was motivated by the desire to safeguard the lives of Russian soldiers.

"There is no need to climb into these catacombs and crawl underground through these industrial facilities," he said.

"Block off this industrial area so that a fly cannot not pass through."

Putin also called on the remaining Ukrainian fighters in Azovstal who had not yet surrendered, saying Russia would treat them with respect and would provide medical assistance to those injured.

It comes as the UK's Ministry of Defence warned Russia could intensify their campaign to show some victory on their national Victory Day celebrations.

A spokesperson tweeted in an update: "Russia likely desires to demonstrate significant successes ahead of their annual 9th May Victory Day celebrations. This could affect how quickly and forcefully they attempt to conduct operations in the run-up to this date."

Mariupol would be the biggest city to be seized by Russia since it invaded Ukraine eight weeks ago in an attack that has taken longer than some military analysts expected, seen over five million people flee abroad and turned cities to rubble.

Vladimir Putin has ordered a stop to a steel plant in Mariupol to be stormed

 

Smoke rises above a plant of Azovstal Iron and Steel Works company during Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol

 

A service member of pro-Russian troops loads rocket-propelled grenades into an infantry combat vehicle during fighting in Ukraine-Russia conflict near a plant of Azovstal Iron and Steel Works company

Putin officials 'increasingly worried' he could unleash limited nuclear weapon

Yahoo News - KATE BUCK 20 April 2022

Kremlin officials are becoming "increasingly" worried Vladimir Putin could use limited nuclear weapons as part of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Officials at high levels of government spoke to Bloomberg, claiming they believed the invasion was a "catastrophic" mistake which will set Russia back years.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the Kremlin sources said there is no sign Putin will change his mind and faces no direct challenge within the walls of the Kremlin.

He has also repeatedly ignored those who have attempted to warn him of the crushing effects his war could have on Russia's economic and political future, destroying two decades of growth.

Almost overnight, Western nations implemented biting sanctions, cutting off half of the central bank's $640bn reserves.

Some said they share fears voiced by the US that Putin will turn to a limited nuclear war, in which two nuclear superpowers engage in a direct confrontation which does not end in either a surrender or massive destruction.

However, US officials have clarified there is "no practical evidence" nuclear weapons will be used imminently.

On Thursday the director of the CIA said Putin could turn to using a tactical or low-yield nuclear weapon out of "potential desperation” to claim a small victory.

William J Burns — who was formerly the US ambassador to Russia — said: "Given the potential desperation of President Putin and the Russian leadership, given the setbacks that they’ve faced so far, militarily, none of us can take lightly the threat posed by a potential resort to tactical nuclear weapons or low-yield nuclear weapons."

But he cautioned he had yet to see any "practical evidence" of military deployments which would indicate this move was imminent.

Fears were further stoked on Tuesday after Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said his country was not considering using nuclear weapons "at this stage" of the invasion.

Speaking to India Today, Lavrov was asked if Russia was looking at deploying part of their nuclear arsenal.

He said: "At this stage, we are considering the option of conventional weapons only," according to Russia's RIA state news agency.

Despite Western claims Putin had thought he could take Ukraine within days of mounting an invasion, it has now been seven weeks since Putin ordered his troops in on 24 February.

But having failed to take control of Kyiv, Russian forces have completely withdrawn from the north of Ukraine and have instead focused on a takeover of the Donbas region in the south east.

Russia has hinted at the use of nuclear weapons in the past, and while no nuclear arsenal has been deployed, Putin's forces have been accused of using chemical weapons in Ukraine.

Russia's actions have promoted a potential expansion of Nato, with Finland and Sweden announcing their intentions to join in the summer.

America is running out of military munitions and can't replace them for years

Just as Russia has now completed the test firing of its global ICBM "Sarmat" missile system -- which can reach any target anywhere in the world with a dizzying array of re-entry (nuclear) vehicles -- alarm bells are being sounded over America's rapid depletion of munitions due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

The US Pentagon has shipped thousands of Javelin anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, along with millions of rounds of ammunition, artillery shells, rockets, drones and troop transport vehicles, leading to a sudden drop in the available stockpiles of such equipment should US forces need to defend the homeland.

Even worse, we've now learned that many of these systems are extremely difficult to replenish, requiring years of manufacturing to restore supplies.

Contributing to the alarming problem is the supply chain collapse that appears to be spreading rapidly, making it difficult if not impossible for weapons manufacturers to source materials and parts that are needed for their products.

“General Mark Milley, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Congress that the West has delivered 60,000 antitank weapons and 25,000 anti-aircraft weapons to Kyiv. The Pentagon is now laying plans to rush additional artillery, coastal defense drones and other materiel to Ukraine,” reports BloombergQuint.com:

Pentagon officials say that Kyiv is blowing through a week’s worth of deliveries of antitank munitions every day. It is also running short of usable aircraft as Russian airstrikes and combat losses take their toll. Ammunition has become scarce in Mariupol and other areas. This is presenting Western countries with a stark choice between pouring more supplies into Ukraine or husbanding finite capabilities they may need for their own defense.

Will take years to rebuild weapons stockpiles

Even worse, we’ve now learned that many of these systems are extremely difficult to replenish, requiring years of manufacturing to restore supplies. While Javelin missiles, for example, have been sent to Ukraine by the thousands, the United States can only manufacture about 1,000 units a year under current circumstances. (See below.)

Contributing to the alarming problem is the supply chain collapse that appears to be spreading rapidly, making it difficult if not impossible for weapons manufacturers to source materials and parts that are needed for their products. In addition, many weapons system suppliers are single-source suppliers, meaning there is zero redundancy in the military supply chain for that component or weapon.

Even worse, many of these single-source suppliers rely on microchips or other parts from China or Taiwan, meaning that such parts may be impossible to get during a world war.

And finally, wrapping up the dismal reality of the situation, America’s industrial capabilities have plummeted over the last two decades. Combined with the fact that so few Americans want to carry out anything resembling “work,” there is no ability for America to repeat its World War II feat of out-producing the Third Reich and the Japanese Empire. In the 1930s and 40s, America carried a strong work ethic and an outstanding industrial output capacity based largely on domestic sourcing (of steel, for example). Today, America has collapsed into a nation with very little domestic manufacturing and almost no remaining work ethic. The primary thing “produced” by America is fiat currency (debt notes) which obviously can’t replace steel. Other American exports include libtard cultural insanity, pedophilia (grooming), Big Tech censorship and Orwellian tracking technologies.

In essence, America produces very little other than debt, misery and insanity. (Plus quite a lot of food crops, when fertilizer is available.)

You can’t “print” your way to military readiness

As analysts are now coming to realize, you can’t print munitions and weapon systems. Yes, you can print money and make believe you have an abundant economy, a rising stock market and high currency velocity, but those are all fictions based on currency counterfeiting by the central bank.

Military weapons, on the other hand, have to be manufactured out of real things. Copper, steel, electronics, gunpowder, aluminum, etc. And these real things are increasingly difficult to acquire, largely due to the West’s insanely stupid economic sanctions against Russia which have, for the most part, backfired against western nations and caused extremely stubborn supply chain disruptions.

You also can’t simply outsource your domestic weapons production to other countries, since the entire point of domestic production is to have factories that can create weapons for national defense when you’re in the middle of a global war. The United States, having outsourced nearly all manufacturing to China and other nations, has but a shadow remaining of its post-World War II manufacturing capabilities.

Printing more money won’t solve this problem, which means fake president Joe Biden has no idea what to do. In fact, that top two “solutions” being pursued by the White House under the Resident-In-Chief Joe Biden is to: 1) Print more money, and 2) Shut down domestic infrastructure.

The results are nothing short of catastrophic. America is dismantling its ability to manufacture weapons for national defense. And China is no doubt watching all of this rather closely, projecting the collapse of America’s military readiness, signaling the perfect storm of circumstances for China to invade the continental United States.

Russia is also watching America burn through its weapon systems

Russia’s take on all this is demonstrated by Sputnik News which recently published an article, “US Running Out of Javelin Anti-Tank Missiles to Send to Ukraine: Report.” From that article:

The United States and its allies have sent up to 17,000 anti-tank weapons to Ukraine over the past month-and-a-half… Having transferred about a third of its inventory of Javelin missile systems to Ukraine, the Pentagon may be running out of stocks critical for the security of the homeland and possible US wars abroad, Center for Strategic and International Studies researcher Mark Cancian has calculated.

That same report concludes that replacing those Javelin missiles will take 3-4 years:

With current production averaging about 1,000 Javelins a year, the Pentagon assures that up to 6,480 can be made per year in an emergency. However, Cancian says this production rate would take years to reach, given the 32 month delivery time from when a missile is ordered and the time that it’s delivered. “This means that it will take about three or four years to replace the missiles that have been delivered so far. If the United States delivers more missiles to Ukraine, this time to replace extends,” he stresses.

A similar situation exists with Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, which are also being sent to Ukraine in large numbers, depleting America’s stockpiles. See the full CSIS report here.

US military weapons are outdated and largely ineffective against Russia’s modern, advanced weapon systems

The other “holy crap” factor in all this is the fact that the US military industrial complex, due to its corruption, laziness and virtue signaling incompetence (where many of the qualified cis-gendered people were fired and replaced by “woke” pretenders who play the role of victims), is utterly incapable of designing new, effective weapon systems. (You know, because “math is racist.”) America is largely churning out the same outdated designed from decades ago, with no design improvements whatsoever.

Idiocracy is now ruling the US military. Why do F-35 fighter aircraft keep falling out of the sky? Why do US Navy ships lose all controls and drift at sea? Why are US soldiers thrust into conflicts with sub-par equipment that barely functions?

The answer is because the Pentagon is far more concerned with being gay and transgender than being prepared to defend America. The “woke” mentality has transformed the leadership of the US Armed Forces into libturd soy boy snowflakes who have forgotten the entire reason for their very existence. They want the military to be a wokeified social experiment rather than an effective fighting force.

This is why America is terrified to actually face off against Russian forces in Ukraine. Russia has already established near-total air superiority in Ukraine. Russia’s artillery equipment is far more modern and effective than is America’s, as the Russian systems have a much faster fire cycling rate and far more accurate targeting of where the shells actually hit.

Russia’s hypersonic missiles can’t be stopped by anything from the USA or NATO, which means Russia can strike targets at will, and there’s nothing NATO can do to stop it. Now, Russia’s new “Sarmat-2” ICBM system which can carry up to 15 independent re-entry vehicles (MIRV units), some of which can include hypersonic glide vehicles that evade every anti-air defense system the USA has in its inventory.

And then there’s Russia’s S-500 anti-aircraft defense systems. These systems are so advanced and effective that they can shoot down aircraft, low-Earth orbit satellites, cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles. America and NATO have nothing that even comes close to the S-500.

In effect, America cannot defeat Russia in a war. This is becoming rather obvious in Ukraine where US intelligence, US weapons and US satellite systems are running the entire theater of operations for the Ukrainians, yet the Ukraine military is still getting stomped. Russia is just weeks away from a decisive victory in the Donbas region, and there’s absolutely nothing any NATO country can do to stop them, short of launching nuclear weapons.

It turns out that America’s priorities have led this nation down the path of self-destruction. Instead of building a military as a capable fighting force, the Pentagon is far more concerned with organizing gay helicopter crews and paying for the transgender sex-change surgeries of active-duty soldiers. The insanity has reached the point of mass dysfunction… even clinical insanity. Our Pentagon is now run by mentally ill lunatics who will get American soldiers slaughtered on the battlefield when there’s an actual war with Russia (which seems to be coming).

Get the full story on all this in today’s Situation Update podcast:

Brighteon.com/6d3e4d16-3cb9-40e3-a476-e4bdc1d8088b

Finland and Sweden, moving toward possible NATO membership, brace for Russian backlash

Yahoo News US MELISSA ROSSI 19 April 2022,

 Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin.

French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen.

 A few thousand people gathered in Senaatintori Square in Helsinki, Finland, to show their support for Ukraine.

The Swedish army participates in a military exercise in the Artic Circle, Norway, on March 25 in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Last Wednesday in Stockholm, the prime ministers of Sweden and Finland, countries where neutrality and military non-alliance are deeply woven into their cultures, shocked the world by issuing a joint statement that, thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, they were considering applying for membership in NATO.

“There is a before and after Feb. 24,” Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson told reporters in reference to Russia’s latest military incursion in Ukraine. “The security landscape has completely changed.”

“We have to be prepared for all kinds of actions from Russia,” Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin said, adding that Finland would decide about applying to NATO in a matter of weeks.

While both countries had already closed off their skies to Russian air traffic, the announcement about NATO membership further risked the wrath of the Kremlin, which has repeatedly threatened both against joining the 30-member military alliance.

Over the last week in Sweden, radios, portable generators and camping stoves are flying off shelves as its 10.4 million citizens begin stocking up on canned food, water, flashlights and matches in preparation for anticipated acts of Russian sabotage. In Finland, where the government has stockpiled enough grains and fuels in strategic reserves to last at least five months, they’re expecting more cyberattacks like those that hit the ministries of defense and foreign relations on April 8, while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed the Finnish Parliament via video. Like the Swedes, the 5.5 million residents of Finland believe that Russia will soon target its infrastructure, including the internet and electrical grid, and Russian violations of the airspace in both countries are already on the rise.

In response to their public declarations of interest in NATO membership, Moscow has renewed its threats to retaliate and bolster nearby ground and air forces, deploying “significant naval forces in the Gulf of Finland,” according to Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council. "There can be no more talk of any nuclear-free status for the Baltic [Sea],” Medvedev added, a threat dismissed by analysts in the region as saber rattling, since tiny Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave on the Baltic, is widely believed to already hold nuclear weapons.

“If you’re talking about large nuclear weapons, it doesn’t really matter if the bases literally are in the Baltic Sea or the Gulf of Finland, if it is in Kaliningrad or if they’re 500 miles away,” Charly Salonius-Pasternak, security and defense analyst at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs in Helsinki, told Yahoo News.

The addition of Finland and Sweden to the Western military alliance would not only expand NATO territory by 300,000 square miles toward the northeast — in blatant defiance of Putin’s demands last December to shrink NATO’s footprint — but it would also roughly double NATO's borders with Russia to nearly 1,600 miles. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who called Sweden and Finland “our closest partners,” said in early April that he expected all NATO “allies will welcome them.” He added, “We know that they can easily join this alliance if they decide to apply.”

“These are two really capable military powers, who are far more capable than the size of the countries would suggest,” Ivo Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, told Yahoo News with regard to Sweden and Finland. And they would also boost military capabilities in the Baltic Sea, home to three small NATO countries — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — whose defense has always posed a problem for the alliance, Daalder said.

The likely accession of Finland and Sweden is “a really big deal” for NATO as well as Finland and Sweden themselves, Daalder added.

“Sweden has been neutral or [militarily nonaligned] since 1814,” he noted. And Finland, which became independent from Russia over a century ago, “has never wanted to be part of any alliance since it became independent in 1917. ... But for the invasion of Ukraine, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Indeed, even three months ago the prospect of Sweden and Finland joining NATO didn’t appear in the cards. Finnish Prime Minister Marin said in January that her country was “very unlikely” to join NATO under her watch, a sentiment that was echoed by Sweden’s defense minister. Two weeks ago, however, Marin did an about-face, proclaiming that “Russia is not the neighbor we thought it was.”

The fact that “Russia seems willing to invade, on completely false pretenses, its neighbors that don’t belong to NATO” sparked a realization among Finns, who have long tried to placate the Kremlin, Salonius-Pasternak said.

Specifically, when the citizens of Finland, which fought the Soviet Union after it invaded in 1939, watched Russia’s savage attacks unfold in Ukraine, something fundamental changed in their logic. After Russia’s atrocities in Bucha became clear earlier this month, Finnish public support for joining NATO soared to 68%. Local thinking, Salonius-Pasternak said, switched from “If we join NATO, Russia may get annoyed and do something bad to us” to “They may do something bad anyway, so why not seek a form of deterrence that is completely unavailable to them?”

“What happened,” Salonius-Pasternak added, “was the Finnish population drew some conclusions which forced the hand of the Finnish political elite, and thereby also the Swedish.”

Gunilla Herolf, senior associate research fellow at the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm, agreed that Finland is blazing the trail toward NATO membership. “Finland has been taking the lead,” she told Yahoo News. “After public support for NATO went up so much in Finland, people in Sweden started to realize that it’s very likely that Finland will join, and that made public opinion go up in Sweden as well.” The two countries have a very close relationship, she added, which only intensified in 2014 when Russia invaded Ukraine the first time, annexing Crimea.

Herolf expects that the extensive cooperation of Sweden and Finland with NATO, with which they often perform joint military exercises and whose forces they fought alongside in the Balkans and Afghanistan, will help speed up the process of applying for membership.

But there’s a risk: While Finland and Sweden are expected to apply in the coming weeks, their acceptance into the military alliance depends on unanimous agreement from all 30 of NATO’s current members, a process that could take months.

“That invitation needs to be ratified by all 30 current members, and that means that the U.S. Senate will have to ratify it, and 29 parliaments will have to ratify it,” said Daalder. While he doesn’t foresee any problems, he added, “you never know — maybe a parliament gets dissolved and therefore there’s no parliament to ratify it.”

Until their membership is ratified, Finland and Sweden will remain vulnerable. If Russia attacked either before they were admitted to the alliance, neither could invoke Article 5, the NATO clause that states that an attack on one member is an attack on all.

Another potential snag is the upcoming presidential election in France. Right-wing candidate Marine Le Pen, currently trailing incumbent President Emmanuel Macron by at least 7 points, has vowed to cut France’s military involvement with NATO.

“While the ratification process among the 30 NATO members could happen quickly," said Daalder, “the problem is it needs to go quickly in 30 countries. The real question is, what do you do in the meantime?” Once Finland and Sweden are officially invited to apply to NATO, Daalder said, even before their membership is approved by member countries, “the president of the United States should make clear that until such time as these countries are formally part of NATO, that we, the United States, hopefully with partner countries, are committed to defending their security.”

In the meantime, both Finland and Sweden are boosting their armed forces and ramping up annual spending on civil defense and arms. The Finnish government in February ordered 64 F-35s from Lockheed Martin, with a price tag of over $9 billion. Sweden, where the 2021 defense budget was around $7 billion, is expected to raise that amount to about $11 billion, roughly the 2% of GDP required of NATO members.

 France 24 and RTE News last night stated that Zelensky, the President of Ukraine was a professional actor and comedian before he decided to become the President of Ukraine, or should we say was selected by the CIA and the USA to become their approved Ukrainian President to do their bidding in Ukraine.
One commentator has stated that the CIA have been in Ukraine since around 2017 training Ukrainians to fight Russia, and suppling Ukraine in preparation for a Russian attack on Ukraine... which seems to be all part of the well planned New World Order Play Book, run by the same group of people that all the world leaders such as USA President Joe Biden, Russian Head of State Putin, Ukraine President Zelensky, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, UKf Prime Minister Boris Johnstone etc works for..
Zelensky looked very comfortable last night in his plush Ukraine office, without a personal care in the world.. as the CIA's well paid and well protected man running Ukraine under day to day orders and directions of the CIA.. the same people Putin works for... if Putin was serious about removing President Zelensky from power in Ukraine.. Putin would have ordered the home and office Zelenski to be bombed... and concentrate on killing Zelensky, rather than Ukraine Civilians... Boris Johnson casually walked around Kiev with Zelensky yesterday ... without a care in the world or fear that Russia would send rockets into Kiev that day.. to kill both Boris Johnson and Zelensky..who know the risks of openly walking around Kiev, while the Ukrainian civilians are all hiding in underground bunkers and cellers.. instead of Russia and Putin killing thousands of Ukraine ordinary citizens.. if Zelensky really cared about his Ukrainian People he would offer his life to save his people ...and no Zelensky is just a well paid actor and comedian who has been promised a high level position in the New World Order on a high salary.. and all the fringe benefits.. there are allegations emerging that Zelensky is a cocaine addict.. his bosses at the CIA have plenty of cocain to supply Zelensky to feed his cocain habit

Being This Close To Nuclear War Should Change How We See Things`

If It Feels Like You’re Being Manipulated, It’s Because You Are

by Caitlin Johnstone

 "France 24 and RTE News last night stated that Zelensky, the President of Ukraine was a professional actor and comedian before he decided to become the President of Ukraine, or should we say was selected by the CIA and the USA to become their approved Ukrainian President to do their bidding in Ukraine.
One commentator has stated that the CIA have been in Ukraine since around 2017 training Ukrainians to fight Russia, and suppling Ukraine in preparation for a Russian attack on Ukraine... which seems to be all part of the well planned New World Order Play Book, run by the same group of people that all the world leaders such as USA President Joe Biden, Russian Head of State Putin, Ukraine President Zelensky, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, UKf Prime Minister Boris Johnstone etc works for..
Zelensky looked very comfortable last night in his plush Ukraine office, without a personal care in the world.. as the CIA's well paid and well protected man running Ukraine under day to day orders and directions of the CIA.. the same people Putin works for... if Putin was serious about removing President Zelensky from power in Ukraine.. Putin would have ordered the home and office Zelensky to be bombed... and concentrate on killing Zelensky, rather than Ukraine Civilians... Boris Johnson casually walked around Kiev with Zelensky yesterday ... without a care in the world or fear that Russia would send rockets into Kiev that day.. to kill both Boris Johnson and Zelensky, who know the risks of openly walking around Kiev, while the Ukrainian civilians are all hiding in underground bunkers and cellers.. instead of Russia and Putin killing thousands of Ukraine ordinary citizens.. if Zelensky really cared about his Ukrainian People he would offer his life to save his people ...and no Zelensky is just a well paid actor and comedian who has been promised a high level position in the New World Order on a high salary.. and all the fringe benefits.. there are public allegations emerging that Zelensky is a cocaine addict.. his bosses at the CIA have plenty of cocaine to supply Zelensky to feed any cocaine habit Zelensky may have".  Robert Miller ,Special Investigator on the Ukraine Russian Conlict

Johnson and Zelensky held talks over roast beef dinner during Kyiv visit

 

 

Amy Gibbons

Mon, 11 April 2022, 

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/johnson-zelensky-held-talks-over-121516005.html

 

Volodymyr Zelensky with Boris Johnson in Kyiv

Zelensy the President of Ukraine and Boris Johnson casually walking around Kiev on th 11th April 2022 witout a care in the worl that Putin will order KIev to the atacked by rocket fire while they both walk around he street of Kiev, Ukraine.

The Prime Minister held a bilateral meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over a dinner of roast beef during his visit to Kyiv on Saturday, Downing Street said.

Boris Johnson was in the Ukrainian capital for around five hours, and travelled by car, helicopter, military plane and train, according to a No 10 spokeswoman.

He started by meeting with Mr Zelensky for an hour, followed by a 30-minute walk to Independence Square.

 

“On arrival in Kyiv, the PM and President Zelensky met for an hour – this was a meeting just with the two of them. They then went on a 30-minute walk together to Independence Square,” the spokeswoman said.

“You’ll have seen some of the footage – he met with Ukrainians and passed the memorials that have been put up to victims of the war.”

After returning, they held a further full bilateral meeting over dinner, she added.

The pair had a starter of goats cheese salad and chicken soup, followed by a main course of roast beef and cherry dumplings for dessert.

Asked who accompanied the Prime Minister on the visit, the spokeswoman said: “It was a very small delegation. I believe it was one member of his private office and then security.”

She said Mr Johnson was in Kyiv for “around five hours”.

“In terms of the entirety of the visit, he left on Friday evening and he travelled overnight, and he arrived back in the UK on the Sunday morning,” she said.

The spokeswoman said that due to “operational concerns” it was not possible to go into “too much detail” about the arrangements, but said Mr Johnson travelled by car, helicopter, military plane and train to get to Kyiv and back.

Asked about his “emotional response” to seeing the destruction, she referred to a previous statement in which the Prime Minister praised the “heroism” of Ukrainians in the face of Russian aggression.

She said the visit had been in planning for “several weeks” but the final decision was taken on the advice of security officials on the day of travel.

Mr Johnson is now at his country retreat, Chequers, with a view to having “a bit of a break” for a couple of days.

The spokeswoman said the intention is for the Prime Minister to “get some rest and spend some time with family”.

He will continue to receive updates, particularly on Ukraine, and will be participating in meetings throughout, she said.

The spokeswoman was also asked about Mr Johnson being presented with a ceramic cockerel, which has become a symbol of resistance in Ukraine, as he walked through the streets of Kyiv with Mr Zelensky.

Asked if the Ukrainian president had explained the significance of the item, and whether it would be placed in the Downing Street office, she said: “I understand that he took that back with him to Chequers, so he has that.

“And yes, he is aware that it has become a famous symbol of resistance

You can listen to this article by watching the above video box

If you've got a gut feeling that your rulers are working to control your perception of the war in Ukraine, it is safe to trust that feeling.

If you feel like there's been a concerted effort from the most powerful government and media institutions in the western world to manipulate your understanding of what's going on with this war, it's because that's exactly what has been happening.

If you can't recall ever seeing such intense mass media spin about a war before, it's because you haven't.

If you get the distinct impression that this may be the most aggressively perception-managed and psyop-intensive war in human history, it's because it is.

If it looks like Silicon Valley platforms are controlling the content that people see to give them a perspective on this war that is wildly biased in favor of the US narrative, it's because that is indeed the case.

If it seems like a suspicious coincidence that Russiagate manufactured mainstream consent for all the same shady agendas we're seeing ramped up now like cold war brinkmanship against Moscow, internet censorship, and being constantly lied to by the mass media for the greater good, it's because it is a mighty suspicious coincidence.

If it seems weird to you that so many self-styled leftists are responding to this war by fanatically supporting the extremely dangerous unipolarist geostrategic agendas of the most powerful empire that has ever existed, that's because it is weird. Really, really, really weird.

These photo shoots mid war are sooooo Wierd pic.twitter.com/3hDyeVXRuy

— leilani dowding  (@LeilaniDowding) April 10, 2022

If it seems a bit hypocritical to you that the empire is blasting us in the face all day with narratives alleging Russian war crimes while that same empire is imprisoning a journalist for exposing its war crimes, that's because it absolutely is hypocritical.

If something looks wrong about the fact that we're about to watch a judge sign off on Julian Assange's extradition to the United States for practicing journalism while that same United States keeps pushing out narratives about the need to protect Ukraine's freedom and democracy, that's because it should.

If you're beginning to get the nagging sense that the mainstream consensus worldview is a construct manufactured by the powerful, for the powerful and everything you were taught about your nation, your government and your world is a lie, that's definitely a possibility worth considering.

If it's starting to seem like we're all being manipulated at mass scale to think, act and vote in a way which benefits a vast power structure that rules over us while hiding its true nature, I'd say that's a thread worth pulling.

If you've a sneaking suspicion that the lies might go even deeper than that, right down to deceptions about who you fundamentally are and what this life is actually about, that suspicion is probably worth exploring.

If you're feeling a bit like Keanu Reeves in the beginning of The Matrix right before the veil gets ripped away, I'd recommend following the white bunny and seeing how deep that rabbit hole goes.

If it has occurred to you that humanity needs to wake up from the matrix of illusion before our sociopathic rulers drive us to extinction via environmental catastrophe or nuclear armageddon, then your notes match my own.

If you believe it's possible that these existential crises we're fast approaching may be the catalyst we need to collectively rip the blindfold from our eyes and begin moving in a truth-based way upon this earth and creating a healthy world, then we are on the same page.

If there's something in you that whispers there's a good chanc

Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone

by Caitlin Johnstone

President Zelensky Seems to Claim he Is Superman

"Zelensky  is going to need the strength of a “Superman” in order to push back against"... Putin March 1, 2022 | by Clay Bennet

 https://www.quora.com/

 

Aman Àparte

Ph.D. in Eventually Dying., Tolstoy School of NihilismMar 9

 

Is Putin at risk of being stopped by his own military generals?

This is a picture of Putin:

Everyone in this picture who isn’t Putin probably wants Putin dead. He is costing them a lot of money and the average Russian soldier doesn’t believe they are on some weird quest for the Holy Grail in Ukraine.

Jesus Christ, the way other me writes you’d think Russian soldiers are reenacting that one scene from “Kingdom of Heaven”.

If Putin didn’t think there was a risk he wouldn’t be doing the weird long-table thing and pre-recording messages to pass off as being live. Apparently KGB #1 operative forget to change the time on his watch to match up with his “live” broadcast, guy didn’t even change his clothes. Where is the effort, Vlad?

 

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Inside Putin's Russia

Mark Hallett, a New Zealand Author claims that Putin has a twin brother.

If that is true, which of the Vladimir  Putin Brothers has ordered Russia to try and take over Ukraine with violence ...

which Putin is the person who the leaders of the western nations through out the world have declared a war criminal

Mark Hallett's books include:

Her Majesty 
Queen Elizabeth II 
Buckingham Palace 
London SW1A 1AA 
England 
Dear Your Majesty The Queen, 
My Spymaster once swore an oath of loyalty to you. 
He now believes you have been badly, if not criminally, 
advised. The Spymaster feels obligated to point this out. 
As such, we are sending you a copy of this book. 

Vladimir Putin Claims That Russia Has Developed an Ebola Vaccine

Putin Twin Brother One

 

 

Putin Twin Brother One

 

Putin Twin Brother One

 

Putin Twin Brother Two

Putin Twin Brother Two

Putin's  and Russia' Patriots In Australia

China's Covert Influence Campaign In Australian Politics

Being This Close To Nuclear War Should Change How We See Things

by Caitlin Johnstone

 They're Enslaving Our Minds And Driving Us Toward Destruction

Going Rogue With Caitlin Johnstone Audio

Vladimir Putin Claims That Russia Has Developed an Ebola Vaccine

https://time.com/4180128/ebola-vaccine-russia-vladimir-putin/

 Yahoo News - ZACH DORFMAN - March 16, 2022,

https://www.aol.com/news/exclusive-secret-cia-training-program-090052594.html

Ukrainian snipers had a problem: Russian forces in eastern Ukraine were trying to blind them.

As the Ukrainians were looking through their scopes in order to find their targets, the Russians had begun pinpointing their location using the glare of the glass, and were shooting high-energy lasers into them, damaging the snipers’ eyesight.

The two sides were squaring off in close proximity. In early 2014, Russia had already invaded and annexed Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula. Shortly thereafter, pro-Russia insurgents in the eastern Donbas region began a grinding secessionist war against Kyiv.

Russian troops soon entered the fray. So, quietly, did the CIA.

As the battle lines hardened in Donbas, a small, select group of veteran CIA paramilitaries made their first secret trips to the frontlines to meet with Ukrainian counterparts there, according to former U.S. officials.

CIA paramilitaries soon concluded that, in Russia and its proxies, the agency was facing an adversary whose capabilities far outmatched the Islamist groups that CIA had been battling in the post-9/11 wars. “We learned a lot real quick,” says a former senior intelligence official — including about the Russians’ laser-blinding techniques. “That s*** wouldn’t happen with the Taliban.”

Since Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine last month — which transformed a long-simmering, attritional conflict into an explosive, all-out war — the Ukrainian military has defied predictions of a rapid collapse, holding key cities against the Russian advance and inflicting punishing losses to Russian troops and materiel.

The Ukrainian military has claimed to have killed three Russian generals, including at least one reportedly eliminated by sniper fire. (Yahoo News could not independently verify whether the Russian commanders were killed by CIA-trained troops.)

At least some of the fierce resistance by Ukrainian forces has its roots in a now shuttered covert CIA training program run from Ukraine’s eastern frontlines, former intelligence officials tell Yahoo News. The initiative was described to Yahoo News by over half a dozen former officials, all of whom requested anonymity to speak freely about sensitive intelligence matters.

The program was run under previously existing authorities for the CIA and did not require a new legal determination for the agency, known as a covert action finding, according to a former national security official.

After Russia’s 2014 incursion, the U.S. military also helped run a long-standing, publicly acknowledged training program for Ukrainian troops in the country’s western region, far from the frontlines. That program also included instruction in how to use Javelin anti-tank missiles and sniper training.

Yahoo News reported in January on the CIA’s secret U.S.-based training initiative for Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel. That program, which began in 2015, also included instruction in firearms, camouflage techniques and covert communications. Yahoo News’ prior report also revealed that CIA paramilitaries had traveled to eastern Ukraine to assist forces loyal to Kyiv in their fight against Russia and its separatist allies.

U.S. officials previously denied to Yahoo News that the CIA training programs were ever offensively oriented. “The purpose of the training, and the training that was delivered, was to assist in the collection of intelligence,” said a senior intelligence official.

Until now, however, the details of the CIA’s paramilitary training program on Ukraine’s eastern frontlines have never been revealed. This initiative, say former agency officials, has helped battle-hardened Ukrainian special operations forces for the current Russian assault, which has plunged Europe into its worst conflict in decades. (The CIA declined to comment. The National Security Council referred queries to the CIA. The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not return a request for comment.)

***

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. The agency needed to determine the “backbone” of the Ukrainians, said a former senior CIA official. The question was, “Are they going to get rolled, or are going to stand up and fight?” recalled the former official.

The Ukrainians, the CIA paramilitaries reported back to their superiors, were indeed ready for battle.

The CIA operatives taught their Ukrainian counterparts the best skills for irregular warfare, said the former senior intelligence official. “We tried to really focus on operational planning, then really hard military skills like long-range marksmanship — not just the capacity to do it, but to know how to do it on a battlefield, to really deplete the leadership on the other side,” said the former senior intelligence official.

Because of the sensitivities of the mission, the agency chose to send experienced, mature operatives, recalled former officials. The thinking was, “one miscalculation, one overzealous paramilitary guy, and we’ve got ourselves a problem,” said the former official. “Everything we did in Ukraine had a chance to be misinterpreted, and escalate the tensions.” Accompanying the more strategic-minded, veteran paramilitaries sent by the agency were tactical specialists, like snipers, who also worked for the CIA Special Activities Center.

But after over a decade focused on the war on terror, the high-tech battlefield environment was a shock to the CIA. Russian soldiers and their proxies were using drones, cell towers and other equipment to triangulate the phones and electronic devices of the Ukrainians and CIA paramilitaries on the frontlines — and then rapidly targeting them with that information, according to former officials.

Ukrainians soldiers “were using mobile phones in a trench,” recalled a former intelligence official. “People were getting blown to bits.”

It was “almost like SkyNet in a ‘Terminator’ movie — that’s what the eastern edge of Ukraine started looking like,” says the former senior CIA official, referring to the malevolent, self-aware, weaponized artificial intelligence system in the Arnold Schwarzenegger films. The Russians’ operations on the frontlines would evolve rapidly in response to the Ukrainians’ and the CIA’s own there, according to former officials.

CIA paramilitaries needed to make quick adjustments, recalled former officials. Agency officials were forced to develop new modes of secure communications systems so paramilitaries could “communicate and then move before you get the direction finding from the Russians” and “they start[ed] rocketing the crap out of you,” recalled the former senior official.

The CIA assembled a special working group to solve the tradecraft challenges that arose from working in eastern Ukraine. The environment was unique, where “Moscow rules” — that is, the need for extreme operational care, because of the Russians’ counterintelligence capabilities — converged with an active war zone.

“We were caught with our pants down,” says the former senior CIA official. But the agency soon developed new tools to ensure that agency paramilitaries could transmit information to each other securely on the frontlines, as well as to Washington, without tipping off the Russians. Agency paramilitaries also shared some of these techniques with their Ukrainian counterparts.

And the rules of the agency’s engagement on the Ukrainian frontlines was clear: Advise and train, but do not take part in combat yourself, recalled former officials.

The agency impressed upon the CIA paramilitaries traveling to the front that “the Ukrainians have very effective special operations,” recalled the former senior intelligence official. The directive was, “Your job is to make them more effective.”

CIA officials believed that “just sending six guys to be six snipers is not really going to be something that’s going to affect the battle space,” recalled this official. “Our job is to have an exponential impact; it’s not to get our badge for shooting a Russian or something.”

Still, shortly after Donald Trump took office in 2017, National Security Council officials were concerned that, though the CIA paramilitaries in Ukraine were prohibited from engaging in combat, the parameters of their mission, which had begun under the Obama administration, were ambiguous. “We worried that the authorities might be too far-ranging,” said a former national security official.

One big question was, “How far can you go with existing covert action authorities?” recalled the former official. “If, God forbid, they’ve shot some Russians, is that a problem? Do you need special authorities for that?” White House officials also worried about what might happen if CIA operatives were captured by pro-Russian forces on what was supposed to be a secret mission, recalled the former official.

The discussion about the agency’s program was part of a broader review at the Trump White House of U.S. support for Kyiv — and what Moscow’s red lines might be, recalled the former official. “There was a school of thought that the Russians spoke the good old language of proxy war,” and that the CIA’s covert (as well as the military’s acknowledged) training programs and the U.S.'s overt supplying of weapons to Ukraine were therefore within historically acceptable bounds, the former official said.

CIA leadership and White House officials both understood — but still fretted over — the risks. “I don’t know how we didn’t get anybody injured, to be honest,” says the former senior intelligence official. But the covert nature of the mission ensured deniability. U.S. officials “wouldn’t want to say, We just had a CIA officer killed by a Russian” in Ukraine, recalled the former official. “That would put the president or the White House in a very bad position.”

The Ukraine-based CIA program operated for years, according to former officials. But as the threat of a large-scale Russian invasion became increasingly acute last month, the Biden administration, still feeling the sting of the Afghanistan withdrawal, pulled all CIA personnel out of the country, including war-zone-hardened agency paramilitaries, according to a former intelligence official in close touch with colleagues in U.S. government.

The administration was “terrified of even clandestine folks being on the frontline,” says the former official.

But even if the CIA’s cadre of paramilitary trainers are no longer in Ukraine, the effect of the agency’s training programs — both in the U.S. and on Ukraine’s eastern front — “cannot be overestimated,” said the former senior CIA official. These elite units trained by the agency have created “a strong nucleus” for Ukraine’s larger military forces today, according to this official.

In addition to the hard skills these operatives are bringing to the fight with Russian troops, some of the benefits are more intangible, according to former officials. The CIA-trained special operations units set an example by “getting some small wins” and by “providing some success stories” for the larger Ukrainian military, says the former senior official.

Courage can be contagious, notes the former official. So then, empowered by their comrades’ victories, “you get people that are charging to the sounds of the gunfire.”

CHINA IN FOCUS - TIFFANY MEIER

 

Are There Bio Weapons In Ukraine Or Not?

 

China In Focus Part 2

China In Focus Part 3

This Video Indicates That MSM Are Lying About The War In Ukraine

Comments by the pubic to this video

This Is A Nightmare For China

Why Joe Thinks Putin's War Spells Doom For  China

 USA Today

 

Brent Renaud attends the 74th Annual Peabody Awards at Cipriani Wall Street on May 31, 2015, in New York.

Talking to the Russians is the only way out of this hell Misha Glenny Sunday March 13 2022

Comment by Misha Glenny

As the former communist states descended into economic chaos and war raged in Yugoslavia in 1993, I wrote a series of talks for the BBC called Loss of Innocence. It concluded with a warning: the West must provide structured economic assistance to Russia, like the Marshall Plan that put Germany back on its feet after the Second World War. Failure to do so would turn Russia into “a psychopathic giant” with nuclear weapons.

 

 

USA TODAY March 13, 2022

 Ukraine Russian Conflict Run Down Channel4

Russian Soldiers Asked How They Ended In Ukraine Part 1

Russian Soldiers Asked How They Ended In Ukraine Part2

War In Ukraine

What The Ukraine War Means For The World Order - Ian Bremmer

History Of Eastern Europe -Ukraine Russia Crisis

Russian President Vladimir Putin Interview

Former MI6 Chief Speaks On The Ukraine Russian Conflict

Why Is The Ukraine Russian Conflict The West's Fault - John Mearsheimer

Putin's Invasion Of Ukraine Salon  -Ray McGovern and John Mearsheimer

Neo Nazi Threat In The Ukraine - Newsnight

Ukraine Russian Conflict -Moldova Prepares For Flood of Of Refugees

Vladimir Pozner - How The United States Created Vladimir Putin

Putin's Road To War - Julia Ioffe - FRONTLINE

 https://www.theepochtimes.com/zelensky-ukraine-must-recognize-it-will-not-join-nato_4338836.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_campaign=breaking-2022-03-15-2&utm_medium=email&est=n05JweAuoyJVL4Cpw0d%2BFKn0bjtYcNrAk%2BlmxMd7w70Q83ZMx9GLiF2iXYDVaH6axNAG57XMVNRwZA%3D%3D

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country has to accept that it will not become a member of the NATO military alliance, a critical Russian concern that was used to justify the invasion.

“Ukraine is not a member of NATO. We understand that. We have heard for years that the doors were open, but we also heard that we could not join. It’s a truth and it must be recognized,” Zelensky said during a video conference with the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force on Tuesday.

He also again urged Western allies to provide Ukraine with fighter planes.

At the same time, Zelensky again called on NATO, which has provided the Ukrainian military with weapons and ammunition, to establish a no-fly zone over his country. U.S. and NATO officials have said such an agreement is not feasible as it would likely escalate the conflict with Russia.

Peace talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations restarted Tuesday after a pause on Monday, according to Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak

But Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told news outlets that it was too early to predict the outcome, saying: “The work is difficult, and in the current situation the very fact that [the talks] are continuing is probably positive.”

Last week, Zelensky told ABC News that he realized that Ukraine wouldn’t join NATO “long ago” and came to that conclusion “after we understood that NATO is not prepared to accept Ukraine.” He did not elaborate.

Meanwhile, Zelensky has ramped up his criticism of the U.S.-led military alliance for not enforcing a no-fly zone, which would likely require U.S. and European warplanes to shoot down Russian planes.

“Unfortunately, today there is a complete impression that it is time to give a funeral repast for something else: security guarantees and promises, determination of alliances, values that seem to be dead for someone,” he said earlier this month.

It comes as two powerful explosions rocked Kyiv before dawn on Tuesday and tracer fire lit up the night sky. A high-rise apartment building was in flames in the morning after being struck by artillery.

Amid the increase in shelling, Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko said Tuesday on Telegram that a 35-hour curfew will start at 8 p.m. Tuesday, ending at 7 a.m. on Thursday. He warned that movement through the city without special passes was prohibited unless civilians head to bomb shelters.

“The capital—the heart of Ukraine—will be defended!” Klitschko, a former heavyweight boxing champion, wrote on social media. “And Kyiv, which today is a symbol and outpost of European freedom and security, we will not give up! We will not be brought to our knees! Today the efforts of every Kyivan are important.”

The United Nations’ refugee agency said on social media that it estimates some 3 million people have fled Ukraine into neighboring countries since the start of the Feb. 24 conflict.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote Tuesday that he and deputy prime minister Jarosław Kaczynski along with Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala and Slovenian Prime Minister Janez Jansa would be traveling to Kyiv to meet with officials as representatives of the European Council.

“Europe must guarantee Ukraine’s independence and ensure that it is ready to help in Ukraine’s reconstruction,” he said in a Twitter post. The Associated Press contributed to this report.

'I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin to single combat': Elon Musk says he wants to fight Russian strongman for Ukraine in bizarre tweetstorm filled with Shakespeare reference and memes about invasion

• The challenge was part of a series of tweets posted by the Tesla founder Monday
• Among them were a meme about Russia's invasion and a quote from Macbeth
• Musk, 50, tagged the Kremlin's official English language account in his message 
• He has also opened his Starlink internet service network to the besieged country at the request of Ukrainian officials

By ADAM MANNO FOR DAILYMAIL.COM - 14 March 2022 

Tesla founder Elon Musk has challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin to a fight over Ukraine in an early morning Twitter dump that included memes about the invasion and references to Macbeth.

'I hereby challenge Vladimir Putin to single combat,' Musk tweeted Monday, typing Putin's name in Russian. 'Stakes are Ukraine,' he added, writing the country's name in Ukrainian.

Musk, 50, capped off his challenge with a direct reference to the Kremlin.

'Do you agree to this fight?' he wrote, tagging the Kremlin's official Twitter account.

The South African-born billionaire, who has been known for making outlandish comments on twitter in the past, may be biting off more than he can handle in challenging the former head of the KGB.

The Russian president is a judo blackbelt and even co-authored a book about the sport, titled ‘Judo: History, Theory, Practice’.

Putin, 69, was made honorary president of the International Judo Federation in 2008, but has been suspended from the role over his war on Ukraine.

Musk's bizarre challenge was part of a flurry of tweets he sent out over the course of three hours, including the oft-quoted Shakespeare line from Macbeth: 'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.' 

In another tweet, he posted a meme of a character from the Netflix show Narcos sitting on a porch swing that reads, 'Netflix waiting for the war to end to make a movie about a black ukraine guy falls in love with a transgender russian soldier.' 

Earlier on Monday, he also posted the cryptic message, 'There is a beauty to the biological substrate.' 

Musk has tried to be a thorn in Putin's side since the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, even providing internet service to the war-torn country through his Starlink satellite service at the request of Ukrainian officials. 

Musk, worth a reported $218.9 billion, mocked Russian officials earlier this month after the head of its space program brushed off US sanctions on Moscow for launching all-out war on Ukraine

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10610887/I-challenge-Vladimir-Putin-single-combat-Elon-Musk-tweets-wants-fight-strongman.html?ito=push-notification&ci=TRTKH3FKdE&cri=GbCJLlhXTS&si=DpTxCkJEP

 AP ELLEN KNICKMEYER March 16, 2022

https://www.aol.com/news/zelenskyy-tells-russian-troops-surrender-072259446.html

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — New U.S. sanctions Tuesday targeted more individuals in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s power structure, including senior Russian military officials and the leader of Kremlin-allied Belarus.

A judge and an investigator in Russia's prosecution of two outspoken critics of alleged corruption and rights abuses are also a focus of the sanctions.

Some of the new sanctions were brought under the Magnitsky Act, a 2012 act of Congress that authorizes sanctions against those engaged in human rights abuses.

Tuesday's sanctions show the U.S. going after more individual officials after laying down some of the toughest sanctions of modern times against Russian institutions and top figures over Putin's nearly 3-week-old invasion of Ukraine.

“Today’s designations demonstrate the United States will continue to impose concrete and significant consequences for those who engage in corruption or are connected to gross violations of human rights,” a Treasury official, Andrea Gacki, said in a statement.

That includes newly announced sanctions against Natalia Mushnikova, a Moscow judge in the case of Sergei Magnitsky, the anti-corruption whistleblower for whom the act is named. Magnitksy died in pre-trial detention in 2009 after exposing an alleged tax-fraud scheme by Russian officials.

Also targeted is Nurid Salamov, a prosecuting investigator in Russia whom Treasury accuses of taking part in an allegedly trumped-up case against Oyub Titiev, of the rights group Memorial.

Tuesday's sanctions also add to sanctions against Alexander Lukashenko, the longtime leader of Belarus, who is allowing Putin to use his country as a staging ground for attacks on Ukraine. They newly sanction Halina Lukashenko, wife of the Belarus leader. And other new sanctions target eight deputy Russian defense ministers and other senior military officials.

 

 

 

Biden to travel to Brussels for NATO summit next week;

Zelenskyy says Ukraine may never join NATO

https://www.aol.com/news/zelenskyy-tells-russian-troops-surrender-072259446.html

 USA Today 

 

March 15, 2022

Ukrainians must realize the country will not be joining NATO and must "count on ourselves and our partners who are helping us" to withstand the Russian onslaught, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Tuesday.

Also Tuesday, the White House said President Joe Biden will travel to Brussels for a March 24 NATO summit on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Zelenskyy, speaking to representatives of the U.K.-led Joint Expeditionary Force, said Ukraine has heard for years about "the allegedly open doors” of NATO but acknowledged his country will not be able to join. Instead, Ukraine needs separate security guarantees from its allies, he said.

Zelenskyy had been a strong supporter of Ukraine's efforts to join NATO. Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has called for a guarantee that Ukraine would never join NATO among terms for an end to the war.

Still, Zelenskyy has repeatedly called for NATO to set up a no-fly zone above Ukraine to ease an aerial assault from Russia that has decimated Ukraine cities since the invasion began Feb. 24. And he said Tuesday that Europe could “help yourself by helping us” with more military aid. The Ukrainian military is using up weapons and ammunition meant to last a week in 20 hours, he said.

Leaders of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia were traveling to Kyiv on a European Union mission Tuesday to show support for Ukraine. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said in a tweet announcing the trip that "Europe must guarantee Ukraine's independence and ensure that it is ready to help in Ukraine's reconstruction."

Talks between Ukrainian and Russian delegations were expected to resume via teleconference Tuesday, Zelenskyy said. Talks were halted Monday for a "technical pause," according to one of Zelenskyy's advisers. Three previous rounds of talks held in Belarus provided little progress, but both sides expressed optimism ahead of this week's negotiations.

 

 

Russia is the global enemy': Fallout from Ukraine invasion could last for years   https://www.aol.com/news/russia-global-enemy-fallout-ukraine-200040094.html   People in Tel Aviv at a protest on Saturday against the Russian invasion of Ukraine   A protester in Madrid holds a placard with the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the word "Killer" during a rally on March 3   The Kremlin tower in Moscow is reflected in the window of a McDonald's, which has temporarily closed all 847 of its restaurants in Russia   Nina Khrushcheva at an event in Doha, Qatar, in 2016   ALEXANDER NAZARYAN - March 14, 202 WASHINGTON — When he invaded Ukraine, Vladimir Putin almost certainly expected a quick, decisive conquest that would restore the Kremlin's influence in Eastern Europe and burnish his own status as a Russian leader on par with Peter and Catherine the Great.   Weeks later, Russia is a hobbled pariah, while the dogged Ukrainian resistance — led by charismatic President Volodymyr Zelensky — has attained admiration in much of the world. There is little doubt that the Russian army has the firepower to level its smaller neighbor if it chooses to. But the costs to Russian society could be enormous for years, even generations, to come. "Russia is done," said New School political scientist Nina Khrushcheva, whose great-grandfather was Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, an ethnic Russian whose rise through the communist ranks mostly took place in Ukraine. In fact, it was Khrushchev — who grew up in a peasant family on the Ukrainian border — who returned Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 as a Soviet administrative region, putting in motion the geopolitical shifts that would, much later, result in war. Six decades later — in 2014 — Putin first invaded Ukraine to recover Crimea, as well as two eastern territories home to many ethnic Russians. When he launched a full-scale invasion last month, he blamed his Soviet predecessors for making mistakes he said it was now his duty to correct. Few outside the Kremlin see it that way. "Russia is hated by the rest of the world," Khrushcheva said, predicting a period of deepening international isolation. "Russia is the global enemy. That doesn't end quickly," she said, pessimistically envisioning "another 100 years of us being villains of the universe." On Friday, President Biden announced that the United States, the European Union, Canada and Asia were all revoking Russia’s status as a favored trading partner, a move that comes on top of several rounds of sanctions and an exodus by Western corporations like McDonald’s. Though it is not clear how long the sanctions will last, “it's pretty clear that Russia will become poorer and more technologically backward. The choices for its citizens will be radically diminished and for many, many years to come," Edward Alden of the Council on Foreign Relations told The Hill. Moscow will certainly look to Beijing in response, and while China has avoided joining the chorus of condemnation directed at Russia, its own vast ambitions could leave Putin indebted to a dangerous degree. What is already clear, however, is that three decades of hoping that Russia would emerge from the Cold War, like Germany, as a full-fledged modern democracy have been decisively dashed. The departure of McDonald’s, which opened on Red Square in 1990 to surging fascination, was a poignant symbol of disappointment in how little has changed since communism’s collapse. The initial sanctions were not a surprise to the Kremlin, which almost welcomed them with a show of defiance. Nor, so far, have they served as a deterrent. In Putin's own speeches and writings — including a remarkably frank English-language essay two years ago in the National Interest, an American publication — he discusses history in geopolitical terms, and he may be willing to countenance collective suffering to achieve his vision of a restored Russian empire that encompasses Ukraine and perhaps other ex-Soviet states. But achieving that vision has already caused widespread suffering for Russians and Ukrainians alike, leading to the kind of near-universal condemnation that is rare in a world of complex and competing national interests. "Vladimir Putin is isolated and morally dead," the lead editorial in a recent issue of the Economist thundered, with the magazine comparing him to Joseph Stalin, the brutal Soviet dictator whose image Putin has assiduously worked to rehabilitate. Khrushcheva thinks such comparisons are unfair — to Stalin. "Even Stalin had an idea," she said, adding that she has no sympathy for the ruthless Soviet despot who sent millions of his citizens to death and prison. The point of the comparison, rather, is to underscore Putin's failure to articulate a reason for invading Ukraine, a nation that does share many cultural and historical ties with Russia but has been sovereign since 1991. She deemed Putin's vision of a "pan-Slavic state" encompassing Russia, Ukraine and Belarus as "beyond backward-looking," not to mention out of touch with a Russian populace whose appetite for war he may have misjudged. Still, war is being waged in the Russian name. And the longer it continues, the more dangerous Putin arguably becomes. Projecting strength is a key feature of his foreign policy — and has been for decades. "You must hit first, and hit so hard that your opponent will not rise to his feet," he told Russian interviewers in 2000 about the second war he launched against Chechnya. The conflict reduced the breakaway republic to rubble, leaving little but grief and destruction in the wake of the Russian army. Similar fears are mounting with Russian troops approaching Kyiv, though Putin may not be willing to outright destroy the historically significant city. Failing to seize the Ukrainian capital, however, would be tantamount to defeat. "I don’t think Russia has a 'best outcome,'" Khrushcheva believes. "Russia doesn't have a good solution — at all." An outcome short of clear victory could prove personally devastating for Putin, who has wielded his power virtually unchallenged for two decades. So far, attempts at a negotiated peace have failed while confusion over the path ahead — on both diplomatic and military fronts — appears to be deepening. The political scientist Francis Fukuyama believes that a Ukrainian resistance bolstered by the West will ultimately prevail against a Russian military that has the advantage of size but suffers from poor leadership and low morale. The war will end in an "outright defeat" for Russia, Fukuyama argued in a recent blog post, and the subsequent collapse of Putin’s regime: "He gets support because he is perceived to be a strongman; what does he have to offer once he demonstrates incompetence and is stripped of his coercive power?" Khrushcheva thinks that even if Putin is replaced as president, the kleptocratic power structure he created will remain, simply allowing a successor to take over without making reforms, the way Dmitry Medvedev did when he became president in 2008. (Putin could not serve a third term at that time because of term limits; he has since changed that law, assuring his own rule into near perpetuity.) "The system is not going anywhere," Khrushcheva told Yahoo News. And she finds discussion of a post-Putin Russia far too premature. "His popularity is rising," she said. Though polling can be inaccurate in Russia, his approval rating last month was above 70 percent. "People will rally around the flag," Khrushcheva predicted. And she did not have in mind the banners of Ukrainian yellow and blue that have become commonplace in many Western cities.

Talking to the Russians is the only way out of this hell Misha Glenny Sunday March 13 2022

Comment by Misha Glenny

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/b6fc090a-a24e-11ec-a1de-983f3d5a1668?shareToken=a59b4b7b233658ebd11c2a0e1bbd260a

"We risk repeating the mistake of Versailles in 1919"

As the former communist states descended into economic chaos and war raged in Yugoslavia in 1993, I wrote a series of talks for the BBC called Loss of Innocence. It concluded with a warning: the West must provide structured economic assistance to Russia, like the Marshall Plan that put Germany back on its feet after the Second World War. Failure to do so would turn Russia into “a psychopathic giant” with nuclear weapons.

Instead, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we encouraged the free-for-all transition to a free-market economy aptly christened “gangster capitalism”. Thirty years on, the giant has awoken to start its bloody rampage, in large part because we didn’t provide that assistance.

Russia’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine has already taken us to the gates of hell. Western officials are now gaming the possibility of a nuclear escalation. Still a remote prospect, but not inconceivable.

I hope they are also gaming the peace. Learning the lessons of history has never been more important. This moment will be as important historically as the Treaty of Versailles and the Yalta agreement.

The world is still suffering or recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic. Vladimir Putin’s huge gamble in Ukraine threatens a wider European and even a world conflict while sinking a stake into the heart of the global economy. The invasion has triggered numerous sub-dramas, each of which could descend into further violence, whether in the western Balkans, the Middle East and north Africa or east Asia.

With crises breaking out on so many fronts, it is hard to think strategically. But if the world is to avoid a wild spiral of uncontrolled conflicts and economic trauma, not to mention accelerating climate change, then governments need to be thinking seriously not only about what happens in the next six months but about how they respond to Moscow after the war is over, whether Russia wins or not.

“Globalisation has shifted on its axis,” says Rafal Rohozinski, founder of the Ottawa-based SecDev Group, which combines cyberanalysis with political intelligence. “Everything from the banking system to finance and logistics is being reordered. It’s the end of globalisation and the start of a new splinter world with its attendant chaos and uncertainties.”

 

As the former communist states fell into economic chaos and war raged in Yugoslavia in 1993, it was apparent that the West needed to provide economic assistance to Russia, like the post Second World War Marshall Plan

MALCOLM LINTON/LIAISON

Managing this requires both the West and China to tread very carefully. After all, an imperfect peace at the end of the Cold War is how we got here. So what does the West do next?

First, we need to understand the Russian leader’s true purpose. “Putin has assumed that the time is ripe to overturn US-led global dominance,” explains Mark Medish, who was chief Russia adviser at the Treasury and the National Security Council in the Clinton administration. “This has long been his goal.”

Other authoritarian leaders almost certainly agree with Putin, including those in Beijing who have bridled under US moral tutelage and alleged double standards. Medish concludes that the chaos of the Trump presidency, the disarray of Europe, capped by Brexit and the authoritarian leanings in Hungary and Poland, and most recently the US withdrawal from Afghanistan “have bolstered Putin’s belief about the decline and fall of the West — and his decision to go for broke now”.

So Putin has laid down an existential challenge to the West. This is a zero-sum game that the Russian leader cannot afford to lose. Hence his apparent readiness to raise the stakes last week with the appalling bombing of Mariupol and the use of thermobaric weapons. This escalation brings greater destruction but it also suggests the Russian president is closer to defeat.

If Putin does lose, it opens up real opportunities. Convinced that Putin has overplayed his hand and will fall, Anthony Barnett, the author of Taking Control!, an analysis of American democracy after Trump and the pandemic, argues that “Putin’s defeat must be turned into a victory for democracy in Russia and Belarus as well as in Ukraine and a path for their renewal”.

The US and Europe’s biggest hope is for Ukraine to inflict a humiliating defeat on Russia’s military — no longer a fantasy but a real possibility, as the American political thinker Francis Fukuyama has argued. But it is Russians themselves, whether oligarchic and military malcontents or popular unrest, who must bring Putinism to an end.

If Putin is Russia’s problem, Russia is the West’s problem. With the horrors of Ukraine unfolding before our eyes, it is difficult to muster any sympathy for the Russians. Yet everyone now agrees that Putin has gone full Stalin. He orders the slaughter of civilians; he has protesters arrested and beaten up; he has clamped down on all independent media; and, tellingly, he humiliates his closest advisers in public.

If we concede he is a dictator, it follows that he is not representative of Russia and the Russian people. The West needs to embrace Russians with an intensity and sincerity hitherto unknown.

Western leaders should begin by mentioning at every opportunity that our quarrel is not with the Russian people but with its ruling clique. So far this has been missing from Joe Biden’s speeches. If our horror at the atrocities perpetrated by the Russian military tips over into a general Russophobia, we will lose the peace before the Ukrainians have won it.

The need to prepare Russians for the moment without Putin, which will be one of profound uncertainty, fear and chaos, is born of naked self-interest. The Americans did not launch the Marshall Plan in western Europe after the Second World War just out of the goodness of their hearts. They did it to create a huge consumer market for American goods and to consolidate their position as unchallenged leader of the western alliance.

The West will have to assist in putting the Russian economy back on its feet as it recovers from the devastating impact of sanctions (this is aside, of course, from the more pressing need to help in the rebuilding of Ukraine). Not to do so will sow the seeds of future conflict. Imposing punitive conditions on a great power will repeat the mistake of Versailles in 1919 — which Hitler exploited to great effect in his rise to power.

But the prize is worth it. Nurturing a Russia sympathetic to the West will reduce the seductive power of populists around the world. Putin has been the inspiration for many of these movements. He dazzled Donald Trump, who bows to Putin’s genius and vision as he does to no other.

Putin also considered Brexit a huge Russian success because it fragmented the West. Britain was the only country that belonged to the Anglophone Five Eyes intelligence network and the European Union. Putin believes he helped cut those vital links, weakening western security structures.

A strong, democratic Russia will also diminish the global influence of China. Here the US must resist the temptation to exploit any temporary discomfort that Beijing might experience. If the US and China do not collaborate in meeting the challenge of climate change, we will all end up losing.

There is still no guarantee that the West and Ukraine will come out of this on top. The war may well continue for some time. Until it is over, there will be a threat of catastrophic escalation. But if we avoid the worst, we will have a unique opportunity to restore faith in multilateral institutions and processes.

Conventional war and the pandemic have already inflicted immense damage on humanity. Western arrogance that followed the victory in the Cold War has not strengthened democracy but led to a more dangerous and capricious world. We are closer to a nuclear conflict than at any time since the Cuban missile crisis in the early 1960s. To restore some degree of stability, a large dose of humility and a sober reading of history will do the West a power of good.

Misha Glenny is the author of McMafia (Vintage)

 

kraine says it launches counteroffensives against Russian forces Reuters March 16, 2022

 

https://www.aol.com/ukraine-launches-counteroffensives-several-areas-081138278-100153323.html

 

LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) - Ukraine’s armed forces are launching counteroffensives against Russian forces "in several operational areas," Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

"This radically changes the parties’ dispositions," he added, without giving details.

Reuters was unable immediately to verify his comments.

In an update on the war, the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces referred to the "high intensity of hostilities" but did not say where fighting was heaviest.

Ukrainian officials also made clear that the death toll was rising from the war that began when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The emergency service in Ukraine's eastern region of Kharkiv region said on Wednesday that at least 500 residents of the city of Kharkiv have been killed.

Prosecutor General said on Iryna Venediktova said on Facebook that 103 children have been killed so far in the war.

Russian forces have struck more than 400 educational establishments and 59 of them have been destroyed, she said.

The governor of the Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine said there was no electricity in the region's main city, Chernihiv, or in some other settlements in the area.

The governor of the Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine said there was no electricity in the region's main city, Chernihiv, or in some other settlements in the area.

But Governor Viacheslav Chaus said Ukraine's armed forces "are powerful and inflict powerful blows on the Russian enemy every hour."

 

Sanctions-savaged Russia teeters on brink of historic default

 Reuters - -MARC JONES March 16, 2022,

https://www.aol.com/sanctions-savaged-russia-teeters-brink-010904138-093600510.html

Ukrainian President Zelensky gives virtual address to U.S. Congress

 

Sanctions-savaged Russia teeters on brink of historic default

 Reuters - MARC JONES -March 16, 2022

 

 

 

 

 

LONDON (Reuters) - The economic cost of Russia's assault on Ukraine was fully exposed on Wednesday as Vladimir Putin's sanctions-ravaged government teetered on the brink of its first international debt default since the Bolshevik revolution.

Moscow was due to pay $117 million in interest on two dollar-denominated sovereign bonds it had sold back in 2013. But the limits it now faces making payments, and talk from the Kremlin that it might pay in roubles - triggering a default anyway - meant even veteran investors were left guessing at what might happen.

One described it as the most closely watched government debt payment since Greece's default at the height of the euro zone crisis. Others said an emergency 'grace period' that allows Russia another 30 days to make the payment could drag the saga out.

"The thing about defaults is that they are never clear cut and this is no exception," said Pictet emerging market portfolio manager Guido Chamorro.

"There is a grace period, so we are not really going to know whether this is a default or not until April 15," he said referring to the situation if no coupon payment is made. "Anything could happen in the grace period."

It had nearly $650 billion of currency reserves

A Russian government debt default was unthinkable until what Putin called a "special military operation" in Ukraine began in late February.

It had nearly $650 billion of currency reserves, coveted investment-grade credit ratings with S&P Global, Moody's and Fitch, and was raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a day selling its oil and gas at soaring prices.

Then the tanks rolled and the United States, Europe and their Western allies fired back with unprecedented sanctions, which froze two-thirds of Russia's reserves that it turned out were held overseas.

"I think the market now expects Russia not to make the (bond) payments," the head of emerging market debt at Aegon Asset Management Jeff Grills, adding the conflict was one of the few emerging market events capable of really unsettling global markets.

That is because Russia's role as one of the world's top commodity producers has sent prices and global inflation skywards.

At the same time it has left Russia a virtual pariah state, crippled by sanctions and watching hundreds of the world's largest firms now quit the country after deciding their presence there is no longer feasible.

DEFAULT SCENARIOS

As for Russia's battered government bonds, most are now changing hands at just 10%-20% of their face value.

The two payments on Wednesday are the first of several, with another $615 million due over the rest of March, and the first 'principal' - final full payment of a bond - on April 4 worth $2 billion alone.

Experienced investors see three potential scenarios for how Wednesday's crucial deadline plays out.

The first is that Moscow pays in full and in dollars, meaning default worries go away for the time being.

Big Russian energy providers Gazprom and Rosneft have both made payments on international bonds over the last 10 days so there is still a sliver of hope it could be done if Moscow feels it is in its interests.

The second possibility is that Moscow doesn't pay, starting the 30-day grace period countdown clock until default.

A third option where Russia pays but in roubles is also possible, although the legal terms of the bonds would mean that is still tantamount to a default. The 30-day grace rule would still apply.

"Maybe we will know today (if they pay) but maybe we won't," said Pictet's Chamorro. His firm doesn't hold the bonds, but does hold other Russian bond - and when a country defaults on one of its bonds it tends to mean all its bonds 'cross default'.

"In situations like these it's safest to expect the unexpected. You can't really rule anything out".

EXPLAINER: How plausible is Chinese military aid for Russia?

 AP March 15,

https://www.aol.com/explainer-plausible-chinese-military-aid-092727148-155838489.html

 

BEIJING (AP) — The U.S. says Russia has asked China to provide military assistance for its war in Ukraine, and that China has responded affirmatively. Both Moscow and Beijing have denied the allegation, with a Chinese spokesperson dismissing it as “disinformation.”

Still, the claims have generated conjecture over how far Beijing would be willing to go in backing its “most important strategic partner,” as China’s foreign minister recently described Russia.

WHAT DID THE U.S. SAY?

Following initial reports that Russia had asked China for military aid, unnamed U.S. officials said that Washington had determined that China had sent a signal to Russia: Beijing would be willing to provide both military support for the campaign in Ukraine and financial backing to help stave off the impact of severe sanctions imposed by the West.

At a meeting in Rome on Monday, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan warned senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Yang Jiechi against providing such support, even as the Kremlin denied requesting military equipment.

The U.S. is wary of China's intentions because the government of President Xi Jinping has refused to criticize the Russian invasion, even as it seeks to distance itself from the Kremlin's war by calling for dialogue and reiterating its position that a nation's territory must be respected.

WHAT MIGHT CHINA OFFER?

If anything, smaller items such as bullets and meals are more likely than fighter jets and tanks, experts said.

China “probably wants to avoid high-profile or big-ticket arms sales to Russia in the midst of a conflict which would expose Beijing to international sanctions,” said Drew Thompson, a former U.S. Defense Department official currently at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore.

Beijing would be more willing to provide spare parts, consumables, ammunition, and dual-use items that don’t contravene sanctions and could fall below the threshold of international reprisals, Thompson said.

For example, Russian helicopters are likely using up their flares to counter portable short-range missiles like the Stinger. China could conceivably sell Russia some of its flares, if they are compatible with Russian systems, Thompson said. China might also share surveillance and intelligence, he said.

Given Washington’s warnings, any Chinese aid would likely involve “very basic stuff,” such as ration packs for soldiers, said Sam Roggeveen, director of the International Security Program at Australia’s Lowy Institute.

He added that Russia would find it virtually impossible to integrate Chinese armaments into its armed forces on such short notice.

WOULD CHINA DO IT?

While not impossible, both Chinese and non-Chinese experts say there are several factors working against it. For starters, it could look bad.

“China will be very careful trying its best to avoid its aid and other assistance being used on the battlefields of Ukraine,” said Shi Yinhong, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing.

He added that China “has no motive to provide any assistance to Russia’s operation in Ukraine.”

Roggeveen concurred that there is no “obvious upside” for China in aiding Moscow, adding that a weakened Russia could work to China’s strategic and economic advantage.

Chinese officials have also said throughout the crisis that the territorial integrity and sovereignty of all countries should be respected — though critics say its refusal to criticize Russia's invasion is in fundamental contradiction to that position.

“Russia’s military operation in Ukraine has in nature become an invasion, and China will never provide arms to help a country attack another sovereign county and that is not in accordance with international law,” said Li Xin, director of the Institute of European and Asian Studies at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law.

China also does not want to see the conflict worsen or be dragged in as a co-belligerent, so any Chinese support “would be measured and carefully calibrated,” Thompson said.

 

Putin wipes out entire Ukrainian city of Volnovakha

Zelensky accuses Kremlin of waging a ‘war of annihilation’ as governor says Volnovakha no longer exists

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/putin-wipes-out-entire-ukrainian-city-of-volnovakha-b28k0lwh7

· Richard Spencer, Kyiv. Sunday March 13 2022

Residents leave their damaged homes in Volnovakha. Barely anything is left of their city after days of intense Russian bombardment

 

An entire city in eastern Ukraine has been wiped out in the Russian invasion, the regional governor said yesterday.

Russian-backed separatists claimed on Friday to have captured Volnovakha. Days of heavy bombardment from the air and ground artillery assaults have demolished much of the small but strategically important city of 21,000 people, similar in size to Truro in Cornwall.

Videos on social media showed Russian soldiers and armoured vehicles in the city, surrounded by mangled, burnt-out buildings.

Most of the civilians living there had managed to escape before they arrived, said Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of the Donetsk region, and barely anything was left of the city. “In general, Volnovakha with its infrastructure as such no longer exists,” he told the Ukrainian television channel Direct.

 As the war enters its 18th day, President Putin's forces are intensifying their efforts, to take key cities, including the besieged port of Martupol, less than 40 miles south of Volnovakha, and expanding the offensive to new targets across the country.

 

The brutal tactics mirror those used by Russia to overwhelm citied i Syria and Chechnya.

In a video address from Kylv early yesterday President Zelensky accused Russia of waging a "war of annihilation" agains5 his country.

In other developments:

Putin spoke to President Macron of France and the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, for 75 minutes but showed no "unwillingness to end the war, according to a senior Macron aide.

The Ukrainian military claimed that Russian troops had fired on a convoy of women an children leaving a village northwest of Kylv of Friday by an agreed evacuation corridor, killing seven.

The Russian deputy Foreign minister, Serget Ryabkov, warned that further supplies of western military aid to Ukraine would be considered "legitimate targets"

 Volnovakha lies between the city violently  of Donetsk, the hub of the unrecognized separatist Donetsk People's Republic, which broke away from Ukraine eight years ago, and the vital Ukrainian-controlled port of Mariupol, on the Sea of Azov, which has been under siege since March 2nd, 2022.

In Mariupol, Europe's Aleppo, the sick are dying from lack of water and medicine and are being buried where they fall by their neighbours.

The population has been cut off from electricity, gas, water and telephone and internet communications, their only contact with the outside world coming through aid agencies satellite phones ad those belonging to the local administration. As of Friday 1,583 people had been killed, the city authorities said.

 Subjugating Mariupol, which had a population of almost half  a million before the war, would create a land bridge for Putin from western Russia to Crimea, which he seized in 2014. A staff member of the aid group Medecins Sans Frontieres managed to get a voicemail message out to colleagues, which they shared with The Sunday Times.

"We saw people wo died because of lack of medication", said the worker, his voice calm but insistent.

 

"There are a lot of such people inside Mariupol, many people who are killed and injured. They are just lying on the ground and putting the dead bodies inside."

 

He said there had been no medical supplies or drinking water for more than a week, and residents were gathering water from the ground and boiling it to drink.

The lack of communications meant no one knew what was happening to relatives, either elsewhere in the city or the rest of the country.

In a new address to his people yesterday, Zelensky said he had sent another team to try to get  ai into the city, after previous attempts to co-ordinate a "humanitarian corridor" failed when it came under renewed Russian attack.

"We will try every day to save our people," he aid. "I am grateful to every driver who tries to accomplish this difficult mission".

Russian bombing yesterday came close to the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent Mosque, where scores of civilians, mainly Turkish nationals, including 24 children, were those in the mosque, which had been hit by shellfire.

Zelinsky also said he had spoken to Macron and Scholz about Ukraine's application to join the EU, and had begged them to help secure the release of the Ukrainian mayor seized by the Russians.

Ivan Fedorow was taken away from his office in the city of Melitopol, which is now under Russian control. Two thousand residents defied Russian occupiers to protect there yesterday.

Zelensky also dwelt on the embarrassing  and highly publicised losses sustained by the Russians in their invasion, as their columns of tanks, heavy weapons and support vehicles are picked off by western-supplied missile launchers and drones.

"This is the biggest blow to the Russian army in deccades, " he said.

 

 

 

Four protesters arrested at Knightsbridge mansion but the stand-off with police continues as Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska claims the £50m home is NOT his and belongs to relatives

• Activists broke into 5 Belgrave Square at midnight before hanging Ukraine flag and banner attacking Putin
• Mansion belongs to family of Oleg Deripaska, one of seven Russian oligarchs who were sanctioned last week 
• Industrialist was once Russia's richest man and hosted Peter Mandelson and George Osborne on superyacht

By RORY TINGLE, HOME AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT and DAVID WILCOCK and CHAY QUINN and JOE MORGAN FOR MAILONLINE

PUBLISHED: 09:29, 14 March 2022 

 

Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska says the £50million Belgravia 'crash pad' which was 'liberated' by squatters in order to 'house Ukrainian refugees' today is owned by family members rather than him as police have arrested four.

Riot police were in a stand-off with Ukrainian protestors who seized the supposed London home of the sanctioned Russian industrialist.

A spokesperson for Mr Deripaska said that he and his family were 'appalled at the negligence of Britain's justice system' who could not remove the protestors for hours despite a heavy police presence. 

At least five activists broke into 5 Belgrave Square just after midnight before hanging a Ukrainian flag and a banner reading, 'The property has been liberated', as they vowed to stay until Vladimir Putin ended his invasion.

Mr Deripaska is one of seven oligarchs who were sanctioned by the UK government last week for being 'pro-Kremlin' and 'closely associated' with Putin.

Deripaska has intimate links with the British establishment, with Peter Mandelson and George Osborne previously visiting his £80million superyacht in Corfu.

At around midday, police officers wearing helmets and safety harnesses used a ladder and a JCB cherry picker to access the mansion's balcony, with two of the protesters trying to make a barricade out of potted plants.

Officers then used a drill to break open the front door, while activists shouted, 'Go away you losers' and 'you fascist scumbags' from the balcony above.

Protestors have said they will only come down if police let them leave with no arrests, saying that there is 'no evidence' of burglary and they will leave peacefully with their friends.

The squatters call themselves the London Mahknovists - after Nestor Makhno, who led an anarchist force that attempted to form a stateless society in Ukraine during the Russian Revolution of 1917-1923.

At one point, two of the activists shared a drink from a single glass while one man sang: 'I've had the time of my life', from the Dirty Dancing soundtrack.

Another shouted to people looking out of the window of the building next door: 'We are your new neighbours. We'll come around tomorrow with some brisket.' 

The Met said officers had 'searched' the property and not found any protesters inside. A spokesman added they were 'continuing to engage' with those on the balcony.

 

 

At least five activists broke into 5 Belgrave Square just after midnight. At around midday, large numbers of riot police massed outside before using a drill to get through the front door 

 

 

The mansion belongs to the family of oil tycoon Oleg Deripaska, one of seven oligarchs who were sanctioned by the UK government last week for being 'pro-Kremlin' and 'closely associated' with Putin

Officers tried to access the property's balcony using a ladder, as one of the activists tried to push it away 

The JCB cherry picker that police used to get onto the balcony, as the activists shouted 'you fascist scumbags' and 'losers' 

A police officer stands guard outside a mansion in Belgrave Square that has been occupied by a group of squatters, in London

 

 

The squatters call themselves the London Mahknovists - after Nestor Makhno, who led an anarchist force that attempted to form a stateless society in Ukraine during the Russian Revolution of 1917-1923

 

Deripaska, who was once Russia's richest man, was one of seven people targeted by the Government on Thursday

Before the police raid, three men stood on the balcony above the street, playing music, waving and dancing. 

Talking about finding housing for refugees, one said: 'Priti Patel, do not worry. We did your job. Refugees welcome.' 

A second man added: 'We are planning to stay until Putin stops the war. Putin is responsible for people losing their homes and lands. Sanctions are not enough. The Government has delayed action - they are playing games.'  

Another of the squatters, who appeared to be in his early 20s, said: 'There was no forceful entry whatsoever. We are using our human rights to protest.

 

 Ukraine says it launches counteroffensives against Russian forces Reuters March 16, 2022

 

https://www.aol.com/ukraine-launches-counteroffensives-several-areas-081138278-100153323.html

 

LVIV, Ukraine (Reuters) - Ukraine’s armed forces are launching counteroffensives against Russian forces "in several operational areas," Ukrainian presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak wrote on Twitter on Wednesday.

"This radically changes the parties’ dispositions," he added, without giving details.

Reuters was unable immediately to verify his comments.

In an update on the war, the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces referred to the "high intensity of hostilities" but did not say where fighting was heaviest.

Ukrainian officials also made clear that the death toll was rising from the war that began when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24.

The emergency service in Ukraine's eastern region of Kharkiv region said on Wednesday that at least 500 residents of the city of Kharkiv have been killed.

Prosecutor General said on Iryna Venediktova said on Facebook that 103 children have been killed so far in the war.

Russian forces have struck more than 400 educational establishments and 59 of them have been destroyed, she said.

The governor of the Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine said there was no electricity in the region's main city, Chernihiv, or in some other settlements in the area.

The governor of the Chernihiv region in northern Ukraine said there was no electricity in the region's main city, Chernihiv, or in some other settlements in the area.

But Governor Viacheslav Chaus said Ukraine's armed forces "are powerful and inflict powerful blows on the Russian enemy every hour."

 

Sanctions-savaged Russia teeters on brink of historic default

 Reuters MARC JONES - March 16, 2022,

https://www.aol.com/sanctions-savaged-russia-teeters-brink-010904138-093600510.html

Ukrainian President Zelensky gives virtual address to U.S. Congress

 

Sanctions-savaged Russia teeters on brink of historic default

  Rueters - MARC JONES March 16, 2022

 

 

 

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RS-100-202

LONDON (Reuters) - The economic cost of Russia's assault on Ukraine was fully exposed on Wednesday as Vladimir Putin's sanctions-ravaged government teetered on the brink of its first international debt default since the Bolshevik revolution.

Moscow was due to pay $117 million in interest on two dollar-denominated sovereign bonds it had sold back in 2013. But the limits it now faces making payments, and talk from the Kremlin that it might pay in roubles - triggering a default anyway - meant even veteran investors were left guessing at what might happen.

One described it as the most closely watched government debt payment since Greece's default at the height of the euro zone crisis. Others said an emergency 'grace period' that allows Russia another 30 days to make the payment could drag the saga out.

"The thing about defaults is that they are never clear cut and this is no exception," said Pictet emerging market portfolio manager Guido Chamorro.

"There is a grace period, so we are not really going to know whether this is a default or not until April 15," he said referring to the situation if no coupon payment is made. "Anything could happen in the grace period."

It had nearly $650 billion of currency reserves

A Russian government debt default was unthinkable until what Putin called a "special military operation" in Ukraine began in late February.

It had nearly $650 billion of currency reserves, coveted investment-grade credit ratings with S&P Global, Moody's and Fitch, and was raking in hundreds of millions of dollars a day selling its oil and gas at soaring prices.

Then the tanks rolled and the United States, Europe and their Western allies fired back with unprecedented sanctions, which froze two-thirds of Russia's reserves that it turned out were held overseas.

"I think the market now expects Russia not to make the (bond) payments," the head of emerging market debt at Aegon Asset Management Jeff Grills, adding the conflict was one of the few emerging market events capable of really unsettling global markets.

That is because Russia's role as one of the world's top commodity producers has sent prices and global inflation skywards.

At the same time it has left Russia a virtual pariah state, crippled by sanctions and watching hundreds of the world's largest firms now quit the country after deciding their presence there is no longer feasible.

DEFAULT SCENARIOS

As for Russia's battered government bonds, most are now changing hands at just 10%-20% of their face value.

The two payments on Wednesday are the first of several, with another $615 million due over the rest of March, and the first 'principal' - final full payment of a bond - on April 4 worth $2 billion alone.

Experienced investors see three potential scenarios for how Wednesday's crucial deadline plays out.

The first is that Moscow pays in full and in dollars, meaning default worries go away for the time being.

Big Russian energy providers Gazprom and Rosneft have both made payments on international bonds over the last 10 days so there is still a sliver of hope it could be done if Moscow feels it is in its interests.

The second possibility is that Moscow doesn't pay, starting the 30-day grace period countdown clock until default.

A third option where Russia pays but in roubles is also possible, although the legal terms of the bonds would mean that is still tantamount to a default. The 30-day grace rule would still apply.

"Maybe we will know today (if they pay) but maybe we won't," said Pictet's Chamorro. His firm doesn't hold the bonds, but does hold other Russian bond - and when a country defaults on one of its bonds it tends to mean all its bonds 'cross default'.

"In situations like these it's safest to expect the unexpected. You can't really rule anything out".

 

RICHARD ENGEL AND MARC SMITH AND HENRY AUSTIN

March 12, 2022,

https://www.aol.com/news/don-t-know-survived-family-093014345.html

 

Tetyana, Igor, Roman and Katherina Vlasenko, pictured a few years ago. #

 

Roman Vlasenko in front of his family home in Vorzel after it was bombed.

 

KYIV, Ukraine — Tetyana Vlasenko was bleeding from 12 bullet wounds to her legs when she begged a Russian military officer nearby for help. His soldiers had opened fire on her family’s car, yet the officer was apologetic as the soldiers gave them first aid.

While she lay there seriously hurt, she recalls him saying, “I’m sorry for doing this but we have an order to shoot everything that is moving, and you cannot imagine how many cars like this we have full of Nazis who are trying to bomb us,” Tetyana, 42, told NBC News on Wednesday from her bed in Kyiv City Hospital 17.

Her husband, Roman, 50, and their daughter, Katherina, 16, were also hit in their legs.

The officer’s comments echoed President Vladimir Putin’s accusations of Nazi elements within Ukraine, his stated reason for invading Russia’s western neighbor. Experts have slammed the allegations as slanderous and false.

Tetyana, a former shop worker, said the Russian soldiers she encountered “truly believe that everyone around is a Nazi.” She added that the soldiers “were all terrified,” and she had spoken calmly with them prior to the shooting.

 

After their house in the village of Vorzel was hit by a Russian strike on March 2, she said, they stayed with neighbors before deciding to leave the community just outside of Ukraine's capital Kyiv.

The family had already fled from Kremlin rule in Crimea after Russian forces annexed the peninsula in 2014, her husband said.

After driving up to the checkpoint at the end of their street, Roman, a former business consultant, said he asked the soldiers whether they could keep moving. “They asked him what his nationality was and why he spoke Russian so well,” Tetyana said.

“They were surprised that we spoke Russian amongst each other. My husband said,

‘We have a free country here, everyone speaks whichever language they like,’” she added. “And I said, ‘Your brains are full of Putin propaganda crap. There are no Nazis here.’”

They were waved through but got less than 40 feet before their car was fired on, Tetyana said.

She added that she was “naive” when she “saw the bullets tearing through the glass and metal into the car.”

“I started to show them documents and saying there were kids,” she said.

She briefly heard Katherina screaming in pain. “I remember the bullet coming through my knee and my bone,” the teenager said. “After this I lost consciousness.”

Roman “started to shout that they killed our daughter because she lost consciousness,” Tetyana recalled.

Their 8-year-old son, Igor, was the only one who escaped unscathed, because Katherina had covered him, Roman said.

Roman added that he called one of his neighbors, who shouted at the soldiers when he saw what had happened, before helping to transfer them to the hospital where they are recovering.

“I don’t know how we survived,” Roman said, sitting in a wheelchair at the foot of his daughter’s bed with his head in his hands.

“I feel huge, huge guilt for what happened because I made this decision to risk the whole of my family. I will have to live with this for the whole of my life.”

Putin is 'lashing out,' U.S. adviser says of Western Ukraine missile strike

https://www.aol.com/news/putin-lashing-u-adviser-says-153913336.html

Russian President Vladimir Putin, "frustrated" by Ukraine's surprisingly stiff resistance, is increasingly escalating the scope of the war, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday.

Earlier in the day, Russia fired waves of missiles at a Ukrainian military base in Lyiv, which is near the Polish border and far from the frontlines of the war.

"This does not come as a surprise to the American intelligence and national security community," Sullivan said on CNN's "State of the Union.”

"What it shows is that Vladimir Putin is frustrated by the fact that his forces are not making the kind of progress that he thought that they would make against major cities including Kyiv, that he is expanding the number of targets, that he is lashing out, and that he is trying to cause damage in every part of the country," Sullivan continued.

More than 30 Russian missiles killed at least 35 people and injured 134 in a strike at the Lviv military base, according to Ukrainian authorities. The base, a former NATO training center that had once hosted U.S. military instructors, had become a link for receiving Western military support to boost the country’s defense against the Russian invasion. The New York Times reported that "up to 1,000 foreign fighters were training at the base," according to a Ukrainian official. (The U.S. said no American forces were there on Sunday.)

Lviv, in Ukraine's west, has been a relatively peaceful outpost in the war, unlike the capital Kyiv and Ukraine's second-largest city, Kharkiv, in the east. It is a central hub for refugees fleeing west into Poland, as well as for supplies and weapons flowing east toward the heart of the conflict.

The Sunday missile strike comes as Russia's invasion drags into its third week, failing to take key cities, despite facing a much smaller Ukrainian military, though boosted by shipments of Western military equipment. Russia recently said that those military convoys are "legitimate targets" for its forces.

"This is the third, now, military facility or airfield that the Russians have struck in Western Ukraine in just the last couple of days. So clearly, at least from an airstrike perspective, they're broadening their target sets," Defense Department spokesperson John Kirby said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Sullivan also said Sunday that Russia would enter a broader war with NATO if it attacked any part of Poland, which is under 50 miles from Lviv and a member of the Western military alliance.

"The president has been clear repeatedly that the United States will work with our allies to defend every inch of NATO territory, and that means every inch," he said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "And if there is a military attack on NATO territory, it would cause the invocation of Article Five, and we would bring the full force of the NATO alliance to bear in responding to it."

Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, Oleg Deripaska and Five other Russian oligarchs worth £15bn have had their assets FROZEN by the UK and are banned from travelling to Britain for having 'blood on their hands'

• UK government has announced sanctions against Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich and six other oligarchs
• The individuals worth combined £15billion have been hit with asset freezes and travel bans in surprise move
• Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said those linked to Putin have 'the blood of the Ukrainian people on their hands' 

By JAMES TAPSFIELD POLITICAL EDITOR FOR MAILONLINE and DAVID WILCOCK, WHITEHALL CORRESPONDENT 

 10 March 2022

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10597693/Roman-Abramovich-Oleg-Deripaska-hit-UK-sanctions.html

Roman Abramovich is among seven oligarchs to be hit with an asset freeze and travel bans under brutal new UK sanctions unveiled today.

The government has announced that the owner of Chelsea FC will also be prohibited from transactions with UK individuals and businesses. The government could still grant him a licence to sell the club, but will need to be assured that he will not benefit financially and any proceeds would remain frozen.

Mr Abramovich's one time business partner, Oleg Deripaska, has been hit with the same measures - as have Rosneft chief Igor Sechin and four more described as being in Putin's 'inner circle'.

The Foreign Office said the Economic Crime Bill coming into force next week 'will allow UK Government to move further and faster than ever on sanctions'.

Boris Johnson said the government will keep 'tightening the vice' around Putin's cronies.

'There can be no safe havens for those who have supported Putin's vicious assault on Ukraine,' he said.

'Today's sanctions are the latest step in the UK's unwavering support for the Ukrainian people. We will be ruthless in pursuing those who enable the killing of civilians, destruction of hospitals and illegal occupation of sovereign allies.'

Foreign Secretary Liz Truss added: 'Today's sanctions show once again that oligarchs and kleptocrats have no place in our economy or society. With their close links to Putin they are complicit in his aggression.

'The blood of the Ukrainian people is on their hands. They should hang their heads in shame.

'Our support for Ukraine will not waver. We will not stop in this mission to ramp up the pressure on the Putin regime and choke off funds to his brutal war machine.'

The Foreign Office said the oligarchs have a collective net worth of around £15billion.

Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries tweeted that Chelsea FC will be able to operate under a 'special licence'.

The team will be able to play fixtures and pay staff, but trading in players seems to be off the table.

Only 'existing ticket holders' will be able to attend matches.

It appears that means only season ticket holder, and away fans will not be permitted. 

There is also the prospect that Champions League games will be played effectively behind closed doors, as those tickets are often purchased separately from season tickets.

Merchandise sales are also expected to end. 

Ms Dorries said the aim was to ensure that Abramovich cannot 'benefit from his ownership of the club'. 

The surprise move came as Defence minister James Heappey insisted the bombing of a maternity hospital in Ukraine was a war crime and called for Putin and Russian generals to be held to account.

Mr Heappey stressed that the West is gathering evidence that can be used in a future prosecution, but said in a round of interviews: 'What you see on your TV screens is a war crime.' 

The comments came as it was confirmed three people, including a child, died when warplanes bombed the hospital in besieged Mariupol while pregnant women gave birth in the basement.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has described the attack as an 'atrocity' and 'the ultimate proof of genocide against Ukrainians'. 

The hospital, in the besieged city of Mariupol, was hit 'several times' by high-explosive Russian bombs - one of which missed the building by yards and left a crater two-stories deep, officials said. Other bombs scored 'direct hits', President Zelensky said, wounding at least 17 people.

Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine's deputy Prime Minister, said there can be 'no doubt' the hospital was deliberately 'targeted' by Russia in a chilling echo tactics used during the bombing of the Syrian city of Aleppo while Putin's men were fighting alongside dictator Basahr al-Assad's troops. Moscow denies targeting civilian facilities. 

 

 

Roman Abramovich is among oligarchs to be hit with asset freeze and travel bans under new UK sanctions

 

 

Mr Abramovich's one time business partner, Oleg Deripaska (pictured), has also been hit with the same measures

 

Nikolai Tokarev  

 

 

Igor Sechin

 

Nikolai Tokarev  and Igor Sechin have also

 

 

A woman injured in Russian shelling of Mariupol's maternity hospital stands outside wrapped in a blanket amid the carnage

Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller 

 

Bank Rossiya chair Dmitri Lebedev 

Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller and Bank Rossiya chair Dmitri Lebedev  have been added to the UK list

 

VTB Bank president Andrei Kostin is now under the UK sanctions regime  

Gazprom chief executive Alexei Miller (left) and Bank Rossiya chair Dmitri Lebedev (right) have been added to the UK list

Putin could use chemical or biological weapons after spreading 'preposterous propaganda' the US is building bio-weapons in Ukraine labs, White House warns: Russia could use claims to justify terrifying escalation after 'barbaric' hospital bombing

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10595279/CHINA-accuses-running-bio-labs-Ukraine-Kremlin-accused-DoD-bio-weapons-research.html?ito=native_share_article-masthead

• China is backing a Russian conspiracy that the U.S. is funding biological weapons labs in Ukraine to study Black Death, anthrax and rabbit fever
• A defense official  told Fox News the claim is 'absurd, laughable and untrue'
• Russia made the claim this week as retroactive justification for invasion
• 'U.S. biolabs in Ukraine have indeed attracted much attention recently,' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Tuesday   
• Russia claimed that Ukraine destroyed stocks of 'dangerous pathogenic agents' because they were afraid Russia would discover the weapons
• Such a program would flout the Biological Weapons Convention if it existed
• It is the latest in a frenzy of scare stories meant to justify the Ukrainian invasion
• Russia has made similar claims before, with a close adviser to Putin claiming last year that the U.S. was developing biological laboratories by the Russian border

By ELIZABETH ELKIND, POLITICS REPORTER  and JOE DAVIES HEALTH REPORTER and KATELYN CARALLE, U.S. POLITICAL REPORTER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM 

9 March 2022 

 

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday accused Russia of trying to stage a 'false flag operation' by pushing claims the US was creating bioweapons in Ukraine

 

 

President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Twitter that there were 'people, children under the wreckage' of the hospital and called the strike an 'atrocity.'

 

 

A woman walks outside the damaged by shelling maternity hospital in Mariupol, Ukraine, after it was destroyed in a 'direct hit' by a Russian rocket on Wednesday

The White House is warning on Wednesday that Russia's autocratic leader Vladimir Putin could use chemical or biological weapons in a massive escalation of his unprovoked and deadly attack on Ukraine.

Press Secretary Jen Psaki sharply criticized Moscow's claim that the U.S. is building bioweapons labs in Ukraine as 'preposterous propaganda.' 

Earlier in the day she condemned Russia over its 'barbaric' bombing of a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. 

The senior Biden official pointed out Russia's 'track record' of gaslighting with its accusations against the West and said the Kremlin's reports were an 'obvious ploy' for Putin to continue his 'premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine' as Russia bombards Kyiv and other cities there for nearly two weeks.

'This is preposterous. It’s the kind of disinformation operation we’ve seen repeatedly from the Russians over the years in Ukraine and in other countries, which have been debunked, and an example of the types of false pretexts we have been warning the Russians would invent,' Psaki wrote on Twitter.

She denied that the U.S. government produces or owns any biological weapons, and said it is in full compliance with the Chemical Weapons Convention and the Biological Weapons Convention.

She pointed out Russia's own track record of allegations of using chemical and bilogical weapons against its enemies, adding: 'It’s Russia that has long maintained a biological weapons program in violation of international law.'

'Also, Russia has a track record of accusing the West of the very violations that Russia itself is perpetrating. In December, Russia falsely accused the U.S. of deploying contractors with chemical weapons in Ukraine.'

She continued, 'This is all an obvious ploy by Russia to try to try to justify its further premeditated, unprovoked, and unjustified attack on Ukraine.'

Psaki warned Russia's seemingly false outrage would lead to a 'false flag' operation.

'Now that Russia has made these false claims, and China has seemingly endorsed this propaganda, we should all be on the lookout for Russia to possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine, or to create a false flag operation using them. It’s a clear pattern,' she said. 

Earlier Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky warned that 'millions' of Ukrainians could die if NATO does not impose a no-fly zone over his country during an interview with Sky News. 

'They want us to feel like animals because they blocked our cities, the biggest cities in Ukraine and they blocked them because they don't want our people to get some food or water,' Zelensky said.  

'We can't stop all of this alone. Only if the world will unite around Ukraine.

'Don't wait for me to ask you several times, a million times, to close the sky. You have to phone us, to our people who lost their children, and say ''sorry we didn't do it yesterday". 

'The world did nothing. I'm sorry, but it's true. In future, it will be too late. They will close the sky but will lose millions of people [while they wait]'. 

His comments came after a maternity hospital in the city of Mariupol was decimated in a 'direct hit' by Russian rockets on Wednesday afternoon, which left children buried in the rubble.    

The Pentagon also dismissed on Wednesday claims the U.S. is operating biological labs out of Ukraine as 'malarkey' after China backed Russia's conspiracy the Washington is creating biological weapons in Eastern Europe.

'The Russian accusations are absurd – they're laughable and are, in the words of my Irish Catholic grandfather, 'a bunch of malarkey,' Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said during a briefing.

'There's nothing to it,' he continued. 'It's classic Russian propaganda.'

China on Tuesday came out spewing a Russian conspiracy accusing the U.S. of operating labs in Ukraine to create biological weapons. The claim was originally made by the Kremlin as a way to retroactively justify President Vladimir Putin's now-14-day attack.

'U.S. biolabs in Ukraine have indeed attracted much attention recently,' Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Tuesday when speaking to reporters.

'All dangerous pathogens in Ukraine must be stored in these labs and all research activities are led by the U.S. side,' he added without providing evidence to the alleged America-run bio labs.

'The Russian narrative that they've put out there that the United States is somehow running or facilitating, you know, biological weapons labs in Ukraine and that these labs are going to pose a threat to the – this is of a piece of the Russian playbook here: claim they're the victims, create a false narrative to try to justify their own aggressive actions,' a senior Defense official told Fox News.

'It is absurd. It is laughable. It is untrue,' they added, echoing Kirby's sentiments.

Meanwhile, it's believed that Putin has his own 'bioweapon arsenal' in Siberia.

The State Centre for Research on Virology and Biotechnology in Novosibirsk Oblast is in possession of devastating diseases like smallpox and anthrax, as well as more recent killer pathogens like Ebola. 

Opened during the height of the Cold War in 1974 as a bioterrorism research centre, it is still one of Russia's most heavily guarded sites, fenced off with barbed-wire with armed soldiers permanently stationed at its gates. 

Officially, the lab now focuses on developing vaccines for lethal viruses. Last year it launched research into prehistoric viruses found in paleolithic horses recovered from melted permafrost in Siberia.  

But a U.S. State Department report last year claimed Russia 'maintains an offensive biological weapons program' despite the country insisting it had ceased such research.  

 

The State Research Centre of Virology and Biotechnology, known as Vector (pictured), released a statement saying a gas cylinder exploded on the fifth floor in 2019

Earlier this week, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs' information and press department Director Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova said that in the midst of invasion, Moscow confirmed Ukrainian leadership was attempting to clean up traces of 'military and biological programs'.

She claimed these programs had financial backing from the U.S.

Now China is repeating this claim, especially after using a similar diversion tactic la

st year when questions mounted on the origins of COVID-19.

At the time, China pointed to Fort Detrick, a U.S. military facility in Maryland, as the source of the virus that led to the now two-year pandemic.

The Soviet Union falsely claimed in the 1980s that the same facility was the source of the virus causing AIDS.

Zhao also mentioned the facility on Tuesday.  

The new accusations from China comes as Russia already accused earlier this week that the U.S. is using Ukraine to carry out illegal biological weapons research on deadly diseases, including the Black Death.

'The U.S., as the party that knows the labs the best,' Zhao claimed, 'should disclose specific information as soon as possible, including which viruses are stored and what research has been conducted.'

He also called on 'relevant sides to ensure the safety' of the bio lab facilities.

The biological weapons claim is just the latest round of misinformation meant to justify Putin's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Before the attack was sparked in late February, there were multiple false flag videos released showing alleged 'genocide' of Russian-speaking residents in Eastern Ukraine, which U.S. intelligence claimed was made with altered video.

Moscow alleged this week that an operation was carried out last month to destroy stocks of 'especially dangerous pathogenic agents of the plague, anthrax, tularemia (rabbit fever), cholera and other lethal diseases.'

The bio-weapons program, which would flout International law, was allegedly held close to the Russian border. The pathogens were supposedly destroyed by Ukraine so that Vladimir Putin's invaders would not find evidence of their existence.

This is the latest in a frenzy of scare stories receiving major coverage in Russian media to justify the increasingly bloody war in Ukraine, where at least 364 Ukrainians have died and at least 759 have been injured, according to the United Nations. 

Russia has been laying the groundwork for such claims for quite some time, according to Foreign Policy magazine. In January, a Russian-language Telegram account warned that a 'full-fledged network of biological laboratories has been deployed' with 'American grants' to study deadly viruses that were already making people sick in Kazakhstan.

In May 2020, the Russian newspaper Izvestia made similar claims. And a close advisor to Putin accused the US last year of developing 'more and more biological laboratories … mainly by the Russian and Chinese borders.'

The biological weapons research is the latest 'false flag' orchestrated by Russia since it announced a 'special military operation' against Ukraine on February 24 to 'demilitarize' and 'de-Nazify' its neighbor, whose president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy. is Jewish.

The Kremlin has separately claimed that Ukraine was building plutonium dirty bombs at Chernobyl - now under Russian military control. 

Russia is also alleging Ukrainian secret services and the Azov battalion - a unit of the Ukrainian National Guard known for its neo-Nazi sympathies - plan to explode a reactor at the National Research Centre of the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology, then blame Moscow for nuclear contamination.

Scant evidence has been produced for the claims, and they are likely to be seen by the West as propaganda to galvanize support for the war inside Russia.

The West has repeatedly warned of Russian 'false flag' and 'fake' stunts linked to its invasion.

'It is clear that with the launch of the special military operation the Pentagon was seriously worried about disclosure of secret biological experiments in Ukraine,' alleged Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov.

He claimed Moscow had obtained documents which 'confirm that Ukrainian bio-laboratories in the immediate vicinity of Russian territory were engaged in developing components of biological weapons'.

It was impossible to verify the authenticity of the documents which the Russians say they are still studying.

'Some of them, in particular instructions by the Ukrainian Health Ministry to destroy pathogens and the certificates of destruction at bio-laboratories in Poltava and Kharkiv, we're publishing right now.'

Konashenkov said employees of Ukrainian bio-laboratories told the Russian army that 'especially hazardous pathogens' and other lethal diseases infecting agents had been urgently destroyed on February 24, ahead of the invasion.

The destruction was to conceal breaches of the Biological Weapons Convention, it was alleged. The disarmament treaty entered into force in March 1975. 

It has been signed and ratified by 183 countries including Russia, the United States and Ukraine, according to the Arms Control Association.

Separately, Russiahas  alleged a planned 'provocation' by Ukrainian defenders to blow up a research reactor near Kharkiv causing 'possible radioactive contamination,' which would be blamed on Moscow.

'Nationalists mined a reactor at an experimental nuclear system located at the [National Research Center of] Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology,' said a Russian military statement.

'The Ukrainian military and the Azov battalion militants are planning to blow up the reactor and accuse the Russian Armed Forces of allegedly launching a missile strike on an experimental nuclear system.'

They further claimed that 'on March 6, foreign journalists arrived in Kharkiv to register the consequences of the provocation, followed by accusing Russia of creating an environmental disaster'.

Earlier Russia claimed that plutonium-based 'dirty bombs' were being prepared at Chernobyl.

No evidence was cited.

Russia in recent years has been accused of using chemical-agent novichok to poison both double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury and Kremlin foe Alexei Navalny in Siberia.  

Last week, Ukraine warned that Russia may be about to stage a false flag attack on one of its own border villages using 'multiple rocket-launching systems'.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter on Thursday there were 'worrying reports' of a potential operation to suggest Ukraine has attacked a Russian village.

'Russians might have pointed multiple rocket-launching systems in the Russian border village of Popovka towards their own territory. Knowing the barbaric nature of Russian actions we fear a false flag operation,' Kuleba said.

His statement was not immediately confirmed by other government officials but follows days of Russian troop movements to encircle key Ukrainian cities after Moscow's men failed to swiftly take major urban centres and to subdue Kyiv's military. 

Two days before the invasion on February 22, Russia was accused of orchestrating a 'false flag' event after Moscow claimed it ambushed two military units, destroyed two armoured vehicles and killed five Ukrainian troops in Russian territory.

Analysts were quick to cast doubt over the claims, which resulted in fresh warnings that the Kremlin was looking to manufacture conflict as justification for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

In another incident, the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) claimed that bombing carried out by 'Ukrainian saboteurs' killed three civilians. But a video of a reporter showing the damage was also questioned by analysts.

US intelligence had for weeks before the invasion been warning Russia was planning a false flag attack as a pretext for an invasion - and a social media disinformation campaign to portray Ukraine as the aggressor.

Officials last month said they had evidence that operatives training in urban warfare and sabotage would carry out the attacks.

On Sunday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the country was in talks with Poland in order to orchestrate a deal that would allow Polish fighter jets to be flown by pilots from the Ukrainian Air Force in order to combat Russia's air superiority.

The deal would see Ukraine take Poland's 28 Russian-made MiG-29 warplanes, which would in turn be replaced by a fresh set of F-16's by the United States. 

Blinken told CBS's Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan: 'That gets the green light. In fact, we're talking with our Polish friends right now about what we might be able to backfill their needs if in fact they choose to provide these fighter jets to the Ukrainians. What can we do? 

'How can we help to make sure that they get something to backfill the planes that they're handing over to the Ukrainians?'   

It comes as Russia's Defense Ministry today warned countries, including NATO member Romania, against hosting Kyiv's military aircraft, saying they could end up being involved in an armed conflict.          

Defense Ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in a video briefing that some Ukrainian combat planes had redeployed to Romania and other Ukraine neighbors he did not identify.

He warned that if those warplanes attacked the Russian forces from the territory of those nations, it 'could be considered as those countries' engagement in the military conflict.'  

Konashenkov said: 'We know for sure that Ukrainian combat aircraft have flown to Romania and other neighboring countries.

'The use of the airfield network of these countries for basing Ukrainian military aviation with the subsequent use of force against Russia's army can be regarded as the involvement of these states in an armed conflict.'    

The spokesman also claimed that 'practically all' Ukraine's combat-ready aircraft had been destroyed.    

Earlier today, U.S. Army Gen. Mark Milley visited a training center in Pabrade, Lithuania, amid the escalating crisis in Ukraine. 

Ukraine fears an attack from the air may soon be the go-to choice of tactics by Russia after their ground offensive appears to be making far slower progress than the  Kremlin had anticipated.   

The White House is now working out the practicalities of carrying out a deal, including the crucial question of how the Ukrainians would physically be able to get their hands on the planes.

'There are a number of challenging practical questions, including how the planes could actually be transferred from Poland to Ukraine. 

'We are also working on the capabilities we could provide to backfill Poland if it decided to transfer planes to Ukraine,' a White House spokesperson told the Financial Times.

Poland, which is a member of NATO, would need to play the situation delicately and not be seen to overtly supporting the war unilaterally.

On Saturday, an 18-month-old boy named Kirill was fatally wounded in the the southern city of Mariupol after Russian forces shelled Ukraine's second city just minutes into an agreed cease-fire. 

Kirill's devastated mother Marina Yatsko and her boyfriend Fedor were later seen grieving as they embraced their son's lifeless body laid out on a stretcher in the besieged city.  

And Saturday, in some of the most harrowing scenes of the war so far, the bodies of those killed in the mortar attack were seen lying motionless on a road.

Beside them were suitcases packed ahead of what they hoped would be a journey to safety. There was even a pet carrier among the luggage.

Three members of the same family were among those killed in the attack by Vladimir Putin's forces on Irpin, a town 12 miles from Kyiv.

Horrific images captured the terrifying experience of mothers, fathers, grandparents and children running from Russian artillery fire.

 

 

China's foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian spewed on Tuesday a new Russian conspiracy that the U.S. is operating a biological weapons lab in Ukraine as retroactive justification for invasion

 

 

The claims come as Russia continues its 14th day of invasion in Ukraine. Pictured: A man rides a bicycle in front of a damaged apartment building in Mariupol, Ukraine on Wednesday, March 9, 2022

 

 

Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov claims to have received documents proving that Ukraine was conducting biological weapons research near Russia with the help of the U.

 

A factory and a store are burning after been bombarded in Irpin, in the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, March 6, 2022

 

 

 

Refugees continue to spill out of Russia as bombing intensifies in Ukraine

 

 

 

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter on Thursday there were 'worrying reports' of a potential operation to suggest Ukraine has attacked a Russian village

 

 

Ukrainians crowd under a destroyed bridge as they try to flee crossing the Irpin river in the outskirts of Kyiv, March 5, 2022

 

 

Devastating images show the father of an 18-month-old boy named Kirill running into a hospital in Ukraine with his dying son

 

 

A man and a child escape from the town of Irpin, after heavy shelling on the only escape route used by locals

 

 

A wife says her goodbyes to her husband who is a member of the Territorial Defence as she evacuates Irpin, Ukraine, on Sunday

 

A mother and two children were killed and the father was wounded by a mortar shell as hundreds of civilians sought safety

Groups of people flee the city of Irpin, northwest of Kyiv, after the region faced heavy bombardment from Kremlin forces

Sarin gas in Syria and Putin's 'poisoning' of political enemies like Alexei Navalny: Russia's dark and 'well-documented' ties to chemical weapons and the Soviet 'bioweapon' lab that's sparked US fears 

Press Secretary Jen Psaki condemned Kremlin accusations that the United States was building a bioweapons lab in Ukraine as 'preposterous' and pointed out that it was Russian President Vladimir Putin who had a history of using such horrific methods to take out his enemies.

Meanwhile, attention has turned to a Soviet-era research facility in Siberia that could be where Putin stores a terrifying 'bioweapons arsenal.' The State Department indicated last year that Russia is running a bioweapons program, though the Kremlin denied the allegation.

'It’s Russia that has a long and well-documented track record of using chemical weapons, including in attempted assassinations and poisoning of Putin’s political enemies like Alexey Navalny,' Psaki wrote on Twitter Wednesday. 'It’s Russia that continues to support the Assad regime in Syria, which has repeatedly used chemical weapons. It’s Russia that has long maintained a biological weapons program in violation of international law.' 

Putin previously shielded his ally, Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, from a United Nations investigation into his use of chemical weapons on civilians in the country's ongoing civil war.

Human Rights Watch found that at least 85 chemical weapons attacks occurred in Syria between 2013 and 2018, the majority of which they blamed on the Russian-backed Syrian government. 

Both Moscow and Damascus have denied the government's use of bioweapons even though Assad admitted to stockpiling them in a 2013 Fox interview.

On 2018 an apparent sarin gas attack in the city of Douma was reported to have killed an estimated 40 to 50 people.

Russian officials claimed after an 'inspection' of the site that the attack had been staged by Western governments. 

The US State Department had accused Russia of working with Syria 'to sanitize the locations of the suspected attacks and remove incriminating evidence of chemical weapons use.'

Putin has also been accused of using chemical weapons to carry out targeted attacks -- such as those against Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny and former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal.

Navalny, one of the autocrat's highest-profile critics in recent years, fell ill on a domestic flight to Moscow in August 2020. He was taken to a Russian hospital after the plane made an emergency landing but was flown to Berlin for treatment two days later upon his wife's insistence.

Labs in Ger

many, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, detected that he was exposed to the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent. 

Navalny was arrested when he returned to Russia in January 2021 and has been incarcerated ever since, despite international calls for his release.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied having a role in poisoning Navalny. Putin laughed off accusations he was responsible when asked at an event in December 2020, and suggested it was a 'trick' pulled to raise the opposition leader's profile.

Navalny's poisoning was not the first time Putin was tied to Novichok, however.

On March 4, 2018 former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia Skripal were found unconscious on a park bench in the city of Salisbury, England.

A witness told the BBC he saw Yulia on the park bench foaming at the mouth and her eyes 'were wide open but completely white.'

Skripal was previously convicted of 'high treason' by a Russian court in 2006 for allegedly revealing the identities of Europe-based Russian agents to the UK's MI6 intelligence agency.

British authorities identified the poisonous substance as Novichok and accused Russia of attempted murder. They claim Russian agents flew to England, applied the nerve agent to Skripal's door handle and then left the country, according to the New York Times. The Kremlin has denied any involvement. 

Former UK Prime Minister Theresa May said at the time, 'Either this was a direct action by the Russian state against our country, or the Russian government lost control of its potentially catastrophically damaging nerve agent and allowed it to get into the hands of others.' 

A Salisbury resident died in June of that year after applying perfume her boyfriend brought home a perfume bottle he found in the trash. Her boyfriend fell ill but survived. British law enforcement believes they succumbed to the same poison as the Skripals.

It appears Putin could have a whole stockpile of chemical weapons stored in what looks like a villain's lair straight out of a James Bond film.

But this is the Soviet-era facility in Siberia where Vladimir Putin's arsenal of bioweapons may be being housed today. 

The State Centre for Research on Virology and Biotechnology in Novosibirsk Oblast is in possession of devastating diseases like smallpox and anthrax, as well as more recent killer pathogens like Ebola. 

Opened during the height of the Cold War in 1974 as a bioterrorism research centre, it is still one of Russia's most heavily guarded sites, fenced off with barbed-wire with armed soldiers permanently stationed at its gates.

The 70,000sqft centre is about the same size as a football pitch and is one of 100 research and administrative buildings in the facility, known in Russia as 'Vector'. 

It is one of just 59 maximum-security biolabs in the world, a status it shares with the Wuhan Institute of Virology — the site at the centre of the origins of the Covid pandemic. 

Vector has clearance to handle the world's deadliest pathogens and workers responsible for studying the viruses wear military green, full-body hazmat suits.

The secretive level four facility is nestled in the foothills of southwestern Siberia on the border of Kazakhstan, one of the harshest and most isolated places on earth, where temperatures can plunge to as low as -35C in winter.

Russia claims the lab, one of a dozen involved in the USSR's manufacturing of bioweapons, shut down research into the weapons in 1992 after the fall of the Soviet Union.  

Officially, the lab now focuses on developing vaccines for lethal viruses. Last year it launched research into prehistoric viruses found in paleolithic horses recovered from melted permafrost in Siberia.  

But a US State Department report last year claimed Russia 'maintains an offensive biological weapons program' despite the country insisting it had ceased such research. 

It comes after the US ambassador to the United Nations claimed that Putin could use bioweapons to overthrow the Ukrainian Government, warning 'nothing is off the table' for the Russian dictator.

Russia itself has accused the US of developing bioweapons in Ukrainian labs as part of its justification for the war, although these claims have been denied by global experts.

Former US officials and non-proliferation experts also insist the labs are working to detect and prevent the spread of bioweapons, and have also helped in containing disease outbreaks.

The lab hit the headlines in 2019 when a gas explosion left one worker with second and third degree burns. 

Bosses were forced to deny that the fire had exposed the public to pathogens stored inside. 

Fifteen years earlier, lab worker Antonina Presnyakova died after she accidentally pricked herself with a needle which contained the Ebola virus. 

And its former boss Professor Ilya Drozdov went missing in 2017 after being accused of stealing two million roubles — then worth around £27,000 — from the facility.

Professor Drozdov was put on Interpol's wanted list but has still not been found five years later, with authorities fearing he escaped abroad. 

The facility — also called the Vector Institute — is believed to be one of the locations where Russia may have continued the bioweaponary scheme, which was named Biopreparat in the Cold War era.

A US state department report last year stated that Russia 'maintains an offensive biological weapons program and is in violation of its obligation under Articles I and II of the Biological Weapons Convention'.

The document said: 'The issue of compliance by Russia with the BWC has been of concern for many years.'

The convention, which forced the USSR to officially disband Biopreparat, is an international treaty banning countries from developing and stockpiling biological weapons.

Biopreparat agency — which spearheaded the country's biological warfare programme — was founded in 1974, the same year as the lab. It employed up to 40,000 workers across five military-focused institutes. 

The Vector facility, which now employs around a third of the number 4,500 staff it had back in the Soviet era, is one of 59 level four security labs dotted around 23 different countries.

 

The largest facility in the world is the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, where some believe the coronavirus pandemic began. 

There are seven in the UK, the best known of which is the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, run by the Ministry of Defence at its base in Porton Down, Wiltshire — where two labs research the threat from biological weapons.

Another high-security lab, run by the National Institute of Medical Research, is based in Camden, North London, and studies flu viruses capable of causing pandemics. 

Experts are becoming increasingly concerned about the control and management of the dangerous organisms in these labs, with some warning that the safety measures are nowhere near sufficient to prevent a global pandemic caused by escaped viruses.

Filippa Lentzos, a senior lecturer in science and international security at King’s College London, said 75 per cent of high-security labs around the world are sited in urban areas — increasing the likelihood of rapid transmission in the event of a virus escaping. 

Vector is also one of just two labs to house the deadly smallpox virus, with the other being the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) in Atlanta, US. They are the only facilities in the world allowed to keep the virus under an international agreement. 

They are both inspected for safety by the World Health Organization (WHO) every two years, with the Vector Institute's last check-up coming in 2019 before the start of the pandemic. 

The last naturally occurring case of smallpox was in 1977 and by 1980 the World Health Organization had declared it globally eradicated.

Smallpox is estimated to have killed up to 300million people in the 20th century.  

Scientists at the lab had also previously weaponised Marburg virus — which kills 88 per cent of people that it infects.

A researcher who injected himself with the virus and died in 1988 is reportedly buried in a zinc-lined grave at a cemetery in the lab complex.

His death came 16 years before Ms Presnyakova accidentally pricked herself with Ebola and died while working in the lab.  

In 2017, Professor Drozdov disappeared without a trace after a complicated legal wrangle.

He was head of the facility for five years and knew some of Moscow's biggest biological secrets. 

A court ordered Drozdov to be arrested 'in absentia' over alleged fraud, in a mysterious case linked to Vector which was only launched four years after he left the research centre, reported The Siberian Times. 

After leaving the institute in 2010, he returned to the southern Russian city of Saratov, where he had earlier headed another major complex called Russian Scientific Research Anti-Plague Institute 'Microbe', providing protection against dangerous deceases like bubonic plague, anthrax, and cholera.

Colleagues at Vector claimed that as director he paid 'exorbitant' salaries to executives, while laboratory workers received 'humiliatingly low wages'. 

And in 2019 the lab made the news again when a gas cylinder explosion threatened to leak some of its deadly viruses. 

Russia claims there is no sustained threat after a gas cylinder exploded on the fifth floor.

Authorities scrambled 13 fire engines and 38 firefighters to tackle the blaze — which the lab claims covered 30 square metres. 

The mayor of Koltsovo claimed that no biologically hazardous materials were released in the explosion.

Since the Soviet Union collapsed, the United States has invested an estimated £7.5million at Vector to encourage the site to abandon bioweapon research in favour of vaccine development. 

The lab claims it now only works on vaccine research and is no longer involved in biological warfare. 

In recent years Vector has been involved in efforts to find cures and antidotes to killers such as bubonic plague, anthrax, hepatitis B, HIV and cancer. 

 

 

Two years earlier, former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skripal (right) and his daughter Yulia Skripal (left) were poisoned by what British officials have said is Novichok

 

 

Putin critic Alexei Navalny (seen in a video link from a prison during a court session in December 2021) was poisoned with the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent, multiple countries have said

 

Putin has previously given cover to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad when he was accused of using chemical weapons on his own people

 

 

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Russia could 'possibly use chemical or biological weapons in Ukraine' after the Kremlin accused the United States of building a bioweapons lab in Ukraine

 

 

The lab is one of 59 level four maximum containment labs housing the most deadly viruses in the world, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where some believe the Covid pandemic may have originated

 

 

Officially, the lab focuses on developing vaccines for lethal viruses, including smallpox, anthrax, Ebola, HIV and Marburg virus. Pictured: Workers in hazmat suits at the lab

 

 

 

At least two people who worked at the lab have been killed from Marburg and Ebola respectively after accidentally coming into contact with the viruses. Pictured: Workers in hazmat suits at the lab

 

 

 

Vector (pictured in 2016, with medical workers handling the Ebola virus in medical unit number 163) is one of just two to house the deadly smallpox virus, with the other being the Centers for Disease Control and Protection in Atlanta

 

 

 

 Vector is also one of just two labs to house the deadly smallpox virus, with the other being the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) in Atlanta, US

 

 

 

Scientists at the lab had previously weaponised Marburg virus — which kills 88 per cent of people that it infects

 

 

 

 

The State Centre for Research on Virology and Biotechnology in Novosibirsk Oblast (pictured) houses Russia's bioweapon arsenal of smallpox, anthrax and Ebola

The US And Ukraine Have Every Reason To Lie About The War

Caitlin Johnstone

he Washington Post has a new article out titled "Intelligence points to heightened risk of Russian chemical attack in Ukraine, officials say," and I challenge you to find me any Russian state media with two opening paragraphs that are more brazenly propagandistic and bereft of journalistic ethics than these:

"The United States and its allies have intelligence that Russia may be preparing to use chemical weapons against Ukraine, U.S. and European officials said Friday, as Moscow sought to invigorate its faltering military offensive through increasingly brutal assaults across multiple Ukrainian cities.

"Security officials and diplomats said the intelligence, which they declined to detail, pointed to possible preparations by Russia for deploying chemical munitions, and warned the Kremlin may seek to carry out a 'false-flag' attack that attempts to pin the blame on Ukrainians, or perhaps Western governments. The officials, like others quoted in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the matter."

So Russia is preparing to stage a chemical attack, and also the Russian chemical attack might look like Ukrainians or western governments committing a chemical attack, and also the evidence for this is secret, and also the government officials advancing this claim are secret, and also Russia's military offensive is faltering. Gotcha.

The third paragraph is even better:

"The accusations surfaced as Russia repeated claims that the United States and Ukraine were operating secret biological weapons labs in Eastern Europe — an allegation that the Biden administration dismissed as 'total nonsense' and 'outright lies.'”

This paragraph is awesome in two different ways. First, it's awesome because The Washington Post goes out of its way to inform readers that Russia's claims have been dismissed as "total nonsense" and "outright lies" after having literally just reported completely unevidenced claims by anonymous government officials with no criticism or scrutiny of any kind. Secondly, it's awesome because at no point during the rest of the article is any mention made of Victoria Nuland's incendiary admission before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Ukraine has "biological research facilities" that the US is "quite concerned" might end up "falling into the hands of Russian forces".

Over and over again throughout the article The Washington Post takes great care to inform readers that Russian claims about biological weapons are not to be trusted, with allegations from Moscow described as "unproven accusations" made with "no verifiable evidence", "absurd and laughable", "outrageous claims”, “utter nonsense”, "sinking to new depths" and "baseless".

This, again, after uncritically reporting completely unsubstantiated allegations by government officials and sheltering them from any accountability by granting them the cover of anonymity. Unproven claims by the Russian government are laughable absurdities presented without evidence; unproven claims by the US government are just The News.

The Washington Post also refers to past Russian dismissals of alleged chemical weapons attacks in Syria as false flags used to frame Damascus, while of course making no mention of the mountains of evidence that this has indeed occurred. It also says the UN human rights office "has received 'credible reports' of Russia using cluster bombs" which "could constitute war crimes", making no mention of the USA's abundant use and sale of these same munitions.

Democracy Dies in Darkness.

The fact that this Russian false flag narrative is being shoved forward with so much propagandistic fervor, not just by The Washington Post but also by government officials and CIA media pundits, makes it all the more concerning that we're seeing things like YouTube banning the denial of "well-documented violent events" involving Russia's invasion of Ukraine. We could soon see a chemical weapons incident occur in Ukraine, after which Silicon Valley platforms ban all accounts who express skepticism of the official western narrative about what happened.

The US-centralized empire is censoring and propagandizing as though it is in a hot war with Russia currently. Officially the US and its allies are not at war, but the imperial narrative management machine is behaving as though we are. This makes sense because when two nuclear-armed powers are fighting for dominance and know a direct military confrontation can kill them both, other types of warfare are used instead, including propaganda campaigns and psychological warfare.

There is a widespread general understanding in the west that Russia stands everything to gain by lying about what happens on the ground in Ukraine and cannot be taken at its word about occurrences during this war. There is much less widespread understanding of the fact that both Ukraine and the United States stand everything to gain by lying about this war as well and cannot be trusted either.

The Washington Post's own reporting says that behind the scenes western governments see Russian victory in this war as a foregone conclusion. Ukraine's only chance at stopping Russia in the near term would be if it could persuade NATO powers to take a more direct role in combat, like setting up a no-fly zone as President Zelensky has persistently pleaded with them to do. One way to get around NATO's rational resistance to directly attacking the military forces of a nuclear superpower would be to appeal to emotion via atrocity propaganda. By circulating a narrative that Russia has done something heinous which cries out to the heavens for vengeance, regardless of the risks entailed.

The United States would also benefit from circulating atrocity propaganda about Russia, in that it would further consolidate international support behind the agenda to economically strangle the nation to death in facilitation of the empire's struggle for unipolar planetary hegemony. Even before the invasion the US was already pushing the narrative that Russia has a list of dissidents, journalists and "vulnerable populations such as religious and ethnic minorities and LGBTQI+ persons” who it plans on rounding up and torturing.

To be clear, it is not conjecture that the US and its proxies make use of atrocity propaganda. The infamous Nayirah testimony for example helped manufacture consent for the Gulf War when a 15 year-old girl who turned out to be a coached plant falsely told the US Congressional Human Rights Caucus that she'd witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators in Kuwait and leaving them on the floor to die.

Atrocity propaganda has been in use for as long as war and media have coexisted, and it would be incredibly naive to believe it won't continue to be. Especially by power structures with a known history of doing so.

For this reason it is necessary to take everything claimed about what happens in Ukraine with a planet-sized grain of salt, whether it's by Russia, Ukraine, or the US and its allies. Be very skeptical of anything you hear about chemical attacks or any other narrative that can be used to get military firepower moving in a way that it otherwise would not. All parties involved in this conflict have every reason in the world to lie about such things.

by Caitlin Johnstone

Umm… Are We The Baddies?

Reuters reports that Facebook and Instagram are now allowing calls for the death of Russians and Russian leaders in exemption from the platforms' hate speech terms of service due to the war in Ukraine:

"Meta Platforms will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to internal emails seen by Reuters on Thursday, in a temporary change to its hate speech policy."

Twitter has also altered its rules against incitement and death threats in the case of Russian leaders and military personnel, as Ben Norton explains here for Multipolarista.

Last month we also learned that Facebook is now allowing users to praise the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion because of the war, a move that is arguably the most liberal thing that has ever happened.

Western institutions everywhere are rejecting all things Russia with such a savage degree of xenophobia it really ought to shock anyone who was born after the 1800s. Everything from Russian athletes to Russian musicians to Russian-made films to Russian composers to Russian Netflix shows to lectures about Russian authors to Russian restaurants to Russian vodka to Russian-bred cats to Russian trees to dishes that sound a little too much like "Putin" have been cancelled to varying degrees around the western world.

Normally when the US and its allies are involved in a war they'll at least pay lip service to the notion that they have nothing but good will for the people of the enemy nation, claiming they only oppose their oppressive rulers. With Russia it's just a complete rejection of the entire culture, the entire ethnicity. It's a widespread promotion of hatred for the actual people because of who they are.

These are the people who are being smashed with crushing economic sanctions while western pundits proclaim that "There are no more ‘innocent’ ‘neutral’ Russians anymore" and ask "At what point do you hold a people responsible for putting an evil despot in power?" This even as the Russian people are being arrested by the thousands in anti-war protests, putting to shame our own western society that has generally slept through war after war in the years since 9/11 while our militaries have been killing of millions of people.

And this is all over a war that the western empire knowingly provoked, almost certainly planned in advance, and appears to be doing everything possible to ensure that it continues. Antiwar's Dave DeCamp reports that Washington is still to this day not engaging in any serious diplomacy with Moscow over this conflict, preferring to strangle Russia economically and pour weapons into Ukraine to make the war as painful and costly as possible. Both of these preferences just so happen to nicely complement the US empire's goal of unipolar planetary hegemony.

Meanwhile the entire western political/media class seems to be doing everything it can to turn this from a regional proxy war into a very fast and radioactive World War 3. Calls for a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would require directly attacking the Russian military and risking a nuclear exchange in the resulting escalations, are now ubiquitous. Claims that more directly confrontational military aggressions against Russia won't start a nuclear war (or that it's worth the risk anyway) are becoming more and more common in western punditry. Democrats are braying for Russian blood while Republicans like Tom Cotton and Mitt Romney are attacking Democrats for being insufficiently hawkish and escalatory in this conflict, creating a horrifying dynamic where both parties are trying to out-hawk each other to score political points and nobody is calling for de-escalation and detente.

As luck would have it, US officials have also selected this precarious nuclear tightrope walk as the perfect time to begin hurling accusations that Russia is preparing a biological attack, potentially as a false flag blamed on Ukraine or the United States. This coincides with Victoria Nuland's admission before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Ukraine has "biological research facilities" that the US is "quite concerned" might end up "falling into the hands of Russian forces".

All of this on top of the unprecedented wave of authoritarian censorship that has been tearing through the US-centralized empire as our rulers work to quash dissident voices around the world. It certainly is interesting that the fight for freedom and democracy requires so much censorship, warmongering, xenophobia, propaganda and bloodlust.

It's almost enough to make you wonder: are we the baddies?

I am of course only trying to make a point here. Geopolitical power struggles are not contested by opposing sides of heroes and baddies like a Marvel superhero movie, though you'd never know it from all the hero worship of Volodymyr Zelensky and the self-righteous posturing of mainstream westerners over this war. Vladimir Putin is no Peter Parker, but neither is Zelensky or Biden or any of the other empire managers overseeing this campaign to overwhelm all challengers to US global domination.

The power structure loosely centralized around the United States is without question the single most depraved and destructive on earth. No one else has spent the 21st century waging wars that have killed millions and displaced tens of millions. No one else is circling the planet with military bases and working to destroy any nation on earth which disobeys it. Not Russia. Not China. Nobody.

The hypocrisy, dishonesty and phoniness of this whole song and dance about Ukraine is one of the most distasteful things that I have ever witnessed. Rather than engaging in click-friendly Instagram activism with blue and yellow profile pics making risk-free criticisms of a foreign leader in a far off country who has nothing to do with us, perhaps we would be better served by a bit more introspection, and by a somewhat more difficult stance: intense scrutiny of the corruption and abuses running rampant in our own society.

This Ain’t Putin’s Price Hike: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrixby Caitlin Johnstone

  Listen to a reading of this article:

Higher fuel and food prices are a sacrifice I'm prepared to make in exchange for a greatly increased likelihood of nuclear armageddon.

❖

Let's be clear: you're not paying more for necessities to punish Putin and save Ukraine, you're paying more for necessities to fund an economic war of unprecedented scale geared toward collapsing Russia to help secure US unipolar domination of this planet.

It's not "Putin's price hike". This was all orchestrated by the empire, from root to flower. The goal is to use economic warfare and a costly counterinsurgency against western-backed Ukrainians to either collapse and balkanize the Russian Federation or foment enough discontent to secure regime change in Moscow. This is because Putin refuses to kiss the imperial ring.

The western empire could not possibly care less about Ukrainians beyond the extent to which they can be used to roll out this agenda. There hasn't been nearly enough public rage about the fact that the US government knew this war was coming, knew exactly how to prevent it with very low-cost concessions to Moscow, and chose not to. They made that choice in order to advance this agenda.

That's what you're paying for as the your cost of living skyrockets. Not freedom and democracy. Not saving Ukrainian lives. Just the very mundane and unsexy unipolarist objectives of a few sociopathic empire managers. Empire managers who, of course, will have no trouble paying for things like fuel and groceries while ordinary people struggle.

And if you think these cold war escalations against Russia are hurting your bank account, wait til the imperial crosshairs move to China.

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One under-appreciated aspect of online censorship is how the fear of losing a valuable platform understandably causes people to self-censor, thereby widening the radius of the censorship campaign's effectiveness a lot further than the actual censorship.

It's exactly the same as the "cooling effect" that the persecution of whistleblowers and journalists has on leaks and investigative journalism. People shying away from speech they could be punished for does a lot more to restrict speech than the punishments themselves.

If for example a chemical attack occurs in Ukraine and is blamed on Russia, there will be great fear of questioning the official narrative about it on YouTube for fear of losing one's platform because YouTube has banned skepticism of official stories about violence in that nation. People will self-censor to avoid being punished for their speech.

This is the exact same principle as a king having an artist who spoke ill of him tortured in the public square in order to deter future acts of dissent. Just re-packaged to be more palatable for the modern world.

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When someone brings up bad things the US does in response to outrage over bad things Russia does, it's not to defend Russia. It's to get the US to stop doing bad things.

Bleating "whataboutism" at sincere attempts to get the US empire to stop doing evil things is just defending those evil things. You're basically just saying "Shut up! Now's not the time to talk about the bad things the US power alliance does, we're on something else right now!" Okay, so when? Never? Nothing has ever been done about the crimes of the empire. No meaningful changes whatsoever were made after Iraq.

Russia invading Ukraine doesn't magically erase the fact that the western empire has spent the 21st century slaughtering people by the millions in wars of aggression and working to destroy any nation which disobeys it. Putin would have to work very, very hard to catch up to those numbers. That still needs to be talked about, and it still needs to end.

People talk about this like it's something in the past, something the US and its allies did back in history but now it's Russia doing it. No, this is happening currently in Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Venezuela etc, and will continue to happen unless drastic changes are made.

The murderousness, tyranny and omnicidal recklessness of the US-centralized empire is a problem of unequalled urgency regardless of what Russia happens to be doing. You can't just bleat "whataboutism" and make that go away. It's a problem that urgently needs to be dealt with.

It's an objectively good thing if more attention is brought to that urgent problem by someone saying "Oh you're upset about this war? Wait til you hear about what your own government has been doing." Any attempt to interfere in their pointing this out is facilitating mass murder. Either help draw attention to this problem or stop interrupting people who are drawing attention to it with power-serving gibberish about "whataboutism".

❖

Western leaders appear to have gone to the NYPD Academy of De-Escalation.

❖

During the Cuban Missile Crisis everyone had a healthy fear of nuclear annihilation, and people wanted de-escalation above all else. Today hardly anyone even cares about the insane nuclear brinkmanship games being played, and all mainstream factions are calling only for escalation.

❖

Schrödinger's Putin: Simultaneously a crazy deranged lunatic and also much too level-headed and rational to respond to western escalations with nuclear weapons.

Love how shitlibs finally decide to become "anti-war" the second their "anti-war" activism has a chance to help manufacture consent for World War 3.

Four years of demented propaganda about an imaginary Trump-Russia conspiracy, Kremlin Facebook memes and GRU bounties in Afghanistan turned liberals into a bunch of gnashing, frothing zombies starved for Russian flesh. Ukraine just gave them something to sink their teeth into.

I don't understand the common sentiment on the left that we need to spend a lot of energy criticizing Putin for this war in the same way we criticize our own rulers for their warmongering. Like even forgetting about all the things western powers did to give rise to the war in Ukraine, what specifically is the argument here? That the English-speaking world doesn't have enough criticism of the Russian invasion, and has too much criticism of NATO aggression? That if more antiwar lefties scream about Putin he'll go "Ah shit I pissed off a few fringe westerners, let's cancel the war you guys"? It just doesn't seem like those who make such claims have thought very hard about the position they're trying to advance.

Our voices can do far more good criticizing the actions of our own governments, which receive barely any criticism, than those of someone else's government which gets tons. It also can't be denied that there's a major propaganda push to manufacture consent for dangerous agendas which pre-date the invasion by many years. Is my voice better used opposing those dangerous agendas, or in helping to facilitate them by saying the same things everyone else is already saying?

Putin is bad! Putin is bad and his war is very bad!

There. I did the thing. Can anyone tell me what I just accomplished, apart from greasing the wheels for new cold war escalations? Did I plow any new ground? Expand awareness in any new direction? What specific good did I do?

None that I can see.

The fact that the Russian people are doing a better job of holding their government to account with massive antiwar protests than people in western nations have says terrible things about us and our obsequiousness to our warmongering masters. If you can't criticize your government, you are more obedient than Russians living under Putin.

Criticizing Putin is the easiest thing in the world for a westerner to do right now. Low cost, maximum clicks, but has zero impact on the conflict and will save zero people. Criticizing the west for its role is hard; it gets you outrage mobbed, deplatformed and shunned. But it could work.

None of these outrage merchants would ever dream of going against their own government, because if they tried they would find themselves smashed against the invisible walls of our inverted totalitarian cage. On some level they know this. That's why they project.