US Secretary of State John Kerry has demanded Russia stop bombing the Syrian opposition, implicitly blaming Moscow for the collapse in peace talks.

• John Kerry demands Russia stop bombing Syrian opposition
• Latest Russian-backed offensive led to collapse of UN peace talks
• Turkey says talks "pointless" while Russia attacks

Speaking in London ahead of a conference on the Syrian humanitarian effort, Mr Kerry said he had called Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov for a "robust" discussion.

In Geneva on Wednesday, UN envoy Staffan de Mistura suspended attempts to begin a dialogue between Bashar al-Assad's regime and the Syrian opposition until February 25.

Alongside Britain's Foreign Minister Phillip Hammond, Mr Kerry read out sections of UN Security Council Resolution 2254, passed in December, calling for an immediate ceasefire.

"Russia has a responsibility, as do all parties, to live up to it," he said.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-04/us-demands-russia-stop-syria-bombing-after-talks-suspended/7142104

The point here is that Russia's intervention in Syria has tipped the balance of power and the US does not like it. The Russians are winning the war that the Americans have encouraged to fester for the last four years, leading to the creation of ISIS.

And of course, Kerry has righteousness on his side since he mentions something "humanitarian" in a sentence...

HONG KONG — China is spending billions of dollars on a major push to make its own microchips, an effort that could bolster its military capabilities as well as its homegrown technology industry.

Those ambitions are starting to be noticed in Washington.

Worries over China’s chip ambitions were the main reason that United States officials blocked the proposed purchase for as much as $2.9 billion of a controlling stake in a unit of the Dutch electronics company Philips by Chinese investors, according to one expert and a second person involved with the deal discussions.

The rare blockage underscores growing concern in Washington about Chinese efforts to acquire the know-how to make the semiconductors that work as the brains of all kinds of sophisticated electronics, including military applications like missile systems.

In the case of the Philips deal, the company said late last month that it would terminate a March 2015 agreement to sell a majority stake in its auto and light-emitting diode components business known as Lumileds to a group that included the Chinese investors GO Scale Capital and GSR Ventures. It cited concerns raised by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews whether foreign investments in the country present a national security risk.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/05/technology/concern-grows-in-us-over-chinas-drive-to-make-chips.html?

The US does not have to worry... The Chinese can easily build NEW chips from old ones being discarded on garbage heaps or those available at Officeworks, made in China... That a chip is twice the size and half as slow should not worry Chinese armament manufacturers... It's still is a small chip with a precision of 1/100000000000 on the ground. Put three together and you get more precision still.

Analysis: Russia’s triumph in Aleppo

Mike Whitney writes in Global Research:

“This is the beginning of the end of jihadi presence in Aleppo. After 4 years of war and terror, people can finally see the end in sight.”

— Edward Dark, Twitter, Moon of Alabama

A last ditch effort to stop a Russian-led military offensive in northern Syria ended in failure on Wednesday when the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) backed by the National Defense Forces (NDF) and heavy Russian air cover broke a 40-month siege on the villages of Nubl and al-Zahra in northwestern Aleppo province. The Obama administration had hoped that it could forestall the onslaught by cobbling together an eleventh-hour ceasefire agreement at the Geneva peace talks.  But when the news that Syrian armored units had crashed through al Nusra’s defenses and forced the jihadists to retreat, UN envoy Staffan de Mistura suspended the negotiations tacitly acknowledging that the mission had failed.

“I have indicated from the first day that I won’t talk for the sake of talking,” the envoy told reporters, saying he needed immediate help from international backers led by the United States and Russia, which are supporting opposite sides of a war that has also drawn in regional powers.” (Reuters)  De Mistura then announced a “temporary pause” in the stillborn negotiations which had only formally begun just hours earlier. Developments on the battlefield had convinced the Italian-Swedish diplomat that it was pointless to continue while government forces were effecting a solution through military means.

After months of grinding away at enemy positions across the country,  the Russian strategy has begun to bear fruit. Loyalist ground forces have made great strides on the battlefield rolling back the war-weary insurgents on virtually all fronts. A broad swathe of the Turkish border is now under SAA control while the ubiquitous Russian bombers continue to inflict heavy losses on demoralized anti-regime militants. Wednesday’s lightening attack on the strategic towns of  Nubl and Zahraa was just the icing on the cake.  The bold maneuver severed critical supply-lines to Turkey while  tightening the military noose around the country’s largest city leaving hundreds of terrorists stranded in a battered cauldron with no way out.

For the last two weeks, the Obama team has been following developments on the ground with growing concern. This is why Secretary of State John Kerry hurriedly assembled a diplomatic mission to convene emergency peace talks in Geneva despite the fact that the various participants had not even agreed to attend. A sense of urgency bordering on panic was palpable from the onset. The goal was never to achieve a negotiated settlement or an honorable peace, but (as Foreign Policy magazine noted) to implement “a broad ‘freeze’ over the whole province of Aleppo, which would then be replicated in other regions later.” This was the real objective, to stop the bleeding any way possible and prevent the inevitable encirclement of Aleppo.

The recapturing of Nubl and Zahraa leaves the jihadists with just one route for transporting weapons, food and fuel to their urban stronghold. When loyalist forces break the blockade at Bab al Hawa to the northeast, the loop will be closed, the perimeter will tighten, the cauldron will be split into smaller enclaves within the city, and the terrorists will either surrender or face certain annihilation. Wednesday’s triumph by the Russian-led coalition is a sign that that day may be approaching sooner than anyone had anticipated. […]

Comment Bevin:

Recently, General Petr Pavel, Chairman of the NATO Military Committee, admitted that,

"It is not the aim of NATO to create a military barrier against broad-scale Russian aggression, because such aggression is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing."

Decoded, this means that intelligence reports indicate that Russia is not a threat to the West. 

Since Russian aggression is not a threat, then increased NATO deployments to encircle Russia are a threat --- to Russia.

Decoded again:  We are the bad guys, Russia is not.

But this hasn’t stopped Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, from confirming, according to CBC news, that

“Canada will send a battle group of soldiers to Latvia by early 2017 as part of a NATO plan to counter fears of Russian aggression in eastern Europe.”  

So, Canada’s decision to provoke Russia is based on groundless fears.

Since reasonable foreign policy decisions are few and far between, Canadians might want to pay heed to a recent observation made by Paul Craig Roberts:

“ …  only an absolute idiot could think that three or four thousand troops constitutes a defense against the Russian Army. In June 1941 Operation Barbarossa hit Russia with an invasion of four million troops, the majority German component of which were probably the most highly trained and disciplined troops in military history, excepting only the Spartans. By the time that the Americans and British got around to the Normandy invasion, the Russian Army had chewed up the Wehrmacht. There were only a few divisions at 40% strength to resist the Normandy invasion. By the time the Russian Army got to Berlin, the German resistance consisted of armed children.”

Decoded? We’re idiots.

Read more: http://ahtribune.com/politics/1073-engineered-fears.html

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In Crimea the mortal remains of German soldiers are often found. They cannot be buried in the beautiful, almost celestially German military cemetery near the port city of Sevastopol, because the responsible German authorities refuse to cooperate with the Russian authorities. If you address this matter to the President of the Federal Republic, an answer will not be given. What is one to think of an administration that due to the current NATO policy behaves in this fashion towards its fallen soldiers?

It is an act of decency and responsibility for the past and future to commemorate the dead. We have seen too many of such occasions in the last century. None of this should be forgotten, because this creates new misery. Isn’t that especially applicable to Stalingrad and the immeasurable death toll that people beyond Brest paid for the German Reich’s attack on the then Soviet Union? Why were the million victims of this war seventy-five years after the end of the Stalingrad battle not commemorated? Why does the Federal Government refuse to honour the victims? Why do we let ourselves be manipulated against Russia by a mendacious and aggressive policy? This policy comes precisely from those alleged allies who wanted to destroy both Germany and the Danube Monarchy in 1914 in the war against Austria-Hungary and imperial Germany!

Why are all in Europe again talking about war against Russia, instead of finally realizing that it was Moscow which placed the key to Germany’s unity in our trustworthy hands? 

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/CC_20180223_04.pdf

May I add that Germany does not have any cenotaphs, nor any monuments commemorating war... 

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Over time, it is possible to completely rewrite history and interchange the roles of the actors. Professor Michael Jabara Carley examines here the example of the Second World War. This important event, extensively studied by many historians, was completely falsified, after 70 years of propaganda by the Atlantic Alliance.

The title of this article is intended to be ironic because of course the Red Army did play the predominant role in destroying Nazi Germany during World War II. You would not know it, however, reading the western Mainstream Media (MSM), or watching television, or going to the cinema in the west where the Soviet role in the war has almost entirely disappeared.

If in the West the Red Army is largely absent from World War II, the Soviet Union’s responsibility for igniting the war is omnipresent. The MSM and western politicians tend to regard the Nazi invasion of the USSR in June 1941 as the Soviet Union’s just reward for the 1939 Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact. As British Prime Minister Winston Churchill put it, the USSR “brought their own fate upon themselves when by their Pact with [Joachim von] Ribbentrop they let Hitler loose on Poland and so started the war…” Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the USSR, was Stalin’s fault and therefore an expatiation of sins, so that Soviet resistance should not be viewed as anything more than penitence.

Whereas France and Britain “appeased” Nazi Germany, one MSM commentator recently noted, the USSR “collaborated” with Hitler. You see how western propaganda works, and it’s none too subtle. Just watch for the key words and read between the lines. France and Britain were innocents in the woods, who unwisely “appeased” Hitler in hopes of preserving European peace. On the other hand, the totalitarian Stalin “collaborated” with the totalitarian Hitler to encourage war, not preserve the peace. Stalin not only collaborated with Hitler, the USSR and Nazi Germany were “allies” who carved up Europe. The USSR was “the wolf”; the West was “the lamb”. These are not only metaphors of the English-speaking world; France 2 has promoted the same narrative in the much publicised television series, “Apocalypse” (2010) and “Apocalypse Staline” (2015) [1]. World War II erupted because of the non-aggression pact, that dirty deal, which marked the beginning of the short-lived “alliance” of the two “totalitarian” states. Hitler and Stalin each had a foot in the same boot.

REad more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article190843.html

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How many of you have not seen some Hollywood film in which the Normandy landings are the great turning point of the war? “What if the landings had failed,” one often hears? “Oh…, nothing much,” is the appropriate reply. The war would have gone on longer, and the Red Army would have planted its flags on the Normandy beaches coming from the east. Then there are the movies about the Allied bombing campaign against Germany, the “decisive” factor in winning the war. In Hollywood films about World War II, the Red Army is invisible. It is as if the Americans (and British) were claiming laurels they didn’t earn.

I like to ask students in my university course on the Second World War, who has heard of operation Overlord? Everyone raises a hand. Then I ask who has heard of Operation Bagration? Hardly anyone raises a hand. I ask facetiously who “won” the war against Nazi Germany and the answer is “America” of course. Only a few students—normally those who have had other courses with me—will answer the Soviet Union.

The truth is uphill work in a western world where “fake news” is the norm. The OSCE and European Parliament put the blame for World War II on the Soviet Union, read Russia and President Vladimir Putin, as the subliminal message. Hitler is almost forgotten in this tohu-bohu of evidence-free accusations. Behind the bogus historical narrative are the Baltic states, Poland, and the Ukraine, spewing out hatred of Russia. The Baltics and the Ukraine now remember Nazi collaborators as national heroes and celebrate their deeds. In Poland, for some people, this is hard to swallow; they remember the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators who murdered tens of thousands of Poles in Volhynia. Unfortunately, such memories have not stopped Polish hooligans from vandalising monuments to Red Army war dead or desecrating Soviet war cemeteries. Polish “nationalists” cannot bear the memory of the Red Army freeing Poland from the Nazi invader.

Now, each year on Victory Day the “immortal regiment”, the bessmertnyi polk, marches; Russians in cities and towns across the country and abroad, march together carrying large photographs of family members, men and women, who fought in the war. “We remember,” they want to say: “and we will never forget you.”

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/05/10/the-russian-v-day-story-or-the-histo...

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The Post-World-War-II world order was dominated by the one WWII major combatant that had only 0.32% of its population (the lowest percentage) killed by the war: the United States. The Soviet Union’s comparable number killed by the war was the highest — it was 13.7% — 42.8 times higher than America’s. The US was the main force that defeated Japan and so won WWII in Asia. The USSR, however, was the main force that defeated Germany and so won WWII in Europe. The USSR suffered vastly more than did the US to achieve its victory. In addition to suffering 42.8 times the number of war-deaths than did US, the USSR’s financial expenditures invested in the conflict, as calculated by Jan Ludvik, were 4.8 times higher than were America’s financial expenditures on the war.

Thus, at the war’s end, the Soviet Union was exhausted and in a much weaker condition than it had been before the war. By contrast, the US, having had none of the war’s battles occurring on its territory, was (by comparison) barely even scratched by the war, and it was thus clearly and overwhelmingly the new and dominant world-power emerging from the war. 

That was the actual situation in 1945.

The US Government did not sit on its haunches with its enormous post-war advantage, but invested wisely in order to expand it. One of the first investments the US made after the war was the Marshall Plan to rebuild the European countries that had now become the US aristocracy’s vassal-states. The heavily damaged USSR possessed no such extra cash to invest in (rebuilding) its vassals. Furthermore, the USSR’s communist regime was additionally hobbled by Karl Marx’s labor theory of value, which produced prices that contained no useful information about demand and thus no constructive information for planners. (Planning is essential regardless whether an enterprise is private or public.) Thus, the USSR was doomed to lose in its economic competition with The West, so that the Cold War was actually a losing proposition for them, from the very start of the post-war era. America’s post-WW-II dominance, combined with Marx’s crippling economic theory, and produced the exodus of East Europeans to The West. 

America’s aristocracy thus increasingly rose on top internationally. Like any aristocracy, the American aristocracy’s main concerns were foreign trade, and so US international corporations increasingly expanded even at the expense of the corporations owned by its competing, now-vassal, aristocracies, and the US aristocracy’s corporations and brands thus came to dominate the entire capitalist sphere. The growth-bug, if it becomes an addiction, is itself a disease. Out of control, it is a cancer, which can destroy the organism. This is what happened in America. Conquering also the communist sphere was the US aristocracy’s long-term goal, so that they would ultimately dominate every nation, the entire world. By the time of 1980, the US aristocracy’s top goal (world domination) became also the US Government’s top goal. The cancer had spread to the culture’s brain. Growth, backed by “Greed is good” economics, became practically the American religion, viewed as patriotic, and not merely as the nation’s economic model (which was bad enough, with its increasingly imperialistic thrust — such as 2003 Iraq, 2011 Libya, 2012 - Syria, 2014 Ukraine, 2016 - Yemen, and maybe now Iran).

America’s unchallengeable dominance lasted from then till now, but clearly has now reached near its end. The United States is trying to restore its post-Soviet (post-1991) global supremacy, by intensifying the US regime's secret war against Russia and its allies, which started on the night of 24 February 1990 and which could reach a crescendo soon in WWIII unless something will be done by America’s allies to force the by-now wildly flailing US aristocracy to accept peacefully the end of the American aristocracy’s hegemony — the termination of their, until recently, unchallengeable control over the world. By now, with the Soviet Union and its communism and its Warsaw Pact mirror of America’s NATO military alliance gone since 1991 and yet no peace-dividend but only ever-increasing wealth-concentration into the tiny number of billionaires who benefit from war weaponry-sales and conquests, America needs to abandon its addiction to growth, or else it will proceed forward on its current path, to WWIII. That’s its current path.

According to Josh Rogin in the Washington Post on November 14th, US Vice President Mike Pence had just said, as Rogin phrased it, that “the United States has no intention of ceding influence or control over the [Pacific] region to Beijing” and that if China won’t do everything that the US demands, then the US is fully prepared to force China to obey. The same newspaper had earlier presented Robert D. Kaplan, on October 9th, saying, “The United States must face up to an important fact: the western Pacific is no longer a unipolar American naval lake, as it was for decades after World War II. The return of China to the status of great power ensures a more complicated multipolar situation. The United States must make at least some room for Chinese air and naval power in the Indo-Pacific region.” But the US regime is now making clear that it won’t do that. 

The US regime appears to be determined to coerce both Russia and China to comply with all American demands. With both of those countries, as with Iran, the US regime is now threatening hot war. Trump, as the “deal-maker,” is offering no concessions, but only demands, which must be complied with, or else. The United States is threatening WWIII. But what nations will be America’s allies, this time around? If many European nations abandon the US, then what?

Key for the US regime is keeping the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. 

Rockefeller Capital Management, Global Foresight, Third Quarter 2018 presents Jimmy Chang, Chief Investment Strategist, headlining “Nothing Trumps the Dollar, Yet”. He writes: “The reserve currency status gives the US a significant advantage in handling its finances. American economist Barry Eichengreen observed that it cost only a few cents for the US to print a $100 bill, but other countries would need to produce $100 of actual goods or services to obtain that $100 bill. The world’s need for the greenback allows the US to issue debt in its own currency at very low interest rates. French Finance Minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, who later became the president, coined [in 1965] the term 'exorbitant privilege' to describe America’s advantage” of the US dollar over any other nation’s currency. That “exorbitant advantage” never went away. Chang concludes: “As for the King Dollar, its short-term outlook appears robust.” However, few other observers now share that view. Increasing numbers of countries are pricing goods in other currencies, and China's yuan and the EU’s euro are especially significant contenders to end dollar-dominance and to end the advantages that US-based international corporations enjoy from dollar-dominance. 

Other than dollar-dominance, the key barrier to world peace is NATO, the military alliance of the northern aggressor-nations. Proposals have been put forth for the EU to have its own army, which initially would be allied with NATO (i.e., with the US regime). On November 17th, Russian Television bannered “EU army: Will it be easy for Europe to get rid of American political diktat?” and pointed to the US vassal-nations that would be especially likely to stay in NATO: UK, Poland, Netherlands, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Perhaps the other EU nations and Russia could form their own military alliance, which will formally be committed to the independence of those US vassal-nations, and which will welcome individual peace-treaties with each of them, so as to indicate that aggression is only the US regime’s way, and thus to lay the groundwork for peace instead of war, going forward. Clearly, the people who control the US are addicted to invasions and coups (“regime-change”s), instead of to respecting the sovereignty of each nation and the right of self-determination of people everywhere. America’s conquest-addiction threatens, actually, every other nation. 

Perhaps a reformed and truly independent EU can provide the new reserve currency, and also in other ways the foundation for global peace between nations. NATO will be irrevocably opposed to this, but it could happen. And if and when it does, it might tame the aristocratic beast that rides the American warfare state, but this isn’t likely to happen anytime soon. A step forward toward it is the courageous statement by “The Saker” at the American news-commentary site, Unz dot com, on November 15th, “Thanking Vets for Their ‘Service’ – Why?” He boldly notes that after World War II, all US invasions have been criminal, and that it’s a remarkably long string of evil — and this doesn’t even include the many coups, which have likewise destroyed some nations. 

Nationalism is just as evil in today’s America as it was in Hitler’s Germany. It is hostile to people in any other nation. It demands conquest. And wherever nationalism rules, patriotism dies and is replaced by nationalism. 

Only by restoring patriotism and eliminating nationalism can WWIII be avoided. Ending dollar-dominance is part of the path toward an internationally peaceful world that focuses more on serving the public’s needs and less on serving the aristocrats’ cravings. But ending NATO is also necessary.

Either these things will be done, or there will be WWIII.

Read more:

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/11/19/world-order-that-now-e...

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The Russians love to win. Unfortunately, other countries often take advantage of our victories, whereas we easily forget about our military prowess. Today, during the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, few people in Russia may remember that it was the Soviet army that put an end to the worst war in the history of mankind - World War II, or the Great Patriotic War, as it is known in Russia. It was on September 3rd, when it happened. 

September 3rd is the official date of the end of World War II in the Soviet Union. It used to be celebrated as a non-working day and had been officially called the National Day of Victory over Imperialist Japan until 1947. One can still find posters at history museums in the Far East of Russia that say: Victory Day over Japan - September 3rd.

The day of September 3rd was officially approved as the red date of the calendar by the decree from the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of September 2, 1945. USSR's first and, unfortunately, the only parade of victory over Japan took place on September 16, on the territory of Harbin, where the Chinese still take care of Soviet burials.

Interestingly, China still recognises the date of September 3rd as the official date of the end of the war. Regrettablly, the Celestial Empire has a much stronger memory than a whole cohort of Soviet and Russian politicians.

Historians will say that "the entire civilized world" marks the end of the war on September 2. Yet, this is just as tricky as the celebration of Victory over Germany on May 8. In both cases, the United States tried to endorse its reading of history on humanity, having stealing glory of victory from the USSR and Russia. Noteworthy, the Anglo-Saxons of the western front went for a real scam, when they hastily whipped Germany's first surrender in April of 1945 in France, but, as they say, the trick did not work. When it comes to imperialist Japan, they had managed to deceive both the Soviet and Russian society for many decades to come. It became possible due to a legal error, as the devil, as you know, dear reader, is in the detail.

On September 2nd, the act of complete and unconditional surrender of the Mikado empire was solemnly signed indeed. The ceremony took place on the deck of the US battleship Missouri. On the part of the Soviet Union, the historical document was signed by military intelligence officer, Lieutenant General Kuzma Derevyanko. His signature is the fourth on the list after the document was endorsed by representatives of the United States, China and Great Britain.

I deliberately chronicle the order of the signatories: needless to say that China's contribution to the victory was minimal, to put it mildly. The UK had nothing to brag about either. However, the fact remains: our straightforward ancestors had not attached importance to the diplomatic protocol, but they should have! After all, it was the fact that the ceremony took place on board the US vessel, the fact that Derevyanko's signature, unlike the American one, was far from being first, gave Washington an opportunity to announce that the main victorious power in the war was the United States. Therefore, the date of September 2nd was enshrined in all military encyclopaedias of the planet.

However, the medal "For Victory over Japan" has a date engraved on the reverse side - "September 3, 1945". The front side of the medal features Joseph Stalin's profile. This medal was awarded to 1 million 800 thousand participants of those battles. 

To crown it all, the Americans did not fight on the continent. They were jumping like frogs from island to island, and then, after the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they occupied the main part of the Japanese archipelago – this can hardly be referred to large-scale military operations on land.

What was our contribution to the victory over Japanese imperialism? In fact, it all began on August 8, 1945, when Vyacheslav Molotov, People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs, handed the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Land of the Rising Sun, Naotake Sato, a note denouncing the treaty of neutrality. The note stated that in accordance with the decision made by Crimean and Potsdam conferences, the USSR, starting from August 9, would officially consider itself at war with the Japanese Empire. On August 7, 1945, USSR's Supreme Commander-in-Chief Joseph Stalin and Chief of the General Staff A.I. Antonov signed corresponding directive of Supreme Command Headquarters No. 11122.

In the period from 18 to 24 August, Soviet armed forces occupied Harbin, Port Arthur, Dalian-Dalny, Changchun, Jirin and, finally, Pyongyang. On August 25, the USSR liberated South Sakhalin, having neutralized the island grouping of the imperial army. However, driven by the samurai spirit of contempt for death, many Japanese units continued to fight for the glory of the Mikado until September 10th. It is extremely important to note that it was by September 3rd, when the Soviet troops had completely cleared the Kuril Islands of Japanese military units. 

And yet, justice eventually triumphed: on April 24, 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a law amending Article 1 of the Federal Act "On Days of Military Glory and Memorable Dates of Russia." The law was initiated by former commander of Airborne Forces, Hero of Russia, Colonel-General Vladimir Shamanov. Since last year, it is the date of September 3rd that is celebrated as the Day of the end of the Second World War. From now and until the end of time.

Читайте больше на https://english.pravda.ru/history/18537-usa_ussr_japan/

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