Nato has confirmed it will not yet offer membership to Georgia or Ukraine after the 26-member alliance was split amid strong objections from Russia.

Moscow said Nato's promise that the ex-Soviet republics would join one day was a "huge strategic mistake".

At a summit in Romania, Macedonia was also denied Nato entry but Albania and Croatia were given the green light.

US and Czech officials agreed to base a missile defence radar on Czech soil, a plan that has also angered Russia.

And President Nicolas Sarkozy indicated France would return next year to the Nato military command it left in 1966 in protest at the dominance of US commanders.

A bad day for Bush in Bucharest
April 3, 2008 2:03 PM

The Nato summit is thus far going brilliantly for the Russians and the Greeks. Both have demonstrated their power to keep Nato expansion in check.

Before Bucharest, British officials had said that Nato membership action plans (MAPs) for Georgia and Ukraine were a reasonable possibility and that a membership invitation for Macedonia, alongside Croatia and Albania, was almost in the bag. Greece's objections to Macedonia's name would be resolved.

That is not the way it has worked out. France and Germany, nervous about Russian reaction, put off MAPs for the former Soviet republics and the Greeks shrugged off the contempt of every other Nato member and blackballed Macedonia.

For those that believe that Nato membership provides a stable environment for the development of market economies and liberal democracies, this is a bad day for eastern fringes of "the west".

It's a bad day for George Bush, in particular. He apparently threatened to veto Croatian and Albanian membership if a Macedonian deal could not be reached, in a desperate attempt to force the issue. It failed.

I have just emerged from a Downing Street briefing inevitably portraying the summit so far, as highly satisfactory, if not an outright triumph.

The spokesman pointed out that Nato had resolved that all three rejected countries would one day become members, but that was essentially the situation before the summit.

He also said that all Macedonia had to do to join the club was to come to an agreement with Greece about its name, as if that had not been the problem all along.

Greece's claim is that because Macedonia has the same name as its northern province, it implies a territorial claim. Other Nato members giggle when they talk about this, but Greece got the last laugh.

but then, a good day for Bushit-the-proliferator: 

Nato countries have agreed to back US plans to site a missile defence system in Europe, at a summit in Romania.

Member states will endorse a communiqué backing the plan to position missile defence bases in the Czech Republic and Poland, US officials said.

The communiqué on missile defence, circulated by US officials, acknowledges ballistic missile proliferation as "an increasing threat to allied forces, territory and populations".

It says the US-led system will make a "substantial contribution to the protection of allies".

---------------- 

Gus: I see... NATO wants its own ballistic missile proliferation to protect allied forces, territory and populations from "missile proliferation"... Makes sense?

Now, where's the "ballistic missile proliferation" threat (or reality) coming from? Russia? China? Pakistan? Iran? Bin Laden? NATO? the US? Mugabe? Japan? NATO? the US? NATO? NATO? the US? Papua?

So, could I predict the Russians are not going to stay idle or knit-one purl-one during a long toilet break on their side of the border, as NATO is packing weapons specifically on the Western wall of their abode?... "even if these weapons are not aimed at Russia's windows?"

Arms race and a hardening of the arteries coming near you... the communiqué acknowledges "it's making sure it will happen"...

 Barbarossa Revisited: Bush Goes Bear-Baiting in the East 
Written by Chris Floyd  
Wednesday, 02 April 2008

...

No, what they hate is that Putin won't play ball. He's got oil wealth -- thanks in large part to Bush's Terror War -- he's got nuclear weapons out the wazoo, and he doesn't have to dance to anyone's tune. And that really sticks in the craw of people who believe they have a divine right to "unipolar dominance" over the entire world.

You want to know how it really goes down at the summits like the one Bush will hold this weekend with Putin? Forget the earnest disquisitions from the Council on Foreign Relations or the interminable "process pieces" from the New York Times. Here's how it goes:

This is, without exaggeration, the precise moral, emotional and intellectual level at which relations between the world's two largest nuclear powers are being conducted. And as Raimondo notes, it will only degenerate further if John McCain -- a man who is perhaps even more ignorant and juvenile than George W. Bush, if such a thing can be imagined -- becomes president.

The only level of sophistication in the relationship is the cynical realization on both sides that all this renewed tension and tough talk strengthens the authoritarian, militarist, war-profiteering faction in each country. Putin can portray the continuing NATO expansion -- quite rightly -- as a strategic and military threat to Russia, and thus justify his military build-up and authoritarian policies as necessary "national security" measures. Likewise, the American militarists can point to the Russian build-up and crack-downs as justifications for "protecting" more nations from the big bad bear by bringing them under the NATO umbrella.

The immediate aim in expanding NATO, of course, is monetary: the militaries of new members must be made compatible with the rest of the alliance -- and that means large-scale purchases of military hardware from the West's arms merchants, particularly the American masters of war. Most of the money for these upgrades actually comes from the American taxpayer: the U.S. government "loans" the new member the money to buy, say, a fleet of warplanes; then the member hands the money straight to Boeing or Lockheed-Martin. (Who will then kick back a bit of the swag to the campaigns and causes of the politicians who engineered the deal.)

read more at http://www.chris-floyd.com/ 

Propelled by historically high oil prices, Gazprom is poised to earn enough cash in 2008 to end the year as the world's second most profitable company.

Its net income will rise as high as $41.5 billion, leaving it only slightly behind global leader ExxonMobil, Alfa Bank said in a research note released Thursday.

The U.S. energy major will turn a profit of around $45 billion, according to consensus estimates. Royal Dutch Shell is projected to finish a distant third, with around $25 billion in net income, analysts have said.

If Gazprom lives up to Alfa's estimates, its profits will be equal to the budget of a small country. Ukraine, for example, has forecast budget revenues of $43 billion for 2008.

--------------------

17 April 2008

Reuters,MT

President Vladimir Putin plans to oversee the signing of deals worth more than $10 billion on a trip to Libya aimed at grabbing a slice of a market opening up to the world after years of sanctions, his spokesman said.

Putin shook hands with with Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in front of his former central Tripoli home, which has been kept in ruins since it was bombed by U.S. aircraft in 1986.

The raid marked one of the lowest points in the decades the North African OPEC member spent being seen as an outlaw state that supported terrorism.

"The main point of the visit is to compensate for losses our bilateral relations suffered during the sanctions, which we observed strictly, in contrast with some Western competitors," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The former outcast state, whose oil and gas riches earned it more than $40 billion in 2007, is now aggressively courted by Western companies seeking contracts from big state infrastructure projects aimed at modernizing Libya's rundown public services.

Putin was to hold talks with Gadhafi at a dinner Wednesday and on Thursday and oversee the signing of a political declaration and an accord on investment guarantees, Russian officials said.

Russia's bid for lucrative contracts is helped by what analysts see as Gadhafi's desire to balance growing political and economic ties with the West with alternative sources of international support.

That offers a limited window of opportunity for Russia, seeking to revive its role as a global power, which diminished after the Soviet Union collapsed.

"Russia plays the role of a foil to the United States, which remains the major power," said Alexander Kliment, of Eurasia Group.

Libya's ties to the West have warmed since it abandoned its weapons of mass destruction programs in 2003, prompting the removal of most international sanctions imposed for what the West called Gadhafi's support of terrorism.

The Ukrainian parliament has approved a bill that effectively rejects any ambition to join Nato.

The law, submitted by President Viktor Yanukovych, cements Ukraine's status as a military non-aligned country - though it will co-operate with Nato.

President Yanukovych was elected earlier this year, vowing to end Ukraine's Nato membership ambitions and mend relations with Russia.

His predecessor, Viktor Yushchenko, had pursued a pro-Western foreign policy.

Under him, relations with Moscow had declined dramatically, with the Kremlin refusing to talk to him.

Since his February inauguration, Mr Yanukovych has wasted no time in re-shaping Ukraine's foreign policy in a more Moscow-friendly way, the BBC's David Stern in Kiev says.

------------------

see toon at top

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has claimed victory in Russia's presidential election.

With tears rolling down his cheeks at a victory rally on Sunday, Putin said the Russian people had clearly rejected the attempts of unidentified enemies to "destroy Russia's statehood and usurp power".

"The Russian people have shown today that such scenarios will not succeed in our land," said Putin, flanked by outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev. "They shall not pass!"

"I promised you we would win. We have won. Glory to Russia," Putin told the rally attended by tens of thousands of supporters in central Moscow. "We won in an open and fair struggle."

Putin led the pack in early results announced by the Russian central electoral commission seconds after polls closed in the country's presidential election.

With half of the votes counted, Putin was leading by a landslide 63.4 per cent.

"It' very clear that very many Russians have voted for Putin, but they've done so without the same enthusiasm they've had in the past," Al Jazeera's Jonah Hull said from Moscow.

"Either because they felt there was no viable choice, or because they had been convinced by the Kremlin rhetoric that Russia would crumble without him."

Exit polls showed that Putin is set to win with a big majority, effectively ruling out a second round of voting

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/03/201234174822513879.html

see toon at top...

...

But the battle for Debaltseve has already been quite instructive – about what Russian President Vladimir Putin likes to describe as an army of former miners and tractor-drivers can do, if given access to the weapons warehouses of a superpower; and about the awful training, morale and discipline of what pass for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Should Washington start shipping weapons, it is likely that Russian-armed separatists will always best Ukrainian national forces, with or without weapons supplied by the US. These ideas, along with Ukraine's muddied history in the Moscow sphere, seemed to make sense of Obama's initial resort to an asymmetric response to the conflict: if Moscow's regional military superiority gave the separatists the upper hand, didn't it make sense for the West to ignore the separatists and to go after Putin with escalating economic sanctions? Why not let Putin go bang-bang for as long as he liked in the bomb craters of eastern Ukraine, while Washington and other capitals co-opted the corporate boardrooms of the world, to fix a gradually tightening sanctions tourniquet on the Russian economy?

Playing catch-up with Moscow as arms supplier to the other side would in all likelihood prove a costly zero-sum game – by one count, the separatists already have more than 500 Russian tanks, more than the German, British or French armies.

read more:

http://www.smh.com.au/world/ukraines-latest-defeat-confronts-west-and-ob...

Gus:

The dynamics here is that the West did not honour its agreement with Russia in regard as to leave former Soviet Union countries alone. All the west's "agent provocateurs", all the west's spy agencies, all the west diplomatic efforts have been made to remove Ukraine out of the Russians' influence... The west even made offer of cash (which the west does not have in its reserves without printing more cash) as well as encourage a shift of Ukrainian government from "post-communism" to fascism... It's a zero sum game, with nuclear war at stake eventually and nobody is caring about the fallout...

The west wants its oyster.

Eventually, the west will have to share half of it with Russia. See toon at top... 

The American Century Is Over

At the time of this writing, an Orioles-White Sox game in Baltimore has been cancelled because of rioting in the city, while on Saturday 37,000 fans were confined inside the stadium for hours after a game ended because of mayhem outside. The state, which cannot protect crowds of dating couples and parents with children outside of Camden Yards, is not going to make eastern Ukraine safe for neoliberalism.

In the run-up to the Baltimore riots, Congress debated ways to tell Europeans what their Mideast policies should be. Working with an AIPAC-drafted playbook, Maryland senator Ben Cardin and Illinois representative Peter Roskam attached language to a large trade bill intended to squelch the growing movement in Europe to label as such Israeli products that originate in the occupied territories. The AIPAC amendments defined as primary American goals in trade talks the discouragement of European economic sanctions against Israel. Mike Coogan’s account of the behind-the-scenes maneuvers highlighted some glimpses of House legislators stunned at the brazenness of AIPAC in action. First hearings on the bill were moved to a smaller room to keep out the public. Then, at the last moment, pro-Israel anti-boycott amendments were tacked on, with language treating Israel and “Israeli-controlled territories” as identical. One congressman asked Chairman Paul Ryan why members of the Ways and Means Committee were unable to consider public health, or labor standards, or food safety in debating the trade legislation, but were able on short notice to rubberstamp an AIPAC-sponsored amendment. He didn’t receive an answer.

read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-american-century-is-over/

See toon at top...

SPIEGEL: Conditions have been poor in your republic since the economic blockade began. What are you doing to combat the problem?

Zakharchenko: We have started paying out pensions, we are slowly getting coal production up and running again and the railroad will be operating again soon. Be it coal or metal, we will return to 2014 production levels.

SPIEGEL: Is the money for the pensions coming from Russia? Is that why they are being paid in rubles?

Zakharchenko: We supply coal to Russia, and we are paid in rubles. But do you think Ukraine could survive without our coal? It is buying through all kinds of circuitous routes. The EU is also interested, including Bulgaria, Poland, Romania and especially Spain. That means we get rubles, hryvnia and dollars.

SPIEGEL: Who do you think should pay for the reconstruction of the Donbas?

Zakharchenko: Ukraine, of course. It destroyed everything here.

SPIEGEL: Ukraine is practically bankrupt.

Zakharchenko: We don't care if Ukraine is bankrupt. We are not citizens of Ukraine. We will present them with our bill. Perhaps German money will also help.

During the interview, Zakharchenko repeatedly mentions the "fascists" in Kiev. He is critical of the fact that Poroshenko's government is receiving €500 million ($550 million) from the "iron chancellor," Angela Merkel. He insists that his People's Republic is in fact entitled to the money, as compensation for its war losses. But the German money is being "stolen" in Kiev, he argues. It is obvious that the leader of the People's Republic is entirely reliant on Russia. The ruble has already found its way into Donetsk, where the Russian currency can be used to pay for gasoline at filling stations. Ruble cash registers can also be found in supermarkets and items on restaurant menus are priced in rubles.

Still, there is a touch of melancholy in Zakharchenko's final answer. The interview has already been underway for an hour, and at times it has turned into a heated argument. In the end, a long argument ensues between the separatist leader and the reporter over whether the uprising on Maidan Square in Kiev was a coup d'état and the current Kiev government is a "fascist junta." Zakharchenko still insists that his republic is fighting fascists, and says that Russia feels the same way.

SPIEGEL: Nevertheless, your former prime minister, Alexander Borodai, regrets that Russia doesn't support the desire for independence by the people in the Donbas in the same way it supports Russians in Crimea. Do you agree?

Zakharchenko: That's his personal opinion. But if there were a "Russian spring" here, as there was in Crimea, I would vote for it with both hands.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

read more: http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/interview-with-donetsk-separatist-leader-on-hopes-for-annexation-a-1031270.html

In an interview with Sputnik, Igor Kovalev of the Moscow-based Higher School of Economics, specifically pointed to the West and international organizations starting to review their position on Ukraine.

The interview came after the International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s mission chief for Ukraine, Ron Van Rooden, said that Ukraine's $3 billion debt to Russia will be taken into consideration when the IMF is making its decision on the next tranche to Kiev. The $3 billion loan was secured by the government of then-President Viktor Yanukovych in late 2013. Moscow has repeatedly stated that Kiev's inability to pay back the debt means a default thus rendering Ukraine unable to receive IMF help.

The IMF, for its part, altered its policy on defaulting debtors in late 2015, allowing the fund to continue lending to countries that have partially defaulted on their sovereign debt. Russia has filed a lawsuit against Ukraine over the issue.

Speaking to Sputnik, Kovalev described Ron Van Rooden's statement as a transparent signal toward Ukraine. "I think the IMF's statement indicates that the West (the US, Western Europe and international organizations) is reviewing its stance on Ukraine.They realize the fact that the reforms initiated by Ukrainian authorities are not effective and that these reforms are stalled. No one wants to continue to keep Ukraine and pay the money which is, as a rule, immediately stolen,” he said.

According to him, Ukraine will have to change its position on its hefty debt to Russia because "the IMF is most likely to return to its original practice stipulating that the organization does not allocate tranches to the countries that have the due-to-be-paid debts and do not recognize these debts, trying to challenge them, as Ukraine does. 

Kovalev pointed out that Kiev should not expect financial assistance from the IMF. "The IMF will not fully reimburse the debt of Ukraine to Russia. I think Kiev will finally have to repay the debt all by itself without hoping for a large-scale assistance from the IMF," he said. Ron Van Rooden has, meanwhile, said that it will take Ukraine a generation to catch up with the Central European economy even if the GDP growth rate increases up to five percent. He added that the IMF wants to see the acceleration of reforms in Ukraine required for receiving the fund's financial aid.

Read more: https://sputniknews.com/world/201612181048706245-russia-ukraine-debt-position/

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Two days ago Reuters published this report, headlined “How Trump can show he’s tough on anti-Semitism”. I’m not sure why Trump – who has never been called an anti-Semite before, never publicly criticised Israel and whose daughter and son-in-law are both Jewish – suddenly needs to show he’s “tough” on anti-Semitism, but apparently he does.

How is Mr Trump going to achieve this? He’s going to denounce Ukraine…because the government is endorsing fascism.

For the sake of brevity I will present a bullet point list of the Ukrainian issues that so trouble the article’s author, Josh Cohen:

• “…local authorities [in Kiev] recently voted to rename a major street after a former Nazi collaborator and anti-Semite named Roman Shukhevych.”
• “In 2015, Ukraine passed a law honoring the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and its military wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, (OUN-UPA)”
• “Numerous Holocaust memorial sites – including Babi Yar, where over 33,000 Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis – have been vandalized or desecrated by anti-Semitic graffiti and swastikas.”
• “…the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory (UINM) is drafting a law to posthumously exonerate OUN-UPA members convicted of murdering Polish and Jewish civilians during and after the war.”
• “The elevation of OUN-UPA has been accompanied by a growing number of anti-Semitic incidents in Ukraine.” 
• “A retired general affiliated with Ukraine’s security services called for the destruction of the country’s Jews;”
• “…a Ukrainian official called Ukraine’s SS Galizien division – created with the support of Heinrich Himmler – “heroes””

These statements will no doubt shock people who only ever read the mainstream media during the right-wing coup and beginning of the subsequent civil war in Ukraine. During that period the MSM was devoting a large part of its resources to dispelling the “myth” that Ukraine was full of Nazis, deriding the notion as “Russian propaganda”, and dismissing those that said it as “Putinbots”.

Indeed, the below-the-line suppression of discussion on this topic is the main reason this website even exists.

In the Atlantic, in 2014, Ukrainian Nazis were dismissed as a “phantom menace”. Luke Harding wrote a (brilliantly argued) column in the Guardian saying that “there weren’t any Nazis in Ukraine because one of the Maidan protesters was Jewish.” Politico magazine mocked “Putin’s Imaginary Nazis”, whilst US News warned against Russia’s “Neo-Nazi Propaganda”. The Guardian simply headlined: “Don’t believe the Russian propaganda about Ukraine’s ‘fascist’ protesters!”

There never were Nazis in Ukraine.

Except now there are.

(This textbook example of double-think is never addressed in the article, which can’t even fully accept the truth itself, referring to the “brave guerilla war” fought by the fascist UON after WW2, with no reference to the CIA funding they received, or the war crimes they carried out.)

Three years later the fascism that it is being nurtured in Ukraine is acknowledged as a political reality. Why? Because of the violence being visited on the people of East Ukraine? No. Because of the terrorist attacks carried out against the people of Crimea? No. But because it is a handy political angle to attack a president who must be undermined at every turn in the news cycle.

read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2017/06/24/reuters-finally-realize-there-are-na...

It started under G W Bush (possibly planned before) see toon at top...

North Korea’s success in testing an intercontinental ballistic missile that appears able to reach the United States was made possible by black-market purchases of powerful rocket engines probably from a Ukrainian factory with historical ties to Russia’s missile program, according to an expert analysis being published Monday and classified assessments by American intelligence agencies.

The studies may solve the mystery of how North Korea began succeeding so suddenly after a string of fiery missile failures, some of which may have been caused by American sabotage of its supply chains and cyberattacks on its launches. After those failures, the North changed designs and suppliers in the past two years, according to a new study by Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

Such a degree of aid to North Korea from afar would be notable because President Trump has singled out only China as the North’s main source of economic and technological support. He has never blamed Ukraine or Russia, though his secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, made an oblique reference to both China and Russia as the nation’s “principal economic enablers” after the North’s most recent ICBM launch last month.

Analysts who studied photographs of the North’s leader, Kim Jong-un, inspecting the new rocket motors concluded that they derive from designs that once powered the Soviet Union’s missile fleet. The engines were so powerful that a single missile could hurl 10 thermonuclear warheads between continents.

Those engines were linked to only a few former Soviet sites. Government investigators and experts have focused their inquiries on a missile factory in Dnipro, Ukraine, on the edge of the territory where Russia is fighting a low-level war to break off part of Ukraine. During the Cold War, the factory made the deadliest missiles in the Soviet arsenal, including the giant SS-18. It remained one of Russia’s primary producers of missiles even after Ukraine gained independence.

But since Ukraine’s pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych, was removed from power in 2014, the state-owned factory, known asYuzhmash, has fallen on hard times. The Russians canceled upgrades of their nuclear fleet. The factory is underused, awash in unpaid bills and low morale. Experts believe it is the most likely source of the engines that in July powered the two ICBM tests, which were the first to suggest that North Korea has the range, if not necessarily the accuracy or warhead technology, to threaten American cities.

“It’s likely that these engines came from Ukraine — probably illicitly,” Mr. Elleman said in an interview. “The big question is how many they have and whether the Ukrainians are helping them now. I’m very worried.”

Bolstering his conclusion, he added, was a finding by United Nations investigators that North Korea tried six years ago to steal missile secrets from the Ukrainian complex. Two North Koreans were caught, and a U.N. report said the information they tried to steal was focused on advanced “missile systems, liquid-propellant engines, spacecraft and missile fuel supply systems.”

Investigators now believe that, amid the chaos of post-revolutionary Ukraine, Pyongyang tried again.

Mr. Elleman’s detailed analysis is public confirmation of what intelligence officials have been saying privately for some time: The new missiles are based on a technology so complex that it would have been impossible for the North Koreans to have switched gears so quickly themselves. They apparently fired up the new engine for the first time in September — meaning that it took only 10 months to go from that basic milestone to firing an ICBM, a short time unless they were able to buy designs, hardware and expertise on the black market.

read more:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/14/world/asia/north-korea-missiles-ukraine-factory.html

Ukraine biting the US hand that fed it crap?... read from top...

https://www.rt.com/news/399602-north-korea-missiles-ukraine-engines-report/

Researchers from the respected George Washington University-based National Security Archive, which specializes in obtaining key declassified information from the government, have put together 30 crucial documents that clearly show several top Western officials vowing to Gorbachev in unison that NATO would not expand eastward. Some of these have been publicly available for several years, others have been revealed as a result of Freedom of Information requests for the study

Through 1990 as the two Germanies, and the leaders of four World War II victors, the USSR, the US, the UK and France, negotiated a reunification treaty, signed by the six parties in Moscow in September, the capitalist states tried to defuse Moscow’s fears that a reunified state in the heart of Europe would present a threat to the Soviet Union.

In February, George H. W. Bush’s secretary of state, James Baker, assured his Soviet counterpart, Eduard Shevardnadze, that in a post-Cold War Europe NATO would no longer be belligerent – “less of a military organization, much more of a political one, would have no need for independent capability.”

Nonetheless, Baker promised Shevardnadze “iron-clad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward.” On the same day in Moscow, he famously told the Soviet General Secretary that the alliance would not move “one inch to the east.”

The following day, February 10, 1990, Helmut Kohl, the future chancellor of a united Germany, repeated the same thought to Gorbachev, even as they disagreed on other issues.

“We believe that NATO should not expand the sphere of its activity. We have to find a reasonable resolution. I correctly understand the security interests of the Soviet Union, and I realize that you, Mr. General Secretary, and the Soviet leadership will have to clearly explain what is happening to the Soviet people,” Kohl said.

Later that month, talking with Czechoslovakian President Vaclav Havel, President George H. W. Bush himself said that “we will not conduct ourselves in the wrong way by saying, ‘We win, you lose.’”

“Tell Gorbachev that… I asked you to tell Gorbachev that we will not conduct ourselves regarding Czechoslovakia or any other country in a way that would complicate the problems he has so frankly discussed with me,” the US president said, talking to the Czech reformer and former dissident.

The French president, Socialist Francois Mitterand, went further and said that he was not in favor of even a unified Germany joining NATO, something he openly shared with the Soviet leader.

In the end, the Soviets moved their forces out of Germany, and later other eastern European states, without a single hostile incident. Among those going home was KGB officer Vladimir Putin, who was stationed in Dresden between 1985 and 1990.

The promise lasted only until 1997, however, when Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary were invited into the alliance. In total, 13 Eastern European states have become NATO members since then.

Gorbachev and subsequently Putin have frequently bemoaned the West’s broken promise, with the latter insisting that it fundamentally undermined the fragile trust between an internationally retreating Russia and an ascendant US.

Meanwhile, in "New Cold War" news, declassified US documents prove that Russia WAS promised NATO wouldn't expand eastwards after 1991. Since then it has added 13 new members. All former communist states. But, you know, expansionist Russia, Putin etc https://t.co/pm0yUqXlPjpic.twitter.com/gVFpFHALKh

On January 17, Petr Pavel, a Czech army general and NATO’s military committee chairman, led meetings with his counterparts from Ukraine and Georgia, which he tweeted were “Sessions dedicated to Projecting Stability.” Yet while NATO’s collaboration with nations historically intertwined with Russia could lead to a number of possible outcomes, “stability” seems the least likely one. Like so much of what the alliance does, the purpose of these meetings is to push the alliance ever eastward. 

That raises a question. Why should Americans participate in an alliance in which a general—from a minuscule military power that spends 1 percent of its GDP on defense—hosts a meeting that is more likely to provoke a catastrophic U.S.-Russia war than to prevent one? As Ted Galen Carpenter recently explained here at TAC, this is the dangerous calculus that results from interlocking the United States with so many NATO nations, including some that Moscow regards as within its sphere of influence.  

Let me offer another reason to be skeptical about the long-term future of U.S. participation in the Western alliance: the West is dying. The historical and cultural legacy that animated Western civilization is atrophying. This is particularly the case in Western Europe, where elites see nothing particularly valuable in their cultural heritage, which will increasingly make them unreliable partners to the United States. How can a Western alliance be maintained when less and less remains of common, distinctly Western values and ideas? 

At the end of the Cold War, the late Harvard historian Samuel Huntington pointed out that the world was reorganizing itself along civilizational lines and that cultural commonalities were replacing Cold War alliances. Western European nations signed the Maastricht treaty, Russia rebuilt its Orthodox cathedrals, Islam experienced a historic reawakening, and China rediscovered Confucius. Huntington therefore recommended that NATO serve as “the security organization of Western civilization.”

According to Huntington, the Western heritage is rooted in “Greek philosophy and rationalism, Roman law, Latin and Christianity,” a common culture with penchants for the separation of “spiritual and temporal authority,” the rule of law, representative governments, and civil liberties. In the post-Cold War world, Huntington advised that the West reanimate its principles and avoid meddling in the affairs of other civilizations that were rediscovering, and taking pride in, their own traditions. 

Because Western elites, the “Davos men,” do not cherish or even particularly admire the unique Western cultural inheritance—Christianity in particular—they did not see civilizational criteria as a basis upon which the West should form post-Cold War alliances. We have thus done precisely the opposite of what Huntington recommended: we have meddled, sometimes aggressively, in other civilizations, and we have repudiated more and more of our own heritage, replacing it with a mishmash of multiculturalism, universalism, globalism, and anti-Christianity. And with our worldwide meddling and fading fondness for civil liberties has come the national security behemoth, weakening our commitment to freedom, privacy, and the rule of law. The recent FISA scandal is another reminder of the legacy that we are squandering.  

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/natos-real-existential-t...

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Should the United States go to war with Russia to protect Montenegro, a nation of 5,332 square miles and some 620,000 people? Where is Montenegro, anyway?

You can answer the second question by consulting any map of the Balkans, where tiny Montenegro is wedged between Serbia, Bosnia, and Albania. You can answer the first question through a cursory consultation with the logic of national interest. The answer is no. 

Yet the United States is bound by treaty to protect Montenegro militarily should Russia or any other nation violate its sovereignty. The fate of Montenegro has absolutely nothing to do with U.S. strategic interests. But the diminutive country resides in a region that has been of crucial cultural and geopolitical interest to Russia for centuries.

Read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/of-course-nato-is-obsolete/

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In one of the largest, if not the largest, Neo-Nazi demonstration in Europe since WW2, 20,000 fascists and their supporters marched through the streets of the Ukrainian capital celebrating the birth of Stepan Bandera 01.01.1909 founder and leader of the ultra-nationalist Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) and its military wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) commanded by Roman Shukhevych. This organization which along with the equally collaborationist outfit, the 14th Waffen SS Grenadier Division Galicia 1, were responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Poles, Jews and Russians during the ethnic cleansing which began in Lviv with a pogrom of the city’s Jews a week after the German invasion in 1941, and in the western Ukraine between 1943-45.

Russian state media RT and Sputnik News featuring fascists throwing Nazi salutes and parading in their tens of thousands in a European capital apparently didn’t concern any of the major western news outlets, however, nor the EU for that matter, which is to be expected. Nothing reported on BBC, France24, CNN, New York Times, The Guardian…the silence of the media lambs when it comes to a growing fascist movement in Ukraine is deafening. Although it should be said The Times of Israel did report on 28th April 2018 on this event with the headline: 50 US Congress members call out Ukraine government for glorifying Nazis. Credit where it’s due perhaps.

But for the western MSM in general this reaction to a blatant display of out-and-out fascism is par for the course. It would not be stretching credulity to say that nearly 100% of the MSM reporting on the Ukraine is frankly, ignorant, made-up, fake and mendacious, and this applies particularly to the liberal media; to be even more specific to The Guardian team, of Luhn, Harding and Walker who seem to have made a career of Russophobia and fake news. Their ‘journalism’ of the courtesan in its essence is quite simple: What are my principles? What would you like them to be?

Searching for a more honest and objective appraisal outside of the usual suspects takes some effort and perseverance, but occasionally this yields dividends. One such gold nugget is the recent publication of the book Ukraine in the Crossfire (Clarity Press, Atlanta, 2017) by Chris Kaspar De Ploeg, a Dutch gentleman, freelance journalist and political analyst. The author doesn’t take sides overtly but tries to sift out the facts of the present conflict – a conflict buried under a sea of lies, and insinuations. For example: “Whilst remaining critical of Russia and the Donbass rebellion he demonstrates that many of the recent disasters can be traced to the Ukrainian ultranationalists” (neo-Nazis), “pro-western political elites” (Poroshenko, Kolomoisky, Tymoshenko) “and their European and North-American backers.” (Cover blurb)

Much of the book is devoted to a re-telling of the events leading up to the Maidan coup of February 2014 which brought the present regime to power. All of these events have been extensively covered elsewhere and I don’t want to go over old ground here. But other events and developments which were not apparent at the time – e.g., the unstable relationship between the oligarchs and the neo-Nazis as well as the intra-oligarch struggles for prestige and power, and, perhaps even more importantly, the calamitous economic and social descent of Ukraine into almost third world status; all have been carefully brought to light by the author.

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https://off-guardian.org/2018/07/13/meanwhile-in-ukraine/

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Pyotr Poroshenko’s recent proposal to change the name of Kiev’s Ivan Kudrya street to John McCain Street betrays the hidden Nazi agenda among Ukraine’s junta.

Ivan Kudrya was Soviet Kiev’s hero during the fight against the Nazis during the Great Patriotic War (Second World War). He was an essential figure in the Kiev Resistance: he blew up a movie theatre full of German soldiers, derailed trains and when caught, was tortured and killed by the Gestapo.

He also fought against the Western Ukrainian nationalists and Nazi collaborators. Their descendants and followers now, those who want to “cleanse” Donbass and pro-Russian South-Eastern Ukraine, want to remove his name (along with the memory of that anti-fascist resistance) from Ukraine’s history books, which they are re-writing.

This time they have gone as far as suggesting that had the Germans not been “provoked” by the Resistance (and people like Ivan Kudrya) then tragedies such as Babi Yar (where the German Nazis killed 150 thousand Jews) supposedly wouldn’t have happened, as the Nazis wouldn’t have had to retaliate!

The fact that killing innocent people, one of the most horrific crimes of the Holocaust, cannot be called “retaliation” and even such a hypothesis is moral turpitude – doesn’t bother these Nazi apologists. But why doesn’t it bother their US “sponsors”?! Are McCain’s family members OK with his name being used as a tool in erasing the memory of those who stopped the Holocaust?

The following “explanation” was aired on Ukraine’s TV Channel 1 by its top host, BBC trained (!) former BBC World Service correspondent Mykola Veresen (real name Nikolai Sytnik). According to his diabolical “explanation” when Ivan Kudrya and other Red Army partisans started blowing up houses on the Khreshchatyk, the Germans decided that it was the Red Army’s NKVD.

“The Germans [thought]” – Veresen “explains,” – “that if you are NKVD, a Red, you are a Jew. And then they thought that the inhabitants of Kiev would treat it [the extermination of Jews] with favour. So the Germans then thought: we will now kill them all , and the people of Kiev will be not against that”, the TV host concluded his insane and blasphemous “hypothesis” of what caused the tragedy. In other words, the world should have submitted itself to the Nazis – then there wouldn’t have been any “losses.”

When the USSR, Britain, and America were allies in the most terrible war in human history, the Washington Post wrote:

One shudders to think what would have happened had the Red Army collapsed under the pressure of the German attackers, or if the Russian people had been less indomitable and courageous.”

British newspapers wrote:

Were it not for the Red Army, the fate of the free peoples of the world would be far more gloomy.”

Winston Churchill himself confirmed:

It was the Red Army that tore the guts out of the German war machine.” 

But now what’s being written? Why do Russia’s former allies now align themselves with those in Ukraine who support former Fascist collaborators and sympathisers such as Stepan Bandera? Do McCain’s family or the Republicans, in general, approve the idea of his name being used by those who deny the Holocaust (along with denying the role of the Red Army in liberating Ukraine from the Nazis)?!

This position, stated by Veresen, was strongly criticised by the director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee Eduard Dolinsky. His view has not been heard on Ukrainian or on US TV nor has it been published in the New York Times.

So, who is the Holocaust denier here and who is denying those honest Jewish voices in favour of pleasing Ukraine’s Nazis …perhaps because they are useful in fostering the new Cold War against Russia?

Read more:

https://off-guardian.org/2018/09/20/kievs-ivan-kudrya-street-to-become-j...

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On October 17th, former Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky outlined his purported “victory plan” to the EU, in which he called for increased military aid and a path to NATO membership, and deep strikes into Russia, with hopes of ending the war by next year. However, Ukraine joining NATO remains highly improbable—actually impossible!

The origins of the current conflict can be traced back to 2008, when NATO expansion discussions first included Ukraine and Georgia, sparking a major rift with Russia. That moment in time set in motion the unraveling of Ukraine’s stability, which culminated in the events we’re seeing today.

The future of any peace will depend on which side holds the stronger position, and there’s no room for bluffing anymore. Russia has long made clear its opposition to NATO’s presence on its borders, while the West claims that it remains committed to supporting Ukraine. However, this creates a stalemate that is better described as a quagmire, where military strength and strategic alliances, or the lack thereof, will shape the ultimate outcome.

So far, it is not looking good in what has proved to be a Western sponsored proxy war. If NATO membership for Ukraine is off the table, as seems most likely, a lasting peace will require a different approach. Possible alternatives could include neutrality for Ukraine, a regional security pact, or even a frozen conflict. Ultimately, peace must come down to finding a solution that somehow respects Ukraine’s sovereignty but as a neutral state, and where the de-Nazification process has been effective, while at the same time addressing Russia’s security concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion and ensuring that the rearming of Ukraine and raising more armies for the next war does not happen.

It is becoming increasingly evident, day-by-day, that Zelensky’s regime is facing a multitude of internal and external challenges that could lead to its eventual collapse. The front lines are crumbling, and the strain on the government is showing in several ways. The Ukrainian parliament (Rada) is resisting efforts to lower the draft age for men, even considering drafting women, whereas desertions within the army are rising, with upwards of 75,000 this year alone.

For obvious reasons, there is a growing resistance to the draft itself, with widespread movements pushing back against forced conscription, including buying your way out. Additionally, corruption within the ranks of officials connected to the military draft is rampant, further undermining public confidence in the government’s ability to sustain any semblance of a war effort.

Compounding these problems are the internal power struggles within the government. Zelensky is reportedly at odds with key figures such as General Zaluzhny, former head of the army, and intelligence chief Budanov, both of whom are influential in Ukraine’s military and security apparatus. These feuds are weakening the unity and effectiveness of the government at a critical time.

All of this must be seen in the larger context of Ukraine’s failure to secure more advanced weaponry, particularly missiles, despite not knowing how to use them, a job done, it is believed, by NATO personnel acting as “volunteers”, and the billions of dollars in aid needed to sustain the war effort. International support, which once flowed freely, is now being not only questioned, but drying up, as the situation deteriorates for Ukraine on all fronts, including the previously lauded drive into Kursk Oblast.

Hence, Zelensky and his corrupted administration find themselves increasingly isolated, as the blind reliance on foreign aid has led them to a dead end, with few options for moving forward. The cracks in the regime are widening, and without decisive changes or support, the future of the government remains uncertain—especially that of Zelensky himself, whom many predict is on his way out, and the landing may not be so light.

Victory Plan is Road to Total Defeat

Zelensky’s five-point “victory plan,” in which he ruled out ceding Ukrainian territory, also called for an unconditional invitation for Kyiv to join the NATO alliance … but if anything is unconditional in this future peace deal, it will be unconditional surrender. It is described by the AP as Ukraine’s last resort to strengthen its hand in any future cease-fire negotiations with Russia.

Why should Russia back down now and roll over like a bug with its feet wiggling in the air when it is winning on all fronts and Ukraine, its army is crumbling, and it is getting close to winter, a winter that, due to the Russian destruction of up to 90% of Ukraine’s thermal power production, will be the grimmest in Ukraine in living memory.

The big question is, will the West be able to warm things up, especially relations?

Zelensky said granting Ukraine an invitation to NATO would be a “testament of determination” by its allies to support Kyiv. The former (his term of office has expired, remember) Ukrainian president has taken his wishful thinking to an unprecedented level, and his plight may befall other politicians skating on thin ice. He had talks on October 10 with French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni in Rome as part of a push to secure additional military and financial aid.

Zelenskiy met with Macron after talks in London with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who was in Kyiv last week after taking over at the helm of the military alliance.

Zelenskiy “outlined the details” of his proposed “victory plan” to defeat Russian forces in his meetings with these two stooges, and he was expected to give the same in his upcoming meeting with Meloni.

Perfect Storm Brewing for Destruction 

There are more than enough internal problems in Ukraine, and also in most of Europe and NATO itself, and these problems have been made all the worse with the failure of the Kursk invasion, this “brilliant” operation having backfired badly.

It was seemingly intended to cause panic in the Russian government, making them withdraw troops from eastern Ukraine to counter it, and also hopefully cause a “popular uprising” against Putin. Instead, it simply motivated the Russians to double down. The planners should have realized this is hallowed ground for the Russians going back to 1943 and studied the lessons of the German defeat, and how this battle was a game changer. Rather than causing support for Putin to crumble, the effect has been the opposite, with a massive boost to voluntary recruiting in Russia, and support for Special Military Operation in general.

Instead, in the wake of high casualties in Kursk, and an increasingly ruthless “popular mobilization” which now targets concert-goers, restaurants, and even wedding celebrations, domestic support for Zelensky eroding, the same trend is speeding up in the West, especially in Europe and in the US in the countdown to US elections, and it is likely, if Trump is election, the game is over.

The Harsh Reality!

The situation remains on a knife edge, with acceptance of one part of Zelensky’s plan, the deep strikes on Russia using western weapons, more than likely to instigate a major escalation. It is well known that such weapons cannot be used without intelligence and satellite data from the west, and the use of western technicians to program and target such weapons. Russia has been repeatedly clear what will happen if such strikes are launched. But it seems that we are being saved not by cooler western heads, but by the fact that the US simply does not have enough of such weapons to give, without seriously weakening its own military.

What will be left of Ukraine will never be allowed to be a member of NATO, at least not until hell freezes over, the aims of the special operation are fully achieved, and the de-Nazification program is concluded. Too much is riding on seeing this process to the end, as was the case in East Germany, which pretty much explains why the AfD is faring well, especially among voters from what was the former East Germany, in local elections.

The hang on, term-expired, president, who refuses to step aside now that his term has ended, can huff and puff all he wants, visit all the crashing and burning leaders of Europe and claim that wants peace, but on whose terms will peace be made?

There will be no Peace with Honor, as Richard Nixon spoke about ending the Vietnam War, for Zelensky, or his backers!  Unlike the Vietnam situation, where the U.S. could physically withdraw, Ukraine’s future is on the line. For Ukraine, there may be no path to a peace that preserves its territorial integrity, claimed sovereignty, and dignity, without substantial concessions and a change in mentality.

Russia, too, will never accept a settlement that doesn’t enshrine its strategic gains and original objectives for the SMO, especially regarding NATO’s proximity to its borders. In this context, any peace deal—if it is ever reached—will likely come without honor.  The legacy of such a peace would be fragile, and, like post-Vietnam, the scars of a prolonged and costly conflict will likely linger for generations, not only in Ukraine but for much of Europe.

It’s harder for the US to get out of Ukraine than Vietnam because it’s dirty and deeper. And now Zelensky wants nukes. He sold himself to US, and it didn’t go as planned. Now he is so desperate!

Zelensky says, “it would be horrible if Biden didn’t support Ukraine’s victory plan, which includes NATO membership”, however, horrible for whom, besides Zelensky and his corrupted minions.

Henry Kamens, columnist, expert on Central Asia and Caucasus, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

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