Our Friday News Analysis | In Search of a Nation's Soul (Part 24)

Orwellian Speakeasy

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US Journalist: Has NATO expanded Eastward toward Russia rather than Russia moving closer to NATO – hasn't NATO moved closer to Russia, not Russia moving closer to NATO?

Department of Defense Spokesperson: NATO is a defensive alliance that has expanded … and there is no reason to presume that NATO's expansion is a hostile or threatening move.

US Journalist: Can't you see that Russia perceives NATO's expansion as an existential threat?

Department of Defense Spokesperson: NATO is a security alliance. NATO is not an anti-Russian alliance that has moved East.

US Journalist: For 50 years, NATO has been an Anti-Soviet Alliance.

Department of Defense Spokesperson: I barely got a history degree at the University of South Florida.

US Journalist: I'm pretty sure Ukraine is not a NATO member.

The Hague, 24 February 2023 | If you know of any story that is decisive, tell the world. We're still searching.

Read more: ‘UN General Assembly Calls for Lasting Peace Deal in Ukraine,’ by Anushka Patil, New York Times, 23 February 2023

The assembly overwhelmingly adopted a resolution calling for a peace agreement guaranteeing Ukraine’s sovereignty. Russia’s key allies abstained, including China, Iran, and India.

How Does One Love One's Enemies?
Have None!

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               I find it jaw-dropping the complete lack of curiosity among EU elites as to who is responsible for an act of sabotage against the infrastructure of an EU Member State and the livelihoods of our citizens. Where is the discussion? Where are the questions? #NordstreamSabotage

               A new article by Seymour Hersh* ('How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline') makes the deeply troubling claim that the US-Norway carried out joint attacks against the infrastructure of a NATO ally and an EU member state.

               Severe and detailed claims must be investigated.

               The EU cannot tiptoe around this anymore.

*Pulitzer Prize Journalist Mr. Seymour Hersh broke the Mai Lai Massacre in 1968.

What is the Side of the Story that is Not Yet Decisive? By Abraham A. van Kempen featuring: Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly: President Vladimir Putin delivered his Address to the Federal Assembly, Gostiny Dvor, Moscow.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin:

Good afternoon,

Members of the Federation Assembly – senators, State Duma deputies,

Citizens of Russia,

This Presidential Address comes, as we all know, at a difficult watershed period for our country. This is a time of radical, irreversible change in the entire world, of crucial historical events that will determine the future of our country and our people, when every one of us bears a colossal responsibility.

One year ago, to protect the people in our historical lands, to ensure the security of our country, and to eliminate the threat coming from the neo-Nazi regime that had taken hold in Ukraine after the 2014 coup, it was decided to begin the special military operation. Step by step, carefully and consistently, we will deal with the tasks we have at hand.

Since 2014, Donbas has been fighting for the right to live in their land and to speak their native tongue. It fought and never gave up amid the blockade, constant shelling, and the Kyiv regime's overt hatred. It hoped and waited that Russia would come to help.

In the meantime, as you know, we were doing everything in our power to solve this problem peacefully and patiently conducted talks on a peaceful solution to this devastating conflict.

Behind our backs, a very different plan was being hatched. As we can see now, Western leaders' promises and assurances that they were striving for peace in Donbas turned out to be shams and outright lies. They were simply marking time, engaged in political chicanery, and turning a blind eye to the Kyiv regime's political assassinations and reprisals against undesirable people and their mistreatment of believers. They increasingly incited the Ukrainian neo-Nazis to stage terrorist attacks in Donbas—the officers of nationalist battalions trained at Western academies and schools. Weapons were also supplied.

I want to emphasize that before the special military operation, Kyiv negotiated with the West about delivering air-defense systems, warplanes, and other heavy equipment to Ukraine. We also recall the Kyiv regime's vain attempts to obtain nuclear weapons; they discussed this issue publicly.

The United States and NATO quickly deployed their army bases and secret biological laboratories near Russian borders. They mastered the future theatre of war during war games and prepared the Kyiv regime, which they controlled, and Ukraine, which they had enslaved for a large-scale war.

Now they admit this publicly and openly and feel no shame about it. They seem proud and even revel in their treachery, calling the Minsk Agreements and the Normandy Format a diplomatic show and bluff. It turns out that all this time, while Donbas was ablaze. At the same time, blood was being spilled. While Russia sincerely made every effort to achieve a peaceful solution (I want to emphasize the word "sincerely"), they gambled on people's lives and played with marked cards, as they say in certain circles.

This appalling method of deception has been tried and tested many times before. They behaved just as shamelessly and duplicitously when destroying Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. They will never be able to wash off this shame. The concepts of honor, trust, and decency are not for them.

Over the long centuries of colonialism, diktat, and hegemony, they got used to being allowed everything and got used to spitting on the whole world. It turned out that they treated people living in their own countries with the same disdain, like a master. After all, they cynically deceived them, too, tricking them with tall stories about the search for peace and adherence to the UN Security Council resolutions on Donbas. Indeed, the Western elites have become a symbol of total, unprincipled, and corrupt lies.

We firmly defend our interests and belief that there should be no division between so-called civilized countries and the rest of today's world. There is a need for a genuine partnership that rejects exclusivity, especially an aggressive one.

We were open and sincerely ready for a constructive dialogue with the West; we said and insisted that Europe and the whole world needed an indivisible security system equal for all countries. For many years, we suggested that our partners discuss this idea and work on its implementation. But in response, we received either an indistinct or hypocritical reaction, as far as words were concerned. But there were also actions: NATO's expansion to our borders, the creation of new deployment areas for missile defense in Europe and Asia – they decided to take cover from us under an 'umbrella' – deployment of military contingents, and not just near Russia's borders.

I would like to stress –in fact, this is well-known – that no other country has so many military bases abroad as the United States. There are hundreds of them – I want to emphasize this – hundreds of bases all over the world; the planet is covered with them, and one look at the map is enough to see this.

The world witnessed how they withdrew from fundamental agreements on weapons, including the Treaty on intermediate and shorter-range missiles, unilaterally tearing up the fundamental understandings that maintain world peace. For some reason, they did it. They do not do anything without reason, as we know.

Finally, in December 2021, we officially submitted draft agreements on security guarantees to the USA and NATO. In essence, all key and fundamental points were rejected. After that, it finally became clear that the go-ahead for implementing aggressive plans had been given, and they would not stop.

The threat was growing by the day. Judging by the information we received, there was no doubt that everything would be in place by February 2022 for launching yet another bloody punitive operation in Donbas. Let me remind you that back in 2014, the Kyiv regime sent its artillery, tanks, and warplanes to fight in Donbas.

We all remember the aerial footage of airstrikes targeting Donetsk. Other cities also suffered from airstrikes. In 2015, they tried to mount a frontal assault against Donbas again while keeping the blockade in place and continuing to shell and terrorize civilians. Let me remind you that this was entirely at odds with the documents and resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council, but everyone pretended that nothing was happening.

Let me reiterate that they were the ones who started this war, while we used force and are using it to stop the war.

Those who plotted a new attack against Donetsk in the Donbas region and against Lugansk understood that Crimea and Sevastopol would be the next target. We realized this as well. Even today, Kyiv is openly discussing far-reaching plans of this kind. They exposed themselves by making public what we knew already.

We defend human lives and our common home while the West seeks unlimited power. It has already spent over $150 billion helping and arming the Kyiv regime. To give you an idea, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the G7 countries earmarked about $60 billion in 2020–2021 to help the world's poorest countries. Is this clear? They spent $150 billion on the war while giving $60 billion to the poorest countries, despite pretending to care about them all the time. They also conditioned this support on obedience on behalf of the beneficiary countries. What about all this talk of fighting poverty, sustainable development, and protection of the environment? Where did it all go? Has it all vanished? Meanwhile, they keep channeling more money into the war effort. They eagerly invest in sowing unrest and encouraging government coups in other countries worldwide.

The recent Munich Conference turned into an endless stream of accusations against Russia. One gets the impression that this was done so that everyone would forget what the West has done over the past decades. They were the ones who let the genie out of the bottle, plunging entire regions into chaos.

According to US experts, almost 900,000 people were killed during wars unleashed by the United States after 2001, and over 38 million became refugees. Please note we did not invent these statistics; the Americans are providing them. They are now trying to erase this from the memory of humankind. They are pretending that all this never happened. However, no one in the world has forgotten or will ever forget it.

None of them cares about human casualties and tragedies because many trillions of dollars are at stake. They can also continue to rob everyone under the guise of democracy and freedoms, impose neoliberal and essentially totalitarian values, brand entire countries and nations, publicly insult their leaders, suppress dissent in their own countries, and divert attention from corruption scandals by creating an enemy image. We continue to see all this on television, highlighting more significant domestic economic, social, and inter-ethnic problems, contradictions, and disagreements.

I would like to recall that, in the 1930s, the West had virtually paved the way to power for the Nazis in Germany. In our time, they started turning Ukraine into an "anti-Russia." This project is not new. People knowledgeable about history, at least to some extent, realize that this project dates back to the 19th century. The Austro-Hungarian Empire and Poland had conceived it for one purpose: to deprive Russia of these historical territories now called Ukraine. This is their goal. There is nothing new here; they are repeating everything.

The West expedited the implementation of this project today by supporting the 2014 coup. That was a bloody, anti-state, and unconstitutional coup. They pretended that nothing had happened and that this was how things should be. They even said how much money they had spent on it. Russophobia and extremely aggressive nationalism formed its ideological foundation.

Quite recently, a brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was named Edelweiss after a Nazi division whose personnel were deporting Jews, executing prisoners of war, and conducting punitive operations against partisans in Yugoslavia, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and Greece. We are ashamed to talk about this, but they are not. The military personnel serving with the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the Ukrainian National Guard are particularly fond of chevrons formerly worn by soldiers from Das Reich, Totenkopf (Death's Head), and Halychyna divisions, other SS units. Their hands are also stained with blood. Ukrainian armored vehicles feature the insignia of the Nazi German Wehrmacht.

Neo-Nazis are open about whose heirs they consider themselves to be. Surprisingly, none of the powers in the West see it. Why? Because they – pardon my language – could not care less about it. They do not care who they are betting on in their fight against us, against Russia. Anyone will do as long as they fight against us and our country. Indeed, we saw terrorists and neo-Nazis in their ranks. They would let all kinds of ghouls join their ranks, for God's sake, as long as they acted on their will as a weapon against Russia.

The anti-Russia project is part of the revanchist policy towards our country to create flashpoints of instability and conflicts next to our borders. Back then, in the 1930s, and now the design remains the same, and it is to direct aggression to the East, spark a war in Europe, and eliminate competitors by using a proxy force.

We are not at war with the people of Ukraine. I have made that clear many times. The people of Ukraine have become hostages of the Kyiv regime and its Western handlers, who have occupied that country in the political, military, and economic sense and have been destroying Ukrainian industry for decades as they plundered its natural resources. This led to social degradation and an immeasurable increase in poverty and inequality. Recruiting resources for military operations in these circumstances was easy. Nobody thought about people who were conditioned for slaughter and eventually became expendables. It is sad and dreadful to say, but it is a fact.

Responsibility for inciting and escalating the Ukraine conflict and the sheer number of casualties lies entirely with the Western elites and, of course, today's Kyiv regime, for which the Ukrainian people are, in fact, not its people. The current Ukrainian government is serving not national interests but the interests of third countries.

The West uses Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia and a testing range. I will not discuss in detail the West's attempts to turn the war around, or their plans to ramp up military supplies, since everyone is well aware of that. However, there is one circumstance that everyone should be clear about: the longer the range of the Western systems that will be supplied to Ukraine, the further we will have to move the threat away from our borders. This is obvious.

The Western elite makes no secret of their goal, which is, I quote, "Russia's strategic defeat." What does this mean to us? This means they plan to finish us once and for all. In other words, they plan to grow a local conflict into a global confrontation. This is how we understand it, and we will respond accordingly because this represents an existential threat to our country.

However, they also realize it is impossible to defeat Russia on the battlefield and are conducting increasingly aggressive information attacks against us, primarily targeting the younger generation. They never stop lying and distorting historical facts as they attack our culture, the Russian Orthodox Church, and other traditional religious organizations in our country.

Look what they are doing to their people. It is all about the destruction of the family, cultural and national identity, perversion, and abuse of children, including pedophilia, all declared normal in their life. They are forcing the priests to bless same-sex marriages. Bless their hearts, and let them do as they please. Here is what I would like to say in this regard. Adult people can do as they please. We in Russia have always seen it that way and always will: no one will intrude into other people's private lives, and we will not do it.

But here is what I would like to tell them: look at the holy scripture and the main books of other world religions. They say it all, including that family is the union of a man and a woman. Now, these sacred texts are being questioned. Reportedly, the Anglican Church is planning, just planning, to explore the idea of a gender-neutral god. What is there to say? Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Millions of people in the West realize they are being led to a spiritual disaster. The elite appears to have gone crazy, and there is no cure. But as I said, these are their problems, and we must protect our children, which we will do. We will protect our children from degradation and degeneration.

The West will try to undermine and divide our society and bet on the fifth columnists who, throughout history, and I want to emphasize this, have been using the same poison of contempt for their Fatherland and the desire to make money by selling this poison to anyone willing to pay for it. It has always been that way.

Those who have embarked on the road of outright betrayal, committing terrorist and other crimes against the security of our society and the country's territorial integrity, will be held accountable for this under the law. But we will never behave like the Kyiv regime and the Western elite, which have been and still are involved in witch hunts. We will not settle scores with those who take a step aside and turn their back on their Motherland. Let this be on their conscience. Let them live with this – they will have to live with it. The main point is that our people, the citizens of Russia, have given them a moral assessment.

I am proud, and we are all proud that our multi-ethnic nation, the majority of our citizens, has taken a principled stance on the special military operation. They understand the basic idea of what we are doing and support our actions to defend Donbas. This support primarily revealed their true patriotism – a historically inherent feeling in our nation. It is stunning in its dignity and deep understanding by everyone – I will stress, everyone – of the inseparable link between one's destiny and the destiny of the Fatherland.

CONTINUE READING...

Read more: ‘A Fight for Survival: What Victory Looks Like to Putin,’ by Tatiana Stanovaya, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 23 February 2023.

Putin’s speech implied that Russia and the West are entirely incompatible, so Russia can do nothing but fight to be the last one standing in the battle for survival.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state of the nation address on February 21 was eagerly anticipated inside Russia. Yet it sheds no light on the question that is foremost on the minds of the Russian elite and public: how Putin intends to win this war.

Read more: ‘Joe Biden’s Showy Defiance of Vladimir Putin,’ by Susan B. Glasser, New Yorker Magazine, 22 February 2023.

After a year of war in Ukraine, the President offers a strikingly personal rebuke—but little clarity on what winning looks like.

Read more: ‘A Year of Putin’s Wartime Lies,’ by David Remnick, New Yorker Magazine, 19 February 2023.

Every credible analyst of the invasion of Ukraine has been stunned by the scale of the Russian President’s folly—and his failure extends well beyond the battlefield.

And finally, here are tidbits from my sources in the region:

So far, Russia has shot down 385 Ukrainian fighter planes and 210 helicopters. They are being shot as soon as they take off. Since the war started, Russia has destroyed the following:

7915 tanks and other armed fortified vehicles
8440 special military vehicles
1028 war vehicles with multiple rocket launchers
404 air defense systems
4133 cannons and mine throwers
3172 unmanned flying objects (drones)

The West – the NATO Defense Alliance – had built the strongest army in Europe to fight Russia,

Bahamut has a large number of foreigners and well-trained Ukrainian troops.

Ukraine kept sending reinforcement in the city as Russians kept attacking the town with constant shelling

Today the last road leading to Bahamut has been closed by Russia

Ukrainian troops and foreigners still have a chance to escape via open fields heading north-west

But the supply roads are not open for them anymore

In other words, Ukraine has lost Bahamut.

According to some Russian sources, about 40,000 Ukrainian troops are in Bahamut. Most elite American, English, and German officers command the Ukrainian defense. Bahamut is a vital place for them, and there will not be easily let go.

On the other side, Russians say: We do not rush to get territory. We must destroy the Ukrainian army.

There is an estimate that the ratio of losses is about 6:1. For every Russian casualty, there are six Ukrainian casualties.

Bahamut is a little "Stalingrad."

America is plundering Europe (Germany).

-USA earned an additional 400 billion in 2022 from selling liquid gas to Europe.

- All countries in the European Union announced record military budgets. Guess where they will buy most of the weapons?

Ukraine will be finished sooner or later as a country and a threat to Russia.

Poland had been arming with a pace unseen before. Poland and some Baltic countries are possibly the next proxy countries waging war on Russia.

Zelensky’s father was a KGB employee. Zelensky’s pre-election promise was to remedy relations with Russia and Russian-speaking Ukrainians. That was a blatant and deliberate lie. Most of the Donbas residents voted for him. Only neo-Nazis and the far right stand beside Zelensky now.

Zelensky was ordered to sign with JP Morgan bank to rebuild Ukraine.

Heaps of money to be raised by other banks and private investors apart from 30 billion directly pledged by JP Morgan. All money will go through JP Morgan and Morgan Chase bank.

Netanyahu met with Putin about a month ago. Israel pulled the "hand brake" on their involvement in the Ukraine operation. More precisely, they went into reverse and pulled their 538 Israeli advisors out of Ukraine about two weeks ago.

Poland had a scandal with several hundred Polish soldiers killed in Ukraine. They fight wearing Ukrainian uniforms.

_______________________

Editor’s Note |

Will this nightmare ever end? For some, NEVER!

Please consider joining us, the Building the Bridge Foundation, The Hague, in urging the United States and the European Union from abusing the people of Ukraine to serve as cannon fodder and human shields.

A Minsk-3 will stop the bloodshed.

_______________________

Related Articles Recently Posted on www.buildingthebridgefoundation.com:

Our Friday News Analysis | 'In Search of a Nation's Soul (Part 23),' 17 February 2023.

Our Wednesday News Analysis | 'America is 'deeply troubled', so what?,' 22 February 2023.

The Evangelical Pope| 'Working Generously for Peace,' 20 February 2023.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of the Building the Bridge Foundation, The Hague.