BY MK Bhadrakumar

 

The West’s cryptic or mocking remarks doubting the Kremlin statement on the failed Ukrainian attempt to assassinate President Vladimir Putin do not detract from the fact that Moscow has no reason on earth to fabricate such a grave allegation that has prompted the scaling down of its Victory Day celebrations on May 9, which is a triumphal moment in all of Russian history, especially now when it is fighting off the recrudescence of Nazi ideology on Europe’s political landscape single-handedly all over again. 

The alacrity with which the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken debunked the Kremlin allegation, perhaps, gives the game away. It is in the neocon DNA to duck in such defining moments. That said, predictably, Blinken also distanced the Biden administration  from the Kremlin attack. 

Earlier, the chairman of Joints Chiefs of Staff General Marks Milley also did a similar thing in an interview with the Foreign Affairs magazine disowning in advance any responsibility for the upcoming Ukrainian “counteroffensive”. This is the Biden Administration’s new refrain — hear no evil, speak no evil. No more talk, either, of backing Kiev all the way “no matter what it takes” — as Biden used to say ad nauseam. 

The heart of the matter is that Kiev’s much touted “counteroffensive” is struggling amidst widespread western prognosis that it is destined to be a damp squib. Actually, the salience of the Foreign Affairs podcast this week with Gen. Milley was also his diffidence about the outcome. Milley refused to be categorical that Kiev would even launch its “counteroffensive”! 

There is a huge dilemma today as the entire western narrative of a Russian defeat stands exposed as a pack of lies, and alongside, the myth of Kiev’s military prowess to take on the far superior military might of a superpower has evaporated. The Ukrainian military is being ground to the dust systematically. In reality, Ukraine has become an open wound that is fast turning gangrene, and little time is left to cauterise the wound. 

However, Kiev regime is ridden with factionalism. There are powerful cliques who are averse to peace talks with Russia short of capitulation by Moscow and instead want an escalation so that the Western powers remain committed. And even after Boris Johnson’s exit, they have supporters in the West. 

The militant clique ensconced in the power structure in Kiev could well have been the perpetrators of this dangerous act of provocation directed against the Kremlin with an ulterior agenda to trigger a Russian retaliation. 

From Blinken’s vacuous remark, it seems the neocons in the Biden Administration led by Victoria Nuland are in no mood to rein in the mavericks in Kiev, either. As for Europe, it has lost its voice too. 

This will probably show up in history books as a historic failure of European leadership and at its core lies the paradox that it is not France but the German government that has aligned itself closer with the US in the Ukraine war and risking an intra-European “epoch of confrontation.”

Even otherwise, these are fateful times, with the political middle ground already shrinking in France and Italy and is much weakened in Germany itself in the wake of the pandemic, the war, and inflation. Importantly, this is only partly an economic story, as the decline of the centre and the de-industrialisation in Europe are closely related and the social fabric that supported the centre has come unstuck. 

Germany, the powerhouse of Europe, has been relatively lucky so far. It benefited from cheap labour from east Europe and cheap gas from Russia. But that is over now and the decline of German industry is foreseeable. When society fragments, the political system also fragments and it will take progressively greater effort to govern such countries. Germany and Italy have a three-party coalitions; the Netherlands has four parties; Belgium has a seven-party coalition. 

For the present, the hardliners in the Kiev regime have set the pace of events and Europeans will meekly follow. But there’s a ‘chill in the room’ — to borrow the words of Judie Foster in the horror film Silence of the Lambs when Anthony Hopkins transformed in a flash into Hannibal Lecter. 

Make no mistake, this is a tipping point; the clumsy attempt on Putin’s life jolts the kaleidoscope beyond recognition. The only comforting thought is that the Kremlin leadership is not going to be driven by emotion. The considered Kremlin reaction is available from the remarks by the Russian Ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov: 

“How would Americans react if a drone hit the White House, the Capitol or the Pentagon? The answer is obvious for any politician as well as for an average citizen: the punishment will be harsh and inevitable.” 

The ambassador went on to draw the bottom line: “Russia will respond to this insolent and presumptuous terrorist attack. We will answer when we consider it necessary. We will answer in accordance with the assessments of the threat that Kiev posed to the leadership of our country.” 

No knee-jerk reactions are to be expected. Nonetheless, the scaling down of the Victory Day celebrations on the Red Square itself must have been a difficult decision. The Victory Day on May 9 is the most important holiday in Russia when the public and the state come together in a patriotic celebration during which people remember their family members who sacrificed their lives to defeat Nazism.

Many of the day’s features—parades, songs and commemorative practices—date back to the Soviet era. Victory Day is the only major public holiday that made the transition to post-Soviet Russia. In a country that lost many of its idols and heroic achievements with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, triumph over Nazism remained a source of enormous collective and personal pride.

But Putin’s hands are tied beyond a point when the country is in rage and demanding retribution, as evident from the comments by former Russian President and current Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia, Dmitry Medvedev: “After today’s terrorist attack, there are no options left except for the physical elimination of Zelensky and his clique.” 

As for Zelensky, he simply left Kiev for Helsinki — and to the Hague thereafter, and arrive in Berlin by May 13 on a state visit — sensing danger, perhaps. Indeed, the fate of the Zelensky regime seems sealed. Zelensky reminds us of the mythical Wandering Jew, who taunted Jesus on the way to the Crucifixion and was then cursed to walk the earth until the Second Coming.

 

READ MORE:

https://www.indianpunchline.com/zelensky-regimes-fate-is-sealed/

 

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ZELENSKY COULD HAVE BEEN THE TRUE HERO OF UKRAINE BY VYING FOR PEACE. HE CHOSE TO BE THE VILLAIN FOR THE AMERICAN EMPIRE... 

 

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

 

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

AND FREE JULIAN ASSANGE FOR HISSSAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7-mwOa7U5Q

 

 

Dive deep into the world of geopolitics as we explore Scott Ritter's insights on Russia's peace strategy! In this eye-opening video, we'll uncover the truth behind Russia's pursuit of peace and how it affects the global landscape.

 

READ FROM TOP.

 

ZELENSKY COULD HAVE BEEN THE TRUE HERO OF UKRAINE BY VYING FOR PEACE. HE CHOSE TO BE THE VILLAIN FOR THE AMERICAN EMPIRE... 

 

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

 

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

AND FREE JULIAN ASSANGE FOR HISSSAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The arrest of two heavily armed French neo-Nazis returning from Ukraine highlights a looming problem for NATO states sponsoring the proxy war, and their conspiracy of silence on the nature of the threat.

On April 24th 2023, two French neo-Nazis were jailed for 15 months, nine of which were suspended, for possessing assault rifle ammunition. The pair had returned to Paris from Ukraine two days earlier, and were arrested at customs.

Both were on the radar of French domestic spying agency DGSI, which held files on them for endangering state security. According to the French outlet Mediapart, one was a veteran of Chasseurs Alpins (Alpine Hunters), France’s elite mountain infantry force. He was thrown out of the military after his neo-Nazi sympathies were exposed online. The other is a notorious local far-right activist.

As in many other Western countries, hundreds of French citizens have traveled to Kiev to take up arms against Russia since it invaded Ukraine in February 2022. According to the DGSI, at least 30 of the French foreign fighters are known fascists. 

This shocking outflow has failed to generate any English-language media interest, however, save for March 2022, when far-right militant Loïk Le Priol was deported home from Hungary en route to Ukraine, to face charges of murdering Argentinian rugby player Federico Martín Aramburú in Paris.

It was inevitable that some of the French Neo-Nazis who managed to make the journey to Kiev had pre-existing links with Azov Battalion, Ukraine’s notorious Neo-Nazi paramilitary. In January 2022, Paris banned the white supremacist group Zouaves. Its members had violently attacked anti-racist protesters disrupting a rally for far-right presidential candidate Eric Zemmour the previous month. The movement’s leader, Marc de Cacqueray-Valmenier, traveled to Ukraine in December 2019 to meet with representatives of Azov, and attend its training camps.

Since the war in Ukraine began, Ouest Casual, a still-extant Telegram channel linked to Zouaves, has published a steady stream of tributes to Ukrainian soldiers, repeatedly denouncing the “Asiatic contingents of Soviet imperialism once again sweeping across Europe,” and “Putin’s Islamist dogs,” in reference to Chechen fighters. Bordeaux Nationaliste, a violent Neo-Nazi group closely linked to Zouaves, has regularly organized collections of equipment for the fight.

Washington creates a powder keg in Kiev

The two newly jailed Neo-Nazis were reportedly “asked all day” by police following their arrest why they carried military equipment, possession of which is absolutely illegal under French law, into the country. An obvious answer is that the pair were planning to bring the terror of Ukraine’s battlefields back home with them.

In November, Alex Rubinstein reported for The Grayzone on how Italian police had arrested five members of the local neo-Nazi group, Order of Hagal, which maintains operational ties to Azov Battalion. They were stockpiling weapons, including ammunition, tactical gear, and a grenade launcher, and planning terror attacks. A sixth member, then-fighting alongside Azov in Ukraine, remained wanted.

The neo-Nazis had been monitored intensively by Italian authorities since 2019. One – reported to be “dangerously close to far-right Ukrainian Nationalist groups” – was planning an attack on a police station in Naples, while the fugitive Azov fighter had a shopping mall in the same city in his crosshairs.

In an intercepted January 2021 conversation, the former boasted he “would make a massacre like the one in New Zealand,” referring to the Christchurch spree shooter who murdered 51 Muslims two years earlier. That individual had emblazoned his flak jacket and the cover of his manifesto, which mentioned Ukraine, with Azov’s ubiquitous “black sun” logo. 

As a 2020 investigation by West Point Military Academy’s Combating Terrorism Center found, that manifesto became a popular online currency among Ukrainian paramilitary groups, and was even translated into Ukrainian and sold as a book by a 22-year-old living in Kiev. The Center noted that Ukraine “holds a particular attraction for white supremacists–ideologues, activists, and adventurers alike,” explicitly due to the emergence of Azov and other state-backed fascist elements.

It was the first time since the defeat of the Nazis that “an overtly far-right white nationalist militia” anywhere in the world was “publicly celebrated, openly organizing, and [had] friends in high places.” Support from Petro Poroshenko’s government and Ukrainian security services – “despite well-documented reports of human rights abuses” – was “electrifying to far-right individuals and groups in Europe, the United States, and further afield,” the investigation noted. Fascists duly flocked in droves to Kiev to join Azov, and/or receive training.

The US and its international vassals have been keen to encourage and facilitate the proliferation of neo-Nazism in Ukraine. Throughout the Cold War, the CIA and MI6 adopted a covert policy of encouraging ultra-nationalist elements in Ukraine to undermine communist rule. In the years after the US-backed 2014 Maidan coup, numerous far-right militias received high-level military training from Washington, London, and Ottawa. Support from the West has only increased since Russia’s invasion.

Two groups that received extensive practical and material support from NATO states in recent years are Centuria and Right Sector. The indicted members of Italy’s Order of Hagal reportedly maintained “direct and frequent” contacts with both, along with Azov, seeking “possible recruitment into the ranks of these fighting groups,” according to local media.

Well-established blowback from US covert ops in Europe 

Since the West initiated its covert program of supporting violent extremists in order to weaken and destabilize its geopolitical foes, blowback has come in various forms. 

Throughout the Bosnian war in the 1990s, the US supported Mujahideen fighters. They arrived on CIA “black flights” from all over the world, especially Afghanistan, and received a seemingly endless flow of weapons, in breach of a United Nations embargo.

Quickly gaining a reputation for excessive brutality against enemy soldiers and civilians alike, and false flag attacks on their own positions and public spaces in order to precipitate Western intervention, their presence was pivotal to the Bosnian Muslims’ war effort. US Balkans negotiator Richard Holbrooke has stated they “wouldn’t have survived” without the Mujahideen’s assistance.

Under the terms of the 1995 Dayton Agreement, Mujahideen fighters were required to leave Bosnia. Immediately after it was signed, Croat forces fighting alongside British and American mercenaries in the country began assassinating the group’s leadership to send the Islamists scattering. Some fled to Albania along with their US-supplied weapons, where they joined the incipient Kosovo Liberation Army, another Western-backed entity filled with hardcore jihadists.

Others were intercepted with the assistance of the CIA, and deported to their countries of origin to stand trial for serious terror offenses. This was perceived as a gross betrayal by the Mujahideen’s senior overseas leadership, which included Osama bin Laden.

In August 1998, two US embassies in East Africa were simultaneously bombed in a suicide attack. A day earlier, the bin Laden-linked Islamic Jihad published a threat, explicitly referring to US involvement in the extradition of the group’s “brothers” from Albania. It warned that an appropriate “response” was imminently forthcoming:

“We are interested in briefly telling the Americans that their message has been received and that the response, which we hope they will read carefully, is being [prepared], because we – with God’s help – will write it in the language that they understand.”

The embassy attacks marked the beginning of bin Laden’s jihad against the US, which one way or another culminated in 9/11. Two of the purported hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, were veterans of the Bosnian war. As The Grayzone recently reported, both may have been knowingly or unknowingly working for the CIA on the day of the attacks.

Today, an even more egregious betrayal is almost inevitably impending – namely, the US ending its support for Kiev’s war effort. Across the West, weapon stocks are almost spent, political and public pressure to exit mounts daily, and officials are openly expressing grave doubts about Ukraine’s ability to stage a successful counteroffensive, let alone recapture any lost territory in the process.

On April 24th, Politico reported that if the long-awaited counteroffensive failed, the Biden administration would end its backing outright and compel Kiev to begin negotiations with Moscow, sweetening this bitter pill by “framing it to the Ukrainians as a ‘ceasefire’ and not as permanent peace talks.” Of course, as the Ukrainian military’s operation is wholly dependent on that support, even a temporary cessation would result in total collapse, leaving Russian forces to steamroller through Ukrainian territory effectively unopposed.

The conspiracy of silence on foreign fighters in Ukraine

The total number of homegrown and foreign fascist fighters in Ukraine is not known, but is likely to be vast. When the US pulls out of the proxy war, they would have every reason to flee. They will bring with them battlefield experience, and in many cases elite Western military training. High-end weapons and ammunition will be available in abundance on the black market, due to the massive wellspring of arms shipments to Kiev over the course of the conflict.

 

In July 2022, Europol warned that “the proliferation of firearms and explosives in Ukraine could lead to an increase in firearms and munitions trafficked into the EU via established smuggling routes or online platforms,” and “this threat might even be higher once the conflict has ended.”

That same month, a report from the British parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee contained a brief section on the risk of Britons who had traveled overseas for “extreme right-wing terrorism purposes” having been “further radicalised” by the experience, and “developed connections with others” who share their violent ideology.

While the country they visited, and whom or what they “may have fought,” was obscured with asterisks, it is beyond doubt this section referred to fighters returning from Ukraine. The Committee ominously warned there was “no process in place” to monitor these individuals upon their arrival. 

It is hard to imagine that Western intelligence officials are not aware that the powder keg they created in Kiev could erupt on their own soil. However, it also appears clear they have taken a vow of omerta on the issue, even redacting sections in their own public reports on the plague of returning foreign fighters. At the same time, they campaign zealously against the threat of homegrown right-wing extremism.

Since taking office, the Biden administration has repeatedly warned of imminent “racially or ethnically motivated” terrorist attacks by US citizens. It has even published a dedicated national security strategy to address the “challenge.” 

Yet, the indictment of two American neo-Nazis in February this year generated virtually no media interest, and went largely unremarked upon by US officials. The pair, leaders of Atomwaffen – also known as the National Socialist Resistance Front – planned to destroy electrical substations serving the majority Black city of Baltimore, Maryland, in a bid to deprive residents of heat and light during Winter.

This eerie silence may be at least partially explained by Atomwaffen’s relationship with Azov Battalion, which has hosted members of the group in Kiev. One Atomwaffen figure, Caleb Kole, was sentenced in January 2022 by the US Department of Justice for plotting with accomplices to intimidate Jews and journalists. It turned out that Cole had previously visited Ukraine to attend the country’s annual neo-Nazi black metal festival known as Asgardsrei, which is held in a state-owned venue and features influential Azov activists on stage. 

As Western pundits airbrush Azov’s openly fascist agenda in order to justify military aid to Ukraine, they are also obscuring the threat posed by foreign fighters returning home in droves after months in the trenches with the group.  

 

READ MORE:

https://thegrayzone.com/2023/05/09/neo-nazi-terror-threat-grows-as-ukraine-fighters-jailed-in-france/

 

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THE WESTERN MEDIA IS DISINTERESTED IN EXPOSING THE NAZIS IN UKRAINE BECAUSE EXPOSING THESE WOULD REMOVE THE WEST's EXCUSES TO DESTROY RUSSIA, AND OF USING UKRAINE's "DEMOCRACY" AGAINST PUTIN...

 

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

 

 

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

 

EASY.

 

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

 

AND FREE JULIAN ASSANGE FOR HISSSAKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!