According to both Russia and the separatist Donbass eastern region of the former Ukraine, the violations of the Minsk II agreement regarding Donbass are attacks by Ukrainian government forces firing into Donbass and destroying buildings and killing residents there, however NATO and other U.S. allies ignore those allegations and just insist that all violations of the Minsk II accords are to be blamed on Russia [...]
On May 18th, Britain’s Guardian headlined “West and Russia on course for war, says ex-Nato deputy commander” and reported that the former deputy commander of NATO, the former British general Sir Alexander Richard Shirreff (who was Supreme Allied Commander in Europe from 2011-2014), expressed outrage that Britain isn’t urgently preparing for war against Russia, and also reported that “He describes Russia as now the west’s most dangerous adversary and says Putin’s course can only be stopped if the west wakes up to the real possibility of war and takes urgent action. … In a chilling scenario, he predicts that Russia, in order to escape what it believes to be encirclement by Nato, will seize territory in eastern Ukraine.” (That’s the Donbass region, where there has been a civil war.)
This encirclement by NATO is, apparently, about to be expanded: Shirreff will now be satisfied by NATO, even if not by its member the UK, of which Shirreff happens to be a citizen. New Europe bannered the same day, “NATO lays down the cards on its Russia policy”, and reported that, “In two distinct pre-ministerial press conferences on Wednesday [May 18th], the General Secretary of NATO Jens Stoltenberg and the US Ambassador to NATO, Daglas Lute, introduced the Russia agenda to be covered. Both NATO leaders said that the Accession Protocol Montenegro is signing on Thursday is a strong affirmation of NATO’s open door policy, mentioning explicitly Georgia. ‘We will continue to defend Georgia’s right to make its own decisions,’ Stoltenberg said.” Georgia is on Russia’s southwestern flank; so, it could be yet another a nuclear-missile base right on Russia’s borders, complementing Poland and the Baltics on Russia’s northwestern flank. (The U.S. itself has around 800 military bases in foreign countries, and so even Russia’s less-populous eastern regions would be able to be obliterated virtually in an instant, if the U.S. President so decides. And President Obama is already committed to the view that Russia is by far the world’s most “aggressive” enemy, more so even than international jihadists are.)
According to the New Europe report, Stoltenberg announced that where the 1997 NATO-Russia Agreement asserts that
The member States of NATO reiterate that they have no intention, no plan and no reason to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of new members, nor any need to change any aspect of NATO’s nuclear posture or nuclear policy — and do not foresee any future need to do so. This subsumes the fact that NATO has decided that it has no intention, no plan, and no reason to establish nuclear weapon storage sites on the territory of those members, whether through the construction of new nuclear storage facilities or the adaptation of old nuclear storage facilities. Nuclear storage sites are understood to be facilities specifically designed for the stationing of nuclear weapons, and include all types of hardened above or below ground facilities (storage bunkers or vaults) designed for storing nuclear weapons.
The agreement is effectively terminated, and, “Largely as a result of the Crimean annexation, the repeated violations of the Minsk ceasefire agreement, and the demands of eastern flank member states, boots on the ground will increase considerably in the region, if not ‘substantially’,” along Russia’s northeastern flank, in Poland and the Baltics. Furthermore, “Poland has already said that it regards this agreement ‘obsolete’.” So, General Stoltenberg is taking his lead on that from the Polish government.
According to both Russia and the separatist Donbass eastern region of the former Ukraine, the violations of the Minsk II agreement regarding Donbass are attacks by Ukrainian government forces firing into Donbass and destroying buildings and killing residents there, however NATO and other U.S. allies ignore those allegations and just insist that all violations of the Minsk II accords are to be blamed on Russia. That is also the position advanced by Shirreff, who thinks that Russia has no right to be concerned about being surrounded by NATO forces.
Consequently, regardless of whether or not the Minsk II violations are entirely, or even mainly, or even partially, due to Ukrainian firing into Donbass, NATO appears to be gearing up for its upcoming July ministerial meeting to be an official termination of its vague promises, which NATO had made in the 1997 NATO-Russia agreement (technically called the “Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation signed in Paris, France, 27 May 1997”). That document said “NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries. They share the goal of overcoming the vestiges of earlier confrontation and competition and of strengthening mutual trust and cooperation.” In this regard, it was — though in public and written form, instead of merely private and verbal form — similar to the promises that the West had given to Soviet then Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, which have already been rampantly violated by the West many times and without apology. The expectation and demand is clearly that Russia must allow itself to be surrounded by NATO, and to do this without complaint, and therefore also without taking military countermeasures, which NATO would call yet more “aggression by Russia.” Any defensive moves by Russia can thus be taken by the West to be unacceptable provocation and justification for a “pre-emptive” attack against Russia by NATO. That would be World War III, and it would be based upon the same accusation against Russia that the Republican candidate for the U.S. Presidency, Mitt Romney, had stated when he was running against Barack Obama: “This is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe.” Perhaps the West here intends the final solution of the Russian problem.
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.
The United States, Europe, and their partners must officially recognize the Mountainous Karabagh Republic within its constitutional frontiers.Stepanakert, Mountainous Karabagh — I no longer know what to do on April 24—or where to go. This is the day Armenians across the globe commemorate the genocide in 1915 that destroyed the Armenian people and its homeland of thousands of years.Those killing fields, the homes of my grandparents, are located in historic western Armenia—now eastern Turkey. But a century later, this very region has erupted in all-out war. Turkish forces are on the offensive again, this time, Armenians having been eliminated, against ...
The Crimean Tatar writer and artist Diana Kadi recently wrote an open letter to Angela Merkel:“I am the author of a novel about the Crimea. Since an information war is being waged of such intensity that propaganda and lies have become the norm, I believe that it is important for me to set forth my views on the subject of the Crimea. Ukrainian politicians claim that Russia is the aggressor and that Crimean Tatars are oppressed, but that is simply untrue. My people have once again become an instrument of political manipulation. The alleged oppression of the Crimean Tatars is ...
The Saker reports that Russia is preparing for World War III, not because Russia intends to initiate aggression but because Russia is alarmed by the hubris and arrogance of the West, by the demonization of Russia, by provocative military actions by the West, by American interference in the Russian province of Chechnya and in former Russian provinces of Ukraine and Georgia, and by the absence of any restraint from Western Europe on Washington’s ability to foment war.Like Steven Starr, Stephen Cohen, myself, and a small number of others, the Saker understands the reckless irresponsibility of convincing Russia that the United ...
NATO was always more about offense than defense, about America controlling the policies of Alliance members, increasing their numbers, pressuring them to stress militarism more than they’d chose otherwise – and selling them lots of US weapons.When founded in April 1949, Soviet Russia was a North Atlantic Alliance enemy in name only, ravaged by WW II – needing years after Stalin’s April 1953 death to regain pre-war normality, peace essential to restore it.Washington controls NATO, covering 75% of its budget, calling the shots, installing subservient Alliance officials to serve its agenda.At a time when no US enemies exist, they’re invented ...
The U.S. Government has invaded and destroyed many countries that posed no actual national-security danger to America, such as Iraq on 20 March 2003, and all on the basis purely of lies. Even if one forgets that the war in Ukraine started in February 2014 and that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was a reaction to that ongoing military conflict on Russia’s own border and which Russia always said consequently endangered the national security of Russia — even if one forgets such things — was America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq (which had posed no national-security threat to ...
The 2015 dataOrigins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]SaveSave
The measures being taken by the government of President François Hollande in response to Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris constitute an unprecedented attack on democratic rights.The Socialist Party (PS) government has declared a state of emergency and mobilized more than 100,000 security personnel throughout the country, including regular police, gendarmes, paramilitary riot police and military forces. It is impossible to walk the streets of any major city without running into individuals decked out in camouflage or dressed in black, toting automatic rifles. These paramilitary forces have been given the power to raid any home and arrest or kill anyone declared ...
Backdrop To The BalkansThe tiny South-Central Balkan country of the Republic of Macedonia is in dire straits right now, but most of Europe – let alone the rest of the world – has no idea that this is the case because the Mainstream Media narrative is that the state’s two-year-long political crisis was “resolved” when the patriotic VMRO-DPMNE government of Nikola Gruevski was replaced in a “constitutional/electoral coup” that followed Color Revolution and even Hybrid War provocations. The author wrote about this in a Sputnik piece at the time from May 2017 titled “The Macedonian Crisis Isn’t Over, and a ...
In just one week the United States government will commemorate its 16th anniversary in the bombing and occupation of Afghanistan.This war did not really begin in 2001 resulting from the attacks on September 11 where planes were hijacked and flown into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon headquartered right outside of Washington, D.C.U.S. involvement in the destabilization of Afghanistan goes back to the late 1970s when the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDP) led a socialist-oriented administration which advanced the cause of working people and farmers as well as providing fundamental civil rights to women. ...
The presidential campaign has mortified millions of Americans in part because the presidency has become far more dangerous in recent times. Since 9/11, we have lived in a perpetual emergency which supposedly justifies trampling the law and Constitution. And the illegalities will not end after Tuesday’s vote count. Both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have signaled that they will perpetuate power grabs in the next four years.For generations, politicians have touted voting as a magical process which almost automatically protects the rights of everyone within a 50 mile radius of the polling booth. But the ballots Americans have cast in ...
The words “possible criminal actions” by CIA employees are used in the report.The terms unethical and immoral are mentioned. The criminality of those who ordered these actions at the highest levels of government, however, is not acknowledged.The actions directed against alleged jihadists are categorized as ineffective in the process of revealing intelligence. This in itself is a red herring. The objective of torture was not to reveal intelligence.What of course is not acknowledged is that the alleged terrorists who were tortured were framed by the CIA.Known and documented the Al Qaeda network is a creation of US intelligence.The jihadists are ...
Destroyed Serbian Orthodox church in Kosovo by local Muslim Albanians after 1999In 2000, when George W. Bush was elected president in a controversial and hotly disputed election, all the experts and pundits predicted that there would be a philosophical sea change in US foreign policy in the Balkans, and in Kosovo in particular. In my 2000 analysis of the election of Bush and US foreign policy in Kosovo, however, I concluded that the George W. Bush Administration represented the same old same old and business as usual. In my viewpoint, absolutely nothing would change in the US foreign policy stance ...
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter, Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.Read our Disclaimer/Legal Statement!Donate to Support UsWe would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics and international relations.[wpedon id="4696" align="left"]Save
Barack Obama is the first two-term American president to have presided over war every day of his tenure in office. He bequeaths to a Trump administration ongoing operations in Afghanistan, continuing drone strikes in northwest Pakistan, the consequences of the 2011 destruction of Libya, the instigation of civil war in Syria, US sponsorship of the brutal Saudi interventions in Yemen, and the civil conflicts in Ukraine, the Caucuses and across Africa.Obama’s blood-soaked legacy, however, is most graphic in Iraq. There is a bitter irony in this, given the fact that he was elected in 2008 largely on the basis of ...
With the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, the authorities in Kyiv began to actively raise funds for the country’s defense. Foreign states responded to the call, as well as individuals and companies. Almost every European who sympathized with Ukraine started sending donations, and cryptocurrencies have become one of the most convenient means of doing this. The anonymity and ease of transactions of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other digital assets have made cryptocurrencies an ideal means for citizens of various countries willing to assist Ukraine. Four months later, Ukraine had already received more than $100 million sent in from all over the ...
The full extent of the damage to international peace and security caused by the US-led Syrian strikes will take some time to become clear. But its impact on the very concept of legality in international affairs is already evident.Simply put, the most powerful county in the world and its chief satellites, the UK and France, have thrown the rule of law into the trash can. The only "law" now is the law of the jungle. There is no going back.Ironically, the attack itself was claimed by its perpetrators as enforcement of legality, not of its obliteration. For example, NATO Secretary-General ...
The U.S. government’s plan to conquer Russia is based upon a belief in, and the fundamental plan to establish, “Nuclear Primacy” against Russia — an American ability to win a nuclear war against, and so conquer, Russia.This concept became respectable in U.S. academic and governmental policymaking circles when virtually simultaneously in 2006 a short-form and a long-form version of an article endorsing the concept, which the article’s two co-authors there named “nuclear primacy,” were published respectively in the world’s two most influential journals of international affairs, Foreign Affairs from the Council on Foreign Relations, and International Security from Harvard. (CFR got the more popular ...
The video of the execution of Russian prisoners of war by Ukrainian troops, which circulated in the media and social networks, is far from the only video recording of war crimes by Ukrainian army.(1) Since the beginning of the Russian special military operation videos of beaten and stripped prisoners of war and civilians suspected of collaborating with the Russians have appeared on internet. Records of torture also circulated widely.However, what shocks the public is that official Kyiv promotes the violation of the Geneva Convention and does not care about the promotion of war crimes. And that is precisely why Ukrainian ...
Leaked emails are filling in the picture of a Bill-and-Hillary-Clinton plan to destroy Russia – a plan which had originated with US President George Herbert Walker Bush in 1990, and which has been followed through both by his son George W Bush, and by both of the Clintons, but which has only recently started to become documented by leaked publications of personal communications amongst the key operatives who were the insiders running this operation behind the scenes, and who include Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, George W Bush, Victoria Nuland, Jeffrey Feltman, Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan al-Saud, Saudi Crown Prince ...
May 19, 1919 has different and even opposing meanings in Turkey and Greece, just as May 15, 1948, marks both the establishment of Israel and, for Palestinians, the start of the Nakba (“catastrophe”).In Turkey, this date marks the first step that led to the establishment of the Turkish Republic, while for descendants of Ottoman Greeks and Greece it marks the end of the centuries-long Pontic Greek presence on the shores of the Black Sea. Whereas Turks celebrate May 19, Greeks mourn it. Researcher Tamer Çilingir summarised the issue in a 2016 interview with the Turkish-Armenian daily Agos:“The Pontic Genocide is the ...
This encirclement by NATO is, apparently, about to be expanded: Shirreff will now be satisfied by NATO, even if not by its member the UK, of which Shirreff happens to be a citizen. New Europe bannered the same day, “NATO lays down the cards on its Russia policy”, and reported that, “In two distinct pre-ministerial press conferences on Wednesday [May 18th], the General Secretary of NATO Jens Stoltenberg and the US Ambassador to NATO, Daglas Lute, introduced the Russia agenda to be covered. Both NATO leaders said that the Accession Protocol Montenegro is signing on Thursday is a strong affirmation of NATO’s open door policy, mentioning explicitly Georgia. ‘We will continue to defend Georgia’s right to make its own decisions,’ Stoltenberg said.” Georgia is on Russia’s southwestern flank; so, it could be yet another a nuclear-missile base right on Russia’s borders, complementing Poland and the Baltics on Russia’s northwestern flank. (The U.S. itself has around 800 military bases in foreign countries, and so even Russia’s less-populous eastern regions would be able to be obliterated virtually in an instant, if the U.S. President so decides. And President Obama is already committed to the view that Russia is by far the world’s most “aggressive” enemy, more so even than international jihadists are.)
According to both Russia and the separatist Donbass eastern region of the former Ukraine, the violations of the Minsk II agreement regarding Donbass are attacks by Ukrainian government forces firing into Donbass and destroying buildings and killing residents there, however NATO and other U.S. allies ignore those allegations and just insist that all violations of the Minsk II accords are to be blamed on Russia. That is also the position advanced by Shirreff, who thinks that Russia has no right to be concerned about being surrounded by NATO forces.
