By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In brief statements issued late last week in Moscow – their significance missed in the western press — President Vladimir Putin ordered a reality check of Russia’s war strategy. He then  answered himself by declaring the war will be over when no Ukrainian army will be left on the battlefield, nor NATO weapons.  

The Foreign Ministry answered by pointing out that Russia does not recognize there is a legal Ukrainian state because the reality is that the mutual recognition treaty between Russia and the Ukraine was cancelled by Presidents Petro Poroshenko and Vladimir Zelensky in 2018 and 2019.  

“We can conclude,” Putin said at the Security Council meeting on Thursday morning,  “that they can certainly send in additional equipment, but the mobilisation reserve is not unlimited. And Ukraine’s Western allies really seem determined to fight with Russia to the last Ukrainian. At the same time, we must proceed from the fact that the enemy’s offensive potential has not been exhausted; they may have strategic reserves yet unused, and I ask you to keep this in mind when making fighting strategies. You need to proceed from reality.”

Putin was following by a few hours the statement by the Foreign Ministry that Russia does not recognize the legal sovereignty of the regime in Kiev, and that following the cancellation of the treaty between the Ukraine and Russia in 2019, there will be no Ukrainian state left to sign an end-of-war agreement.

At her weekly briefing of reporters, the ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova, was asked “when will Russia initiate a legal procedure to terminate the bilateral treaty with Ukraine on its sovereignty?” Zakharova answered:  “The procedure for terminating the bilateral treaty with Ukraine on its sovereignty is hampered by the absence of such a treaty. In Article 1 of the Treaty on the Principles of Relations between the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR of November 19, 1990, the two republics recognised each other as ‘sovereign states.’ The 1990 treaty was then replaced by the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between the Russian Federation and Ukraine of May 31, 1997 (Article 39),  which was denounced by Ukraine and terminated on April 1, 2019.”

No army, no state. But the war will continue because it is the one between the US and the NATO powers and Russia. That too will have an ending, but longer.

“If [NATO Secretary-General] Mr Stoltenberg again says on behalf of NATO that they are against freezing the conflict in Ukraine,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said  on June 21,    “this means that they want to fight. So let them fight. We are ready for that. We realised NATO’s true goals in Ukraine some time ago as their plans took shape over the years that followed the coup. Today, NATO is attempting to implement them…they are directly involved in the hybrid and hot war declared on Russia.”

I am reminded, Lavrov added, “of a Soviet-era joke noting that the Soviet Union is located too close to US military bases.” The Soviet Union was dismantled, but the war continues against Russia. It will end when the US is pushed to a safe distance.  How safe, Putin asked Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to explain in answer to two questions?

Putin’s question: “we know that the enemy is to receive additional Western equipment. What does the Defence Ministry think about threats in this connection?”

Shoigu’s answer: “All arsenals, accumulated by the Soviet Union and countries of the former socialist bloc, have now been virtually depleted. We can say the same about former Ukrainian resources… the amount, due to be delivered throughout 2023, as well as those weapons that have already been delivered, will not seriously affect the course of hostilities. Additionally, most of the armoured vehicles and fighting vehicles belong to the previous generation, or even to an earlier generation. On the one hand, their armour is weak and ineffective, compared to modern equipment. Mr President, we do not see any threats here.”

Question: “Mr Shoigu, what is the percentage of Western equipment out of the equipment that has been destroyed since June 4, which Mr Patrushev has just reported giving generalised data? Approximately.”

Answer: “Of the 246 tanks destroyed, 13 were Western made. At the same time, it should be noted that, if we consider the equipment that was delivered, tanks in particular: 81 Western-made tanks have been delivered. Of the 81 Western tanks, 13 [16%] have been destroyed. Of the armoured fighting vehicles, 59 Western ones have been destroyed. To date, Western countries have supplied Ukraine with an estimated 109 Bradley armoured fighting vehicles. Of the 109 BFVs, 18 [17%] have been destroyed. Overall, 59 Western-made armoured vehicles have been destroyed. As for field artillery and guns, here, of course, I can estimate right away that out of the 48 pieces destroyed, about 30 percent were Western made.”

The “reality”, Putin concluded publicly, not for Shoigu or the General Staff, is that the percentage of NATO weapons destroyed on the battlefield will rise sharply because “the enemy’s offensive potential has not been exhausted; they may have strategic reserves yet unused.” When those reserves are defeated, there will be neither NATO arms nor Ukrainian men left.

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by Editor - Saturday, June 24th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Without the public support of any political figure in Russia, military or police unit, regional governor, or the officers of his Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigozhin and his thousand rank-and-filers have agreed to return to their base camps on terms negotiated late on Saturday afternoon between Prigozhin and Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarus President.

The one-armed rebellion has failed with recriminations, immunity from prosecution, and  almost no bloodshed. The Kremlin solution has followed the precedent of General Alexander Lebed’s (lead image, centre) rebellion against President Boris Yeltsin in 1996, not the violent end of the rebellion of Yemelyan Pugachev (left) of 1773-75.

Dmitry Rogozin, who was one of the strategists of Lebed’s campaign for the presidency and later became a deputy prime minister under President Vladimir Putin,  made the difference clear in a statement he issued early on Saturday, before Putin spoke at 10 o’clock. “I know the situation at the front as well as Prigozhin and I have never hidden my position, but whatever the explanation for an armed rebellion, it is still an armed rebellion in the rear of a belligerent army. In a war, you have to shove your political ambitions up your ass and support the front with all your might. Any attempts to weaken it are nothing but aiding the enemy.”

Another of Lebed’s comrades of 27 years ago, Sergei Glazyev, followed with a repudiation of Prigozhin of his own. None of the well-known critics of Putin on domestic policy, nor the military bloggers who have attacked the tactical management and strategic priorities of the Special Military Operation, supported Prigozhin.

The rebellion, according to sources speaking on Saturday evening, involved advance planning by Prigozhin and several hundred of the lowest ranks of his military group. There was no support among the Wagner officers. After they had moved on Rostov, then took the road to Voronezh and on towards Moscow, the road columns numbered several hundred, with a total across the southwest of no more than four thousand.

A statement issued by Lukashenko’s office in Minsk at 8 in the evening said the rebellion was at an end.  “This morning, Russian President Vladimir Putin informed his Belarusian counterpart about the situation in the south of Russia with the private military company Wagner. The heads of State agreed on joint actions. As a follow-up to the agreements, the President of Belarus, having further clarified the situation through his own channels, in coordination with the President of Russia, held talks with the head of the Wagner PMCS [private military companies], Yevgeny Prigozhin.”

“The negotiations lasted throughout the day. As a result, we came to an agreement on the inadmissibility of unleashing a bloody massacre on the territory of Russia. Yevgeny Prigozhin accepted the proposal of the President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko to stop the movement of armed persons of the Wagner company on the territory of Russia and further steps to de-escalate tension. At the moment, there is an absolutely profitable and acceptable solution to the situation on the table, with security guarantees for the fighters of the Wagner PMCs.”

A well-informed Moscow source says:  “The whole thing was planned for several weeks. Soldiers and unit sergeants might be on board. Officers, obviously not. That makes it a mutiny against commanders. I do not think Prigozhin will go quietly. He will try and romanticize himself as a Pugachev and his assassins as peasants defending Russia from oligarchs. Questions will be asked when and which men were already inside of Rostov Military HQ. Perhaps some advance parties were inside.”

There is no publication yet of Lukashenko’s terms which Prigozhin has accepted for himself. Unconfirmed reports in Moscow indicate he will leave the country for Africa with one of the Wagner units operating there. His media, communications, and internet networks have been blocked.

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by Editor - Saturday, June 24th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Since the Ukrainian abrogation of the  Istanbul non-aggression and neutrality agreement of March 2022, which President Vladimir Putin displayed to a delegation of African leaders last Saturday, one thing has been clear. The pact to end this war will be drafted and signed by Ukrainian soldiers who have been defeated in the field, not by civilian politicians who are paid and instructed by Washington.  

The terms will be dictated by Russian soldiers. They will calculate the distances to be covered by long-range NATO artillery and missile launches on Russian territory, and of Ukrainian terrorist attacks into Russian regions. These are military facts the Russian General Staff have a long history of calculating, plotting them on maps and reinforcing the depth of defence and control lines – as long ago as the Soviet Army war against the US-backed Afghan mujahideen.

Since last November, when this website published first maps of a demilitarized zone for the Ukrainian territory, the depth of the Russian defence lines has been moving steadily westward. As each of the Ukrainian strategic reserves – units newly trained and armed by the US and NATO states – are committed to battle and fail, their retreat leaves all of the remaining Ukrainian territory open to a Russian advance.  

What follows is the first detailed discussion in the open in Moscow of how the map of this territory should be drawn when the Ukrainian offensive reaches its end, and the Russian advance begins.   

Left out of mention is who in Moscow will be drawing the new map. This is because Putin has annonced he is delegating to the General Staff.  “Russia’s military leadership,” he said on June 9, “is realistic in its assessments of the situation and will proceed from these realities as it continues to plan up our actions in the short term.”

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had already said the same a year ago. “Now the geography is different,” he concluded an interview in Moscow on July 20, 2022.   “Take the HIMARS. [Ukrainian] Defence Minister Alexei Reznikov boasts that they have already received 300-kilometre ammunition. This means our geographic objectives will move even further from the current line. We cannot allow the part of Ukraine that Vladimir Zelensky, or whoever replaces him, will control to have weapons that pose a direct threat to our territory or to the republics that have declared their independence and want to determine their own future.”

“[Question:] How can this be arranged, technically? This is our territory. Then there are the republics that will accede to us. In fact they already have – the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. … Further west, there is the territory controlled by Vladimir Zelensky. They have a common border. So either there should be a 300 kilometre buffer zone or something between them, or we need to march all the way to Lvov inclusive.”

“[Lavrov:] There is a solution to this problem. The military know this.”

“Comrade servicemen,” Lavrov added last week on a visit to the 201st Russian Military Base in Tajikistan, “they are getting ready, in earnest, to supply the F-16 jets. Some say they will make two squadrons available, others say eight. They are gearing up to continue the escalation of the war against us. There’s an ongoing debate about where these planes will take off from. Our armed forces and the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces are well aware of ongoing developments and report to the Supreme Commander-in-Chief. We must keep in mind that one version of the F-16 can carry nuclear weapons. If they do not understand this, they are worthless military strategists and planners.”  

The General Staff have no reason to speak publicly on this point.

Privately, a source in a position to know says: “the General Staff are not satisfied with the Dnieper [line of defence]. It will run from a small town on the border with Belarus to Transnistria. They will solve that problem as well. But mainly, Belarus has to be protected from the south. And most importantly, that leaves nothing of the Ukraine except the territory which the Poles and Hungarians might not be bold enough to take.”

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by Editor - Tuesday, June 20th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Jack Teixeira (lead image, left), the US Air Force national guardsman arrested on espionage allegations in April, is scheduled to appear in a Boston federal court for his arraignment on the prosecution’s charges this Wednesday, June 21.  

Six counts were listed in the grand jury indictment filed in court on June 15. The 10-page paper reveals new evidence contradicting the case against Teixeira which has been published in the mainstream media based on official government leaks to the Bellingcat propaganda organization and the New York Times, which are working together against Teixeira and against the intelligence disclosures attributed to him.  

The new court evidence is now pointing to the likelihood that Teixeira’s access to highly classified documents prepared by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (lead image, right) at the end of February this year had been facilitated for him by senior US Air Force (USAF) officials.

If provable, Teixeira will plead not guilty and his lawyers will prepare the defence case of entrapment. If embarrassing to the Pentagon and the Justice Department, Teixeira may be offered a plea bargain of guilty in exchange for no trial of the evidence and a reduced jail sentence. The section of the Espionage Act which is the basis of Teixeira’s prosecution, 18 United States Code Section 793(e ), provides ten years in prison and a fine of $250,000 for  conviction  on each count. The 21-year old is facing the equivalent of a life sentence.  

It is not yet known whether Teixeira, who has been ordered to remain in prison without possibility of bail release, will appear in person in court or sign a waiver. His lawyers are also not saying what plea Teixeira will enter. (At a brief hearing on June 21, Teixeira appeared in federal court in Worcester and pleaded not guilty to reach of the charges. He was remanded in prison to appear next on August 9. )

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by Editor - Tuesday, June 20th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Until June 24 the combined air forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) are conducting their largest operation against Russia in the 74-year history of the alliance. The plan has been to disguise F-16 fighter jets as if they are piloted by Ukrainians, and pretend they are  launched from Ukrainian territory. 

In response, Russian artillery, missile and fighter-bomber forces have been disabling and destroying Ukrainian airfields, and every Ukrainian aircraft being flown from them.  

Then on Friday, President Vladimir Putin dismissed the NATO pretence, warning that if an F-16 threatens to attack a Russian target,   it would be “burned”, and so would the launch airbase and supporting aircraft – fuel tankers, electronic countermeasures, command-and-control, and decoys –  no matter what NATO member-state flag they are  flying,  and on what territory they are  based.

“The F-16 will also burn, there is no doubt,” Putin said in St. Petersburg on June 16. “But if they are located at air bases outside Ukraine, and used in combat operations, we will have to look at how to hit and where to hit those means that are used in combat operations against us. This is a serious danger of NATO’s further involvement in this armed conflict.”  When the president and commander-in-chief announces “we will have to look at how to hit”, he means the General Staff have already assembled the operational intelligence and readied plans of attack with three minutes to launch; that is, against targets in Poland, Romania, Moldova, and possibly further west across the Czech and German borders. 

In the president’s phrase “those means that are used in combat operations against us”, Putin also intends to identify airborne targets, manned and unmanned, over the Black, Baltic, and Barents Seas.

Never before has NATO’s collective defence proviso Article Five been explicitly challenged by the Kremlin. In practice, by describing the agreement of the NATO members that “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all”, the NATO wording does no more than require each of the NATO members to take “forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary.” .

What is happening is that by aiming their display of NATO airpower at the Kremlin, US and German commanders in their Ramstein bunkers have provoked Putin to call their bluff: he is now aiming directly at the Poles, Romanians and Germans, telling them to “deem” whether war with Russia is “necessary”.

“Well, the Poles,” added Putin, “okay, they have their own goals, they sleep and see the return of Western Ukraine. And, apparently, they are gradually coming to this.”

In parallel,  the US has escalated to nuclear weapons by flying two US Air Force (USAF) B-1B bombers from the UK Fairford airbase, refuelling in Germany, transiting Poland and Romania, to a point in the Black Sea off the Crimean coast and the Sevastopol naval base, where  the aircraft transponders were turned off from public view.   

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by Editor - Saturday, June 17th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

It’s religious to believe that a slight young man with a slingshot can defeat a heavily armed giant with a single stone.

No general, head of government, or national electorate can rationally calculate risking their fortunes and fates on such a disadvantageous ratio of force;  on a lucky shot;  and on an article of faith. Icons can motivate soldiers to ignore the odds of survival in a battle; they don’t win wars of attrition.

In the two hundred years since Greece freed itself of Turkish rule with Russian and British support, it’s to be expected that the Greeks would be obliged to count and counter the strengths of their enemies with the resources of their friends. Over the years this Greek calculation has required them to conceal, lie, cheat, fabricate, and steal from them all when their survival was at stake.

In retrospect of the 20^th century, that has happened more often to the Greeks than to most other Europeans. In the outcome for them of the Balkan Wars, 1912-1913; World War I; the Greco-Turkish War of 1919-22; the Italian and German invasions of  World War II;  the Civil War of 1945-49; the military dictatorship of 1967-74, the Turkish invasion and occupation of Cypus from 1974; and the European bailout terms of 2015, the Greeks have suffered incomparable  losses.  Measuring by the European standard of destructiveness in war — civil war and invasion — only one country exceeds Russia (and possibly Serbia) in the frequency of violence, in the percentage losses of Gross Domestic Product, and  in casualties per head of population: this  is Greece. In the anti-Russian European alliance of today, no country has been as damaged by the violence and depredations of its own allies — the Turks, Italians, Germans, British, and Americans — as Greece.

That is,  until the US and NATO allies decided on war with Russia to be fought to the last Ukrainian and to the end of the Ukrainian state. For the time being, though, the money which the US,  the UK and NATO allies, and the International Monetary Fund have paid into the Kiev regime dwarfs the sums of reparations, compensation and aid paid to Greece.

Notwithstanding, in the current war none of these allies has concealed its role in the battlefield fight against Russia more clumsily than the Mayor of Athens, Kostas Bakoyannis (lead image, left) and his uncle, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (right).  No communist party in Europe has been as outspoken as the Greek Communist Party (KKE) in its verbal attacks on Russia.  No domestic oligarchs have put their capital to the aid of Russia as much as the Greek tanker fleet owners. No rocket forces commander has exchanged one anti-aircraft and missile defence system which works for another which does not as the Greek exchange of the Russian S-300 for the US Patriot.

These aren’t individual Greek faults or follies. They are contradictions which have political and economic reasons. But there  is a standard of deceit below which not even the Greeks in their historic and current predicament should fall. This is when the Greeks deceive and cheat each other for self-enrichment,  and for the benefit of the country’s enemies. The first of these is  corruption; the second is treason. When the two are combined in the running of the state – election votes, parliamentary majority, formation of government, allocation of budget, military pacts,  security service operations  – and when all of this is camouflaged by the courts and the media, then the country is committing suicide.

Is this the present fate of Greece? Listen to the discussion between Slobodan Despot, Alexander Mercouris, and John Helmer.

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by Editor - Saturday, June 17th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The Black Sea is a small body of water by international sea standards.

It is so small that when the navies of the shore states go to war, the battles tend to be brief, hit-and-run affairs, like the skirmishes between the Romanians, Germans and Soviets in 1941-42, and between the Georgians and the Russians in August 2008. The Russians, with the bigger, better equipped navies,  tend to win. When they win, as they did over the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Sinope in 1853, the outside powers try to equalize by taking the anti-Russian side: it was the French and British in 1853; the Americans and the NATO allies now.

In the recent history of their direct encounters with the Russian vessels and their air support, the Americans  and British   have come off with what is known in maritime history as their tails between their legs.

The surface area of the Black Sea is 436,400 square kilometres.   By comparison, the Mediterranean, into which the Black Sea drains, is 2.5 million square kms, and there are several much larger seas than that. .

The Black Sea is also not the biggest of the seas on which Russia has a shore line and frontier. The Caspian Sea is 371,000 square kms; the Baltic Sea is 377,000 square kms; the Chukchi Sea,  595,000 square kms; the Barents Sea, 1.4 million square kms; the Sea of Okhotsk, 1.6 million square kms; and the Bering Sea, 2.4 square million kms. For the time being, the Black Sea is the only one of these seas in which one of the littoral territories, the Ukraine, has declared war on one of the littoral states, Russia.

In the year since the Special Military Operation began on February 24, 2022, Turkish figures count 52 ship losses altogether;   most of the Russian losses are Ukrainian claims which have not been verified. All of the Ukrainian losses on the Turkish list have occurred in port harbours or at a limit of 12 nautical miles (23 kms) offshore. The principal causes have been mines, shore-based artillery, missile, aircraft, and drone strikes.

In the past three weeks, the Kiev regime has declared war in the international waters of the Black Sea by launching drone boats to attack two Russian naval vessels operating to guard the gas pipelines which run on the seabed between Russia and Turkey. The pipelines are known as Blue Stream, operational in 2003, and Turkstream from 2020. On May 24, the Russian Navy’s  Ivan Khurs (lead image, left) was attacked by three Ukrainian surface drones; at the time the location was  140 kms northeast of the Bosphorus Strait, outside Turkish territorial waters, inside Turkey’s exclusive economic zone, but in international waters.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported the destruction of the attacking vessels without their reaching the Ivan Khurs, and the return of the vessel undamaged to its homeport of Sevastopol.  Its mission, the ministry said, had been “to ensure safe operation of the Turkstream and Blue Stream gas pipelines in the exclusive economic zone of the Republic of Turkey and also [it] monitored the surface situation in the southwest part of the Black Sea to ensure the safety of navigation under the ‘grain deal.’”  

On June 11, six Ukrainian surface drones attacked the Russian Navy’s Priazovye (“Azov Sea”, lead image, right). All six were destroyed before they could strike. The reported location was about 300 kms southeast of Sevastopol; that is the northern limit of the Turkish exclusive economic zone, but still in international waters.  

The Ukrainian military have made no claim of responsibility.

The official Russian reporting of the incidents has treated them as Ukrainian terrorism. The method of the operations, and the vessels from which the drone boats were  launched, have not yet been disclosed, although the positional data appear to have been recorded by the overhead US Air Force FORTE11 operation,   and by overhead Russian surveillance aircraft, drones, and satellites, and by naval radars. The probability is also that real-time course targeting coordinates for the drones in their runs at the Ivan Khurs and the Priazovye were transmitted to the Ukrainians by the US Air Force (USAF).

The likelihood also is that the Ukrainian attackers used the shipping channel designated for the security of grain transportation under the Black Sea Grain Initiative agreements of July 2022. Compliance with these agreements is the responsibility of the United Nations Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres. Ukrainian terrorism in violation of the agreements indicates the complicity of that UN official as the war has been extended by the Ukrainians and the USAF into international waters.

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by Editor - Wednesday, June 14th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

There’s an old Russian adage about swallowing too much and trying to talk at the same time – if  you don’t want to die of gastroenteritis, keep your mouth shut.  This isn’t an option for  understanding the  past week of the war, and preparing for the next.

Bear in mind that, in the middle of the Ukrainian ground offensive and hours before the start of the largest NATO air operation since the alliance was created in April 1949,  the war in the Ukraine is having almost no impact on President Biden’s (lead image) job approval polls and thus on his re-election chances in November 2024.

By contrast, President Putin, who goes to election between January and March of 2024, has declared his new approach to what will happen between now and then.

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by Editor - Saturday, June 10th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The longest lasting of the false-flag operations conducted against Russia since the Special Military Operation started in February 2022 has been flying the flag of the United Nations (UN).

The chief flag-bearer has been the Secretary-General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, a Portuguese (lead image, left); he has manipulated, plotted, and lied his way through the Ukrainian hostage-taking at Azovstal, during the Battle of Mariupol;  the Ukrainian attacks on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant; and Ukrainian attempts to break the ports blockade with what the UN has been calling its “Black Sea Grain Initiative”.   

Reinforcing Guterres in these schemes of deceit have been his spokesman, American and Frenchman Stéphane Dujarric (Rothschild),  Argentine Rafael Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA);  and the negotiator of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, British lawyer Martin Griffiths (lead image, right)  and https://twitter.com/. Griffiths came to his UN job from a Geneva organization funded by the anti-Russian governments of Norway, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada, Denmark, the UK, Australia, Ireland, and Switzerland. It calls itself “The Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue”.  

Guterres’s bluff was called a year ago, on April 26, at the long-table incident in Moscow when President Vladimir Putin told Guterres he was wrong on the facts, biased in his public statements, and acting in violation of his UN authority.  

“You can call it whatever name you like and have whatever bias in favour of those who did it, “ Putin told Guterres after getting him to confirm that the earphone to his interpreter was working. “But this was really an anti-constitutional coup. Unfortunately, our colleagues in the West preferred to ignore all this. After we recognised the independence of these states [Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics], they asked us to render them military aid because they were subjected to military actions, an armed aggression. In accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter, Chapter VII, we were forced to do this by launching a special military operation…[About the Battle of Mariupol and the Azovstal hostages] Mr Secretary-General, you have been misled…The simplest thing for military personnel or members of the nationalist battalions is to release the civilians. It is a crime to keep civilians, if there are any there, as human shields.”  

Putin did not shake hands to greet Guterres; he placed him further away than any head of state had ever been seated in conversation at the Kremlin before; Guterres squirmed.  To CNN a day later in Kiev, Guterres lied about what had been said at the meeting.   Later, when asked in New York to say what and when he knew of the foreign combatants at Azovstal, and the use of civilian hostage shields in the battle, Guterres refused to answer.   

The Russian Foreign Ministry has been more explicit in its condemnation of Guterres than of any UN secretary-general before him. “Contrary to the requirements in the UN Charter,” the Foreign Ministry spokesman declared last July, “the [Guterres’ staff] Secretariat is not taking an equidistant position, as one would expect from a Secretariat of the most authoritative international organisation that is designed, among other things, to promote the settlement of disputes.”  

“I would like to remind our esteemed colleagues from the UN Secretariat”, according to Maria Zakharova at the ministry, “that their job is not to take sides in situations of dispute, but to help maintain peace and stability. This is what they are paid for and this is their mandate.”

On September 29, the Foreign Ministry announced: “The relevant functions do not give the Managing Director [Guterres] of the UN Secretariat the right to make biased political statements on behalf of the entire [UN] Organization. Nor is such a person authorized to interpret the norms of the Charter and documents of the General Assembly, including the 1970 Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation between States in Accordance with the UN Charter… Obviously, A[ntonio] Guterres has not only exceeded his authority, but actually taken sides with the collective West, again resorting to a selective approach in the interpretation of the unfolding events.”  

“We consider unacceptable the fact that the UN Secretary-General has become an instrument of propaganda and pressure on Member States at a time when he should be guided by the UN Charter in its entirety.”

The defeat of the Ukrainian and NATO forces on the battlefield has gradually diminished the value to the US and NATO of the role of the UN Security Council and of Secretary-General Guterres. This has left Grossi exposed as playing the role of spokesman for Kiev when war operations caused the biggest radiation release so far into the atmosphere on May 13 as   Ukrainian army stocks of depleted uranium shells were blown up at Khmelnitsky.  

In the war over food stocks – the attempt to stop Russia exporting grain and crop fertilizers, and to use Ukrainian grain exports to recover Black Sea ports and to conceal attacks on Russian targets  – the role of Griffiths as the UN go-between has failed comprehensively, and for the same reason that Guterres and Grossi have failed. Griffiths told the UN on May 23 that the Ukraine is the victim of Russian attacks based on Kiev press releases. “The biggest challenge remains the impediments to reaching all areas in Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia currently under the military control of the Russian Federation.”

Griffiths also claimed that “in recent weeks, we have engaged in intensive discussions with the parties to the Black Sea Initiative, to secure agreement on its extension and the improvements needed for it to operate effectively and predictably. This will continue over the coming days.”

In fact, Griffiths and UN officials cannot “engage” with the Russian side because they are no longer trusted. Griffiths’ claim that he and his staff have “continued to deliver a wide range of support with concrete results under the Memorandum of Understanding on the facilitation of Russian food and fertilizer exports” is false.

The Russian response is that Grossi and Griffiths have been following “illegal instructions to his subordinates” from Guterres.  

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by Editor - Monday, June 5th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In a month it will be three hundred and fourteen years precisely since the Swedes lost their king, their generals, their soldiers, and their empire when Tsar Peter the Great and the Russian army defeated them at the Battle of Poltava (lead image). That battle of July 8, 1709, is the greatest disaster in Swedish military history; it is the bitterest grudge they hold against Russia, still.   

The Swedes were obliged to accept their inferiority and become a minor power in Europe. Their  strategic calculation ever since has been to conserve their resources by keeping to the winning side in Europe, while hoping to revenge themselves on the Kremlin. At Poltava, in eastern Ukraine, they still hope if,  with Swedish money, arms, and men, the regime in Kiev can manage it.

Over the past week the Swedish Air Force has taken its Saab-made JAS39 Gripen  fighter-bombers to the air, alongside other NATO forces and the USS Gerald Ford in what they are calling Operation Arctic Challenge 23. At the same time, the Swedish Defense Minister Pål  Jonsson, has admitted that he is discussing with Kiev supplying the Gripen for attacking Russian forces over the Ukrainian battlefield. “Yesterday [February 14], I had the opportunity to discuss this with the Minister of Defense of Ukraine, Reznikov….We are significantly increasing our support for Ukraine”.  “President Zelensky also asked for it.”

Jonsson didn’t admit that the Swedes are discussing with the US, NATO, and the Czech Republic a form of disguising the battlefield deployment of the Gripen through third countries and through NATO’s Air Defender 23 exercise, which begins on June 12.

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by Editor - Sunday, June 4th, 2023
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