By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

In the history of the wars of the world, it almost never happens that the military strategy of a fighting state directs and revolutionizes the political strategy, and not the other way round —  as  aspiring politicians, military officers and policemen are taught by the venerable Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz to believe.

But it is happening in Europe now, on the Ukrainian battlefield, and in the war of the US and NATO alliance against Russia.

So long, Sun; so long, Carl; so long, Pardner!

For Russia it would never have turned out this way if President Boris Yeltsin had decided to run for a third term, ruling as medically incapable as President Joseph Biden,  but deferring the succession until after Mikhail Khodorkovsky had sold the Yukos oil company to the US, and the other Russian oligarchs created by Yeltsin had followed suit. Heart, brain, and liver disease stopped the Yeltsin part of that. The Vladimir Putin succession plan then failed to deliver what had been intended.

What has remained of the plan of the destruction of Russia from those days is what there is today.

The oligarchs survive but, according to the terms of the US and NATO sanctions war, they cannot have their assets and freedom of movement back unless they overthrow Putin, change the regime in the Kremlin, and destroy the capability of the Russian military to defend the country.

The defensive strategy in response is obvious. Not only must the capacity of Ukrainian forces and their NATO weapons be destroyed at the front, and their remainder driven to a territorial line west of the Dnieper River, between Kiev and Lvov, out of range of Russian Crimea, Zaphorozhye, Kherson, Donetsk and Lugansk. Also, each of the NATO weapons must be defeated and destroyed which the US sends to the battlefield, and the airborne and ground systems for directing them at their Russian targets neutralized. .

If this Russian strategy succeeds, the implication for Europe – and the rest of the world (Taiwan) – will be plain. The US cannot defend NATO and NATO cannot defend its member states with a military capability that has been defeated. Article Five of the NATO treaty will become a dead letter. If and when that happens, the all-for-one-one-for-all principle of security in Europe which Article 5 promises will be replaced, first by the principle of every one for himself, and then by the principle of reciprocal security and non-aggression; that was the proposal of the Russian treaties of December 17, 2021.  

The political strategy of the US and NATO for Russia, having failed with Yeltsin’s replacement of Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991, and then with Putin’s replacement of Yeltsin in 2000, now depends on the survival of the oligarch system inside Russia. This too is under attack —  not from the Kremlin, but from the US and European sanctions war which has paralyzed the oligarchs and their networks in the west, and suspended their capital export schemes.

For the Russian oligarchs to hope to resume their business as usual in the post-war period, as they say they want,   the war on the Ukrainian battlefield should be short and the terms of armistice and settlement suspensive, equivocal, inconsequential – like the Minsk accords of 2014-15. Ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel  and ex-French President Francois Hollande  have acknowledged why that is impossible for the Russian president, the General Staff, and the Russian people to accept.

The alternative Russian political strategy is the redirection of trade, capital, transport, and financial logistics to the east and south – principally China and India, but also Iran, Turkey, the Arab world, and in time, the African one. For this political strategy to succeed, the success of the military strategy in Europe is a parallel requirement, a pre-condition almost. And so, in the practical logic of politics, for Russian military strategy to succeed on its terms, the Russian oligarchy must be transformed. This is happening.

As the Russian military strategy succeeds on the battlefield, the political will of the European people must also be transformed. This too is happening. Not every battle on every front can be explained at once, though.

Listen to the discussion of Russian tactics in the Donbass, the General Staff strategy for the Ukraine, and the political divisions widening inside the NATO states.

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by Editor - Sunday, March 5th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Two Englishmen, Timothy Garton Ash (lead image, left) and Mark Leonard (right),  and Ivan Krastev (centre), a Bulgarian, claim to have discovered from opinion polls they conducted in nine European Union (EU) countries during January that “since Russia’s war on Ukraine began, the US and its European allies have regained their unity and sense of purpose…Russia’s aggression in Ukraine marks both the consolidation of the West and the emergence of the long-heralded post-Western international order.”

“The growing hostility of Europeans towards Russia is reflected in their preference not to buy Russian fossil fuels even if it results in energy supply problems. This is the prevailing view in every one of the nine EU countries polled, with an average of 55 per cent of these EU citizens supporting it.It is now clear that, contrary to the Kremlin’s expectations, the war has consolidated the West, rather than weakened it.”

“Average” is a telltale admission from Ash, Leonard, and Krastev.

They have been employed to undertake the polling and write a summary of its reults by a European government think tank called the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR).  Their report was published on February 22. Click to read it here.  

This “average” result has been fabricated by counting the response percentages in each of the EU country polls and dividing by their sum, nine. This “average” distorts and conceals the large differences in the poll percentages between the most anti-Russian countries – Estonia and Poland – and the more pro-Russian and antiwar states, such as Italy,  Spain, and Germany.

“Unity”, “consolidation”, and “hostility towards Russia” are the “prevailing view in every one of the nine EU countries” – that’s the headline conclusion from the think tank. It  appears to mean  the majority of people in Estonia think the same towards Russia and the war as the majority of Italians;  the majority of Poles the same as the majority of Spaniards or Germans.

But the evidence from Ash, Leonard and Krastev is a slip of their tongue between “prevailing”, which is a political term that doesn’t mean numerical majority; and “average” which is an arithmetical  operation which doesn’t measure difference – it erases the variation around the numerical mean.

Politically speaking about the Europe peoples, this is faking.  “I found the degree to which the national EU findings were subsumed in the overall figures, so that Germany could be diluted by Poland, for instance, fairly blatant,” commented a British expert on the war.

Asked to clarify the methodology for his published conclusion, Krastev refused, saying “I am putting in cc my colleagues from ECFR as they can answer your question.”

Speaking for Krastev, Ash and Leonard, Andreas Bock, a Berlin-based spokesman for the ECFR, acknowledged the individual country tabulations for each of the poll questions asked in each of the European countries were available to the report authors. But when asked for a public or press copy of these data, Bock refused to disclose them. He claimed “we can’t provide the intra-European data as we are preparing another piece using this [sic] data”.

Ash has been travelling outside England, his secretary said, but he had received the request for evidence to substantiate what he had written, and he would be replying. He has not, however. “Misrepresenting research data, withholding research data tables, faking research results, refusing to substantiate factual claims, and representing propaganda as professional work are grave violations of duty, standard and conduct for the holder of a university professorship”, Ash was asked. “How do you respond?”  He has not answered.

Ash,  Leonard,  and Krastev were asked by telephone and email to explain the stonewalling. “Is there a reason in evidence or interpretation why you believe this statement [of fabrication] does not apply to you?” There has been no response.

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by Editor - Wednesday, March 1st, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

An article by Lucy Komisar on the film “Navalny” was republished here at Komisar’s request on February 22.

Komisar has requested its removal after she received an email from Diana Schemo, an ex-New York Times reporter.

This is a new story of what was famously called, almost a century ago, La Trahison des Clercs. 

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by Editor - Wednesday, March 1st, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Football is the most popular sport Russians like to play and like to watch. Ice hockey comes second.

The connexion between football and ice hockey, apples and tomatoes is that Gennady Timchenko (lead image left) is the sanctioned oligarch who is now moving into domestic production of apples to substitute for imports; he has been a player, sponsor, financier and director of ice hockey clubs, associations, and stadiums in Russia and Finland.   Yevgeny Giner (right) has been the long established owner of the Moscow football club CSKA, a financial director at the Russian Football Union, and stadium builder;   he is now taking a position in tomatoes.

Why apples, why tomatoes, why now in Russia?

The reason is the war – and the way in which the US and NATO campaign to destroy the Russian economy is rebuilding it in directions and in sectors which the pre-war oligarchs had no wish, no incentive to consider.

By curtailing their freedom to export cash, capital, and assets outside Russia, the sanctions have forced the oligarchs to look for the right combination of investment factors in the domestic Russian market. Apples and tomatoes qualify for them because of the large and growing size of consumer demand; the relatively low level of domestic competition for market entry; and the determining role of the state in raising protection from imports, allocating low-cost land for production; and handing out budget cash to pay for borrowing, seed, fertilizer, and other purchases, machine leasing, tax relief, subsidized storage and transport to the point of sale – and price fixing. Traditional oligarch methods for consolidating assets, raiding and bankrupting small producers, and court corruption can flourish under the war emergency regulations administered by state planning committee apparatchiki. They have taken over where the state anti-monopoly and environment regulators left off.   

And so, by striking at Putin’s cronies, as the US Treasury and the Office for Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) call them, with their long-arm prohibitions, freezes, and threats of confiscation,  the warfighters are revolutionizing the domestic economy.

Think of this revolution as an apple a day to keep the oligarchs in play.  

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by Editor - Monday, February 27th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The brainwashing of the peoples of the NATO alliance is working much better with the British than the Americans. For the time being, Russia-hating is a peculiarly English phenomenon.

Almost half the Americans polled a month ago said they did not believe Russia was an adversary with whom the US is in conflict. The poll results were reported by a government-sponsored and financed think tank called the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), and the results published on February 22.  Asked to say which prompt statement “best reflects your view on what Russia is to your country”, 55% of Americans took the war-fighting option. However, 14% replied that Russia was “an ally that shares our interests and values” or “a necessary partner with which we must strategically cooperate”; another 16% of   Americans described Russia as “a rival with which we need to compete”; and 16% were non-committal, saying they “don’t know”.

Altogether, 46% of the national US sample refused to agree to the mainstream media line on Russia and the policy of the US Government and Congress.

By contrast,  the proportion of British respondents polled who agreed Russia is the enemy in the present war was about two-thirds – 65% — while the dissenters numbered only 35%. Northern Ireland was not included in the survey, and the Scots were under-represented.

The European country results have been manipulated by the ECFR think tank, casting doubt on the first conclusion it reported that “Europeans are united in believing that Russia is an ‘adversary’ or a ‘rival’”, and the second conclusion of “the growing hostility of Europeans towards Russians”. This rigging was managed by withholding the separate poll results for France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain, and over-weighting the influence of Estonia, Poland, Denmark, and Romania in the consolidated European Union (EU9) result reported.

Interpretation of the results by a group of academics at St Antony’s College, Oxford,  was paid for by US and German foundations which have published their anti-Russian views, like these: “Stiftung Mercator views the war against Ukraine also as an attack by Putin on European values, an attack directed against democracy, pluralism, freedom of opinion and freedom of the press throughout Europe.”  

Despite the message of the money, one-third of the EU9 respondents resisted, saying they believe Russia is either an ally or partner, and 20% refused to give the pollsters an answer – the largest non-committal response in the entire survey worldwide.

Even more hostile to the sponsors of the survey were Indians, Chinese,  and Turks. In India, where the surveys pressured respondents in face-to-face interviews, 80% insisted Russia is an ally or partner, and only 3% an enemy. In China, the opinion was almost identical — 79% and 5%, respectively. In Turkey 69% favoured alliance or partnership with Russia; 8% said Russia was an enemy; 5% said they didn’t know.

TNT Radio’s War of the Worlds programme broadcasts to provide the breaking news and  analyses which the Don’t Knows of Europe and North America need to hear, before making up their minds. This is also information unpaid by the war-fighting governments of the NATO alliance, and by the German foundations committed to continuing the Wehrmacht aims of 1939. The broadcast is also an opportunity for the Irish and Scots to pull their ears out of Westminster’s hands.

This week the breaking news on microphone reveals the evidence of how and why the Kremlin gave US President Joseph Biden s safe-conduct pass to Kiev, with the caution that the Russians could give no “security guarantees” against an attack on Biden from Ukrainian fanatics afraid of a sell-out by Washington.

Listen also as the terms for an armistice and partition of the Ukraine are revealed in the Chinese Government’s twelve-point proposals for a political settlement of the war, released on Friday morning.

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by Editor - Sunday, February 26th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

For the first time in the century of US warfare against Russia, a sitting US president has requested and received a formal ceasefire and  safe conduct  pledge (propusk) from the Kremlin in order for him to visit a third country.

President Vladimir Putin signed his authorization for the pass before it was transmitted to the Oval Office in Washington last Friday morning,  according to the New York Times, “when the president gathered with a handful of top advisers in the Oval Office and consulted with others by phone.”    

The newspaper also reported the Russian terms required Biden’s signed undertaking in advance that no US military or civilian aircraft would enter Ukrainian airspace during the 24-hour duration of the safe conduct pass. The New York Times confirmed this detail, claiming “American military planes were spotted hovering in eastern Poland near the border during the trip, but officials said they never entered Ukrainian airspace out of concern that it would be taken as the sort of direct American intervention that Mr. Biden has avoided.” 

CBS News has reported the National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, as confirming the application to the Kremlin and the receipt of the reply several hours before Biden agreed to make his trip to the Ukraine. “’We did notify the Russians that President Biden would be traveling to Kyiv,’ Sullivan told CBS News chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes. ‘We did so some hours before his departure for deconfliction purposes. And because of the sensitive nature of those communications, I won’t get into how they responded or what the precise nature of our message was, but I can confirm that we provided that notification.’”  

This is the first time White House officials have publicly confirmed accepting Putin’s word on a diplomatic, military, or security issue.

Biden responded in Kiev with a personal attack on Putin: “Putin thought Ukraine was weak and the West was divided,” Biden said. “He thought he could outlast us.  I don’t think he’s thinking that right now.  God knows what he’s thinking, but I don’t think he’s thinking that.  But he’s just been plain wrong.  Plain wrong. And one year later, the evidence is right here in this room.  We stand here together.”  

The record of the White House-Kremlin exchange for Biden’s propusk also reveals Putin’s willingness to accept Biden’s word. But four days later on February 21, in his speech to the Federal Assembly, Putin declared:  “The concepts of honour, trust, and decency are not for them…[nor] of [their] total, unprincipled lies.”  

The Russian press has not reported the Putin propusk. But there is speculation in Moscow the clash of public statements and the contradiction between them and the private safe conduct agreement are a sign of secret negotiations on armistice terms  between the Americans and Russians, which Biden also promised Putin to put to Ukrainian officials in Kiev.  

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by Editor - Tuesday, February 21st, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The Dutch Government didn’t intend to close its investigation of the MH17 shoot-down with the public report and press conference of the Joint Investigation Team on February 8.  That was a curtain raiser. It is definitely not the final curtain.  

The Dutch are continuing their European Court of Human Rights case against Russia which Prime Minister Mark Rutte started in July 2020.  

The Dutch are also joining with the US and the European Union to prepare what they say will be an international criminal tribunal against Russia, sponsored by either the United Nations or by the European Commission. This scheme was first announced by the European Commission president, the German Ursula von der Leyen, on November 30 last.   The scheme was explicitly promoted last week in Germany by US Vice President Kamala Harris and the Ukrainian president, Vladimir Zelensky.  

The court proceedings to date and the von der Leyen proposal have created a tangle of illegalities, conflict of laws, and contradictions between what the Dutch judges have claimed to be the law in their guilty convictions in the MH 17 case, and the judgement of the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in their innocence verdict when the killing of civilians was done by the United States Air Force.  

One law for the US and the NATO member states to prosecute and to judge; quite another law for Russia, China and India to defend. The Axis versus the Tricontinental Alliance.

This is what the Dutch and ICTY verdicts have already demonstrated. The doctrine of “functional co-perpetration” the Dutch prosecutors and judges called it in the MH17 case.  They meant guilt by association – that’s association with Russians — when the evidence of association was fabricated in secret by the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and the Dutch prosecutors, and tested in secret hearings in front of secret judges. The chain of evidence custody, admissibility, cross-examination of witnesses without duress or bribery, and proof beyond reasonable doubt – the legal standards required in the courts of civilized states – don’t exist across the line of contact between the Axis and the Alliance.

Repeating the doctrine, making Russia and Russians (Chinese, Indians) synonymous with culpability in war crime – this is the intention and future plan of politicians like Rutte,  von der Leyen, and Harris.  The immediate outcome is that across the front lines of the war in Europe, there is no law. Not even the law of war and the Geneva Conventions.

In such a state of international lawlessness –- aka “the rules-based international order” in Axis-speak — there are lies to justify paying for the guns to open up and to identify their targets.

Listen now to Gorilla Radio, unpaid, unarmed, but with the swiftness of a nerve agent in reaching the brain, as Chris Cook opens each of the big lies, and the discussion reveals the truth.  

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by Editor - Monday, February 20th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow, and George Eliason, Donetsk
  @bears_with

Seymour Hersh, a US journalist, has just broadcast his defence of a plan by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to sabotage President Joseph Biden’s re-election campaign before it gets under way.

In a German video podcast from Germany, Hersh has made a string of telltale mistakes of fact at the same time as he has attacked those journalists who have been following up his report of February 8, investigating errors Hersh has been asked to correct in his follow-up. Instead, according to Hersh’s new publication, he and his sources have “le[ft] enough breadcrumbs for them to be able to write as a couple already have, ‘Oh this couldn’t have happened because…’ So we took care of them.” Click to read:   Min. 14:45.

The reporters whom Hersh took care of, those who have published endorsements of his initial report, have been misled.

Hersh concluded the new interview with his personal endorsement of CIA sources who, he reports,  have criticized Biden and his White House and State Department allies “for choosing to keep you [Germany] cold for their short-range political [re-election goals]… That horrified [them].” Hersh added:  “I’m talking about people who are intensely loyal to the United States. Intensely loyal. And they understand – and in the CIA it is understood… even in that community it’s appalling that he [Biden] chose to keep Europe cold” (Min 31-32).

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by Editor - Sunday, February 19th, 2023
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By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

Kinetic lesson learning is a euphemism for what military and political commanders learn from mistakes, miscalculations, misjudgements, and misfortunes – their own, and their adversary’s. Kinetic is the newspeak; lesson learning, if it happens, is the reality.

A NATO military veteran has reviewed General P.R. Shankar’s detailed assessments of the Ukrainian war published yesterday.  The Indian artillery expert’s analysis has been appearing regularly in the Indian media. But Indian military experience has not been getting the attention it warrants in the North American and European press; there a handful of Swiss, German,  and US officers have been pitting their expertise against the mainstream media line.

The NATO military veteran’s views follow without editorial comment. The illustrations have been added for reader reference.

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by Editor - Tuesday, February 14th, 2023
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P.R. Shankar, Madras, with John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

The Indian Army has had more warfighting experience than the other world Powers on battlefields similar to the conditions of the Russian Special Military Operation against the NATO lines in the Ukraine. The Indian generals have also won more victories than the others with the combination of heavy artillery, tanks, infantry manoeuvre,  and air power now engaged between Russia and the US and NATO allies.

Coming out of this experience is a deep reserve of analyses and discussions, some of them open and public, by Indian officers who are now retired from active duty but who continue to advise and teach, and assist in the lessons which the Indian forces believe they must learn facing hostile states to the north and the west, as well as insurgency threats inside the country, and spilling over the eastern border.

To begin to understand how the Indian military views the war in Europe, Lieutenant General P.R. (Ravi) Shankar (lead image, right) has agreed to answer a series of questions. Shankar retired from the Indian Army as Director General of Artillery in October 2016.  Last July, he wrote a comparison between the Kargil War, won by Indian forces against Pakistan in May-July 1999,  and Russian operations in the Ukraine beginning on February 24, 2022.

 “Artillery is winning the war for Russia at this point in time,” Shankar wrote.   “Similarly in the period May-July in 1999, artillery won the war for India by pulverising Pakistani defence to smithereens in Kargil. The Indian artillery fired over 2,50,000 shells, bombs, and rockets during the Kargil conflict. Most of these were fired in an approximately 10-15 days period of intense fighting. 9,000 shells were fired on Tiger Hill alone when it was regained. During the peak period of assaults, on an average, each artillery battery fired over one round per minute for 17 days continuously. The Pakistanis were simply and overwhelmingly OUTGUNNED!  Such intense firing was seen only after the Second World War. After that war, it is only now in Ukraine that such intense firing is being witnessed. In fact, the Ukraine and Kargil wars bear a similarity of the Gunner stamp on the battlefield.”

“The importance and value of artillery has been reinforced manifold in the Ukraine war. The terrain conditions during the Kargil War in the Himalayas were almost like the muddy ‘Rasputitsa’ conditions in Ukraine.”

Shankar graduated from the National Defence Academy Khadakvasala, and from several higher Indian staff colleges and the US Navy’s Naval Postgraduate School at Monterey. Over his 40-year career he held many high command, staff and instructional appointments in the Army, and led Indian planners in the modernization of domestically produced artillery, including 155mm gun projects like the Dhanush howitzer,   the ultra-light M777 howitzer,   and the K9 Vajra;  as well as rocket and missile weapons such as the Pinaka,  and the BrahMos .  

Following his retirement, Shankar became a professor in the Aerospace Department of the Indian Institute of Technology at Madras.

Follow General Shankar at his website and Twitter.

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by Editor - Monday, February 13th, 2023
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