By Jeffrey D. Sachs

 

The American people urgently need to know the true history of the war in Ukraine and its current prospects. Unfortunately, the mainstream media ––The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, MSNBC, and CNN –– have become mere mouthpieces of the government, repeating US President Joe Biden’s lies and hiding history from the public.

Biden is again denigrating Russian President Vladimir Putin, this time accusing Putin of a “craven lust for land and power,” after declaring last year that “For God’s sake, that man [Putin] cannot stay in power.” Yet Biden is the one who is trapping Ukraine in an open-ended war by continuing to push NATO enlargement to Ukraine. He is afraid to tell the truth to the American and Ukrainian people, rejecting diplomacy, and opting instead for perpetual war.

Expanding NATO to Ukraine, which Biden has long promoted, is a U.S. gambit that has failed. The neocons, including Biden, thought from the late 1990s onward that the US could expand NATO to Ukraine (and Georgia) despite Russia’s vociferous and long-standing opposition. They didn’t believe that Putin would actually go to war over NATO expansion.

Yet for Russia, NATO enlargement to Ukraine (and Georgia) is viewed as an existential threat to Russia’s national security, notably given Russia’s 2,000-km border with Ukraine, and Georgia’s strategic position on the eastern edge of the Black Sea. U.S. diplomats have explained this basic reality to U.S. politicians and generals for decades, but the politicians and generals have arrogantly and crudely persisted in pushing NATO enlargement nonetheless.

At this point, Biden knows full well that NATO enlargement to Ukraine would trigger World War III. That’s why behind the scenes Biden put NATO enlargement into low gear at the Vilnius NATO Summit. Yet rather than admit the truth – that Ukraine will not be part of NATO – Biden prevaricates, promising Ukraine’s eventual membership. In reality, he is committing Ukraine to ongoing bloodletting for no reason other than U.S. domestic politics, specifically Biden’s fear of looking weak to his political foes. (A half-century ago, Presidents Johnson and Nixon sustained the Vietnam War for essentially the same pathetic reason, and with the same lying, as the late Daniel Ellsberg brilliantly explained.)

Ukraine can’t win. Russia is more likely than not to prevail on the battlefield, as it seems now to be doing. Yet even if Ukraine were to break through with conventional forces and NATO weaponry, Russia would escalate to nuclear war if necessary to prevent NATO in Ukraine.

Throughout his entire career, Biden has served the military-industrial complex. He has relentlessly promoted NATO enlargement and supported America’s deeply destabilising wars of choice in Afghanistan, Serbia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, and now Ukraine. He defers to generals who want more war and more “surges,” and who predict imminent victory just ahead to keep the gullible public onside.

Moreover, Biden and his team (Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Victoria Nuland) seem to have believed their own propaganda that Western sanctions would strangle the Russian economy, while miracle weapons such as HIMARS would defeat Russia. And all the while, they have been telling Americans to pay no attention to Russia’s 6,000 nuclear weapons.

Ukrainian leaders have gone along with the US deception for reasons that are hard to fathom. Perhaps they believe the US, or are afraid of the US, or fear their own extremists, or simply are extremists, ready to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to death and injury in the naïve belief that Ukraine can defeat a nuclear superpower that regards the war as existential. Or possibly some of the Ukrainian leaders are making fortunes by skimming from the tens of billions of dollars of Western aid and arms.

The only way to save Ukraine is a negotiated peace. In a negotiated settlement, the US would agree that NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine while Russia would agree to withdraw its troops. Remaining issues – Crimea, the Donbas, US and European sanctions, the future of European security arrangements – would be handled politically, not by endless war.

Russia has repeatedly tried negotiations: to try to forestall the eastward enlargement of NATO; to try to find suitable security arrangements with the US and Europe; to try to settle inter-ethnic issues in Ukraine after 2014 (the Minsk I and Minsk II agreements); to try to sustain limits on anti-ballistic missiles; and to try to end the Ukraine war in 2022 via direct negotiations with Ukraine. In all cases, the US government disdained, ignored, or blocked these attempts, often putting forward the big lie that Russia rather than the US rejects negotiations. JFK said it exactly right in 1961: “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” If only Biden would heed JFK’s enduring wisdom.

To help the public move beyond the simplistic narrative of Biden and the mainstream media, I offer a brief chronology of some key events leading to the ongoing war.

January 31, 1990. German Foreign Minister Hans Dietrich-Genscher pledges to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that in the context of German reunification and disbanding of the Soviet Warsaw Pact military alliance, NATO will rule out an “expansion of its territory to the East, i.e., moving it closer to the Soviet borders.”

February 9, 1990. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker III agrees with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that “NATO expansion is unacceptable.”

June 29 – July 2, 1990. NATO Secretary-General Manfred Woerner tells a high-level Russian delegation that “the NATO Council and he [Woerner] are against the expansion of NATO.”

July 1, 1990. Ukrainian Rada (parliament) adopts the Declaration of State Sovereignty, in which “The Ukrainian SSR solemnly declares its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs and adheres to three nuclear free principles: to accept, to produce and to purchase no nuclear weapons.”

August 24, 1991. Ukraine declares independence on the basis of the 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty, which includes the pledge of neutrality.

Mid-1992. Bush Administration policymakers reach a secret internal consensus to expand NATO, contrary to commitments recently made to the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation.

July 8, 1997. At the Madrid NATO Summit, Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic are invited to begin NATO accession talks.

September-October, 1997. In Foreign Affairs (Sept/Oct, 1997) former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski details the timeline for NATO enlargement, with Ukraine’s negotiations provisionally to begin during 2005-2010.

March 24 – June 10, 1999. NATO bombs Serbia. Russia terms the NATO bombing “a flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter.”

March 2000. Ukrainian President Kuchma declares that “there is no question of Ukraine joining NATO today since this issue is extremely complex and has many angles to it.”

June 13, 2002. The US unilaterally withdraws from the Anti-Ballistic Weapons Treaty, an action which the Vice-Chair of the Russian Duma Defence Committee characterises as an “extremely negative event of historical scale.”

November-December 2004. The “Orange Revolution” occurs in Ukraine, events that the West characterises as a democratic revolution and the Russian government characterises as a Western-manufactured grab for power with overt and covert US support.

February 10, 2007. Putin strongly criticises the U.S. attempt to create a unipolar world, backed by NATO enlargement, in a speech to the Munich Security Conference, declaring: “I think it is obvious that NATO expansion … represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?”

February 1, 2008. US Ambassador to Russia William Burns sends a confidential cable to U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, entitled “Nyet means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines,” emphasising that “Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region.”

February 18, 2008. The US recognises Kosovo independence over heated Russian objections. The Russian Government declares that Kosovo independence violates “the sovereignty of the Republic of Serbia, the Charter of the United Nations, UNSCR 1244, the principles of the Helsinki Final Act, Kosovo’s Constitutional Framework and the high-level Contact Group accords.”

April 3, 2008. NATO declares that Ukraine and Georgia “will become members of NATO.” Russia declares that “Georgia’s and Ukraine’s membership in the alliance is a huge strategic mistake which would have most serious consequences for pan-European security.”

August 20, 2008. The US announces that it will deploy ballistic missile defence (BMD) systems in Poland, to be followed later by Romania. Russia expresses strenuous opposition to the BMD systems.

January 28, 2014. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt plot regime change in Ukraine in a call that is intercepted and posted on YouTube on February 7, in which Nuland notes that “[Vice President] Biden’s willing” to help close the deal.

February 21, 2014. Governments of Ukraine, Poland, France, and Germany reach an Agreement on settlement of political crisis in Ukraine, calling for new elections later in the year. The far-right Right Sector and other armed groups instead demand Yanukovych’s immediate resignation, and take over government buildings. Yanukovych flees. The Parliament immediately strips the President of his powers without an impeachment process.

February 22, 2014. The US immediately endorses the regime change.

March 16, 2014. Russia holds a referendum in Crimea that according to the Russian Government results in a large majority vote for Russian rule. On March 21, the Russian Duma votes to admit Crimea to the Russian Federation. The Russian Government draws the analogy to the Kosovo referendum. The US rejects the Crimea referendum as illegitimate.

March 18, 2014. President Putin characterises the regime change as a coup, stating: “those who stood behind the latest events in Ukraine had a different agenda: they were preparing yet another government takeover; they wanted to seize power and would stop short of nothing. They resorted to terror, murder and riots.”

March 25, 2014. President Barack Obama mocks Russia “as a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbours — not out of strength but out of weakness,”

February 12, 2015. Signing of Minsk II agreement. The agreement is unanimously backed by the UN Security Council Resolution 2202 on February 17, 2015. Former Chancellor Angela Merkel later acknowledges that the Minsk II agreement was designed to give time for Ukraine to strengthen its military. It was not implemented by Ukraine, and President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged that he had no intention to implement the agreement.

February 1, 2019. The U.S. unilaterally withdraws from the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty. Russia harshly criticises the INF withdrawal as a “destructive” act that stoked security risks.

June 14, 2021. At the 2021 NATO Summit in Brussels, NATO reconfirms NATO’s intention to enlarge and include Ukraine: “We reiterate the decision made at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance.”

September 1, 2021. The US reiterates support for Ukraine’s NATO aspirations in the “Joint Statement on the U.S.-Ukraine Strategic Partnership.”

December 17, 2021. Putin puts forward a draft “Treaty between the United States of America and the Russian Federation on Security Guarantees,” based on non-enlargement of NATO and limitations on the deployment of intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles.

January 26, 2022. The U.S. formally replies to Russia that the US and NATO will not negotiate with Russia over issues of NATO enlargement, slamming the door on a negotiated path to avoid an expansion of the war in Ukraine. The U.S. invokes NATO policy that “Any decision to invite a country to join the Alliance is taken by the North Atlantic Council on the basis of consensus among all Allies. No third country has a say in such deliberations.” In short, the US asserts that NATO enlargement to Ukraine is none of Russia’s business.

February 21, 2022. At a meeting of the Russian Security Council, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov details the U.S. refusal to negotiate:

“We received their response in late January. The assessment of this response shows that our Western colleagues are not prepared to take up our major proposals, primarily those on NATO’s eastward non-expansion. This demand was rejected with reference to the bloc’s so-called open-door policy and the freedom of each state to choose its own way of ensuring security. Neither the United States, nor the North Atlantic Alliance proposed an alternative to this key provision.”

The United States is doing everything it can to avoid the principle of indivisibility of security that we consider of fundamental importance and to which we have made many references. Deriving from it the only element that suits them – the freedom to choose alliances – they completely ignore everything else, including the key condition that reads that nobody – either in choosing alliances or regardless of them – is allowed to enhance their security at the expense of the security of others.”

February 24, 2022. In an address to the nation, President Putin declares: “It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns. Its military machine is moving and, as I said, is approaching our very border.”

March 16, 2022. Russia and Ukraine announce significant progress towards a peace agreement mediated by Turkey and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. As reported in the press, the basis of the agreement includes: “a ceasefire and Russian withdrawal if Kyiv declares neutrality and accepts limits on its armed forces.”

March 28, 2022. President Zelensky publicly declares that Ukraine is ready for neutrality combined with security guarantees as part of a peace agreement with Russia. “Security guarantees and neutrality, the non-nuclear status of our state — we’re ready to do that. That’s the most important point … they started the war because of it.”

April 7, 2022. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov accuses the West of trying to derail the peace talks, claiming that Ukraine had gone back on previously agreed proposals. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett later states (on February 5, 2023) that the U.S. had blocked the pending Russia-Ukraine peace agreement. When asked if the Western powers blocked the agreement, Bennett answered: “Basically, yes. They blocked it, and I thought they were wrong.” At some point, says Bennett, the West decided “to crush Putin rather than to negotiate.”

June 4, 2023. Ukraine launches a major counter-offensive, without achieving any major success as of mid-July 2023.

July 7, 2023. Biden acknowledges that Ukraine is “running out” of 155mm artillery shells, and that the US is “running low.”

July 11, 2023. At the NATO Summit in Vilnius, the final communique reaffirms Ukraine’s future in NATO: “We fully support Ukraine’s right to choose its own security arrangements. Ukraine’s future is in NATO … Ukraine has become increasingly interoperable and politically integrated with the Alliance, and has made substantial progress on its reform path.”

July 13, 2023. US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin reiterates that Ukraine will “no doubt” join NATO when the war ends.

July 13, 2023. Putin reiterates that “As for Ukraine’s NATO membership, as we have said many times, this obviously creates a threat to Russia’s security. In fact, the threat of Ukraine’s accession to NATO is the reason, or rather one of the reasons for the special military operation. I am certain that this would not enhance Ukraine’s security in any way either. In general, it will make the world much more vulnerable and lead to more tensions in the international arena. So, I don’t see anything good in this. Our position is well known and has long been formulated.”

 

First published by The Kennedy Beacon July 17, 2023

 

https://johnmenadue.com/the-real-history-of-the-war-in-ukraine-a-chronology-of-events-and-case-for-diplomacy/

 

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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.

 

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By

 Evan Reif

 

 

One of the great mysteries surrounding the Maidan coup and the civil war which has followed is how the rabble of soccer hooligans and neo-Nazis who orchestrated the coup were able to become an army capable of subjugating the nation so quickly.

Despite Western narratives, the Maidan was a violent coup, and their government was imposed on most of the nation by force. However, 70% of the Ukrainian Army deserted or defected after the coup. This left the new government with both a great need for soldiers and very few of them at its disposal.

The solution was to deputize the fascists who had served as storm troopers in the Maidan, but these were drunken brawlers and petty criminals, not soldiers. How can a gang of street fighters be turned, in a matter of months, into the brutal Special Tasks Patrol police who terrorized Ukraine on a scale not seen since the 1940s?

As it turns out, they had a good teacher: an American paratrooper by the name of Brian Boyenger.

The Swarm

“Men, it is time to go hunting. You’re the hunter. You’re the predator. You’re looking for the prey. Rakkasans!” – Col. Michael D. Steele

Brian Boyenger did not come out of the womb as a killer. He was a normal young man in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, before he joined the U.S. Army. It was there that he learned his trade, working under one of the most brutal commanders in the Army. Like many young Americans, he joined the Army in the wake of America’s illegal full-scale invasion of Iraq and was deployed in the country for 14 months starting in 2006 as part of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division. The 3rd BCT is the remnant of the former 187th Airborne, also known as “Rakkasans,” which was merged into the 101stbut retained its traditions.

His first lesson was Operation Swarmer, a so-called counter-terrorism operation in outlying villages near the city of Samarra, Iraq. True to the name, 1,500 Iraqi and American forces descended on the region like a swarm of locusts. The U.S. and its associated propagandists touted the operation as the largest air assault since 2003, and even George W. Bush mentioned the operation as a great triumph.

It was anything but.

Despite ominous (and entirely unsourced) claims of insurgent leadership in the raided villages, U.S. and Iraqi forces found nothing of value. Of the 48 people detained by force, 17 were released immediately, and the rest were illegally detained and then sent to prisons and black sites where torture is rampant. Iraqi intelligence claimed that several hundred weapons and bombs were found in the searches, but no evidence was ever provided of this and none of those arrested was ever charged. Journalists were not allowed to accompany the troops on this operation and were only brought in after the raid was mostly finished to witness some carefully staged propaganda.

They watched as American and Iraqi forces ransacked a family farm, making note of the emaciated cattle juxtaposed against the multibillion-dollar war machine tearing apart the modest home. Despite all their effort, the Americans and their lackeys found no weapons, no people of interest, and no contraband at this home. However, they did not leave empty-handed. After they kidnapped a family by force, raided their home, and held them on their knees at gunpoint, they helped themselves to the dinner the Iraqis were cooking before their lives were interrupted by terrorists.

American forces were baffled as to why they met no resistance on this raid. They concluded that the terrorists must have been tipped off and fled the area rather than admit the truth that they had raided and pillaged peaceful villages for no reason. American forces claimed that they did not fire a shot, and neither side sustained any casualties. As was usual for America’s illegal war, this was a lie.

Before the operation, American forces bombed the region for several nights in a row. In one instance, American forces bombed a home killing 11 civilians and two cows with a single strike. Five of those killed were children. The Americans said that they were suspected al-Qaeda, a charge for which no evidence was ever provided.

“The killed family was not part of the resistance, they were women and children, The Americans have promised us a better life, but we get only death.” – Ahmed Khalaf, brother of one of the victims

As they were wont to do, the captive media establishment simply accepted the Army at their word and thereby helped launder a terrorist raid on innocent civilians into a triumphant operation. The media’s refusal to confront the military on their deadly lies created a culture of impunity which perhaps made the 3rd BCT feel comfortable enough to commit their next crime, knowing that no one would dare challenge them.

The unit was commanded by Colonel Michael D. Steele, a veteran of America’s disastrous Somalia intervention immortalized in the film Black Hawk Down. He was known as a brutal, aggressive commander who kept kill tallies and awarded custom-engraved knives as prizes to the soldiers who had killed the most people while threatening any who refused or hesitated.

Steele encouraged his men to carry out extreme violence without hesitation, teaching them that they were hunters, apex predators, and “carnivores.” He replaced language training with marksmanship, redirected all resources from development to security, and ordered soldiers to raze Iraqi homes to the ground on their raids. He ordered his men to shoot only to kill and never fire warning shots; to prepare them, he implemented a training he called “Psychological Inoculation of Combat.”

In other words, Steele had his soldiers visit morgues and ride with ambulances to desensitize them to the sight of dead bodies so they would not hesitate in battle. He even encouraged his soldiers to fight among themselves, orchestrating brawls and fistfights in the unit to weed out any “herbivores” who would not subscribe to his murderous ideology.

Day and night, body bags containing “high-value targets” killed in raids were brought back to the unit’s base where Steele personally and dutifully photographed and cataloged the dead for his killboards. However, even at the best of times, it is estimated that 90% of the Iraqis targeted by American intelligence were innocent, with little to no evidence of any misdeeds ever presented. These so-called high-value targets murdered by Steele’s thugs for prizes were usually little more than civilians in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The raids they carried out as part of Operation Swarmer were only a dress rehearsal for the real show, Operation Iron Triangle. On May 6, 2006, the 3rd BCT descended from their helicopters onto an island in the south of Lake Thantar, Iraq, near the site of a former chemical weapons plant. The factory was long abandoned, but the surrounding area had been reclaimed by local farmers.

According to American intelligence, there was an al-Qaeda training camp in the region, so the 3rd BCT was sent in to destroy it, capture the al-Qaeda fighters and collect evidence of any terrorist activity.

They needed to look no further than the mirror. In the mission briefing, Col. Steele had given them a very simple assignment: Kill all “military-age,” a term so broad it can apply to nearly anyone. A group of soldiers did their duty to the fullest, kidnapping an Iraqi family of four in front of their spouses and mothers, then staging an escape to give it legitimacy before they executed the bound prisoners as they ran away. The bodies brought back for Steele’s killboards that night ranged from a 13-year-old child to a 75-year-old grandfather named Jasim Hassan Komar-Abdullah whose dentures fell out as Steele tried to pose his body for pictures.

Eventually, the soldiers responsible for these murders were brought to trial. Squad leader Sgt. Raymond Girouard, who gave the order to fire and tampered with the bodies to make it look like an escape, was sentenced to 10 years but paroled in less than three.

Both the shooters, PFC Corey Clagett and Specialist William Hunsaker were given a sentence of 18 years and paroled in 10. Clagett showed no remorse and said if he had it to do over again, he would have shot the women, too. Despite testimony from all the soldiers saying he had ordered them to kill all adult males and clear evidence of his fostering a culture where acts of terror were encouraged, Col. Steele was not charged with any crimes and was only reprimanded.

“[Sgt. Raymond Girouard] said we were going to kill the detainees, cut the zip ties off and make it look like they ran, and he said Hunsaker and Clagett were going to do it. I didn’t say anything. Hunsaker didn’t say anything. I pulled the blindfold up on one guy, down on the other. Hunsaker took his [detainee’s blindfold] off. Hunsaker told them to ‘Run.’ I told them ‘Yalla’ to get them to run faster. They didn’t run faster, so I raised my weapon. Hunsaker raised his. He shot then I shot. The way Sgt. G. ran his squad, I thought it was basically like an initiation if I wanted to be in 3rd squad. [Girouard] shut the [Humvee] door, locked it, booby-trap locked it, and said if I ever say anything—he put his weapon to me and he said if I ever say anything that he will kill me. That is what the Army is, a big gang.” – Corey Claggett, in testimony at his trial

Operation Iron Triangle started as the sort of terroristic raid that U.S. forces carried out on a nearly daily basis in Iraq. Much as it had been with previous cases like My Lai in Vietnam, this sort of violence was the norm for American forces in Iraq, and it was unique only because this time the soldiers were caught.

After spending more than a year under the tutelage of Col. Steele, Brian Boyenger was a seasoned terrorist when he arrived in Ukraine. He wasted little time in demonstrating his skills to the Ukrainian people.

Washington’s Wolf

“We were always in contact with this Bryan, he was a man of Mamulashvili. It was he who gave the orders. I had to follow all his instructions” – Koba Nergadze, Georgian mercenary and sniper

After he returned from Iraq, there is a gap in Boyenger’s history spanning the years between the Iraq war and the 2014 Maidan coup. Boyenger says he left the army at the rank of Specialist, enrolled in college, and was a student until he saw the Maidan protests and was so inspired by the heroic struggle of the Ukrainian people, he went to the embassy to ask how he could help. In his story, the process took some time to clear the legal hurdles, and he only arrived in 2015 to serve as a military instructor.

Russian sources claim that he continued his military service and entered special forces, working all over the world with Delta Force and the CIA’s Special Activities Division as a commando and sniper before his deployment to Ukraine.

Due to the nature of these sorts of units, such an accusation can never be proven. Some sources have blamed Boyenger for attacks as varied as assassinations of Russian generals, the car bombing of Daria Dugina, and the destruction of the Kerch Bridge. These embellishments are almost certainly exaggerated if not entirely false.

Regardless, Boyenger’s story is suspicious, and his actions in Ukraine are even more so. There is strong circumstantial evidence that, although he may not be Rambo, Boyenger is much more than he says.

At the time Boyenger left for Ukraine, it was illegal for foreigners to join the Ukrainian Army. A special legal dispensation was made for Boyenger. It seems unlikely that the Ukrainian Army would bother to jump such legal hurdles for a low-ranking enlisted paratrooper with about a year of combat experience unless he brought something else to the table.

Furthermore, there is evidence that Boyenger was in Ukraine much earlier than he admits. An exposé by Italian journalists led by Gian Micalessin revealed that Boyenger was present in Ukraine as early as February 15, 2014. Georgian mercenaries hired by future Georgian Legion commander Mamuka Mamulashvili all testified that Boyenger was one of the organizers of the infamous Maidan sniper attacks. According to their testimony, in the days leading up to the attack, Boyenger was inseparable from Mamulashvili, and they were ordered to follow his commands.

At the time, Mamulashvili was a little-known figure outside of Georgian and Ukrainian nationalist circles. A former child soldier, an ally of the reviled and deposed ex-Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili and a veteran of both the 1992 and 2008 wars in Georgia, Mamulashvili was on the front lines of the Maidan from the beginning.

Mamulashvili had worked with Ukrainian nationalists before, during the 1992 Abkhaz war he fought as a child soldier alongside the neo-Nazi Argo Battalion, the armed wing of the UNA-UNSO.

Argo worked as mercenaries during the early 1990s and carried out an unsuccessful operation to rescue Mamulashvili and his father from encirclement in Abkhazia. Mamulashvili did not forget their efforts and wasted little time repaying them during the Maidan. UNA-UNSO would later co-found the infamous fascist militia Right Sector alongside a coalition of other right-wing groups.

In early 2014, the ongoing Maidan coup reached a stalemate. Time and bitter cold had driven many of the protesters on both sides back to their homes and the revolution was facing the very real danger of simply fizzling out. To prevent this, Mamulashvili needed a spark of violence to light the fire of revolution. He hatched an audacious plan to fire on the crowds and blame the attacks on the Yanukovych government. His point man for the plan was the U.S. Army-trained sniper, Brian Boyenger.

On February 20, 2014, snipers, allegedly under the direct command of Boyenger, opened fire on the crowds from the Maidan-occupied Kyiv Philharmonic building, killing dozens of both police and protesters. The plan worked, and the sniper attacks were the pivotal moment that gave the Maidan the momentum to finally depose the democratically electedYanukovych government. While the Maidan forces quickly blamed the government for the attacks, NATO officials suspected a provocation from the beginning.

The attacks remain officially unsolved and, as the Ukrainian government destroyed all evidence, it is unlikely that those responsible will ever be brought to justice.

Mamulashvili has denied his involvement with the sniper attacks and writes off the entire Italian exposé as a Russian intelligence operation. While NATO sources are quick to back him up, their arguments mostly revolve around the journalists responsible working for a paper owned by ex-Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi and Gian Micalessin’s membership in the neo-fascist MSI party as a youth.

They do not mention, however, that it is proven beyond any doubt that Berlusconi was a member of Propaganda Due (aka P2) a fascist-terrorist organization operated by the CIAinside Italy to prevent the country from electing leftist or even moderate politicians. P2 was heavily involved in narcotics and arms trafficking, money laundering on an unprecedented scale, kidnapping, assassination, and at least dozens of proven acts of terrorism resulting in hundreds of known deaths with many more suspected.

For their part, the MSI has been proven in court to be heavily infiltrated and directed by Italian and American intelligence. Because of this, the party was from 1959 strongly pro-NATO and pro-EU. They supported Italian accession to the European monetary system and U.S. missiles in Sicily. The two organizations often worked together as the political and military wing of the CIA’s Operation GLADIO, designed to implement what was known as the “Strategy of Tension,” a terrorist campaign against the cause of Italian democracy.

The MSI has often stood in coalition with Berlusconi and many of its members have gone over to his Forza Italia party, including Benito Mussolini’s granddaughter, Alessandra, who is currently a member of the European Parliament.

It seems unlikely that a lifelong CIA asset and his militantly pro-NATO employee would be working with the Russians to discredit an American-backed coup.

Adding to this, Mamulashvili’s Georgian Legion is rife with neo-Nazis and other fascists from around the world. The organization even uses Paul Gray; an infamous neo-Nazi terrorist who was one of the organizers of the deadly Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, as its English-speaking spokesman. Gray has made dozens of appearances on Fox News, proudly extolling the virtues and combat prowess of the Georgian Legion while begging for more weapons.

While Mamulashvili insists that all Legion recruits are vetted and neo-Nazis or fascists are rejected, Gray’s membership proves the Legion’s “vetting” is little more than PR to assuage the consciences of guilty liberals. Even a cursory Google search would reveal that Gray has been a member of multiple neo-Nazi terrorist groups, such as the Traditionalist Worker’s Party and Atomwaffen, who are infamous for calling in bomb threats against Historically Black Colleges and University’s (HBCU’s).

The implication that Berlusconi or any other fascist would oppose the Maidan or the Georgian Legion on ideological grounds is therefore ridiculous and little more than a desperate act of projection.

It should also be mentioned that the paper responsible for this exposé, now called InsideOver, currently has journalists embedded with the Ukrainian Armed Forces and is actively reporting from the front lines of the conflict. As of the time of this article, they have released 85 videos from Ukraine on their YouTube channel, the vast majority of which were made in collaboration with the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Even by the low standards of NATO propaganda, it beggars belief that the Ukrainian military would allow Russian agents into their midst, let alone work alongside them.

Regardless of when he arrived in Ukraine, Brian Boyenger’s hands are not clean. He was instrumental in the training and formation of the various far-right units including Azov, Right Sector, the Georgian Legion, and many others. These units are all credibly accused of countless war crimes, and many of them have even been convicted in Ukrainian courts of crimes as vile as raping children.

In 2015, Boyenger broke his usually immaculate OPSEC to chat with Swedish neo-Nazi and first-generation Azov member Mikael Skillt, once described by the BBC as a “White Power warrior,” for advice on smuggling anti-materiel weapons into Ukraine.

 

 

The conversation is clear proof that Boyenger was acting with the knowledge and in the interests of the U.S. government. Boyenger openly discussed smuggling otherwise highly illegal weapons to a known terrorist on a public forum with what he says is State Department approval. Even aside from the obvious implication of the State Department arming Nazi terrorists, it seems very unlikely that a former low-ranking enlisted Army soldier would be getting this sort of approval from the government. Unless, of course, Brian Boyenger is something more than that.

Once he arrived in Ukraine, Boyenger became more difficult to track. Unlike most mercenaries in the country, Boyenger keeps his exploits quiet. He is not the type to upload his war crimes to TikTok or brag about atrocities in interviews. Most of what we know about him is due to his loose-lipped associates and even from the bits and pieces we can gather from second-hand sources, the picture is very grim.

We do know that Boyenger was one of the founding members of the Georgian Legion from their press releases. Interestingly, the Legion repeatedly mentions that Boyenger was a former officer, while Boyenger had claimed to be a specialist in a Legion propaganda video. If Boyenger was indeed an officer, this would mean that his military career continued for years after Iraq, and the fact that he would try to hide this would indicate that he had a part of his military career he did not want to talk about.

Someone is lying, but it is unclear who and for what purpose. Did Mamulashvili lie to make Boyenger seem more important, or did Boyenger lie to conceal that he was far more than a simple soldier? It would not be out of character for Mamulashvili, a man whose past and exploits seem to grow more outrageous with each telling, to lie to the media. The only question is what would he gain for lying in this case?

Does it matter to the readers of Ukrainska Pravda if Brian Boyenger was an officer or a specialist? Would the Ukrainian readers even know the difference? As Boyenger was vetted by both the U.S. and Ukrainian governments, Mamulashvili knows the truth, but only he and Boyenger know if he is telling it or not.

It is unlikely that we will ever learn the truth of this matter. However, we do know some details of Boyenger’s exploits in Ukraine, and this is thanks mostly to his comrade at arms and close friend, a former U.S. Army soldier by the name of Craig Lang. Together, Lang and Boyenger founded a unit made up entirely of criminals, terrorists and neo-Nazis known as Task Force Pluto.

 

Task Force Pluto

“What they’re saying is, ‘Here’s a group in Ukraine that’s going beyond ideology, they’re a militia group that’s actively recruiting for the cause. That’s appealing to people who want to promote white nationalism or preserve European-American culture. The fact that they’re fighting is in and of itself important.”– Marilyn Mayo, ADL terrorism researcher.

 

Craig Lang’s story is even more suspicious than Boyenger’s. Lang was a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, who served in the Army until his dishonorable discharge in 2014. A few months prior, Lang had gone AWOL and driven across the country to murder his day-old son, wife, and her family by surrounding their home with landmines. Fortunately, Lang’s plot failed, and he was arrested and discharged soon after.

After some time working on oil rigs in North Dakota, Lang first came to Ukraine in 2015 while still in court for his earlier plot. It is difficult to imagine how a fugitive wanted for such serious crimes could leave the country, transit through several U.S.-aligned countries and make his way to Ukraine, where he passed an allegedly rigorous vetting process. Unless, like Boyenger, he had the blessing of the government.

What is even more suspicious is that Lang did it three times. He left Ukraine in 2018 after he became upset that the war had ebbed in intensity. He wanted action, and he thought he could find it in South Sudan. Lang and his comrade, another deserter-turned-terrorist named Alex Zwiefelhofer, attempted to sneak into the country via Kenya where they were caught and deported.

 

Zwiefelhofer, the son of a police chief from Wisconsin, is another former U.S. Army soldier who went AWOL in 2016. His social media accounts were peppered with neo-Nazi memes and “jokes,” including Zwiefelhofer wearing a Hitler mustache and a shirt that said, “Help more bees… shoot refugees.”

Like many other American neo-Nazis, notably Dylan Roof, he is an open admirer of the unrecognized colonial state of Rhodesia and its savage form of apartheid. He often posted pro-Rhodesia memes on Facebook and often suggested that Rhodesia did not go far enough in the subjugation and violent exploitation of its native people.

After deserting from the Army, Zwiefelhofer attempted to join the French Foreign Legion and was denied. Despite claims of a rigorous vetting process, Brian Boyenger ignored all these red flags when he accepted Zwiefelhofer into the ranks of Task Force Pluto. Zwiefelhofer fought alongside the unit in combat operations and became friends with Craig Lang in the process. Eventually, the two became so close that Zwiefelhofer joined Lang on his excursion.

When they landed in the United States after their deportation, Zwiefelhofer was interviewed by the FBI, who found large amounts of child pornography on his phone. He was arrested and spent several months in jail awaiting trial until he bonded out and fled to Miami alongside Lang with a plan to become mercenaries in Venezuela. The new front was the latest in the long line of America’s imperial misadventures and the target of a failed “color revolution” to overthrow the left-wing Maduro government.

However, Lang and Zwiefelhofer needed money and so they put two guns for sale on the internet to help finance their journey. The two men met the prospective buyers, Serafin and Deana Lorenzo, at a church parking lot on April 9, 2018. Rather than hand over the weapons, Lang and Zwiefelhofer opened fire, killing both the Lorenzos in a hail of bullets and then robbing their dead bodies.

Now with both money and guns, Lang and Zwiefelhofer were ready to set off for Venezuela. They tried to book passage on a ship but murdered the captain in a payment dispute. With their money gone and the walls slowly closing in on them, the two men fled Florida to the Pacific Northwest, where they split up. After disposing of the murder weapons, Zwiefelhofer returned to his home in Wisconsin and was caught about a month later.

The ever “lucky” Craig Lang easily escaped the dragnet. Four months after the murders, he drove to St. Louis, where he met with other fugitive veterans to plan a return to Ukraine. Now wanted for at least a dozen felonies, including multiple murders, Lang somehow walked through customs and immigration without anyone batting an eyelash. He even tagged himself at Kyiv Airport on Instagram.

Lang made one more attempt to return to Venezuela only a few days later. Even after charges had been filed by the Department of Justice, Lang was able to fly from Ukraine to Bogotá, Colombia, via Mexico City. In Bogotá, Lang was somehow able to convince police to sell him weapons despite his rap sheet. He paid for the guns in cash and boarded a bus to the border town of Cúcuta, which had been at the epicenter of America’s failed attempt at a coup in Venezuela.

For reasons unknown, Lang failed to cross the border for a second time. He returned to Ukraine, where he was embraced once more as an honored member of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Even after formal charges were issued against Lang and the U.S. government had officially requested his extradition, Lang lives freely in Ukraine, where he lives with his wife and child.

The Ukrainian government has refused multiple requests to extradite Lang, and his comrades in arms in Right Sector have provided for his legal defense. Brian Boyenger’s old friend Mikael Skillt, now the head of a mercenary group, even threatened violence if Lang were extradited.

“He [Lang] has a lot of friends; he’s active in social media, he’s been involved in the war as long as anyone. If they would extradite him, there would be consequences in terms of a demonstration.” – Mikael Skillt

 

Despite his claim to be “apolitical,” Lang often associates with neo-Nazis. Beyond his public affiliations with Right Sector, Task Force Pluto is rife with neo-Nazis and other far-rightists almost to the exclusion of all other members. Screenshots of their social media show an open admiration for Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, the veneration of racial violence, routine use of racial slurs, and open association with other violent neo-Nazis around the world.

The unit’s prolific recruitment of American neo-Nazis became so serious that it drew the attention of the U.S. Department of Justice, who began investigating the group both for war crimes committed in Ukraine, and a serious worry that its members would bring their skills back home with them.

Besides Lang and Zwiefelhofer, other members of Task Force Pluto and associated groups have already made their way back to the United States, where they are once more active in neo-Nazi groups. Task Force member Dalton Kennedy, originally of North Carolina, has returned to join Patriot Front, another of the amalgamation of the groups responsible for the deadly Unite the Right Rally. While less public today, Patriot Front remains an activeneo-Nazi terrorist group, and Kennedy is still a member. He is only one of many such cases in a vast constellation of militias operating inside Ukraine.

The implication of this at the very least is that the United States government, through Brian Boyenger and the rest of its ongoing operation, is openly arming, training, and funding neo-Nazi terrorists who have killed not just Russians and Ukrainians, but also American citizens on American soil. Perhaps most worrying, the atrocities carried out by these men in America are nothing compared to those they have been doing for years in Donbas.

What price will we pay in the future, when this bloody seed grows into a tree of hatred with roots throughout the world?

During their investigation, the FBI found evidence of routine, serious war crimes committed by Task Force Pluto members inside Ukraine. Leaked documents show the FBI requested detailed information from the Ukrainians on alleged crimes as ghastly as rape, human trafficking, production of child pornography, pillaging, torture and even beheading of POWs.

The FBI maintains an open investigation on many of the Task Force’s members, including Lang and Boyenger. No results have been released, and no action has been taken against anyone except Craig Lang. At least one of the members, Santi Pirtle, joined the U.S. Army upon his return to America and is currently an active-duty soldier based in Louisiana. It appears that Boyenger’s saga has gone full circle. The terrorist tactics he learned from Col. Steele in Iraq and taught to Task Force Pluto have been refined in Ukraine and are now being passed on to a new generation of U.S. Army soldiers.

The Tip of the Sword

“What he confessed was this. He had not been serving God, after all, when he followed Allen Dulles. He had been on a satanic quest.

These were some of James Jesus Angleton’s dying words. He delivered them between fits of calamitous coughing—lung-scraping seizures that still failed to break him of his cigarette habit—and soothing sips of tea. “Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars,” Angleton told Trento in an emotionless voice. “The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted….Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and loved being in it.” – The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government by David Talbot.

What we are seeing in Ukraine is something very familiar. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States government in one form or another has waged a campaign of terror that spans almost the entire globe. In Italy, where the young Silvio Berlusconi worked with the CIA’s P2 Masonic Lodge, the Vatican and the Mafia to destroy Italian democracy, they called it Operation GLADIO.

 

In Turkey, they called it Counter Guerrilla. In what became the founding example of a deep state, the CIA and their Turkish allies carried out a decades-long covert operation so extensive that it was involved in three separate coups. Their activities ran the gamut from pogroms, terrorism, and torture to international drug trafficking and murder for hire. They worked together with the Italians on many occasions.

In South America, it was known as Operation Condor. The CIA conjured up an overblownguerrilla threat to justify a continent-wide campaign of terror, carried out with the help of former Nazis and America’s hand-picked fascist dictators. At an absolute minimum, it has been proven beyond any dispute in court cases that at least 50,000 were killed, 30,000 disappeared and 400,000 were imprisoned. The real numbers are likely much higher, and it is unknown how many were tortured or otherwise brutalized by the U.S.-aligned regimes. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was but one of many participants in this brutal campaign, and he remains an enthusiastic supporter of the program to this day.

In Ukraine, it was called Project AERODYNAMIC. Supplies and teams of commandos were parachuted into western Ukraine to support a group of bandits, Nazi remnants, and fascist terrorists led by holocaust perpetrator Roman Shukhevych.

After that failed, the U.S. continued to support the remnants of the Nazi collaborationist OUN and other organizations and protected their members from any repercussion. Yaroslav Stetsko, the second in command of the OUN who publicly pledged allegiance to Adolf Hitlerin 1941 as his men beat Lviv’s Jews to death in the streets with hammers and axes, later became head of the World Anti-Communist League.

In this role, he received open funding and support from the U.S. government and worked alongside other fascists such as Alfredo Stroessner, Yakuza war criminals like Ryōichi Sasakawa and Yoshio Kodama, Hitler’s top commando, the Waffen-SS’s Otto Skorzeny, and the founders of the Italian MSI among many others. WACL worked as hit men, arms dealers, consultants and any other role needed to advance the cause of fascism. They were Reagan’s “third force,” able and willing to conjure up a rebellion or engineer a crackdown anywhere the U.S. government wanted.

In 1991, Stetsko’s widow Slava returned to Ukraine, where she founded the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists 50 years to the day after the Lviv pogroms. The KUN later co-founded Right Sector, which helped overthrow the democratically elected Yanukovych government and then, under the tutelage of Brian Boyenger and Craig Lang, was re-formed into one of the premier reprisal battalions.

With American tactics honed from decades of brutal occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, the “punishers” brought a once peaceful nation to heel, by any means necessary.

Whatever we call these operations, the result is always the same: America creates war and chaos around the world, using it as a training ground to refine its tactics and gather personnel for the future. Entire generations of humanity are wiped from the Earth to feed the ravenous machine of American capital.

For the United States, and the corporations that so transparently dictate policy to the government, the blood and suffering of so many nations has been turned into almost endless profits for the ruling class. Beyond the arms contracts that fill the coffers of Lockheed and Raytheon, entire nations are economically subjugated by American capital. Their resources are systematically looted and, if one of the nations has nothing left to give, its people are enslaved both at home and abroad.

Ukraine is not an aberration, and it is not unique. It is only the latest in a long line of victims of America’s savage “rules-based international order” which is enforced on the world by any means necessary. The people of Ukraine and the world deserve better than this.

Our task is to find a way to defeat this monstrous system—which turns blood into money—before it is too late. As the warmongers now try to foment a new war with China, our time is running short.

 

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/07/17/the-lord-of-the-underworld-meet-the-paratrooper-from-north-carolina-who-orchestrated-the-war-in-ukraine/

 

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Ukraine Sitrep - Reality Defeats The War Narrative

At the beginning of the war in Ukraine I pointed out that the false narrative of 'Ukraine is winning' which the 'western' propaganda steadily promoted would not win the real war on the ground.

As the war continued I made the point again and again.

• Propaganda Does Not Change The War - The Ukraine Is Still Losing - Updated - March 25, 2022
• Ukraine - War Propaganda And News Items - October 11, 2022
• No - Such Propaganda Delusions Will Not Win The War - June 07, 2023

In this week's SCF column Alastair Crooke makes the same point in much more detail.

A Bonfire of the Vanities

Hubris consists in believing that a contrived narrative can, in and of itself, bring victory. It is a fantasy that has swept through the West – most emphatically since the 17th century. Recently, the Daily Telegraph published a ridiculous nine minute video purporting to show that ‘narratives win wars’, and that set-backs in the battlespace are incidentals: What matters is to have a thread of unitary narrative articulated, both vertically and horizontally, throughout the spectrum – from the special forces’ soldier in the field through to the pinnacle of the political apex.

The gist of it is that ‘we’ (the West) have compelling a narrative, whilst Russia’s is ‘clunky’ – ‘Us winning therefore, is inevitable’.

It is easy to scoff, but nonetheless we can recognise in it a certain substance (even if that substance is an invention). Narrative is now how western élites imagine the world.
...
The weakness to this new ‘liberal’ authoritarianism is that its key narrative myths can get busted. One just has; slowly, people begin to speak reality.

Ukraine: How do you win an unwinnable war? Well, the élite answer has been through narrative. By insisting against reality that Ukraine is winning, and Russia is ‘cracking’. But such hubris eventually is busted by facts on the ground. Even the western ruling classes can see their demand for a successful Ukrainian offensive has flopped. At the end, military facts are more powerful than political waffle: One side is destroyed, its many dead become the tragic ‘agency’ to upending dogma.

Even as reality seeps out the narrative of a 'successful' western battle tactics in form of combined arms warfare gets reinforced.

Ukraine aims to sap Russia’s defenses, as U.S. urges a decisive breakthrough - Washington Post

Western officials and analysts say Ukraine’s military has so far embraced an attrition-based approach aimed largely at creating vulnerabilities in Russian lines by firing artillery and missiles at command, transport and logistics sites at the rear of the Russian position, instead of conducting what Western military officials call “combined arms” operations that involve coordinated maneuvers by large groups of tanks, armored vehicles, infantry, artillery and, sometimes, air power.

Ukraine’s military leaders argue that, lacking aviation might, they must avoid unnecessary losses against an adversary with a far larger pool of recruits and weaponry. To preserve manpower, Ukraine has fielded just four of a dozen trained brigades in the current campaign.

A new element in the narrative is that Ukraine is loosing because it does not use the glorious combined arms operations 'western' military told them to use.

Franz-Stefan Gady, from the British International Institute for Strategic Studies, has just been in Ukraine where he talked with Ukrainian soldiers and commanders at the frontline. In a Twitter thread he summarizes what he has seen but is strongly promoting the same narrative:

By and large this is an infantryman’s fight (squad, platoon & company level) supported by artillery along most of the frontline. This has several implications:

1st: Progress is measured by yards/meters and not km/miles given reduced mobility.

2nd: Mechanized formations are rarely deployed due to lack of enablers for maneuver. This includes insufficient quantities of de-mining equipment, air defenses, ATGMs etc.

2.) Ukrainian forces have still not mastered combined arms operations at scale. Operations are more sequential than synchronized. This creates various problems for the offense & IMO is the main cause for slow progress.
...
4.) Minefields are a problem as most observers know. They confine maneuver space & slow advances. But much more impactful than the minefields per se on Ukraine’s ability to break through Russian defenses is UKR inability to conduct complex combined arms operations at scale.
Lack of a comprehensive combined arms approach at scale makes Ukrainian forces more vulnerable to Russian ATGMs, artillery etc. while advancing. So it's not just about equipment. There’s simply no systematic pulling apart of the Russian defensive system that I could observe.

The narrative element is the same as in the Washington Post. That the Ukrainians are not using our vaunted combined arms operations is the reason for their failure.

The well synchronized New York Times piece is making the same point:

But that artillery-centric approach raises questions about whether Ukraine has lost confidence in the combined arms tactics — synchronized attacks by infantry, armor and artillery forces — that nine new brigades learned from American and other Western advisers in recent months. Western officials heralded the approach as more efficient than the costly strategy of wearing Russian forces down by attrition and depleting their ammunition stocks.

Senior U.S. officials in recent weeks had privately expressed frustration that some Ukrainian commanders, exasperated at the slow pace of the initial assault and fearing increased casualties among their ranks, had reverted to old habits — decades of Soviet-style training in artillery barrages — rather than sticking with the Western tactics and pressing harder to breach the Russian defenses.

However, the narrative is wrong.

The Ukrainian do not fear increased casualties. They did try combined arms warfare in the beginning of the counteroffensive in early June. After a few days of trying again and again they noted that the attacks failed with ever greater losses and were not sustainable. A third of the tanks and other material the 'west' had sent to Ukraine was destroyed in the attempts to use 'fire and maneuver' to break through Russian mine fields and defense lines.

Ukraine then returned to the current 'mosquito tactics' where small groups of infantry soldiers try to make small progress bit by bit. The likely loss of more tanks was thus replaced with the likely loss of more lives.

The narrative element that a combined arms attack would have more success is simply false.

As Crooke explains:

The hubris, at one level, lay in NATO’s pitting of its alleged ‘superior’ military doctrine and weapons versus that of a deprecated, Soviet-style, hide-bound, Russian military rigidity – and ‘incompetence’.

But military facts on the ground have exposed the western doctrine as hubris – with Ukrainian forces decimated, and its NATO weaponry lying in smoking ruins. It was NATO that insisted on re-enacting the Battle of 73 Easting (from the Iraqi desert, but now translated into Ukraine).

In Iraq, the ‘armoured fist’ punched easily into Iraqi tank formations: It was indeed a thrusting ‘fist’ that knocked the Iraqi opposition ‘for six’. But, as the U.S. commander at that tank battle (Colonel Macgregor), frankly admits, its outcome against a de-motivated opposition largely was fortuitous.

Nonetheless ‘73 Easting’ is a NATO myth, turned into the general doctrine for the Ukrainian forces – a doctrine structured around Iraq’s unique circumstance.

In the first year of the second world war the German Wehrmacht used combined arms warfare to wage its blitzkrieg against inferior adversaries. The tactic failed two years later when it tried to break through solid Soviet defense lines.

In the battle of 73 Easting the U.S. army could repeat blitzkrieg tactics because he had air superiority, well trained troops and better weapons. But the circumstance in Ukraine can not be compared to a mobile war in the desert.

---

The Black Sea grain deal has, as we expected, ended. The Ukraine reacted to this anticipated loss with a another successful attack on the Kerch bridge. Road traffic will be hindered or blocked for two or three months but the more important rail lines along the route are still intact.

As the grain deal was expected to fail, the Ukrainians may well have thought of breaking the blockade of its harbors by asking for more ships to come. But the Russia military has now used a large drone and missile attack to make sure that the facilities in Odessa and other Ukrainian Black Sea harbors can no longer be used to load or unload ships. It thus does not make sense for any ships to go there.

---

Over the last week the ground war in east Ukraine has further intensified. In the north of the eastern contact line the Russian army has launched its own attacks. In the center and south the Ukrainians still try to break through Russian defenses. But they are losing about 700 soldiers per day with little to show for the losses.

The Russian's are again concentrating on the defeat of the Ukrainian artillery. Over the last five days they claimed to have destroyed 27 brigade level ammunition depots. Each of these should usually hold around 30 tons of shells and missiles. Thus such attacks add up. During those five days the Russians also claimed to have destroyed some 66 Ukrainian artillery pieces. It is race of what will be completely lost first, the ammunition the Ukrainian's can use or the guns that are needed to fire it.

But some Ukrainians still insist on continuing the senseless fight.

 

The way too emotional interview quote is not in the writeup of the BBC interview but I still have not seen a video of it.

That Ukraine has already lost many soldiers in Bakhmut should certainly not be a reason to continue fighting for it. It has by now only symbolic value. Even it would again change hands it would not change the trajectory of the bigger war.

Ukraine is loosing that war. The Jig Is Up and NATO knows it. Ukraine will never be allowed to become a member.

A new narrative element is creeping in with talks about a ceasefire in Ukraine. It would give the Ukraine time to refit its military.

But Russia has absolutely no reason to agree to a pause in the fight. During the war its military has become larger and better and a total defeat of the Ukrainian army is only a question of time.

The U.S. and NATO will soon have lost their big proxy war against Russia.

In light of this reality the much larger, centuries old narrative of the superior West is also breaking down.

This will have global consequences for decades to come.

 

 

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2023/07/ukraine-sitrep-reality-is-defeating-the-war-narrative.html#more

 

 

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