By John Helmer, Moscow
  @bears_with

There’s no American anti-war movement in the Vietnam War, Syrian War or Afghan War sense of the term. That’s because there is a genuine US strategic interest at stake in fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian, and further.  No comparable strategic stake existed in the earlier wars.

The stake in the war against Russia is the preservation of the US occupation of Germany and the empire in Europe and the UK, together with the credibility of US weapons which must be sold worldwide at prices to match their reputations in combat. Losing the war on the Ukrainian battlefield and in the sanctions war against Russia means a worldwide defeat for the US, its military power, its commercial and financial dominance, along with its command-and-control  systems, subsidiaries, and retainers.

The substitute for an anti-war movement in Washington is faction-fighting over what means, what terms can be devised to get the US out of the Ukraine before the Ukrainian army capitulates, Vladimir Zelensky flees for his life and fortune, and with them the collapse of the US alliance called NATO.

The apprehension of the allies in Europe was revealed a few days ago when Jacques Attali  answered a telephone call he thought was from former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, but which came instead from the Russian pranksters Vovan and Lexus.  Attali,  French presidential adviser, US retainer,  and ex-head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development,  said he knew French President Emmanuel Macron well and that Macron was afraid the US would abandon the Ukrainians to save itself. There was the same fear among the Germans and British, Attali added. “The weak point is what happens in Washington.”

“[This is] a nightmare scenario. That would be the US saying, well, enough is enough. We are not going to help Ukraine more. You have to go to negotiations, to the negotiating table. And that’s it. … Neither France, Germany or the UK can do that. But the US could arm-twist your [Poroshenko’s] government and your country [Ukraine] to say we want a ceasefire whatever it costs and stop [the war]. The most important thing is to avoid that.”  

“There is no other way than a total win and to get rid of Putin…We have to take all risks for that. No compromise is possible, no compromise.”

This is the European allies’ last stand, their backs to the wall at the Dnieper River. It is the rationale for desperate measures on the battlefield, and at the NATO summit on July 11.

Listen to the hour-long discussion in TNT Radio’s War of the Worlds broadcast on July 8.  

Source: https://tntradiolive.podbean.com/

Follow up the points of discussion, the official statements, and the evidence of what they mean:

• Russian Ministry of Defense battlefield bulletin as of July 7. Killed in action on the day, 820.

•  The Ukrainian Army’s shift to the mosquito attack tactic.

Source: https://askeptic.substack.com/

• US cluster munitions for the Ukraine; Russian, Ukrainian, and Turkish equivalents already used on the battlefield; and the technical characteristics – lethality, range, dud rate, etc.   
  

• Fact, fiction and the way the wind has been blowing from the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, click to read.   

• President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s statement that the Ukraine “deserves NATO membership” following his meeting with Zelensky in Istanbul on July 8, as reported in the Turkish press.  

Source: https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/
The Voice of America footage failed to record a grin or a smile on the face of either president from beginning to end of their meeting. The longer record from Turkish public television broadcaster TRT also shows each man reading his statements from pre-prepared paper scripts with almost no conversation visible between them.   

• For background on the Black Sea grain trade deal, read this.  The most recent statement from the Russian Foreign Ministry was given on July 6 by spokesman Maria Zakharova: “There is no optimism here. Regarding contacts in Geneva, we posted a comment on June 10, 2023, noting that, on June 9, 2023, Geneva had hosted another round of consultations involving Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin, the concerned Russian agencies and companies, as well as a UN delegation headed by United Nations Conference on Trade and Development Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan. After that, we repeatedly provided our assessments during our contacts with our foreign partners. We have posted the relevant reports and materials on our website stating that the deal has become purely commercial and lacks any humanitarian content.  Moreover, the Ukrainian side is behaving like a real terrorist regime. In particular, it has blown up an ammonia pipeline [Togliatti-Odessa]. In effect, they are destroying the civilian infrastructure that was part of this deal. No one has condemned this. The main parameters of the deal are not working and have failed. Consequently, there is no reason to be optimistic.”  

• The terms of the United Nations agreement with Russia, signed in Istanbul on July 21, 2022, have never been implemented, leaving Russian shipments of fertilizers to the global market blocked, stocks still under arrest at European ports, and the SWIFT system for grain trade payments between banks unrelieved.    Note that in the deal, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres “agrees to continue efforts to facilitate the transparent  unimpeded access of food and fertilizers, including the raw materials required to produce fertilizers (including ammonia), originating from the Russian Federation to the world markets. This includes impediments that may arise in the sectors of finance, insurance and logistics.” Guterres has done nothing of the sort.

• Desperation measures in Washington, part 1 – Richard Haas (Council on Foreign Relations), Charles Kupchan (National Security Council), and Thomas Graham (Kissinger Associates, State Department ) meet Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other unidentified Russians.  

Source: https://www.nbcnews.com/

• Desperation measures in Washington, part 2 – the CIA publishes a lengthy alibi in Newsweek:  

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/
Not a single factual or operational claim reported by Arkin, including the Polish farm missile hit of last November, has not been fully exposed in the public record already.  

• The 9^th anniversary of the shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 and the fall of  of Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.  For the book on the Dutch government plan to send a military intervention force into eastern Ukraine after the shootdown, the coverup of the lack of US satellite evidence of a Russian role in the shootdown;  concealment of the forensic evidence from the autopsies of the aircraft cockpit crew; and the management of the two-year show trial with evidence from the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), read the book.  

• Mark Ruttte (right), Dutch prime minister since 2010, is the principal Dutch fabricator of the MH17 lies and of the policy of waging war against Russia. He was forced to resign on July 8.  In the coming election, the polls show Rutte is almost certain to be defeated by an opposition  coalition led by the new Dutch party known as the Farmer Citizen Movement (BBB).   For a discussion of the war against Russia from the Dutch perspective, listen to Alfred Vierling on War of the Worlds.  

• For the latest evidence uncovered by Russian prosecutors and police of the business operations of Yevgeny Prigozhin and the more than 600 company entities he has used to receive and transfer military budget funds, read this compilation of Russian publications and official leaks.   This corroborates the earlier calculation of Prigozhin’s 2 trillion rouble take from the state budget over 12 years which appeared here.   Missing from these reports so far, according to a Moscow source, are calculation of state bank borrowings by the Prigozhin companies, secured by the budget contracts; offshore transfers; and the share which Prigozhin himself and his closest associates received from the contract cashflow. The source claims Prigozhin was not receiving the lion’s share of the earnings and profit, as has been widely believed; and this was one of his grievances against the Defense Ministry. Prigozhin’s well-known public accusation that the General Staff was withholding ammunition supplies from Wagner units at Bakhmut is also false and camouflage – claims an uncorroborated Moscow source — for an attempt Prigozhin was making to take control of the upstream munition production line;  this cannot be verified.

• According to retired Swiss colonel and NATO specialist on small and light arms, Jacques Baud, “Russian forces had reduced their consumption of artillery projectiles to 20,000 rounds per day. Difficult to verify, but this could be explained by preparations—on both sides of the front line—for the major Ukrainian counter-offensive in the spring. At this stage, the Russian army was aiming at spreading its capabilities, which were concentrated in the Donbass region, all along the front line. In response to these allegations, the Russian Ministry of Defense stated that it had allocated 1660 rockets for multiple rocket launchers and 10171 artillery shells to Wagner for two days (February 18 to 20). That’s over 800 rockets and 5,000 shells per day. In other words, Wagner would have had more artillery ammunition per day in the Bakhmut sector alone than the entire Ukrainian army had in the whole theatre of operations! Prigozhin’s accusations therefore appeared to be unfounded—there was no indication whatsoever that the Russian Ministry of Defense intended to harm Wagner.”  

• This is the table of ranks in the traditional US mafia organization.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Mafia  
Russian military sources are reporting that Dmitry Utkin, who has been identified as Prigozhin’s leading deputy and  the leading military planner and operational commander of the Wagner forces in the Ukraine, has broken with Prigozhin; did not participate in the mutiny of June 23-24; and has disappeared.

• The new evidence on the Nord Stream pipeline bombing, produced by the independent Swedish engineer Erik Andersson and corroborated by others,  can be followed in Englsh here;  in German here.  

• The commencement of Russian war crimes trials in Rostov, Lugansk and Donetsk was announced by the Russian Foreign Ministry on July 6.  “The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation will investigate every crime that has been committed. Rostov-on-Don is the venue for trials of Ukrainian militants, including members of the Azov nationalist regiment (an organisation banned in Russia), involved in mistreating and killing the residents of the new Russian regions. These trials are based on evidence that has been collected. Courts in the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics have already sentenced over 30 Ukrainian nationalists for crimes against the civilian population; some of them will spend the rest of their lives in prison. This week, the courts sentenced several militants, including A. Petrenko who killed a civilian in Mariupol using a sniper rifle. Two others, A. Pinkovsky and A. Bardash, tossed hand grenades inside private homes in Lisichansk and Popasnaya, seriously injured an elderly woman and destroyed the properties. We are warning all current ‘guardians’ of the terrorist Kiev regime, who are involved in its activities, who implement the criminal orders of Vladimir Zelensky and who draft these orders, that every criminal acting for the benefit of the Nazi regime and its Western patrons will be severely punished in line with the law.”

by Editor - Sunday, July 9th, 2023