Biden team blows off deadline for Ukraine war strategyPerhaps the administration can't admit it doesn't have one.

 

BY ANATOL LIEVEN

 

Almost 100 days have now passed since the Congress passed $61 billion in emergency funding for Ukraine, a measure that included a condition that required the Biden Administration to present to the legislative body a detailed strategy for continued U.S. support.

When the funding bill was passed with much fanfare on April 23, Section 504, page 32 included the following mandate:

“Not later than 45 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the heads of other relevant Federal agencies, as appropriate, shall submit to 18 the Committees on Appropriations, Armed Services, and Foreign Relations of the Senate and the Committees on 20 Appropriations, Armed Services, and Foreign Affairs of the House of Representatives a strategy regarding United States support for Ukraine against aggression by the Russian Federation: Provided, That such strategy shall be multi-year, establish specific and achievable objectives, define and prioritize United States national security interests…”

It is now August and There is still no sign on the part of the Biden Administration of any intention to submit such a strategy to Congress. This inevitably leads to the suspicion that no such strategy in fact exists. It also suggests that without a massive change of mindset within the administration, it is not even possible to hold — let alone make public —serious and honest internal discussions on the subject, as these would reveal the flawed and empty assumptions on which much of present policy is based.

This relates first of all to the requirement “to define and prioritize United States national security interests.” No U.S. official has ever seriously addressed the issue of why a Russian military presence in eastern Ukraine that was of no importance whatsoever to the U.S. 40 years ago (when Soviet tank armies stood in the center of Germany, 1,200 miles to the West) should now be such a threat that combating it necessitates $61 billion of U.S. military aid per year, a significant risk of conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia, and a colossal distraction from vital U.S. interests elsewhere. 

Instead, the administration, and its European allies, have relied on two arguments. The first is that if Russia is not defeated in Ukraine, it will go on to attack NATO and that this will mean American soldiers going to fight and die in Europe. In fact, there is no evidence whatsoever of any such Russian intention. Russian threats of escalation and (possibly) minor acts of sabotage have been outgrowths of the war in Ukraine, and intended to deter NATO from intervening directly in that conflict — not actions intended to lay the basis for an invasion of NATO. 

Western commentators like to state Russian public ambitions beyond Ukraine as a given fact, but when asked to provide actual statements to this effect, they are unable to do so. Nor, at least judging by Putin’s latest statement, does he intend (or believe it possible) to “wipe Ukraine off the map.” The top official Russian goals include limited territorial gains, Ukrainian neutrality, and Russian language rights in Ukraine — all questions that can legitimately be explored in negotiations.

Moreover, given the acute difficulties that the Russian military has faced in Ukraine, and the Russian weaknesses revealed by that conflict, the idea of them planning to attack NATO seems utterly counter-intuitive. For Russia has been “stopped” in Ukraine. The heroic resistance of the Ukrainian army, backed with Western weapons and money, stopped the Russian army far short of President Putin’s goals when he launched the war. They have severely damaged Russian military prestige, inflicted enormous losses on the Russian military, and as of today, hold more than 80% of their country’s territory. 

The Biden administration has issued partly contradictory statements about the purpose of U.S. aid to Ukraine: that it is intended to help Ukraine “win”, and that it is intended to help “strengthen Ukraine at the negotiating table.” They have not however fulfilled their legal obligation to define to Congress what “winning” means, nor why if the war will end in negotiations, these negotiations should not begin now — especially since there is very strong evidence that the Ukrainian military position, and therefore Ukraine’s position at the negotiating table, are getting worse, not better.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/biden-ukraine-strategy/

 

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SEE ALSO: https://theduran.com/americas-military-industrial-complex-too-corrupt-to-win/

America’s Military-Industrial Complex Too Corrupt to Win

 

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

 

RT has obtained an exclusive video of the arrest of ex-US Marine Paul Whelan in a sting operation several years ago, in which he is seen illegally acquiring what appears to be a flash drive containing classified data.

The clip, which was released on Monday and dates back to December 2018, was filmed at Moscow’s Metropol Hotel, where Whelan met with an undercover agent from Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). The video shows the two meeting in a bathroom, with the man handing a USB stick to Whelan.

He is then placed under guard by law enforcement officers and later escorted into custody. At the time, the FSB accused Whelan of trying to obtain dossiers on the agency’s agents. He later denied any wrongdoing, insisting that he thought the USB drive contained church pictures and that he was being persecuted because his acquaintance in the FSB had been reluctant to return a loan of around $1,100.

https://www.rt.com/russia/602166-whelan-arrest-exclusive-video/

 

Former US President Donald Trump has blasted President Joe Biden’s prisoner exchange deal with Moscow, suggesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin got the better end of the bargain.

The US and Russia exchanged a total of 26 prisoners held in several countries earlier this week, in the largest such deal since the end of the Cold War. Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan – both of whom were convicted of espionage in Russia – were sent to the West, as were 14 other foreign agents, opposition activists, and criminals.

In return, ten Russian nationals were sent to Moscow, among them alleged intelligence agents and cybercriminals. The most prominent name on the list was Vadim Krasikov, an FSB agent who was convicted of the murder of a former Chechen militant commander in Germany in 2021. 

“I’d like to congratulate Vladimir Putin for having made yet another great deal,” Trump declared at a campaign rally in Georgia on Saturday. “Did you see the deal we made? They released some of the greatest killers anywhere in the world, some of the most evil killers they got.”

“We got our people back, but boy we make some horrible, horrible deals,” he continued, adding that “it’s nice to say we got them back, but does that set a bad precedent?” 

Prior to the swap, Trump claimed that only he could secure the release of Gershkovich. In a post to his Truth Social platform in May, he wrote that the Wall Street Journal reporter “will be released almost immediately after the election, but definitely before I assume office,” and that the US would be “paying nothing” for his return.

With Gershkovich back in the US, Trump has switched tone, arguing that Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris – who is running for the presidency against Trump – are inept negotiators who paid too high a price for his freedom.

“We got 59 hostages, I never paid anything,” he told his supporters on Saturday. However, while Trump did secure the release of dozens of American prisoners during his presidency without making any concessions, he did trade captives on multiple occasions. Among these deals were two one-for-one swaps with Iran, and the 2019 exchange of an American and an Australian for three senior Taliban leaders held in an Afghan jail.

https://www.rt.com/news/602115-trump-putin-prisoner-deal/

 

 

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IT IS A GIVEN THAT IN THE LATEST EXCHANGE OF "PERSONNEL", THE WEST SENT BACK A BUNCH OF CROOKS, SPIES AND KILLERS TO RUSSIA, IN EXCHANGE FOR HONEST, INNOCENT PEOPLE WHO NEVER HURT A FLY BUT GOT JAILED BY RUSSIA UNDER FALSE PRETENCES... (FREE SARCASM HERE).... THE FOLLOWING STORY BY THE BBC FALLS INTO THIS ABOVE LINE:

 

 

Russian activist speaks out in spy case after prisoner swap

 

    BY Sarah Rainsford

 

In early August, Pablo González was taken from a prison in Poland and flown to Moscow on a plane carrying Russian deep-cover agents, hackers and a hitman for the FSB intelligence service.

The group was met at the airport by a military guard, red carpet and Vladimir Putin – thanking them for their loyal service to the country.

Video footage from that night in Moscow shows Mr González smiling as he shakes hands with President Putin at the foot of the plane steps. Black-bearded, with a shaven and shiny head, he’s wearing a Star Wars T-shirt that declares “Your Empire Needs You”.

Known by his Russian friends as “Pablo, the Basque journalist”, the 42-year-old was part of a major prisoner swap for Westerners held in Russian jails and Russian dissidents.

In the group freed by Vladimir Putin were two opposition activists Mr González was accused of spying on.

He’d been arrested in Poland in 2022 for alleged espionage.

“I got my first suspicions in 2019. It just dawned on me,” Zhanna Nemtsova tells me, in the first interview she’s given about the man who spied on her.

The two met in 2016 at an event about the investigation into her father’s murder. Boris Nemtsov, a staunch opponent of Vladimir Putin, had been assassinated a year earlier, right beside the Kremlin.

His daughter - herself a vocal Putin critic – eventually moved to Europe for safety.

That day in Strasbourg, Pablo González asked Ms Nemtsova for an interview for a newspaper in the Basque region. She refused, at first. But the journalist – Spanish, with Russian roots – gradually became something of a fixture in her circle: attending events, taping interviews, mingling.

Looking back, Ms Nemtsova remembers becoming wary.

“I shared my suspicions with a couple of people and they were like, ‘No, this is nonsense!’ People regard you as crazy if you bring up some things. They can think you paranoid.

“But I was absolutely right.”

That’s why she’s decided to speak out openly now.

“I want other people to be very careful,” Zhanna Nemtsova explains. “The threat is not something you can just read in books or watch at the movies. It’s very close.”

Mr González was only formally charged with espionage a week after he left Poland, flown to Moscow as part of the August prisoner swap. By then, he’d spent well over two years locked up, awaiting trial.

All along, Polish prosecutors have deflected questions about the case and the process. Intelligence sources remain tight-lipped. The Polish lawyer who first represented Mr González says he can’t comment.

By the time of his arrest, Mr González had been living in Warsaw for at least three years, much of that time with his Polish girlfriend. He was a freelance journalist, working mostly for Spanish-language press.

He reported from the war in Nagorno-Karabakh and travelled to Ukraine. At some point, he joined a media trip to Syria run by the Russian defence ministry, always very selective about who it takes.

It was in 2022 that he was detained, briefly, in Ukraine, though the SBU security service there won’t divulge any details. Then, on 28 February, Mr González was arrested in Przemysl, eastern Poland, where he was part of the media pack covering the start of Russia’s all-out war on Ukraine.

The trigger for the arrest has not been made public.

Last year, Zhanna Nemtsova was shown evidence of Mr González’s activity as part of the criminal investigation.

“I have no doubt he was a spy. I am sure, 100%,” she told me this week.

Ms Nemtsova is banned by a non-disclosure agreement from sharing details of the evidence. As a result, she’s had to watch people continue to profess that Mr González is innocent.

“It’s scary. We shouldn’t downplay this. These people have no moral scruples. They regard you as their enemies,” she warns, referring to Russian intelligence agents.

Although Ms Nemtsova says she never trusted Mr González as a true friend, he did manage to insert himself into her circle. He was informing on the group from the start, she says.

“He can be very charming, he knows how to communicate with people, make them feel at ease.”

Her ex-husband, Pavel Elizarov, agrees. He and Mr González were “quite close for some period of time”. He would visit him in Spain, talk politics and do tourism. He introduced others to his friend.

Ilya Yashin, another prominent activist, went to a football match with Mr González in Spain and even coat shopping. When Mr González was released in the prisoner swap, Mr Yashin was one of the trades: he’d been imprisoned in Russia for condemning the war on Ukraine.

Vadim Prokhorov, the Nemtsov family lawyer, recalls another detail.

“He drank like a Russian,” Mr Prokhorov told me. “He could hold his drink without falling over. We should have suspected him back then!”

We did ask to interview Mr González via his wife, who lives in Spain and has been his most avid supporter. So far, he hasn’t replied.

Instead, he appeared on Kremlin-controlled television, filmed wandering through a Moscow suburb, reminiscing in perfect Russian about sledging on cardboard as a child.

He was born, he explains, Pavel Rubtsov – still the name in his Russian passport.

He became Pablo González when he moved to Spain with his mother in 1991. His grandfather had been evacuated to the USSR during the Spanish Civil War, so Pavel and his mother were entitled to Spanish citizenship.

It all made him ideal recruitment material for Russian intelligence, but the state TV report declared that Poland had no evidence of that.

“They threatened and pressured me,” Mr González says, in his extremely deep voice. “I asked, ‘What did I do?’ and they said, ‘You know.’ But I didn’t.”

No-one I’ve interviewed has characterised Mr González as a Putin fan, although Zhanna Nemtsova says she and he were on “different sides of the political spectrum”.

“I didn’t get any pro-Russian vibe off him,” a Polish contact said.

But on Russian TV, Mr González is quite clearly excited as he describes meeting “Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin” at Vnukovo airport in Moscow.

Coming down the plane steps, he says, he was “practising” all the way how to greet his president. “I wanted to be sure it was a strong, manly handshake,” Mr González explains, with a big grin.

The BBC has not had direct access to any of the material in this case. But we have interviewed reliable sources whose accounts, taken together, reveal that Pablo González was informing on a number of people in Europe.

When he was detained, Polish investigators discovered reports detailing the movements, contacts and profiles of people ranging over several years.

Russian opposition activists were one target, including those close to Zhanna Nemtsova. There’s a report on at least one Polish citizen, as well as students of a journalism summer school run by Ms Nemtsova. Investigators also found emails that Mr González had copied from a laptop he had been lent.

We don’t know who these reports were sent to, but they list expenses incurred in gathering information, including transport costs. “There were a lot of details, including what they ate for lunch,” the BBC was told.

In some cases, that source says, questions have been added, apparently by a superior seeking clarification or more detail.

One of the reports concerns the Russian defence ministry press trip to Syria that Mr González went on, though its main focus is to criticise the ministry for poor organisation of the tour.

The official charge sheet accuses Mr González of espionage - namely, providing intelligence, spreading disinformation and “conducting operational reconnaissance” for Russian military intelligence, the GRU.

We don’t know what other evidence there might be, but the value of what he gathered on the Russian opposition is unclear.

I was told that some reports are “sloppy” and include information taken from the internet. “Some were really wordy, with 10 pages instead of one. Probably to get more funding,” the source thought.

The first part matches the comments of a close friend of Mr González who told me he was “a bit lazy”.

The BBC also understands that the accuracy of the reports deteriorates notably after 2018, with fewer notes or corrections by a senior officer, or handler. It may be coincidental, but that’s when large numbers of Russian intelligence assets were expelled from Europe, after double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter were poisoned in the British city of Salisbury.

And although Russian activists who socialised with “Pablo, the Basque journalist” were shocked to learn he’d betrayed them, they doubt he had access to sensitive information.

“We are not in the habit of sharing this information with anyone, as we’ve always known we could face such problems,” Zhanna Nemtsova confirms.

“Everything we said to him, we’d say to anyone else in public,” opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza told me after his release as part of the same prisoner swap.

One source sought to downplay the case against Mr González, describing the contents of the reports as "not serious". But Ms Nemtsova – whose father was murdered in Moscow for his politics – strongly disagrees.

“His words were important for the GRU [Russian military intelligence]. They might have led to serious consequences. This does not suggest that Pablo himself would do some damage. But they have other people who do this.

“That’s why this is serious.”

When Mr González was detained, there was a flurry of protest over accusing a journalist of espionage. The EU had significant concerns about the rule of law under the previous Polish government, while groups such as Reporters Without Borders called for Mr González to be brought to trial, allowed to defend himself against any evidence, or be set free.

“I thought maybe they were mistaken about the arrest,” a Polish journalist who knew Mr González remembers his own initial doubts. “I thought maybe it was just to show the government were doing stuff about Russia.”

As Mr González was never convicted, his staunchest supporters still argue that Poland has “got away” with an injustice. But most were silenced by last month’s prisoner swap and the ceremonial welcome in Moscow.

The government in Madrid has been notably quiet on the case, in public, from the start.

“But that prisoner exchange, and González’s reception, are the reply to everything,” one official there told me. As she put it, it would be very odd for Vladimir Putin – crusher of the free media – to “save” a mere journalist.

Weeks after Mr González was returned to Moscow, the spy scandal is still causing headaches for Ms Nemtsova.

In 2018 and 2019, the foundation she set up after her father’s killing invited “Pablo, the Basque journalist” to Prague to give a lecture on war reporting. The summer school for young journalists was hosted by Charles University.

Now Czech media have declared that academia has been “infiltrated”, prompting a PhD student to write a dramatic letter to the university Arts Faculty, warning that the Nemtsov Foundation may pose a security threat “to the entire Czech Republic”.

The student, Aliaksandr Parshankou, suggested suspending a Russian Studies MA, supported by Ms Nemtsova’s group, pending an investigation. He told the BBC the course was “by definition a point of attraction for Putin” and called for it to carry a warning that the safety of students “cannot be guaranteed”.

Ms Nemtsova calls the student’s claims “groundless and manipulative” and he admits he has no actual evidence. But the foundation is part of the legacy of Ms Nemtsova’s father and she fears the aim is to “kick us out of the faculty”.

“I am a victim of espionage,” she protested. “It can happen to people like me, but that doesn’t mean we represent a threat to the Czech Republic.”

Pablo González was flown back to Moscow by Russia, where his passport identifies him as Pavel Rubtsov.

Spain does not deprive people of citizenship, even those suspected of espionage. But Mr González would have to reapply for his Spanish passport.

The chances of him heading there seem slim while there’s a case for espionage open in the EU. It’s unclear how long that case might be left pending.

As for visiting his sons there, an official in Madrid was clear: “They are free to go and see him in Moscow.”

Once an intelligence agent is unmasked, their career options and movements are limited.

Other Russians who’ve followed a similar path have ended up starring on state-controlled TV. Perhaps Pablo will restyle himself as Pavel, and find himself praising Vladimir Putin a lot more.

As for Zhanna Nemtsova, she admits she’s even more cautious about who she deals with.

“Now I always think about security,” she told me. “I did think about my security before, because I left Russia. But I didn’t think about security in Europe. Now of course, I do. And I am careful.”

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c07e0m9r35jo

 

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