NATO destroyers near Crimea - to sink or not to sink?

 

World  » Former USSR   

The Russian Defense Ministry gave its assessment to the crisis that took place in the Black Sea to HMS Defender of the British Navy, which violated the Russian state border. According to Major-General Igor Konashenkov, the official representative for the Defence Ministry, the British destroyer suffered an "epic fiasco."

Konashenkov's statement came as a response to the recent remarks from Pentagon spokesman John Kirby, who claimed that, according to the British Ministry of Defence, the information about the warning shots for the British destroyer was nothing but "Russian disinformation."

"The epic fiasco of the provocation conducted by the British destroyer Defender in the Black Sea, which abruptly changed her course from the Russian territorial waters after the warning shots were fired by the patrol ship, will remain a fragrant stain on the reputation of the Royal Navy for a long time," Konashenkov said.

Konashenkov also called on the Pentagon and the command of the British Navy that send their warships to the Black Sea, "not to tempt fate in vain being guided by admirals of the Ukrainian mosquito fleet."

Читайте больше на https://english.pravda.ru/world/147611-nato_crimea/

 

 

I love the "to sink or not to sink"... So dry (to be or not to be...)

 

assangex

 

The official chain of events around the leak of classified and embarrassing Ministry of Defence documents raises more questions than it answers. The bundle of papers was reportedly discovered a day before the incident between HMS Defender and the Russian Navy, with a BBC journalist aboard, but official sources are vague about who 'mislaid' them.

Mystery surrounds the discovery of secret UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) documents that indicate a Royal Navy warship was deliberately routed through restricted Russian waters.

An unnamed individual found a rain-soaked bundle of 50 pages behind a bus stop in Kent on Tuesday and and contacted UK state broadcaster the BBC — which only reported the find on Sunday.

Crucially, the find was made a day before the destroyer HMS Defender sailed through a Traffic Separation Scheme (TSS) around Cape Fiolent, just south of Russian Black Sea naval port of Sevastopol, on Wednesday — with a BBC reporter on board.

 

The broadcaster made no mention of the documents in its breathless report from the ship, which was in stark contrast to the MoD's laid-back dismissal of warning shots fired by Russian patrol boats and jet bombers as distant military exercises.

One document in the bundle shows two alternative routes for the warship from Odessa in Ukraine to Batumi in Georgia, its next port of call. One involves sailing almost due south before making a dog-leg to east-south-east to reach Batumi, giving the Crimean peninsula a wide berth.

The alternative, more direct route is shown on the map passing diagonally south-east through the clearly-marked Sevastopol TSS — although traffic through such zones is meant to stick to designated north-south or east-west lanes.

That would "provide an opportunity to engage with the Ukrainian government… in what the UK recognises as Ukrainian territorial waters" the document read — indicating that the voyage was planned as a challenge to Russian sovereignty over the Crimea, which voted overwhelmingly to reunite with its historical mother-country in 2014.

 

Possible Russian responses to the manoeuvre, ranging from "safe and professional" to "neither safe nor professional", were already anticipated. But the document argued the alternative route avoiding confrontation risked Russia claiming "the UK being scared/running away" and that the UK had tacitly dropped its insistence that Crimea was still Ukrainian territory. 

Lost or Leaked?

Sky News quoted a "Whitehall source" claiming a "senior civil servant" at the MoD had "mislaid" the documents.

But other journalists speculated that it may have been a deliberate leak from another ministry — as part of a battle over whether foreign policy takes a more hawkish or dovish turn. Other documents in the bundle detail British plans to keep troops in Afghanistan after the US and NATO pull-out in September this year.

The Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday that Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab had "raised concerns" that the naval excursion would only hand a propaganda victory to Moscow, forcing Prime Minister Boris Johnson to intervene between him and defence chiefs to settle the matter.

The bundle of classified documents reportedly included a print-out of a PowerPoint slide presentation — something that would usually be carried on a USB pen drive to display on a projector or screen at meetings.

And it included notes on a session of the UK-US Defence Dialogue on 21 June, the day the Defender was scheduled to sail.

The Pentagon was quick to back the MoD's version of events regarding the incident — suggesting the UK's NATO ally knew of the destroyer's planned route in advance.

The US Navy guided missile destroyer USS Ross arrived in Odessa on Sunday for a joint naval exercise involving 32 warships from 32 countries, scheduled to run from June 28 to July 10.

One Twitter user speculated the sensitive documents were planted behind the bus stop by a Russian agent in the MoD.

 

Another thought it was a propaganda operation cooked up between the ministry and the BBC, while others questioned the credibility of the official chain of events.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/uk/202106271083253430-whats-behind-mislaid-defence-documents-showing-crimea-incident-was-planned/

 

Read from top.

 

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW !!!!!!!!!!... See: lies...

 

The UK Navy claimed in early December 2020 that Royal Navy warships had been monitoring a significant Russian presence close to the west coast of Scotland in Britain’s territorial waters, with First Sea Lord, Admiral Tony Radakin, saying “we are always ready to respond”.

UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace has accused Russia’s “nosy” submarines of reportedly circling Britain’s entire coastline, as he gave an interview for the Sunday Telegraph.

“We’re regularly visited by nosy Russian ships, and we are regularly visited now by a number of Russian warships,” said Wallace, adding that Moscow had been carrying out “a number of operations, deliberately at Britain”.

As the Defence chief added that a Russian kilo class submarine had ostensibly been detected in the Irish Sea late last year, which had not been seen "for a very, very long time, he emphasised:

"We have tried de-escalation, we have tried methods but at the moment until Russia changes its attitude, it’s quite hard to see where we’re going to go."

The Defence Secretary’s statement echo last year’s reports by the UK Navy. In December 2020 the Royal warships claimed to have observed a significant presence of Russian vessels near the kingdom’s territorial waters.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/world/202105231082972078-uk-defence-chief-claims-nosy-russian-ships-circling-britain-labels-moscow-number-one-threat/

 

Read from top.

 

assangex

So what went on with this British warship in Crimea? Nothing, according to London. A great deal, according to those who were there, on both sides of the argument—and for you to be the judge.

HMS Defender was sailing from Odessa (the smuggling port which Mikheil Saakashvili was made governor of after being granted instant Ukrainian citizenship by the government which later said they hadn’t known who he was) to Georgia (which Saakashvili is still trying to get back into the presidency of by undermining from within). It claimed it was using a recognised international transit route, which is true, but also said it was “making a point” by using it, which does cast doubt on the first statement.

London claims no warning shots were fired and no bombs were dropped in the path of the warship. BBC Correspondent Jonathan Beale, who was on HMS Defender and had been invited by the crew, just like Russian troops were invited to Syria, witnessed the contrary – shots fired at the ship, bombs dropped and direct radio communication between the ship and the Russian authorites, telling it to go away or face the consequences.

Apparently London still thinks that if it says it never happened, the incident will go away. Like Paderewski’s Poland didn’t persecute Jews, like Albert Speer never knew what his Nazi friends were up to. Like Brexit is working, and the UK’s twenty years of austerity economics has worked when the country borrows at ever increasing rates to keep the country afloat and food banks and cities of homeless are common phenomena in one of the richest countries on earth.

The British knew there would be some reaction to using that sea lane. Whether or not they believe the Crimean coast really is Russian waters, they knew that sailing a warship through it would provoke a reaction—and it did!

If, as they now claim, the Russians were conducting gunnery exercises there and had informed the maritime community about these, what point were the British making by sailing in that vicinity? That they were simply doing what everyone else does, and had to prove this now Brexit has left the UK with no friends?

Here we have it. In the same way Georgia sends its soldiers to be killed to bleed itself into NATO, the UK has to be country which causes trouble.

But why the UK, and why now?

London has lost its former allies through its own stupidity, but it still has one thing in common with them: they all see Russia as a threat. However no one really wants to take the Russians on, or help each other in the face of supposed Russian aggression elsewhere, however many words they expend on the subject.

If the British get the Russians to attack them they can claim they are on the right side again. If it all goes wrong, those former allies can put on their best British accents and say “not me guv – they wuz doin’ it themselves, jus’ like they wanted, yer knows we ain’t talking to ‘em no more”.

Would London be insisting nothing happened if its old friends had rushed to condemn Russia’s actions, as Bojo’s Clown Show wanted them to? This is not about Russia, but all about the UK turning to international prostitution to make diplomatic ends meet – knowing the financial ones won’t meet either, before too long.

The Ruling Class

History recalls that Puyi, the last Emperor of China, was restored to his throne in 1932 as the ruler of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. He subsequently served a sentence for the war crimes committed by the Japanese during that period.

It is highly unlikely that Puyi knew anything about the more extreme aspects of Japanese rule of “his” state. As long as he could be called Emperor, he did not question what the Japanese were doing, and they never consulted him about anything, as they hardly needed his approval.

But he served 10 years, even when Mao wanted him freed and re-educated, because he insisted that he must be responsible for everything that had happened in Manchukuo, even without his knowledge, because he was the Emperor. Efforts were made by others to mitigate Puyi’s role, but he insisted on taking the blame for crimes he would not necessarily have committed had he actually been Emperor in fact rather than name.

The British are possibly the only people who would understand Puyi’s actions. During the days of their pomp they went out their way to cultivate their own variety of “Exceptionalism”, as all great powers do. In their own estimation, their superpower status was not the product of trading, thievery and oppression but the natural superiority of their race and their methods, which therefore had to be claimed to be distinct from everyone else’s.

The British believed that their nation alone personified fair play, tradition, decency and fortitude. This made them superior to other people, and this superiority explained their success. Other people would just have to bow before the British way, because the British were always right and everyone else had something wrong with them, large or small.

This remains the basis of British self-identification today. In the global but very British sport of cricket, a batsman continues batting until the umpire says he has committed some infraction. But when a batsman knows himself that he has committed such an infraction, he “walks” – he doesn’t wait for the umpire to tell him he’s out, he walks off voluntarily rather than hope the umpire might make the wrong decision, and let him stay in. In British eyes, only they would have introduced such a practice, and made it an expectation, not an exception.

It is also the way other countries see the British. Back in the 1970s a Greek Orthodox writer commented that the thing he had noticed about English converts to that faith is that they come at the beginning of the service and stay until the end. All Orthodox are supposed to do that, but many just come and go, which the British don’t understand. They fell they have a moral obligation to the rest of humanity to turn up on time, pay attention, finish on time and obey all the rules of church deportment, and others can tell them apart because of it, whether or not they seek to present themselves as different.

All this makes a lot of sense when you actually have a great empire and are regarded as a globally important country. Americans are notorious for going everywhere and expecting the American Way to be the solution to everything in the other country, not being able to understand it is only one option amongst many, and may not be the appropriate model in local circumstances.

But the Americans can actually do this. Other countries still perceive the American way of life, and the American political system and freedoms, as things they aspire to, hence the reaction to what the US actually does on the ground on those countries, which is flagrantly contrary.

The British can no longer pull the same trick, because they are just one Western country amongst many. They are still expected to live up to their self-image, but it doesn’t have the same meaning it once did. It makes the UK a quaint foreign country, of whom a lot of expected, rather than one which can be a model, and respected simply because it is what it is.

The Brexiteers are right to believe that this is partly because the UK was part of the EU, and has become an equal instead of superior. But this would have happened anyway, hence the increasingly desperate clinging to the “Special Relationship” with the US before and after EU membership.

Brexit has changed things by pushing the UK lower down the food chain – it has not re-established British superiority, it has created a new British inferiority none can remember ever seeing. So all it has left is what are still internationally recognised as its traditional values.

Sending HMS Defender to pass by the Crimean coast was a way of trying to make that perception once again mean that the British must be right. Instead it has made the UK seem a useful anachronism, and a useful idiot too. Its values may be noble, but they give it as much credibility as wearing a grass skirt does Fijians.

Having been caught, the response is more of the same – the “stiff upper lip” of complete denial of the facts, as if they are beneath the UK. But that too doesn’t provoke outrage that the mighty British Lion’s version has been contradicted – it shows that the UK has nothing left, and can be used for its own purposes by whoever offers it the most at a given time.

What Time Would Like It To Be, Old Boy?

If the British warship had achieved what it was supposed to have done, and rallied the Western world around the “principled” UK, the British would be reliving every gory detail of the shots fired and bombs dropped. They would be quoting the passages of international law and the Law of the Sea which they claimed Russia had broken by taking these actions, showing that they were once again on the right side of law, and therefore on the right side of history too.

However all this is as much for domestic as international consumption. Boris Johnson has ascended to power by claiming to represent everything British against a tide of foreign deviancy. His response to Brexit has been to put Union Jacks on everything he claims (often wrongly) to be “British” produce – as long as it’s called British, that makes it alright.

Johnson’s definition of being British changes depending on how much attention he will get for what he is saying. The only thing he can rely on being accepted as such is this concept of the innate superiority of British values – otherwise, what would be the point?

When things continue not to work out as his Brexiteer mates had hoped – we are still waiting for all the new British jobs, and money for the NHS, Brexit was supposed to create – he will have to resort more and more to invoking a romantic fantasy in which British equals superior. Even when the rest of the world has grown tired of hearing it, he and his party will have little option but to keep repeating this at home.

So who will help Johnson? Whichever country offers him the opportunity to do this, regardless of what strings are attached. But every other country also wants to be seen to be right and good, and to be providing leadership. Who would want to share this glory with the country which deprived them of it for decades by pretending it had a monopoly on it?

The only way Johnson can show his audience that the only thing he has left has any meaning is to go along with any hare-brained scheme invented by other countries for their benefit, not his. The UK is the fall guy, which is hardly surprising as it is led by a clown. Innocent Britons will now be doing pratfalls for other countries, taking pies in the face and seeing their trousers fall round their ankles, so their leader can convince them it is good to be British, and everyone else can run away from whatever they are too scared to do themselves.

When Sir Eric Gairy was the controversial Prime Minister of Grenada he gained even more notoriety by addressing the UN on the subject of flying saucers. We can now expect the same of BoJo the Clown, only with official sanction from other powers.

BoJo and his minions will be the first to stand up and condemn any alleged violation the rest of the world has no real interest in doing anything about. Having used the British to make their point, they will then address the issue diplomatically, leaving the impossibly stuck up Brits behind.

None of this will help the UK one bit. But it will keep the chickens from coming home to roost long enough to give BoJo and Co. the change to run away with the silver – which is what they all ultimately want, whoever they drag down with them.

This Is Not 1854

One wonders what Alfred, Lord Tennyson would have made of it. Tennyson was one of the few poets to become a popular entertainer by writing verse, a sort of Lord Byron for a more satisfied culture which felt poetry reading was a social accomplishment.

At the height of his fame, Tennyson wrote possibly his most famous work, “The Charge of the Light Brigade”, about a famous failed British action during the Crimean War. This included recognition that a mistake in command had been made, in the line “Someone had blundered”.

Tennyson was asked to revise his poem, and did so several times before the original version was restored to the canon. Even though the poem celebrated the bravery and commitment of the British troops sacrificed, no one official wanted to admit a mistake had been made, even though it undoubtedly had been.

What would Tennyson be writing about the bravery and commitment of the British sailors who were not fired on and didn’t have any bombs dropped on them? Where is the Britishness in that?

This incident was planned ahead, and is part of a larger pattern of sabre rattling by the UK and the US, and not only in this region. It appears as if Western powers fail to recognize the importance of the Montreux convention. That is something that nobody in the West wants to talk about right now. It is interesting to note that vessels of war (warships) belonging to non-riparian states cannot stay more than 21 days in the Black Sea.

 

Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

Read more;

 

 

Read from top.

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE TODAY !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Russian Fleet Monitoring Italian Frigate That Entered Black Sea

This comes as the Russian Navy has carried out a live fire training exercise in the Black Sea following the Sea Breeze drills, led by Ukraine and the United States. 

The Russian fleet has been tracking an Italian Navy frigate since it entered the Black Sea, after Ukraine and the NATO countries conducted military exercises in the same wider area, Russia's National Defenсe Management Center stated.

"The forces and means of the Black Sea Fleet are controlling the actions of the Virginio Fasan CGN frigate of the Italian Navy, which entered the Black Sea on 1 July, 2021," the ministry said in a press release.

Russia's Black Sea fleet announced earlier in the day that Russian warships had carried out a live fire training exercise in the Black Sea. The exercise took place in the same wider area where Ukraine and the United States held their Sea Breeze drills.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/world/202107011083281378-russian-fleet-monitoring-italian-frigate-that-entered-black-sea/

 

Read from top.

 

assangex

 

In a recent EU summit held in Brussels, the bloc overwhelmingly rejected joint French-German proposal to normalise EU-Russia relations. The bloc, instead of paying heed to the Franco-German message of redefining EU-Russia relations as a means to increase the bloc’s strategic autonomy in the international arena and reduce its dependence on the US for critical foreign policy objectives, wilfully decided to reduce itself to the margins of international politics by refusing to create a European space for relations with Russia, one that does not simply toe the US line of action vis-à-vis its Cold War adversary. While the Franco-German proposal asked for creating formats for discussion with Russia on as varying issues as climate change, peace and security, the proposal also shows a growing realisation within the continent, at least in the bloc’s two most powerful countries, for a policy that may allow it to shun its current status as a US periphery. As Germany’s Merkel said, “we cannot remain on a purely defensive attitude to Russia, on a case-by-case basis, while, very legitimately, we saw a structured discussion unfold between President Biden and President Putin.” In other words, the underlying logic for Germany and France remains: if the US can independently pursue discussions with Russia, the EU, too, must not hold back.

But the fact that nearly half of the EU countries voted against the otherwise progressive and rational proposal shows how many of them continue to follow an extremely narrowly defined policy of confrontation with Russia, a policy that is actively encouraged by the US as well.

For instance, in a June 5 piece written for The Washington Post, the US president underlined his visit to Europe as his attempt to rally world’s democracies against Russia. To quote Biden, “We are standing united to address Russia’s challenges to European security, starting with its aggression in Ukraine, and there will be no doubt about the resolve of the United States to defend our democratic values, which we cannot separate from our interests”, adding further that “When we meet, I will again underscore the commitment of the United States, Europe and like-minded democracies to stand up for human rights and dignity.”

While one may tend to think that the Joe Biden administration is pursuing its own agenda, it remains that fanning out anti-Russian sentiments, or directly sympathising European countries’ inflated apprehensions with regards to Russian intentions, as a means to increase the margin of space for the US to intervene in European politics is structurally rooted in the US body politics. For instance, even during the era of Donald Trump, who was otherwise accused of pro-Russian policies, a US Senate appropriations subcommittee invited European countries, including those from within the EU, to give testimony with regards to “Russian activity” in their countries.

While all six of these countries – Ukraine, Poland, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – testified in the hearing against the so-called Russian aggression, the testimony also highlighted how the US continues to aid these countries against Russia, a policy that directly underpins the continuity of anti-Russian Cold War mentality in Eastern Europe.

Poland’s ambassador to the US, Piotr Wilczek, said that “The Kremlin has a chief strategic objective: restore the superpower status lost after the fall of communism. The way to achieve this goal seems straightforward: altering the security architecture in Europe, thus impeding post-soviet countries from integrating with the Euro-Atlantic community.” He further thanked the US for “the deployment of your [US] troops to our region under the NATO flag. A long-term American commitment to the eFP is absolutely essential. I would like to add that the presence of American soldiers in Poland as part of Operation Atlantic Resolve is of equal and paramount importance. Further congressional support for the European Reassurance Initiative would be greatly appreciated.”

While this testimony took place in 2017, the Joe Biden administration remains obsessed with the same mentality, indicating the structural underpinnings of anti-Russianism in the US and the tendency of all US governments to flag European “fears” as true and legitimate reasons for the US political, diplomatic and even military interventions in favour of these countries.

For instance, when Antony Blinken, the current US Secretary of State, toured Europe in April, one of the chief purposes of the visit was to “educate” the Europeans about the “Russian threat.” In his meeting with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, Blinken affirmed the US’ “unwavering support” for Ukraine’s territorial integrity as it faces aggression from Russia. “The secretary expressed concern about Russia’s deliberate actions to escalate tensions with Ukraine, including through its aggressive rhetoric and disinformation, increasing ceasefire violations, and movement of troops in occupied Crimea and near Ukraine’s borders,” the US embassy in Ukraine said in a statement.

The US efforts to actively instil fear of Russian “expansionism” and Moscow’s search for re-establishing Russian hegemony in Eastern Europe represent US attempts to prevent the continent from developing its own organic foreign policy and strategic outlook. As it stands, these Eastern European countries’ threat assessment vis-à-vis Moscow continues to be largely shaped by their consistent cooperation and engagement with the US than other EU members such as Germany and France.

While this is not to suggest that France and Germany are for absolute normalisation of ties with Russia, as they continue to support establishing a NATO footprint in the Black Sea, it remains that their position represents a fast growing European desire to establish Europe as an independent player in the international arena whereby it can pursue its foreign policy objectives more independently.

While the trend will continue even after Merkel’s exit from politics. Merkel’s likely successor as chancellor, Armin Laschet, in an interview with Financial Times last week, duly called for Russia to be brought out of the cold, saying the West must try to “establish a sensible relationship” with Moscow, and that wilfully “ignoring Russia has served neither our nor the US’ interests”, it remains that Washington has established strong strings in Eastern Europe to pull to kill such European initiatives as and when needed.

 

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

 

Read more:

https://journal-neo.org/2021/07/01/why-s-europe-divided-on-positive-ties-with-russia/

 

Read from top.

 

See also:

putin — the NBC interview...

 

jesus was gay...

 

 

 

assangex

“THE ART OF WAR”

Atlantic stormwind in the Black Sea

by Manlio Dinucci

 

The HMS Defender case attests to the UK and possibly the US attempting to militarily provoke Russia in exercises involving the allies. There is no "Russian threat", but it is possible to create it.

 

The large aeronaval maneuver Sea Breeze, officially "co-hosted by the United States and Ukraine" in the Black Sea, began yesterday. The United States planned and command it, it is, therefore, the host in this sea close to Russian territory. Sea Breeze takes place from June 28 to July 10. It is led by US Naval Forces Europe-Africa / Sixth Fleet with headquarters in Naples. It includes naval, submarine, amphibious, land, and air warfare exercises.

Since this series of annual maneuvers in the Black Sea began in 1997, the 2021 edition sees the largest number of participants: 32 countries from six continents with 5,000 soldiers, 18 special forces teams, 32 ships, and 40 war airplanes. Not only NATO member countries - Italy, Great Britain, France, Spain, Greece, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, the three Baltic republics, Turkey and Canada – participate in it, but partner countries like Georgia, Moldova, Sweden, Israel, and above all Ukraine. Other nations sent their military forces to the Black Sea: Australia, Japan, South Korea and Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Senegal, and Brazil. The fact that military forces are deployed in the Black Sea, even from Australia and Brazil for this great maneuver under US command directed against Russia, is in line with what Joe Biden promised: "As president I will immediately take steps to renew the alliances of the United States, and make America, once again, lead the world”. The war maneuver in the Black Sea, the largest to date, demonstrates that President Biden’s steps go in the direction of a growing escalation against Russia and at the same time against China.

Sea Breeze 2021 actually began on June 23, when the British warship HMS Defender sailing from Ukraine to Georgia entered Crimea’s territorial waters. A deliberate provocative act [1] claimed by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who declared that Great Britain can again send its warships to those waters since it does not recognize the "annexation of Ukrainian Crimea by Russia" [2]. This hostile action, certainly concerted with the United States, was implemented just a week after the Biden-Putin Summit, defined by the US president "good, positive"; a week after Russian President Putin warned in the press conference in Geneva: "We conduct military exercises within our territory, we do not bring our equipment and personnel close to the borders of the United States of America, as the US and its partners are doing now near our borders”. This hostile action was implemented by Great Britain just two weeks after the signing of the New Atlantic Charter with the United States, in which their Allies are assured that they will always be able to rely on "our nuclear deterrents" and that "NATO will remain a nuclear alliance”.

The deliberate violation of Crimean territorial waters made the war maneuver in the Black Sea even more dangerous. This act, if repeated, may have the aim of provoking a Russian military response possibly with some dead or wounded, to accuse Moscow of aggression. It is not a coincidence that some architects of the Maidan Square putsch in 2014 hold important posts in the Biden administration, such as the current Undersecretary of State for political affairs Victoria Nuland. The putsch set in motion a sequence of events, the bloody offensive against the Russians of Ukraine pushed the inhabitants of Crimea - Russian territory passed to Ukraine in Soviet times in 1954 - to decide the secession from Kyiv and the reannexation to Russia with 97% of votes in a popular referendum. NATO and the EU accused Russia of having illegally annexed Crimea and subjected it to sanctions. Now, they want to move from political to military confrontation. They play with fire, even with the nuclear one.

 

 

Manlio Dinucci

 

Source
Il Manifesto (Italy)

 

Read more:

 

https://www.voltairenet.org/article213530.html

 

August 5 2021…  

MOSCOW (Sputnik) – UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said on Tuesday that the country’s vessels would keep the route through Crimean waters despite a recent incident involving the UK’s HMS Defender destroyer.

"HMS Defender was taking the shortest and most direct route. It is an internationally recognised traffic route. We've got every right to conduct innocent passage through Ukrainian territorial waters, according to international law. That's what we'll continue to do", Raab told a parliamentary committee.

For its part, the UK Defence Ministry said the destroyer was en route from Ukraine's Odessa to Georgia, and there were no warning shots at all. According to the footage published by the Russian security service FSB, the ship ignored warnings about the use of weapons and only left the waters near Crimea after warning shots.

The warship entered what Moscow considers a Russian maritime area near Cape Fiolent in Crimea on 23 June. The Russian navy had to fire warning shots to divert the vessel.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/world/202107061083320654-raab-uk-ships-to-continue-to-sail-waters-near-crimea-after-hms-defender-incident/

 

Read from top.

 

assangex

Russian senator advises Boris Johnson to "save money" by not sending warships to the Black Sea   By Alexandre Sutherland 

 

Russian Senator Alexey Pushkov commented on the British decision to send two warships to the Black Sea in order to support Ukraine. He cited a poll that found 73% of Britons oppose action by London against Moscow.

 

As tension mounts on the Russian-Ukrainian border, with both sides accusing each other of increasing their presence there, London has decided to send two warships to the Black Sea by May to support Kiev. Russian Senator Alexeï Pouchkov was dubious about the usefulness of such an action.

 

“Johnson [the British Prime Minister, editor's note] has an interest in saving money on sending two warships to the Black Sea as a sign of support for Ukraine. It is an unnecessary measure that will not help him in any way, two ships will not solve anything, ”he wrote Sunday April 18 on Telegram.

 

"We can do without this unnecessary demonstration of British post-imperial poses," he added, suggesting spending the money saved, to "buy the Sputnik V vaccine from Russia and protect hundreds of thousands of Britons" .

 

 

Survey

 

The senator, former representative of Russia at the Council of Europe, supported his remarks by a poll of 5,000 readers of the British tabloid Daily Express. The latter were 73% to vote against an intervention by the United Kingdom against Russia.

“Most Britons remember that previous military interventions cost the country many lives and money,” Mr Pushkov commented.

  Tensions

 

The US Navy had also decided to send two ships to the Black Sea in May, before turning back following a telephone interview between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. The American President expressed his concerns about a reinforcement of Russian troops near Ukraine, while Moscow denounced the intensification of NATO military activities near its border.

 

 Read more:

https://fr.sputniknews.com/

 

Note: this was written in April, BEFORE the crap hit the fan...

 

Read from top.

 

assangex

 

 

 

On 27 June the BBC reported that a member of the public had discovered classified MoD papers at a bus stop in Kent, dated 21 June, purportedly offering an analysis of the potential consequences of deliberately sailing a warship through Russian waters off Crimea. The MoD subsequently admitted that the sensitive documents had been lost.

The senior civil servant who mislaid a bundle of sensitive British Ministry of Defence (MoD) documents dated 21 June, found by a member of the public at a bus stop in Kent, has been identified for the first time, reported The Times.

At the time of the embarrassing incident in June, Angus Lapsley, 51, had been on temporary transfer to the MoD from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FDCO).

Lapsley held the position of director-general at the MoD, responsible for defence policy on NATO and the Euro-Atlantic area. At the Foreign Office he was believed to have been director for defence, international security and south-east Europe from 2017 until 2019.

He has since had his security clearance suspended and is currently back at the FDCO.

“The individual concerned has been removed from sensitive work and has already had their security clearance suspended pending a full review,” the Foreign Office was cited as saying.

A written statement to parliament from the MoD last week said that “there was no evidence of espionage” pertaining to the incident and all the classified material had been recovered with “no compromise of the papers by our adversaries”.

‘No Excuse’ for Such a Blunder

While a final decision regarding whether to discipline Angus Lapsley is yet to be made, concerns have reportedly been raised in the Ministry of Defence over the civil servant’s continued employment.

Angus Lapsley had been tipped to be UK ambassador to NATO, according to government sources. Despite the grave nature of his blunder, it was added that there was a chance for him to be “rehabilitated”.

“There are some people who are asking ‘Why has he kept his job?’ His own stupidity has been very damaging… I can’t see a scenario where he will [be given the ambassador job]. You would need to have access to certain documents. However, there is a chance for him to be rehabilitated,” a government source was cited as saying.

Sir Iain Duncan Smith, the former Conservative leader, was cited by The Telegraph as saying there was “no excuse” for a civil servant to take such sensitive documents home. “The message should go out very strongly that the days of taking papers home are long gone,” he said.

Other government sources were cited as wondering whether lack of public sanction for Lapsley might make penalising junior employees for similar mistakes harder. “It used to be the case that people would be hung out to dry for something like this,” added a source.

On the fateful day in June Lapsley misplaced 50 pages of documents which are believed to have fallen out of his bag. It was then that they were spotted by a member of the public behind a bus stop and handed to the BBC after their sensitive nature was discovered.

Although most papers in the trove were marked “official sensitive”, which is a low level of classification, one addressed to the Defence Secretary's private secretary was marked “Secret UK Eyes Only”, says the outlet.

Documents of this level are not allowed to be taken from government buildings unless properly logged out and securely stored, said a Whitehall source.

Among other issues, the documents are cited as containing details pertaining to the Royal Navy’s decision to purposely sail its warship HMS Defender through Russian waters off Crimea.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/uk/202108041083521484-uk-official-who-lost-classified-mod-docs-on-hms-defender-provocation-was-to-be-nato-ambassador-/

 

Read from top.

 

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW !!!!!