If there were discontent in Crimea the western media would be full of lip-smacking detail, describing all the dreadful things that were happening. Print and electronic news sources would be revelling in headlining updates about dissatisfaction and there would be rejoicing in the corridors of comfort from Capitol Hill to Westminster via the Pentagon’s billion dollar branch office in Brussels. But although Crimeans are suffering just as badly as anyone else from the Covid epidemic and from the normal problems that exist in any well-conducted society, there is no evidence of rumbling dissatisfaction, and the place is moving along with citizens minding their own business and getting on with their lives. Since accession to Russia they have had a long time in which to voice disapproval of their government but the CIA and other agencies have been unable to foment an uprising of any sort.

Meanwhile, the U.S.-Nato military alliance and its supporters continue to insist that Russia is going to invade Ukraine, and Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda joined the clamour by declaring that “We are probably facing the most dangerous situation in the last 30 years, I am talking about not only Ukraine but the eastern flank of NATO.” The “we” in President Nauseda’s announcement referred to the European Union, and it is intriguing that he and others should use the forum of the European Council to make such statements. He was followed by Latvia’s Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins who kept on the same rails by proclaiming that “We really are facing a series of attacks. I see them all as associated,” and according to France 24 explained that his fears are “the weaponisation of Middle East migrants on Belarus’ borders with the EU, artificially high prices for Russian natural gas, and Russian disinformation.”

These theatrical and exaggerated statements were made in the context of a meeting of the European Council on December 16, but in spite of their fervour it was heartening that the Council’s agenda and discussion emphasised health and economic matters as distinct from sabre-rattling rhetoric, although the mandatory post-conference warning was given about sanctions being imposed on Russia.

The admirable President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, gave a good indication of the EU’s positive attitude by declaring that “Europe must deliver solutions to citizens’ immediate problems, notably on the pandemic and its fallout on their daily life, as well as to the long term challenges we face together, like climate change. Our joint declaration shows our commitment to working hard together to deliver solutions on all these issues, from health to climate change, from digital transformation to broad economic prosperity.”

This common-sense approach to obvious problems was part of the “Joint Declaration on EU legislative priorities for 2022” which does not mention the words Ukraine or Crimea but gets its primacies right for the citizens of Europe — now excluding the United Kingdom which carries on its sadly shambolic way, stumbling and lurching from crisis to catastrophe while continuing to spread the story about “a U.S. intelligence assessment which suggested that Russia could be planning an invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.” There were no qualifications about this supposed invasion plot (described in the UK Parliament), even though The New York Times (for example) pointed out that “U.S. officials stress that the intentions of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia remain unclear, and the intelligence does not show that he has decided to carry out the apparent war plan.” In other words, it is part of the ongoing tide of anti-Russia propaganda that is guided in the main by a desire in some quarters to provide justification for the existence of the U.S.-Nato military alliance.

The psychological operations campaign against Russia has been markedly successful, and there is hardly anyone in the west who, for example, does not believe there was a vast armed invasion of Crimea by Russia in 2014, resulting in its “illegal annexation” by the Federation. Nobody pays attention to the fact, as recorded by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, that “On March 16, 2014, Crimea held a referendum in which 97 percent of voters opted to leave Ukraine and join Russia.” But Washington’s orders were clear to western countries, and they dismissed the measure as being illegal.

The Carnegie Endowment points out that “Western countries’ dismissal of the Crimean referendum . . . does not appear consistent with their positions on similar votes held by former Soviet territories. For instance, the United States and Western Europe supported and quickly recognized Ukraine’s and Georgia’s independence referendums in 1991, when they separated from the Soviet Union as it was experiencing upheaval. The West also actively backed Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania when these former Soviet territories established independence in the early 1990s.” But Washington and its allies choose to ignore precedent and preference because the people of Crimea prefer to be citizens of Russia rather than Nato.

In 2014 I wrote that “some 90% of the inhabitants of Crimea are Russian-speaking, Russian-cultured and Russian-educated, and it would be strange if they did not vote for accession to a country that welcomes their kinship, empathy and loyalty” and noted there was not “a single case of bloodshed in the run-up to the plebiscite, the free vote as to whether the population wished to accede to Russia or support the ‘status of Crimea as a part of Ukraine.’ The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was asked by the government of Crimea to send representatives to monitor the referendum but refused to do so.” The majority of the west’s mainstream media failed to disseminate any positive news about the situation, but the UK’s Independent newspaper reported that “Fireworks exploded and Russian flags fluttered above jubilant crowds after residents in Crimea voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and join Russia.”

Now that it has proved impossible for the Washington-Brussels Axis to achieve revolution in Crimea, as was done in Ukraine, or to destroy its economy by sanctions, there are few alternatives open for the U.S.-Nato military alliance to further its aim of moving ever-closer to Russia’s borders. But one practical and attractive proposal was fielded by none other than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy who, according to Reuters, said on December 10 that “he did not exclude holding a referendum on the future status of war-torn eastern Ukraine and the Crimea peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014. Zelenskiy did not give detail on how and when a referendum could be held, but said it was one of the options to revive a stalled peace process in eastern Ukraine and end a standoff with neighbouring Russia.”

Although a breath of sanity was wafted from Kiev, there was no positive reaction from any western government. It must have been extremely galling for Washington and its followers to learn that President Zelenskiy said in an interview that “I do not rule out a referendum on Donbass in general. It might be about Donbass, it might be about Crimea”, and it is extremely unlikely that his sensible approach will be endorsed. Crimea continues to be calm, which upsets Nato, and any move that could result in acceptance of the peaceful status quo will be either ignored or resisted. Confrontation is the name of the U.S.-Nato game.

For nearly seven years the issue of Crimea has been trumpeted as if it were a bedrock principle of Ukraine’s sovereignty. Now it turns out the Kiev regime would be happy with a grubby pay-off.

Russia has been repeatedly accused by the United States and its European allies of “annexing” the Black Sea peninsula in 2014. Countless rounds of sanctions have been imposed on Russia for its alleged violation of Ukrainian sovereignty.

The issue has been central to the alarming deterioration in relations between Moscow and the US-led NATO alliance.

NATO warships and surveillance aircraft have encroached on Russia’s Black Sea territory supposedly to “defend Ukraine”. Any miscalculation could trigger a war.

Yet after all the huffing and puffing by the US and Europeans, the Western-backed Kiev regime is now indicating it would accept “reparations” from Russia over Crimea. That’s according to a media interview by Ukraine’s deputy prime minister Alexey Reznikov.

As senior Russian lawmaker Leonid Kalashnikov astutely observes: “If they [Kiev regime] say they are prepared to accept money, this means they have realized that the peninsula will never return to Ukraine.”

There is no way Moscow will pay “reparations” to Kiev. That very word implies that Russia acted malignly over Crimea.

The facts are: first, a Western-backed violent coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014 brought to power Neo-Nazi factions espousing vicious anti-Russian bigotry.

Secondly, in response to that illegality, the people of Crimea – who are mainly of ethnic Russian heritage – organized a legitimate referendum and voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine to join the Russian Federation. That formally happened in March 2014.

Historically, Crimea has always held a revered place within Russia’s culture. In a recent highly literate and compendious essay, Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined the deep historical ties between the Russian people and the rest of Ukraine, including Crimea, going back over a millennium.

The peninsula’s temporary inclusion in Ukrainian jurisdiction was an unfortunate accident of political horse-trading during the Soviet era and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union.

So, the idea of “reparations” is completely alien and contemptible to Russia and compatriots in Crimea.

Nevertheless, the fact that the Kiev regime now reveals itself to be open to such a transaction shows that they realize that history and natural justice are on the side of Russia regarding the fate of Crimea.

It also demonstrates the squalid money-grubbing mentality of the Kiev regime. There is no principle in what this regime says about Crimea or many other alleged grievances. It all comes down to scrounging for financial gain.

This is clearly seen over the Nord Stream 2 gas project between Russia and the European Union. The Kiev regime made up all sorts of absurd claims about Moscow using the new alternative Baltic Sea route as a weapon against Ukraine to deprive the latter of transit fees for existing over-land gas pipes.

Kiev has a reprehensible record for not paying national gas bills owed to Russia and also of illicitly siphoning off gas en route to the European Union. That’s on top of continually bad-mouthing Russia and recklessly accusing it of “aggression”. It is Russia’s sovereign right to construct the most logistically efficient pipeline to the European market. But the Kiev regime would have us believe that it is its “right” to pimp Russian gas forever.

Since the events in 2014, the Kiev regime has been waging a war of aggression against the ethnic Russian people of Donbass in eastern Ukraine. Despite a supposed ceasefire, the regiments under Kiev’s control have continually shelled civilian centers in and around Donetsk city. Some of these forces, such as the Azov Battalion, openly glorify Nazi collaborators who exterminated ethnic Russians during the Second World War.

The war that Washington and the European Union helped to unleash by backing the 2014 coup against an elected pro-Russian president has been enabled with massive financial loans and military supplies to the Kiev regime. According to the Pentagon, aggregate American military aid over the past seven years is set to reach $2 billion.

The Kiev regime has destroyed the Ukrainian economy and pushed the nation into irreconcilable conflict – all on the basis of groveling for money and military arms from the US, the EU and NATO. Part of the act has been to pretend there were “principles” to defend. The purported principles of standing up to Russian “aggression” and “annexation”.

Moscow indeed supports the ethnic Russian people who are coming under criminal attack from US-backed Kiev forces. But Russia is not a party to the conflict. It has acted as a guarantor of the Minsk Peace Accord signed in 2015. But the Kiev regime has never fulfilled its obligation to implement that internationally binding deal.

The charade of money-grubbing under the guise of “defending principles” just fell apart after Kiev’s latest move to sell off Crimea for a price.

Time was when Britain’s mighty fleets ruled a quarter of the earth’s surface. I’ve been savoring the names of its dreadnaughts and battle cruisers like George V, Prince of Wales, Hood, Princess Royal, Iron Duke and scores of other renowned warships.

Last week, the imperial British lion made a last, feeble roar by sending one of its new anti-aircraft destroyers, ‘Defender,’ to annoy the Russians by patrolling off the south-western coast of Crimea.

Russia and Ukraine both claim Crimea, which had been Russian since 1783. After a drunken dinner, the late Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, ‘gave’ the Crimean SSR to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.

Russia reoccupied Crimea, one of Russia’s most important naval bases, after a US-led coup overthrew Ukraine’s pro-Russian government in 2014. The UK, US and rest of NATO insist Crimea belongs to Ukraine. Of course they do. They engineered it.

HMS ‘Defender’s’ baiting the Russian bear took place while NATO naval and air forces were holding threatening war games over the southern Black Sea to intimidate Russia and embolden allies like Romania, Bulgaria and Poland, the three weak sisters of Eastern Europe.

This tempest in a teapot suddenly became a farce after a stack of soggy secret British naval documents was found behind a park bench in Kent. ‘Defender’s’ mission was discussed in them, Russia’s possible response, and, of all crazy things, potential new British operations in Afghanistan. All to please Uncle Sam, of course.

These embarrassing documents caused an uproar in Britain, made the government look like fools, and put the lie to Whitehall’s claims that the naval operation was only an innocent patrol. Britons are very intelligent people but tend to be sloppy and poorly organized. Britain has been a happy hunting ground for Soviet/Russian spies since the war.

Small wonder the French call Britain ‘perfide Albion.’ The Brits are masters at intrigue, double-dealing and propaganda. British propaganda drew the United States into two world wars. In our era, Britain has assumed leadership of western propaganda efforts against Russia and its allies.

Most Russians, who tend to be well-educated, are well aware of Great Britain’s 1853 invasion of Crimea, in league with France, the Ottoman Empire, and the then kingdom of Sardinia. The Crimean War was a bloody, three-year war designed to wrest the strategic peninsula from Tsarist control and thwart Russia’s expansion into the Balkans.

This nasty war saw the British finally storm fortress Sevastopol and temporarily reduce Russia’s influence in the Black Sea and Balkans. For France, the war was a thrilling return to military victories after the dark years of the Napoleonic wars. For Britain, it was also a triumph in spite of the disaster at Balaclava and heavy casualties due to disease. But, in the end, the war proved a stalemate: the foreign powers withdrew from Crimea and left Russia to lick it wounds.

The next serious invasion came from Germany and Romania in 1941, led by the great German general, Erich von Manstein. The second siege of Sevastopol lasted 250 days. I’ve walked over many of the old Soviet forts that so long resisted German attacks. Crimea was one of the hardest fought campaigns of WWII. Sevastopol was named one of the Soviet Union’s ‘hero cities’ for its legendary resistance.

No one who knows history should be surprised that western moves on Sevastopol and Crimea produced such a strong Russian reaction. Imagine how the US would react to a Russian naval squadron staging war games in the Gulf of Mexico or off New York City.

The point of the ‘Defender’ exercise was to humiliate Russia and show off its weakness, all part of the longer-term US/British/NATO strategy to splinter the remaining Russian Federation in a similar manner that the old Soviet Union was torn apart. That’s what the big NATO Black Sea exercise is about. There will be many more.

ericmargolis.com

As the U.S.-NATO military alliance retreats from its failure to overcome a few thousand raggy-baggy militants in Afghanistan and regroups in the Persian Gulf with 5,000 troops in Iraq on a so-called training mission, it continues deployment of troops, surveillance systems, combat ships and strike aircraft along Russia’s borders in order to provoke reaction that it considers will justify its existence.

On June 28, while the evacuation of Afghanistan gathered pace, the U.S. carried out airstrikes in Syria and Iraq on what were claimed to be bases of “Iranian-backed militias”. Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi condemned the raids as a “blatant and unacceptable violation of Iraqi sovereignty and Iraqi national security” but he was wasting his time, because this sort of protest has no effect whatever on Washington which had not even informed the Iraqi government of its intentions.

It was possibly coincidental that on the same day that that the U.S. Air Force was rocketing and bombing targets in Iraq and Syria, a chain of U.S.-NATO military manoeuvres called “Sea Breeze” began some 1000 km to the north.

Reuters reported that “Ukraine and the United States will start a military exercise involving more than 30 countries in the Black Sea and southern Ukraine on Monday, despite Russian calls to cancel the drills” and Deutsche Welle detailed that “a total of 32 ships, 40 aircraft and helicopters and 5,000 soldiers from 24 countries are taking part in the exercises, which last through July 10. Participating countries include the U.S., the United Kingdom, France, Turkey, Israel, Morocco, Japan, South Korea and Australia. Germany, which has been involved in the past, is not taking part this year. It’s the largest manoeuvres in decades, after last year’s drills were shortened due to the pandemic. Various exercises are planned at sea, on land and in the air with the goal of bringing Ukraine up to NATO standards.”

It is obvious that this sort of military roaring and splashing along Russia’s borders is infantile and deliberately confrontational, and the tone was set five days before Sea Breeze began when there was an incident involving the British destroyer HMS Defender which had been ordered to conduct manoeuvres in the Black Sea specifically in order to provoke Russian reaction.

Russian forces intercepted the British warship and the BBC’s correspondent “who had been invited on board the ship before the incident happened, saw more than 20 aircraft overhead and two Russian coastguard boats which at times were just 100 m (328 ft) away. This is at odds with statements from both the British prime minister’s office and defence ministry, which denied any confrontation.” Of course they denied confrontation, because the automatic response of the Johnson government in London is to tell lies when faced with an embarrassing or otherwise awkward situation. But it goes further than that, because classified documents relating to the Black Sea fandangos were found by a member of the public in England and made known to the media which promptly published details of what was really behind the British government’s attempts to provoke Russia to react.

The BBC lived up to its reputation for factual and objective reportage and blew the lid off the government’s attempts to mislead British citizens (and the world) which won’t do it any good and will have the effect of hardening the ruling Conservative Party’s determination to neutralise and if possible privatise it to become Britain’s equivalent of the United States’ pantomime Fox News channel.

It noted that the documents, many relating to power-point presentations given to government representatives, “show that a mission described by the Ministry of Defence as an ‘innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters’, with guns covered and the ship’s helicopter stowed in its hangar, was conducted in the expectation that Russia might respond aggressively” [emphasis added]. The documents indicated that there was no military requirement to send the warship so close to Crimea and that “an alternative route was considered, which would have kept HMS Defender well away from contested waters. This would have avoided confrontation, the presentation noted, but ran the risk of being portrayed by Russia as evidence of ‘the UK being scared/running away’, allowing Russia to claim that the UK had belatedly accepted Moscow’s claim to Crimean territorial waters.” And that’s where the emphasis lies.

The British government refuses to acknowledge that the people of Crimea prefer to be part of the Russian Federation rather than of Ukraine, as pointed out by a commentator in the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper, Peter Hitchens, who wrote that “in 1991 the people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly (93 per cent of an 80 per cent turnout) for Crimean autonomy — that is, separating the peninsula from the direct authority of Ukraine . . . In December 1991, Ukraine voted in a referendum to leave the Russian empire. Moscow rightly accepted this. The leaders of Ukraine were happy to win their own freedom by such a vote. But there was one rule for them and another for the Crimea . . . Ukraine could vote itself out of Russia, but Crimea was not allowed to vote itself out of Ukraine. Do you think that fair or right? I don’t.”

But the British government wants to ramp up the country’s international profile, and the fact that Britain has no commercial or strategic interests in or associated with Ukraine, Crimea or the Black Sea is irrelevant to what passes for analysis in London. National policy and military posture are focused on Prime Minister Johnson’s declaration that he seeks to “make the United Kingdom stronger, safer and more prosperous, while standing up for our values.” What he does not understand is that national leaders do not make their citizens safer by indulging in confrontational antics specifically designed to provoke another country to take military action.

The London Times newspaper reported that “the head of the armed forces has said that incidents such as this week’s Black Sea confrontation with Russia are giving him sleepless nights. General Sir Nick Carter said that the conflict between the British destroyer HMS Defender and Russian forces in contested waters off the Crimea coast was an example of where a miscalculation could come from ‘unwarranted escalation’.” But the sensible voice of the most senior officer of the British armed services was not heeded, and it is intriguing, even bizarre, that he was not consulted before the government decided to commit forces to engage in military action that could indeed lead to “unwarranted escalation.”

Prime Minister Johnson desperately wants to develop “Global Britain”, and is using compliant NATO to help him in his attempts to cavort on the world stage. He won’t achieve “Global Britain” by ordering military confrontation, but he may well achieve military escalation, which is not the route to safety and prosperity. He is playing with fire.

(Click on the image to enlarge)

Russian patrol vessels fired warning shots at an armed British warship after it breached Russian territorial waters this week. Then a SU-24 fighter jet dropped bombs in the path of the British destroyer apparently forcing it out of Russian waters.

It sounds almost incredible that a war situation was only a shot away in such a grim face-off between NATO member Britain and Russia.

But what’s also condemnable is that the incendiary incident was a deliberate provocation by Britain. Russia has warned Britain not to provoke it again in the Black Sea. And Moscow accused London of telling barefaced lies.

The British government and its Ministry of Defense were quick to play down the incident, claiming that there were no warning shots fired on the Royal Navy guided-missile destroyer. London accused Russia of “disinformation” and maintained that HMS Defender was engaged in “innocent passage” through international waters in the Black Sea.

However, the official British version is contradicted by a BBC correspondent who was on board HMS Defender.

Jonathan Beale reported: “I am on board the warship in the Black Sea.The crew were already at action stations as they approached the southern tip of Russian-occupied [sic] Crimea. Weapons systems on board the Royal Navy destroyer had already been loaded.

This would be a deliberate move to make a point to Russia. HMS Defender was going to sail within the 12 mile (19km) limit of Crimea’s territorial waters. The captain insisted he was only seeking safe passage through an internationally recognized shipping lane.”

Thus, according to the BBC’s account, a fully armed and cocked warship deliberately entered territorial waters claimed by Russia (since Crimea joined the Russian Federation by a referendum in 2014). The crew were at action stations on their approach “to make a point to Russia”.

Such conduct by the British is nothing less than a wanton provocation to Russia. The BBC version concurs with Russia’s account of the circumstances, including the sound of warning shots.

One question is: why did the British government and MoD seek to immediately play down the incident, purporting to say that nothing had happened? London claimed that the warship was merely in the vicinity of Russian “gunnery exercises” as if it was all coincidence and that Moscow was engaging in disinformation about warding off the Royal Navy vessel.

Another question is: why was the BBC correspondent invited to take part in the Black Sea voyage of HMS Defender from the Ukrainian port of Odessa to Georgia skirting the Crimea Peninsula? It seems like the British may have been expecting their “point to Russia” would have been met with a passive response. And so the British would have been able to spin that their plucky navy was able to stick it to the Russians. Turns out though that the BBC man unhelpfully contradicted the military planners in London.

Britain was obliged to deny the military encounter because it knows full well that it was a provocative show of aggression by its warship. If the shots had escalated it could have been an act of war that Britain had instigated. Aggression is the supreme war crime as defined by the Nuremberg trials of Nazi leaders.

Russia has condemned the British action, saying HMS Defender should be renamed HMS Aggressor or HMS Provocateur.

It is also reported that on Tuesday, the day before the skirmish, Ukrainian military chiefs were hosted onboard HMS Destroyer while docked in Odessa where they signed new military contracts with the British on naval cooperation. That the Brits then sailed the next day straight into Russian waters suggests that the maneuver was a calculated show of naval power in support of Ukraine’s claims of “fighting against Russian aggression”.

As far back as April, the British had given notice that they were intending to dispatch warships to the Black Sea “in support of Ukraine”. Russia responded angrily and warned Britain and other NATO members to stay away from its territory. Russia subsequently has deployed larger military forces in its Black Sea territory, including around the Crimea Peninsula.

That the British went ahead with their plans to send warships into disputed waters is further sign that London was deliberately goading Moscow.

What the Brits were not expecting, it seems, was the way Russia rapidly deployed firepower this week to underscore its warnings to back off.

This is the context for why international “stability talks” between the United States and Russia are an urgent matter. It remains to be seen if the American Biden administration genuinely responds to Moscow’s appeals for earnest negotiations to stabilize relations. NATO so far seems to be indifferent to Russian proposals for cooperating on forming new security mechanisms in Europe.

The deterioration in relations between Russia and the United States and other NATO members has reached a dangerous flashpoint. The arming by the U.S. and NATO of the anti-Russia regime in Kiev is fueling the potential for all-out conflict between nuclear powers. Western indulgence of Kiev’s reckless claims of “Russian aggression” is further insanity.

And amid the treacherous conditions, the British send a guided-missile destroyer into Russian waters in defiance of reasonable warnings. That’s just a shot away from disaster.

Incredibly, this is all happening on the 80th anniversary of Operation Barbarossa when Nazi Germany launched its war against the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941.

Ever since Joe Biden became America’s President in January, America’s hostile and threatening actions and rhetoric against (as Biden refers to him) the ‘killer’ Vladimir Putin, Russia’s President, have made clear to Putin that the U.S. Government’s determination to impose regime-change upon Russia will continue undiminished. This hostility from Biden has dashed Putin’s hope that the string of sanctions which the U.S. Government has constantly been adding to ever since President Obama started the anti-Russian sanctions in 2012, would end, or at least not continue to be added to, under Biden.

Perhaps the clincher, in Putin’s mind, was Biden’s appointment, on January 16th, of Victoria Nuland to the #2 spot in the U.S. State Department, where, during Obama’s Presidency, as a third-ranked official who reported directly to Obama (instead of to her nominal boss the Secretary of State), she had planned, and organized the bloody coup that installed a rabidly anti-Russian Government in Ukraine on Russia’s border. This is as if during the Cold War the Soviet Union were to have perpetrated a bloody coup installing an anti-U.S. government in Mexico or in Canada (something that the U.S. Government would never have tolerated for even a moment — consider the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 as an example), and Putin now is making clear that he will not tolerate any further increases in America’s anti-Russian threats and aggressions. (In fact, Nuland also was one of the chief planners of America’s aggressions against Syria, which has long been an ally of Russia. The plans against both Ukraine and Syria were first being firmed-up under her during 2011.)

America’s meta-strategy, at least since 2006, has been to ‘win’ WWIII against Russia, whereas Russia has always remained with what had been the meta-strategy on both sides, of having nuclear weapons only in order to be able to deliver an annihilating retaliatory response if the opposite side blitz-attacks it with nuclear weapons. That previous (in the United States, but still current in Russia) meta-strategy is called “Mutually Assured Destruction,” or “M.A.D.” for short.

As I had headlined and documented on 3 May 2017, “America’s Top Scientists Confirm: U.S. Goal Now Is to Conquer Russia”. That article quoted America’s top experts on nuclear war as saying that America’s “boosting the overall killing power of existing U.S. ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three … creates exactly what one would expect to see if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.” This would nearly be sufficient superiority of U.S. forces to fulfill the plan which had been first described publicly in America’s two most prestigious international relations journals, as being a suitable replacement for “M.A.D.”: “Nuclear Primacy”. That’s the goal for America to blitz-nuclear attack Russia so quickly that Russia won’t have enough time to launch a retaliatory response. America’s Establishment wants it to happen. (They are even buying luxurious deep-underground nuclear-bomb-proof shelters so that they will be among the few survivors from it.)

Putin is now taking the situation to be so dangerous for Russia so that he has publicly established “red lines” in U.S. policies, which, if crossed by the United States or its allies, might be responded to by Russia’s being the first to strike — the start of WWIII — even though that would destroy the entire world, including Russia itself.

Though he takes a great risk with these “red lines,” he seems to believe that by establishing them, there is less of a risk to Russians than if he continues to pretend that M.A.D. remains as being American policy. He is, in effect, forcing Joe Biden to choose now, between Nuclear Primacy versus M.A.D. Putin is now publicly warning the U.S. Government and America’s allies what could possibly be responded to by Russia’s blitz-attacking them. That’s what this new Russian policy is all about: pre-announced red lines.

The biggest hot spot, where a world-destroying nuclear war is the likeliest to be sparked, is in Ukraine, after Barack Obama’s February 2014 coup in Ukraine (on Russia’s border) which coup illegally and violently overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected President and replaced him by a racist-fascist (or nazi) anti-Russian regime that promptly began an ethnic cleansing operation in its far south and far east in order to eliminate voters who had (in the far east, the Donbass region) voted 90%+ for him, and (in the far south, including Crimea) voted 75%+ for him. (Only by eliminating those people could the Obama-imposed regime remain in power after an election.) Obama had started planning this operation in 2011, and by the time of June 2013 a part of this plan was for America to replace Russia’s largest naval base, which was (and remains) in Crimea, by establishing yet another U.S. naval base there. (Putin — with the strong backing of the Crimean people — blocked that part of Obama’s plan.)

On April 15th, the U.S. regime’s Associated Press (AP) propaganda agency headlined a thousand-word “EXPLAINER: What’s behind the conflict in eastern Ukraine?” and devoted one section of it to “WHAT ARE THE ROOTS OF THE CONFLICT?” and another section to “WHAT’S THE U.S. ROLE?”, but nowhere in it was anything that has just been documented here, via the links, to be true, was even so much as just mentioned, in that entire article.

Here are headlines from April 17th regarding Ukraine:

“Ukraine’s military chief urges authorities to refrain from creating armed formations”: This reports an announcement by Ukraine’s Government telling its independently organized volunteer nazi battalions: please do not invade Donbass unless and until authorized to do so. Those battalions had previously been given to understand that they would soon be authorized to invade. The Ukrainian General is here telling those battalions that premature actions on their part might be exploited by Russia for its purposes (for Russian propaganda). This plea to those far-right mercenaries can only be very disappointing to them. Both of Ukraine’s two nazi Parties, Svoboda (originally the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine), and Right Sector (meaning “Right Wing” in the extreme senses), are on the front lines there, and have publicly threatened to overthrow Ukraine’s current President if he fails to invade Donbas soon. Those mercenaries could quickly turn against him.

“Russia Shuts Ukraine’s Military Access To [the Sea of Azov]”: Beginning “next week,” and continuing at least until October, Russia will prevent any military vessels of or allied with the United States from passing through the Kerch Strait, which transits from the Black Sea, into the Sea of Azov, which latter is Ukraine’s sole coastal waters. (That U.S.-written headline erroneously said “Russia Shuts Ukraine’s Military Access To Black Sea,” because confusing the Black Sea with the Sea of Azov is common. However, that news-report provided an excellent map which shows what the article was actually reporting: Russia will close off U.S.-and-allied warship-access to Ukraine’s coast.) The implication of this news-report is that until (at least) October, Ukraine must avoid invading Donbas, or else do it without being able to be militarily resupplied by the U.S. and its allies.

“FAA issues warning for flights in Russia-Ukraine border airspace”: This is a warning to airlines to avoid that area because of the possibility of war breaking out imminently there (warning them to avoid events like the 17 July 2014 MH17 incident).

In other words: Putin is finally putting his foot down. He won’t tolerate any more of what Obama and Trump were dishing out.

On April 15th a headline was “U.S. drops plans to send destroyers into the Black Sea due to concerns over Russia”. This is one of several strong signs that Biden understands that crossing one of Putin’s red lines would be extremely dangerous.

The stooge-President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, appears to be trapped between what he has promised to do — which is for Ukraine to retake both Donbas and Crimea (the same thing that his predecessor Petro Poroshenko had promised) — and what will be within his power to do. Even the U.S. empire, which had placed him (and Poroshenko — and Poroshenko’s predecessor “Yats” Yatsenyuk) into nominal control over that country, won’t actually risk WWIII in order to keep him in power there. At the present point in time, the best that Zelensky can reasonably hope for is to survive beyond his clearly doomed Presidency. He is learning that being a stooge is not a comfortable position to occupy.

In a previous article I argued “Why It’s Necessary to End NATO”. However, recent events are making clear that the urgency of this need is increasing, instead of decreasing.

In 2011, the U.S. Government started planning a take-over of Ukraine, which, at that time, was a neutral country that has a 1,625-mile border with Russia. At its nearest point to Moscow, that border is only 5 minutes flight-time away from Moscow, via the fastest missiles. Obviously, that’s far too little time for Russia’s Government to be able to evacuate themselves from Moscow and to launch a retaliation against a U.S. blitz-attack. The U.S. goal is to get Ukraine into NATO, so that America can position its missiles there and really achieve “Nuclear Primacy” (which I discussed in that earlier article as being America’s meta-strategy since at least 2006 — safely to destroy Russia, even though that won’t actually be possible).

On February 1st of 2021, Ukraine’s President, Volodmyr Zelenskyy, made undeniably clear his intention to fulfill on Obama’s plan, for Ukraine to become a NATO member. Whether Joe Biden is going to push for that will be the most important decision of his Presidency, because it would be a commitment to World War III. It would, in effect, be a U.S. declaration of war against Russia. Whether the blitz-invasion would come from the U.S. (presumably assisted by missiles placed in Ukraine), or instead from Russia (in order to wipe out those and all other U.S. missiles), would be the only remaining question. Who will try the blitz-attack first? Either way, the world — at least the biosphere that sustains human life — would end.

Zelenskyy said:

We are grateful for everything, but Ukraine is not just saying in words that it wants to be an equal member of the Alliance, an equal member of NATO, because this is one of the most important security points – the same security that President Biden is speaking about. How should we further state the desire to accede [join], if it is enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine – the movement towards the European Union, European integration, as well as accession to NATO? Therefore, I have a very simple question – why is Ukraine still not in NATO? Putting away these phrases that we will all contemplate and communicate, the first simple question from me would be: “Mr. President, why are we not in NATO yet”?

If Ukraine becomes a NATO-member, then Ukraine will have the right to demand that America join its war to grab back the former Donbass region and also the former region of Crimea. The U.S. Government would then be put into the position of having to either fulfill its NATO commitment to the new NATO member (presuming that restoration of both Crimea and Donbass to Ukraine would be accepted as being a part of that commitment to what then would be a fellow-NATO-member) or else become very embarrassed by not doing so. If such a NATO commitment would be fulfilled, the world as it has always been known would end very fast — less than an hour.

The way that WW III would then start is that Ukraine would become more heavily armed by the U.S. and then would invade both Donbass and Crimea, Russia would then attack Ukraine for doing that, and the U.S. would then launch a blitz-attack against Moscow from Ukraine, and, simultaneously launch against all other command-and-control targets in Russia, so that before those have become hit, Russia would already have been decapitated.

The United States Government is fortunately not obliged to allow Ukraine into NATO and has many ways to prevent it from joining NATO. Some of these ways wouldn’t at all embarrass the U.S. Government, and the reason for this is that if any one NATO-member nation refuses to okay Ukraine as becoming a member, then Ukraine won’t become a member, and the scenario that has been described won’t then happen. The U.S. Government has enormous clout with each existing NATO member-nation, because NATO was created by the North Atlantic Treaty (also called the “Washington Treaty”) in Washington, DC, on 4 April 1949, at a conference that was chaired by U.S. diplomat Theodore Achiles, who subsequently retired to become a Director of the Atlantic Council, which also is in Washington, and which is the PR arm of NATO. The U.S. Government could easily get at least one NATO-member country to say no to Ukraine’s joining. However, if U.S. President Biden announces that the U.S. endorses NATO-membership for Ukraine, then that’s, in itself, virtually a U.S. declaration of war against Russia, and Russia might not wait for it to be made official before responding to it — blitz-invading the U.S. and its allies.

According to Achilles’s account of the creation of NATO:

The NATO spirit was born in that Working Group. Derick Hoyer-Millar, the British Minister, started it. One day he made a proposal which was obviously nonsense. Several of us told him so in no uncertain terms, and a much better formulation emerged from the discussion. Derick said, and I quote, “Those are my instructions. All right, I’ll tell the foreign office I made my pitch, was shot down and try to get them changed.” He did. From then on we all followed the same system. If our instructions were sound, and agreement could be reached, fine. If not, we worked out something we all, or most of us, considered sound, and whoever had the instructions undertook to get them changed. It always worked, although sometimes it took time. That spirit has continued to this day, I believe, although the size to which NATO has grown makes it far less easy. Two years later we began in London to put the “O” on the NAT by creating the organization. Some of the members of the delegations had been members of the Working Group, some had not.

Was that the beginning of the end of the world? Perhaps Biden will decide whether it is, or not.

However, if he does decide to do it, then I doubt he’d do the attack prior to getting Ukraine into NATO — if he can do that. On March 10th, The Saker headlined “Is the Ukraine on the brink of war (again)?” and speculated whether Biden will provide now the backing that the Obama-installed stooge-regime there wants. Though the stooge-regime might re-invade Donbass (and maybe even attack Crimea), I doubt that Biden will provide the type of assistance that the U.S.-stooge regime in Kiev would need in order to retake that land (and certainly not Crimea). I would expect that Biden is therefore informing Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy not to try. So, I would expect that, instead, the crucial decision will be whether or not the regime in Washington will decide that it really does want Ukraine to become a member of NATO.

On March 10th, Sweden’s Defense Research Agency issued in two different parts, a 300-page report, “Western Military Capability in Northern Europe 2020,” which concluded that Russia would likely win WW III in Europe, and which analyzed only conventional war and virtually totally ignored even the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons in WW III — the presumption was instead that the meta-strategy “MAD” still would prevent that, and they ignored the U.S. regime’s actual abandonment of “MAD” and switch to “Nuclear Primacy”. They also simply presumed that the U.S. is their ally and non-aggressive and that Russia is their enemy and is aggressive. In other words: it is fantasyland, at least in the Swedish Government. Furthermore: the core strategic question, of whether the loser in a conventional WW III would accept defeat instead of blitz-nuclear-attack the opponent so as to ‘win’ the war, was simply ignored, as if there would be a 100% likelihood that the conventional-war loser would just surrender and not escalate to a blitz nuclear attack against the opposite side in order to ‘win’ and would leave its enormous nuclear stockpile unused. They ignored the fact that NATO, after the Warsaw Pact ended in 1991, is the trip-wire to an all-out nuclear war — the exact opposite of an asset to its participants’ national security. NATO-participation makes all of them inevitably a part of the battlefield, and forces Russia to target them. Sweden’s Defense Research Agency produced there an insanely stupid study, and one which shows that Europeans, at least in Sweden, are being ‘defended’ by a government that is either in the pocket of the U.S., or else is simply idiotic. That study is shockingly stupid; it makes some of the craziest assumptions imaginable — assumptions that are tragically at variance with established facts (facts such as that America is, by far, the world’s most aggressive nation, and perpetrates far more coups, sanctions, and invasions, than does any other nation). At least regarding foreign relations, Sweden’s Government is monstrously disserving its public, and yet Swedes aren’t enraged against it. Are their news-media really that bad, so as for Swedes to tolerate a military alliance with the world’s most aggressive nation?

The only sane path forward for the nations that currently are NATO members (or “Partners” as Sweden is) is to withdraw and to urge other members (and Partners) likewise to withdraw, so that NATO will end — as it should have ended when the Soviet Union’s NATO-mirror organization the Warsaw Pact ended in 1991. End the Cold War, finally. NATO — the American military alliance against Russia — is simply the trip-wire to WW III. End it. Now. Even 30 years after 1991 isn’t, yet, too late to do it. But, maybe, 31 years would  be. That’s why it must be done now, delayed no further. Either NATO will end, or it will end all of us.

theduran.com

Russia and Belarus fear another blitz invasion — a modernized version of Germany’s infamous Operation Barbarossa — but this time coming from NATO (instead of only from Germany, as in 1940), and they are preparing their forces for it.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published a study, on 1 March 2017, which opened:

The US nuclear forces modernization program has been portrayed to the public as an effort to ensure the reliability and safety of warheads in the US nuclear arsenal, rather than to enhance their military capabilities. In reality, however, that program has implemented revolutionary new technologies that will vastly increase the targeting capability of the US ballistic missile arsenal. This increase in capability is astonishing — boosting the overall killing power of existing US ballistic missile forces by a factor of roughly three — and it creates exactly what one would expect to see, if a nuclear-armed state were planning to have the capacity to fight and win a nuclear war by disarming enemies with a surprise first strike.

Furthermore, the U.S. government’s plan to conquer Russia is based upon a belief in, and the fundamental plan to establish, “Nuclear Primacy” against Russia — an American ability to win a nuclear war against, and so conquer, Russia.

This concept became respectable in U.S. academic and governmental policymaking circles when virtually simultaneously in 2006 a short-form and a long-form version of an article endorsing the concept of a nuclear-blitz first strike, which the article’s two co-authors there named “nuclear primacy,” were published respectively in the world’s two most influential journals of international affairs, Foreign Affairs from the Council on Foreign Relations, and International Security from Harvard. (CFR got the more popular short version, titled “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy”, and Harvard got the more scholarly long version, which was titled “The End of MAD?”.)

This article claimed that the central geostrategic concept during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, Mutually Assured Destruction or “MAD” — in which there is no such thing as the U.S. or the U.S.S.R. conquering the other, because the first of the two to attack will itself also be destroyed by the surviving nuclear forces of the one responding to that attack — will soon be merely past history (like the Soviet Union itself already is); and, so, as the short form of the article said, “nuclear primacy remains a goal of the United States” (implying that it already was); and, as the long form said, “the United States now stands on the cusp of nuclear primacy.” In other words: arms-control or no, the U.S. should, and soon will, be able to grab Russia (the largest land-mass of any country in the world, and also the one richest in natural resources).

Neither version of this article mentioned the key reason why nuclear victory is exceedingly dangerous even under the most favorable conditions, which reason is the concept (and the likely reality in the event of nuclear war between the two superpowers) “nuclear winter” — the scientific studies showing that a resulting sudden sharp cooling of the atmosphere after all those enormous explosions darkening the global skies would produce a global die-off. America’s aristocracy and its vassal-aristocracies controlling the U.S.-allied nations (billionaires, centi-millionaires, and their top agents in both the public and private sectors) are buying and building deep-underground nuclear shelters for themselves, but they wouldn’t be able to stay underground and survive on stored feedstuffs forever. (As for everybody else, those other people are not involved in U.S. geostrategic decision-making, and so are being ignored by the U.S. Government.) Many of America’s (and associated) elite are paying those bomb-shelter expenses, but none of the West’s elite are condemning the path toward nuclear war that their governments are on. Their Government represents them — not the public. So: buying or building nuclear-war shelters is more acceptable to them than is stopping America’s planned conquest of Russia. The higher priority for them is to conquer Russia.

A far less influential scholarly journal, China Policy, published later in 2006 a critical article arguing against nuclear supremacy, but that article has had no impact upon policymaking. Its title was “The Fallacy of Nuclear Primacy” and it argued that, “American nuclear supremacy removes the root source of stability from the nuclear equation: mutual vulnerability.” It presented a moral argument: “U.S. leaders might try to exploit its nuclear superiority … by actually launching a cold-blooded nuclear attack against its nuclear rival in the midst of an intense crisis. The professors discount significantly the power of the nuclear taboo to restrain U.S. leaders from crossing the fateful threshold. If crisis circumstances grow dire enough, the temptation to try to disarm their nuclear adversaries through a nuclear first-strike may be too strong to resist, they argue.” The concept of “nuclear winter” wasn’t even so much as just mentioned (much less dealt with) in this article, just as it was ignored in the two that it was arguing against. (Nuclear winter is virtually prohibited from being discussed in leading academic journals in the social sciences; but one article, in the 2 September 2019 Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, “Nuclear War as a Global Catastrophic Risk” was published because it simply ignored the key question of who gets the benefits and who suffers the costs of America’s current meta-strategy, Nuclear Primacy.)

The co-authors of (both versions of) the article that had proposed and endorsed nuclear primacy, then published in 2007 (this one also in International Security), a response to that critical article, which had attacked theirs. This reply’s title was “U.S. Nuclear Primacy and the Future of the Chinese Deterrent”. But it made no more impact than did the obscure article it was arguing against. In the circles of power within the U.S., the matter was already settled.

Thus, Nuclear Primacy has tacitly become U.S. policy, and MAD no longer is U.S. policy (though it remains Russian policy). The U.S. government is planning to take over Russia (basically, to install a puppet-regime there). That’s the reality.

Starting by no later than 2011, the Administration of U.S. President Barack Obama was planning two operations in order to move forward especially against Russia, but also against all countries that were not hostile toward Russia (such as China, Russia, Venezuela, Syria, and Iran), and this included especially Ukraine, which has a 1,600-mile border with Russia, and also Syria, which ever since 1949 the U.S. CIA has been trying for the U.S. Government to take over so as to advance oil pipeline projects that the Sauds wanted to be built through Syria into Europe. (The Sauds are key allies of the U.S. Government.)

In a moment of extraordinary candor, George Friedman, the founder and CEO of the ‘private CIA’ consulting firm Stratfor, once called the overthrow of the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, which had occurred in February 2014, “the most blatant coup in history”, and this was because it was the first coup ever to have been captured live on cellphone videos and uploaded to the internet as it happened, and it was afterward documented by interviewing some of the participants, in detailed accounts which fit perfectly with similar confessions from other participants (such as this, from one who didn’t even know about those other participants, but they all were carrying out the same plan, which they didn’t know about and which came from above — the U.S. regime — they all were only following the orders that they had been given by agents of the U.S.).

These realities were able to be reported outside the United States but not inside the United States. The top EU officials didn’t become so much as even aware that it had been a coup instead of an authentic revolution, until it was already finished, on 26 February 2014. By our own time, there is no longer any reasonable doubt that it had been led by the U.S. regime, and that Barack Obama’s Administration had started planning the operation by no later than 2011, and the implementation-phase started by no later than 1 March 2013 inside the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine — well before the fairy-tale ‘explanation’ of the coup (‘the Maidan Revolution’) started on 21 November 2013. Famously, after that ‘democratic revolution’ (which was instead a fascist coup that was hidden behind popular anti-corruption demonstrations), came the breakaway of Crimea (which had voted over 75% for Yanukovych) and of Donbass (which had voted over 90% for him). And then came the Obama-installed regime’s ethnic cleansing ‘Anti Terrorist Operation’ to eliminate as many of the voters in Donbass as possible, because if they stayed in Ukraine, then the newly installed regime in Kiev would soon be elected out-of-office. Hatred was needed in order for that ‘Anti Terrorist Operation’ or ‘ATO’ (the ethnic-cleansing operation) to be able to achieve its purpose (of eliminating those voters but keeping the land), and this hatred was funded and promoted by American billionaires and the American Government — and American-and-allied media.

The big ‘justification’ for economic sanctions against Russia was Putin’s ‘seizure’ of Crimea, which was anything but a seizure and was actually protection not only of a part of Ukraine which had been part of Russia from 1783 to 1954 when the Soviet dictator arbitrarily transferred Crimea to Ukraine, but Putin’s action regarding Crimea was also protection of the residents there who were clamoring for Crimea to rejoin Russia when Obama’s Ukrainian fascists made clear their hatred of Crimeans and their aim to destroy Crimeans. As became ultimately revealed, the Obama Administration had a plan in place by no later than June of 2013 not only to expel from Crimea Russia’s largest naval base, which was located there, but to replace it by a U.S. naval base on Crimea.

So, there can be no reasonable doubt that the actual aggressor regarding Crimea was Obama and his regime, who seized Ukraine, and not really Putin and his government. However, the anti-Russian sanctions nonetheless remain in place to this day, and the actual history regarding the matter of Crimea, Donbass, and Ukraine, remains covered-up by the U.S. regime and its allied regimes and their propaganda or ‘news’ media.

Furthermore, the Obama regime had had Gallup survey Crimeans both in 2013 before the coup, and in 2014 right after the coup, and found that, in both polls, far more Crimeans wanted Crimea to be again a part of Russia than wanted it to be a part of Ukraine as the Soviet dictator had ruled it to become in 1954. The 2014 poll found that only 2.8% of Crimeans viewed the U.S. favorably, while more than 97% did not, and that by a margin of 71.3% to 8.8%, which is 89%, Crimeans were pro-Russia. Furthermore, the 2014 survey covered not only Crimea but all parts of what had been Ukraine, and it also found that only in Ukraine’s far northwest (near or adjoining Poland) were Ukrainians favorable either to America or to NATO. (The U.S. regime wants Ukraine to become a member of NATO — so as to place U.S. missiles only 5 minutes flight-time to Moscow, a super-blitz away — but in almost all parts of the former Ukraine, that was not wanted.)

On 16 January 2021, four days before Joe Biden became U.S. President, Russia’s RT headlined “‘America is back’: Biden fills State Department slots with more Obama vets, including Ukraine ‘coup plotter’ Victoria Nuland”, and noted that “President-elect Joe Biden is getting the old interventionist-foreign-policy team back together, including Ukraine coup engineer Victoria Nuland, signaling a hardline Russia stance as he fills out top posts in the State Department. … Nuland, who studied Russian literature at Brown University, wrote last summer in Foreign Affairs of how ‘a confident America should deal with Russia’ with a more ‘activist’ policy, including ‘speaking directly to the Russian people about the benefits of working together and the price they have paid for (President Vladimir) Putin’s hard turn away from liberalism.’ … Nuland, a neoconservative who was named undersecretary for political affairs, goes all the way back to former President Ronald Reagan’s administration and was a foreign policy adviser to former Vice President Dick Cheney. … Cato Institute senior fellow Doug Bandow said … ‘She’ll be back overthrowing governments in the Biden administration, so it remains a valid standard.’” And Nuland was part of a solidly neoconservative (i.e., U.S. imperialist) team leading both diplomatic and military policies in the new Administration.

Nuland was the person who had led the Obama Administration’s coup against Ukraine — she gave the orders, which came from Obama himself. Trump continued Obama’s neoconservative foreign policies and intensified them against Iran, but Biden is expected to intensify them against Russia, and maybe also against China. Ever since at least George W. Bush, the U.S. Government has been 100% neoconservative. Of course, Nuclear Primacy is neoconservatism regarding nuclear-weapons strategy.

Nuclear Primacy is neoconservatism in the Atomic Age. That’s what the termination of MAD is, in America. It’s super-aggression. Neoconservatism German-style was Nazism. But when the concept of neoconservatism is applied to any country other than the U.S. and its allies, it is instead called by the more general term, “imperialism.” There is nothing really new about it.

Operation Barbarossa was Germany’s version of what today is America’s Nuclear Primacy; and, of course, it preceded the era of nuclear weapons, but it produced the vast majority of the deaths and destructions in World War II — even without nuclear weapons. Because of that Nazi Operation, Russia lost 13,950,000, or exactly 12.7% of its population. Another part of the Soviet Union, Belarus, lost 2.29 million, or exactly 25.3% of its population to Hitler. Another part of the U.S.S.R., Ukraine, lost 6.85 million, or 16.3%. The entire Soviet Union lost 26.6 million, exactly 13.7% of its population to Hitler. The U.S. lost only 419,400, or 0.32% of its population.

Furthermore, immediately after FDR died and Harry S. Truman became President, the U.S. CIA (then as its predecessor organization the OSS) provided protection and employment in Germany for top members of Hitler’s equivalent to the CIA, the Gehlen Organization. (America’s CIA continues flagrantly to violate the law and hide from Congress and the American people crucial details of its relationship with the Gehlen Organization.)

By contrast, the Soviet Union was unremitting in killing Nazis whom it captured. So: while the U.S.S.R. was killing any ‘ex’-Nazis it could find, the U.S.A. was hiring them either in West Germany or else into the U.S. itself. It brought them to America whenever the U.S. regime needed the person’s assistance in designing weapons to use against the U.S.S.R.

Right away, the U.S. was looking for ‘ex’-Nazis who could help the U.S. conquer the Soviet Union. The Cold War secretly started in the U.S. as soon as WW II was over (the OSS-CIA’s “Operation Paperclip”). (There was no equivalent to “Operation Paperclip” in the U.S.S.R.)

Then, when the U.S.S.R., in 1991, ended its communism, and ended its Warsaw Pact military alliance which it had created in 1955 after America had created its NATO military alliance in 1949, and dissolved altogether, the U.S. regime secretly continued, on its side, the Cold War, but this time against Russia instead of against the Soviet Union. It was and is a U.S. war of imperialism, not a war against communism. The U.S. regime (including its allies) constantly lies about Russia, (and also about the Soviet Union, rewriting history) in order to ‘justify’ this imperialism by the U.S.

Last year, the U.S. regime (and its allies) tried to generate a coup overthrowing Belarus’s Government, which wasn’t being sufficiently hostile toward its next-door-neighbor, Russia. As a result, Belarus is now closer than ever to buying from Russia S-400 anti-missile systems, just in case the U.S. regime tries to pull its own Operation Barbarossa (of the nuclear-blitz type, instead of by three million German soldiers).

One recent instance of non-adjustment, however, is the Western media’s continuing public relations and propaganda campaign against Russia.

On 9 April Al Jazeera carried a report that “A U.S.-Russian space crew blasted off Thursday to the International Space Station following tight quarantine amid the coronavirus pandemic.

NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy and Roscosmos’ Anatoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner lifted off as scheduled from the Russian-operated Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.” There was an excellent 400-word piece about the mission, just as one would expect from Al Jazeera.

On the other hand, the New York Times, as ascertained from a search of its website on 10 April, didn’t mention the mission at all. The Washington Post carried a twelve-word item that read in its entirety “By Associated Press April 9, 2020 — A U.S.-Russian space crew has blasted off to the International Space Station.” End.

The reason for reluctance on the part of the U.S. mainstream media to inform the world about such an important international event is that Russia played the major part in a successful space mission with the United States. Imagine the news cover if the spacecraft hadn’t been a Russian Soyuz, but a U.S.-produced SpaceX (still under vastly expensive development) launched from the Kennedy Space Centre. There would have been front-page headlines with “Keep America Great” exhortations from the space commander in Washington.

And so the propaganda of the third Cold War continues, involving all sorts of important international affairs, not least being Crimea which (whisper this) is doing very nicely, thank you, having been restored to Mother Russia.

It must be acknowledged, however, that the Washington Post marked the sixth anniversary of the restoration with a piece on 18 March that (albeit reluctantly) recognised Crimea’s accession to Russia. It noted, among other things, that “in Crimea itself, the annexation was popular, especially among Crimea’s large population of older ethnic Russians. More than five years later, and billions of roubles of investment later, it remains popular.” It is mandatory in the West to use the word “annexation” when referring to the accession of Crimea to Russia following a popular referendum, but even the Post can’t escape the facts, which are so distasteful to the propagandists.

In 1783 Crimea became part of Russia and remained so until, as recorded by the BBC, “In 1954 Crimea was handed to Ukraine as a gift by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev who was himself half-Ukrainian.” The majority of citizens wanted to rejoin Russia rather than stay with crippled post-revolution Ukraine which would have victimized them because of their Russian heritage. One of its first actions “was to repeal a 2012 law recognising Russian as an official regional language” and governance from Kiev boded badly for minorities.

It was rarely stated that 90 percent of the inhabitants of Crimea are Russian-speaking, Russian-cultured and Russian-educated, and they voted to “dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another” (in the words of the Declaration of Independence of 1776) in order to rejoin Russia. It would be strange if they had not wanted to accede to a country that not only welcomed their kinship, empathy and loyalty but was economically benevolent concerning their future, as has now been amply demonstrated by ensuing growth and prosperity. As even the Washington Post had to acknowledge, “Crimea’s three largest ethnic groups are, by and in large, happy with the direction of events on the peninsula.”

At the time that these ethnic groups were voting to rejoin their mother country, five years ago, the West, and most notably the administration in Washington, decided to oppose any such move. It didn’t matter that it was a fair and free vote, because there are ways to defeat common sense and national aspirations while creating the impression that it is wrong for people to express their feelings and wishes if these favour a nation that is anathema to those who make the rules.

For example, the government in Crimea invited observers from the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to witness and assess the conduct of the referendum held to determine whether the people of Crimea wished to remain under the Kiev government or rejoin Russia. There were no strings attached, and the invitation was sent to the HQ of the OSCE in Vienna. Then there was a pause during which the matter was considered in who knows what halls of power. And the OSCE conjured up an intriguing excuse for refusing to assess conduct of the plebiscite. As Reuters reported, “a spokeswoman said Crimea could not invite observers as the region was not a full-fledged state and therefore not a member of the 57-member organization. ‘As far as we know, Crimea is not a participating state of the OSCE, so it would be sort of hard for them to invite us,’ she said. She also said that Ukraine, which is an OSCE member, sent no invitation and that the organization ‘respects the full territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine’.” You couldn’t make it up.

The feelings and aspirations of Crimea’s citizens didn’t matter to the OSCE or to the West as a whole. The West wanted, and still wants, Ukraine to rule Crimea, and seems determined to pester and sanction Russia accordingly. But nobody can seriously imagine for one moment that Russia is going to hand over Crimea to the Kiev government. So what is the answer?

Nobody expects the Great and the Good of the West to openly admit they were wrong about Crimea, and that the region and its citizens are in fact immeasurably better-off than they would be had they been subjected to rule by Kiev. But there is usually a way out of such a dilemma, and one that can be gently implemented without embarrassment. All that the West needs to do is quietly accept the status of Crimea and remove anti-Russia sanctions without fanfare. There would be discontent among the ultra-nationalists in Kiev, of course, but the world would be a more secure and happier place. Surely that’s a worthy aim to be achieved?