Putin Recognizes Donbass Republics, Sends Russian Military to 'Denazify' Ukraine

[SOTTREADER]

 

[Aeneas]

Ahhh. Only war can prevent the world from collapsing, huh?

Yes, it interesting how Germany is discussing agriculture in terms of a food crisis and that Russia will use it as a weapon.

The alleged attacks are a part of the “starvation strategy,” purportedly employed by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, the official went on. This “strategy” is set to take a heavy toll on the countries already experiencing issues with food security, in particular a number of African nations, Ozdemir claimed. The situation needs to be addressed globally, and the UN World Food and Agriculture Committee should play the central role in this, the official believes.

It is especially interesting since Germany still is supporting farmers financially so that they don't grow crops from what I read somewhere. I didn't find something in the search, but it might be what is also applied in Denmark. Farmers in Denmark have been restricted for some time in their use of fertiliser, which results in lower yields. Farmers have to keep a record of use of fertilisers and report it to the ministry of agriculture. The ideological part of the idea, which is the facade, is to limit nitrogen in the waterways, though it has been proven not to be a problem as such as the it is more about a balance between nitrogen and phosphor. In praxis it is yet another bureaucratic control measure which could have devastating effects.

So back to the point. The EU have done a lot to make it harder for farmers to grow produce, which is why we have seen protests in France, and the Netherlands of farmers taking to the streets. In the Netherlands, a big push is on to drastically reduce the dairy herds. In other words, the coming food crisis is to a big part selfmade, yet Russia will be blamed and not the Great Reset agenda.

 

[SOTTREADER]

I swear to God if Gonzalo pops up alive he better get his backside out of Ukraine immediately. The more I think about it the more I can't help but conclude it was absolutely reckless to not leave given he knew he was a target of the State and he bloody can't speak Ukrainian or Russian.

He may very well be okay but this doesn't negate the danger he is in being such a popular critic on social media. Most of the other westerners like him are either embedded in Donbass or can always escape into Russia if need be. I can't think of any other personality like him in Ukraine who shows their face on camera whilst being behind enemy lines with no way out! Hopefully the Russians picked him up and saved him from himself.

 

[Ocean]

Dmitry Orlov in 2014:

"In [Russia's] arsenal is: popping the huge financial bubble and causing a resumption of the financial collapse of 2008 by any number of means, from requiring gold instead of fiat currency as payment for oil and gas, to dumping US dollar reserves (in concert with China), to putting the EU on a fast track to economic collapse by giving the natural gas valve a slight clockwise twist, to leaving US and NATO troops in Afghanistan (who are about to start evacuating) stranded and without resupply by declaring force majeure on the cooperative arrangement currently in effect, where much of their resupply route is allowed to pass through Russian territory. That's if Russia chose to act decisively."

Called like a boss


The Madness of President Putin

The Madness of President Putin

Juliette Bates [ In italiano. Grazie, Massimiliano!] [ 日本語訳 。大谷正幸、ありがとうございます。 ] [Many thanks to Max who helped put this together.]...

cluborlov.blogspot.com

Of all the various interpretations Western leaders and commentators have offered for why the president of the Russian Federation has responded the way he has to the events in Ukraine over the course of February and March of 2014—in refusing to acquiesce to the installation of a neo-fascist regime in Kiev, and in upholding the right of Crimea to self-determination—the most striking and illuminating interpretation is that he has gone mad. Striking and illuminating, that is, something in the West itself.

In times past, the international landscape reflected a multipolar order, a multiplicity of competing ideologies, alternative schemes of social and economic organization. Back then the actions of another country could be understood in terms of its alternative ideology. Even extreme figures—Stalin, Hitler, Idi Amin, Pol Pot—calling them crazy was an example of hyperbole, an intensified way of describing the brazenness with which they pursued their rationally set political goals. But when Chancellor Angela Merkel asks whether Putin is living “in another world,” echoing a theme in the narrative presented by Western media, the question seems to imply something quite literal.

We question someone's sanity when we cannot explain their behavior or logic based on a common understanding of consensual reality. They become utterly unpredictable to us, capable of carrying on a normal conversation one moment and lunging at our throats the next. Their actions appear rash and disordered, as if they inhabit a world parallel to but completely different from the one we do. Putin is portrayed as a fiend, and the West acts baffled and scared. The feigned shock with which the West looks on at the developments in Crimea could be seen as a tactic designed to isolate and intimidate Vladimir Putin. The fact that this tactic is not only not working but actually backfiring changes feigned shock into real shock: Western meds aren't working any more—on itself or anyone else.

The West—that is, the United States and the European Union—have played the role of chief psychiatrist in the world insane asylum ever since the USSR fell apart. Prior to 1990 the world was neatly carved up into two competing ideologies locked in a nuclear standoff. But then Mikhail Gorbachev capitulated. He was a champion of “common human values” and wanted to resolve the superpower conflict peacefully, by combining the best of both systems (all the humanistic victories of Soviet socialism plus all the seductive, consumerist prosperity of American capitalism).

But in effect Gorbachev capitulated; the USSR was dismembered and, over the course of the 1990s, Russia itself came close to being destroyed and dismembered. Although in the West, where he is still a popular figure, Gorbachev is credited with orchestrating a peaceful dissolution of the USSR, the chaotic aftermath of the collapse of the USSR was an extremely traumatic event, with massive loss of life.

When Putin calls the collapse of the USSR “the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the century,” he echoes the feelings of many Russians—who, by the way, like to call Gorbachev “Mishka mécheny” (“Mickey the marked”—marked by the devil, that is.)

During the post-collapse period Russia could offer no competing ideology. In fact, it had no ideology at all, except for an implant of Western liberalism which, given a lack of a viable legal framework or traditions of private property and civil society, quickly turned into a particularly brutal brand of gangsterism. But then Putin came along and, using his experience in the KGB and connections with other post-Soviet “power ministeries,” he crafted a new order, which first decimated and either supplanted or absorbed the gangsters, and then imposed what Putin has termed “the dictatorship of the law.” This is the first important piece of the new Russian ideology: law matters and nobody can be above it—not even the United States.

Now, compare the concept of the “dictatorship of the law,” domestic as well as international, as it is promulgated by Putin, to the sort of law which now prevails in the United States. In the US, there are now two categories of persons. There are those who are above the law: the US government and its agencies, including NSA, FBI, DOD, etc.; Wall Street financiers and shadowy government contractors who are never prosecuted for their crimes; the über-rich who are politically connected and can prevail legally against anyone simply by throwing money at lawyers.

And then there are those who are below the law: everyone else. These are some of the most sheepish people in the world, living in constant fear of getting sued and stripped of their savings—or arrested, intimidated into accepting a plea bargain, and locked up. They can now be detained indefinitely without a charge. They can be kidnapped from anywhere in the world, transported to a “black site” and tortured. They can be put on trial without being informed of the charge and convicted based on evidence that is kept secret from them. Their communities can be placed under martial law without cause. Individually, they can be shot on sight with no provocation of suspicion of wrongdoing. Abroad, when wedding parties and funerals are taken out by misguided drone strikes, that's a war crime—unless Washington is behind it, in which case it is just “collateral damage.”

Thanks to the relentless NSA surveillance, we now have no privacy and can keep no secrets. For example, German Chancellor Merkel is definitely “below the law.” When, thanks to Edward Snowden, she discovered that the NSA was listening in on her cell phone conversations, she was outraged and complained bitterly. The NSA stopped listening in on her phone and... started listening in on the phones of everyone she talks to! Now, isn't that cute? Notice, however, how Frau Merkel has stopped complaining. Unlike Putin, she isn't “mad”: she is a willing participant in a consensual reality in which what Washington says is the law, and what she says is just noise, for the benefit of maintaining the illusion of German sovereignty. For her benefit, let's ask her in her native German: “Frau Merkel, glauben Sie wirklich dass die amerikanischen Politiker Übermenschen und die Deutschen und Russen und Ukrainer Untertanen sind?”

Putin's second innovation is what he calls “sovereign democracy.” It is a system of representative democracy that is completely impervious to foreign political manipultion. Well, not completely impervious: just as it's good to have a low-level inflammation somehwere once in a while to keep the immune system humming along, it's considered healthy to have Moscow's and St. Petersburg's hipsters—many of whom, in their youthful folly, still worship the West—to go and get themselves roughed up by the riot police periodically. The worship appears mutual, and watching Wetern media worship a bunch of nobodys whose idea of public art is going into supermarkets and stuffing frozen chickens in their vaginas (“Pussy Riot,” that is) provides much-needed comic relief. But the firewall of Russian conservatism remains impervious to Western advances. (As Prof. Cohen recently pointed out, prior to Americans' gay rights agitation, Russian gays used to be called “faggots”; now they are being called “American faggots,” and gay rights in Russia have taken a giant leap back.)

Continued....

The Madness of President Putin

Juliette Bates [ In italiano. Grazie, Massimiliano!] [ 日本語訳 。大谷正幸、ありがとうございます。 ] [Many thanks to Max who helped put this together.]...

cluborlov.blogspot.com

 

[Ocean]

If you're surprised that NATO isn't doing all that well in Ukraine, Dmitry Orlov has the answer :

"At the risk of restating the obvious, let me enumerate the actual reasons. Why did Russia invade the Ukraine? To neutralize multiple threats: of an otherwise inevitable eventual war with NATO; of genocide against Donetsk and Lugansk (which, based on recovered official documents, was being planned); of a bioterror attack using viruses and bacteria engineered in Ukrainian bioterror labs funded by Joe Biden's son Hunter (also copiously documented); and of dirty nukes the Ukrainians announced that they were planning to build with American help using Chernobyl's nuclear waste and to lob at Russia using their large stock of ballistic missiles. Why did it take just a few weeks to neutralize the Ukrainian military? Because it was trained and equipped by NATO, an organization that exists for the purpose of funneling money to US defense contractors (who then use some of it to buy politicians who vote to give them even more money) and is only useful for attacking mostly defenseless countries such as Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria."

 

[Ocean]

ASB Military News

The chance to give up arms for Azov nazis holed up in Azovstal has expired and the corridors were closed a few hours ago. Russian Air Force, including the nuclear capable Tu-22M3 have started bombing the Azovstal this afternoon

t.me

 

[Ocean]

ASB Military News

Azovstal industrial zone from a drone view right now after Russian Airforce attacks. It seems Russians are trying to delete the plant off the map.

t.me

 

[Laurentien2]

Moskva Cruiser Photos Before Sunk. Fake or Not?

A few hours ago, some sources published an alleged photos of the cruiser Moscow after being hit by anti-ship missiles....

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MOSKVA CRUISER PHOTOS BEFORE SUNK. FAKE OR NOT?​

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A few hours ago, some sources published an alleged photos of the cruiser Moscow after being hit by anti-ship missiles.



The silhouette of the stern of the ship in the photos corresponds to the silhouette of the stern of the Moskva cruiser.
More than half of the ship is missing or invisible in the photos, at least from the midship frame to the bow.



The sea roughness in the photos is consistently close to the weather conditions at the time of the incident.
Assuming that the photos are authentic, this means that there was earlier destruction of the ship’s structure and the entire front part sank or severely damaged, while the remainder from the centre to the stern maintained buoyancy. If there was a detonation of the main missile payload, it is difficult to imagine such a picture.

UPDATE: Or do we see the front of the ship completely smoke-filled. In any case, the versions stated below have the right to exist, with the correction that the 3rd version becomes on a par with the two main ones.
The SF reader’s comment: “I actually don’t think it’s fake. To me, these pictures are consistent with the prevailing narrative, that there was a fire/explosion in the forward gun magazine.
If the smoke is thick enough it can cover the silhouette of the forward part of the ship to make it appear as though it is not there. In the second picture where the smoke has cleared, the forward part of the ship is visible.”

This leaves two main versions, either the observed picture is the result of a submarine attack, or these photos are fake.
There certainly remains a third version, that Neptune anti-ship missiles miraculously and precisely hit the cruiser’s waterline area in the vicinity of the main missile ammunition depot without causing its detonation.

 

[Laurentien2]

America Escalates Its War Against Russia

Written by Eric Zuesse Even without Ukraine being a NATO member-country, that land has already become America’s initial battlefield against Ukraine’s...

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AMERICA ESCALATES ITS WAR AGAINST RUSSIA​

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Members of Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Forces, volunteer military units of the Armed Forces, train in a city park in Kyiv, Ukraine, January 22, 2022
Written by Eric Zuesse
Even without Ukraine being a NATO member-country, that land has already become America’s initial battlefield against Ukraine’s next-door-neighbor, Russia, thus effectively starting World War III against Russia; and, so, Ukraine is enormously boosting the profits of U.S.-and-allied ‘defense’ contractors, such as Lockheed Martin Corporation, the world’s largest weapons-seller.
Though Ukraine is the land, and though Ukrainians are the U.S. regime’s proxy-soldiers in this initial stage of World War III, it is mainly American armaments-firms that are enormously benefitting from the resultant global surge in weapons-purchases. It’s Ukrainians’ and Russians’ blood, and U.S.-and-allied billionaires’ profits, that are now being promoted in their U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media, as being the heroic war for ‘democracy’ and ’to defend freedom’, though, during the many decades before, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq, and in Syria, and in Libya, and in Yemen, and in so many other lands which have been cursed by America’s violent presence, the U.S. regime’s promised ‘championship of democracy and of the rules-based international order’, turned into the reality of U.S.-and-allied ‘rules’, and of rampant violations of international laws, as being the delivered U.S.-and-allied ’order’ there. Russia and China are being demonized, by the U.S. regime, as ‘authoritarian states’, and as violators of human rights, while America’s billionaires, who control the U.S. regime and its ‘news’-media and its armaments-manufacturers, reap the rewards of this — the most massive of all global con-games against the entire global public.
Here are some recent developments, in America’s actual (though not yet formally announced) war against Russia:
On April 12th, Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post bannered “Pentagon looks to vastly expand weapons for Ukraine”, and reported that, “The Biden administration is poised to dramatically expand the scope of weapons it’s providing Ukraine.”
On April 13th, Russia’s RT News headlined “US issues Russia sanctions warning”, and reported that,

During an event at NATO’s Atlantic Council adjunct, [U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet] Yellen plans to insist that Washington remains fully committed to pushing Russia “further towards economic, financial, and strategic isolation,” according to an excerpt quoted by the media.
“And let’s be clear, the unified coalition of sanctioning countries will not be indifferent to actions that undermine the sanctions we’ve put in place,” Yellen will say.
In her opinion, the measures being imposed on Russia by the US and its allies are necessary because the future of the international order, “both for peaceful security and economic prosperity,” is now at stake.

Also on the 13th, the New York Times bannered “The U.S. has expanded intelligence sharing with Ukraine”, and reported that “The United States has increased the flow of intelligence to Ukraine about Russian forces in the Donbas and Crimea,” so as to increase the likelihood that Ukrainian forces will retake Crimea, which the Soviet dictator Nikita Khrushchev, a Ukrainian, had arbitrarily transferred to Ukraine in 1954, and which had been a part of Russia ever since 1783. Because there was such intense opposition by the Crimean population to this transfer, the Ukrainian government was obliged to grant to Crimea a special status as being a self-administered region, not controlled by the Ukrainian government in Kiev. But, now, the U.S. regime demands instead that Crimea become an integral part of the Ukrainian regime, especially because Crimeans are passionately opposed to doing that, just as they had been back in 1954, when Khrushchev (a less barbaric dictator than today’s U.S. regime is) transferred it to Ukraine.
The U.S. is also opposed to the residents in the breakaway Donbass portion of that pre-U.S.-2014-coup Ukrainian region, where over 90% of the residents had voted for the democratically elected Ukrainian President whom U.S. President Barack Obama had overthrown in a bloody U.S. coup (‘democratic revolution’) in February 2014. So, the U.S. Biden Administration, set upon bringing about World War III, is likewise assisting its Ukrainian stooge-regime to grab back that former region of Ukraine, against which that U.S.-stooge-regime had been trying to eliminate as many of the residents there as it could.
The idea behind America’s “intelligence-sharing” with their stooge-regime is to provide U.S. satellite and other secret intelligence information to America’s stooge-regime there, in order to assist them to conquer not only the residents in both Donbass and Crimea, but also to conquer the Russian military forces in Crimea, which region of the former Ukraine had voted over 95% in March 2014 to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia, and which region has had, ever since 1783, Russia’s largest naval base (which naval base Obama had been intending to become instead yet another U.S. naval base).
Also on the 13th, Defense News bannered “NATO planners put the F-35 front and center in European nuclear deterrence” and reported, regarding that Lockheed Martin fighter-plane:

Following Germany’s decision to buy a fleet of F-35s, NATO planners have begun updating the alliance’s nuclear sharing mechanics to account for the jet’s next-gen capabilities, a key NATO official said this week.
“We’re moving fast and furiously towards F-35 modernization and incorporating those into our planning and into our exercising and things like that as those capabilities come online,” said Jessica Cox, director of the NATO nuclear policy directorate in Brussels.
“By the end of the decade, most if not all of our allies will have transitioned,” she added, speaking during an online discussion of the Advanced Nuclear Weapons Alliance Deterrence Center, a Washington-based think tank. …
The United States military stores around 150 B-61 gravity bombs in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Turkey for that mission, according to a recent accounting in an article by the British-based Chatham House think tank. …
Most recently, the new German government picked the F-35 specifically for the nuclear sharing mission, committing to up to 35 copies. The decision followed a lengthy discussion in Germany about Berlin’s continued participation in the nuclear sharing responsibility in the first place, a debate that appears to have abated following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Cox said the aircraft’s advanced features also will boost the capabilities of alliance members and F-35 customers like Poland, Denmark or Norway who might be tasked with supporting actual nuclear sharing missions.

The U.S. Congress hasn’t yet declared war against Russia, but over 97% of the members in the U.S. Senate and House have voted for the sanctions, and the military appropriations bills, and the other anti-Russian legislation, to assist the U.S. regime to conquer Russia. So, pulling the plug to start the official war seems now to be almost a mere formality, so late in ‘the game’.
The U.S. regime’s intentions toward Russia have been conquest ever since U.S. President Harry S. Truman made that decision on 25 July 1945, and it stayed that way even after the end of the Soviet Union in 1991. America’s anti-Russia alliance, NATO, has always been committed to conquering Russia, and remains so today. For example, NATO’s chief Jens Stoltenberg has always said, and repeated it recently, that “NATO is not a threat to Russia.” How much contempt, against the public, must such a person, who says such a thing, in such circumstances, and with such a long history behind it — all of which has been to the exact contrary of that person’s statement — have? However much it is, that’s how much contempt of the public he has. The blatancy of his lying is shocking. But it’s normal for NATO, which also makes this type of blatantly false allegation an intrinsic part of their commitment to being Russia’s enemies, such as their official statement on 26 February 2022: “NATO has tried to build a partnership with Russia, developing dialogue and practical cooperation in areas of common interest. Practical cooperation has been suspended since 2014 in response to Russia’s illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea, Ukraine, which NATO will never recognise.” (It wasn’t ‘illegal’; Obama’s coup in Ukraine was.) But that ‘partnership with Russia’ didn’t exist even when Boris Yeltsin was Russia’s President and, as the New York Times headlined on 21 December 1991, “Yeltsin Says Russia Seeks to Join NATO”, yet NATO never gave more than perfunctory consideration to his repeated proposal. And as U.S. President G.H.W. Bush secretly started informing U.S. allies on 24 February 1990, the Cold War was to continue on the U.S.-and-allied side until Russia itself becomes conquered, no matter how friendly toward them Russia might be or become.
Russia never invaded America and has never even threatened to do so except as being what they would do if America pushes them too far into a corner — comes at all close to trapping them (such as the present Biden regime is trying to do). The aggressor has always, ever since 25 July 1945, been the U.S. regime, which has perpetrated most of the world’s coups, sanctions, and invasions, after WW II. This has always been done by the U.S. regime in the name of advancing ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ and ‘human rights’. It has always been done by the very same regime that today is the world’s biggest violator of each of those alleged values, and that is also the world’s #1 police state, having a higher percentage of its residents living in prisons than does any other nation on the entire planet. Any nation which is allied to it shares its immense guilt and hypocrisy, and will, no doubt, likewise be targeted by Russian, and maybe also Chinese, missiles, when America and its NATO finally do unleash their World War III against their ‘enemies’ if the intended victims become totally cornered, trapped. But this will surely be a loser’s game on both sides (victimizers, the U.S. and its vassal-nations or ‘allies’; versus victims, such as Russia, China, Iran, Syria, and Libya). However, for the weapons-profiteers and extraction corporations that (mainly) the U.S. aristocracy control, and that are making money hand-over-fist this way, it will be a ‘winning’ game, if nuclear debris can ever be called a “win,” by anyone who is sane (which billionaires, as individuals with insatiable demands for their own supremacy, strongly tend not to be).
Can anyone more evil and deceitful, and hypocritical, than the U.S. regime and its NATO be imagined? If so, then whom might such a person even possibly be?

 

[f1esk]

Does anyone know why in the language to describe when combatants are killed words such as "destroyed" or "liquidated" are used? Why doesn't the Russian military just use the word "killed"? Any idea?

Killin is a crime (criminal law). When they destroy a Nazi, a fascist, a mercenary (heavy weapons) or liquidate a combatant (rifle) - this is not a crime, therefore this is not killing.

 

[SOTTREADER]

Could be fake news but it's not looking good I must say

 

[SOTTREADER]

Neo Nazis are now claiming to have captured Gonzalo - note one is the baseball cap guy with the skull crest in the previous post

 

[SOTTREADER]

WATCH: Gonzalo Lira has gone missing in Ukraine, this is how you may help!

Kevork Almassian – Gonzalo Lira López, a 54-year-old Chilean-American who was reporting from Kharkov since the start of the war, has not been heard from since Friday (15 March 2022. You may...

www.syriana-analysis.com

Asking people to contact the Chilean embassy. Not sure what they'd be able to do.

 

[Possibility of Being]

A few hours ago, some sources published an alleged photos of the cruiser Moscow after being hit by anti-ship missiles.

The Russian Gov was asked about it and Peskov said that there is a constant flood of fake news and photos in relation to Russia and the Russian operation, and it's not possible for them to verify those pictures at the moment.

 

[Laurentien2]

Is US Edging A Step Closer To WW3 Over Combat Drone Deliveries To Kiev?

Moscow has “strongly advised” against sending additional US weapons to Ukraine. Written by Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst...

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IS US EDGING A STEP CLOSER TO WW3 OVER COMBAT DRONE DELIVERIES TO KIEV?​

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Illustrative Image

Moscow has “strongly advised” against sending additional US weapons to Ukraine.

Written by Drago Bosnic, independent geopolitical and military analyst
The United States’ and NATO’s so-called “lethal aid” to the post-Maidan regime in Kiev is in no way breaking news. It has been going on for nearly a decade now and has directly contributed to the mass murder of around 15,000 people in Donbass. In addition to weapons, the Armed Forces of Ukraine have received top-level training by the US, UK and other NATO militaries. In recent months, these arms deliveries have skyrocketed to unprecedented levels. In addition to thousands, even tens of thousands of antitank guided missiles (ATGMs) and man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), the “Javelin” and “Stinger” missiles being the most prominent examples, Ukraine also received thousands of drones and loitering munitions.
Apart from weapons, the North Atlantic Alliance has also mobilized its vast ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capabilities and is relaying battlefield information to the Kiev regime. It remains to be seen how effective this is, given the collapse of Kiev’s joint military command and control structure, but it definitely shows the West’s commitment to their favorite regime. In other words, the US has been involved in every conceivable way, except for a direct shooting war with Russia. However, even that may change in the coming days and weeks.
The Kiev regime recently passed a law officially allowing foreign citizens to serve in its intelligence and higher echelons of military hierarchy. Of course, this doesn’t seem like news flash to most people, especially given that US intelligence has been heavily involved in Ukraine for decades. However, coupled with the recent Kiev’s request for the MQ-9 “Reaper” unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAV), this may be much bigger news than what the mainstream media is reporting. These US MQ-9 “Reaper” drones are infamous for sowing death and destruction across the world, with former US President Obama authorizing at least 6,000 documented drone strikes around the world (the actual number may be orders of magnitude greater), which would make it approximately 2 drone strikes per day during Obama’s 8 years of presidency.
And this is when we get to the connection between Kiev’s new law and the drones. The transfer of the MQ-9 “Reaper” is useless without the necessary training for the drone operators. This alone takes over two months, which is the time the Kiev regime simply doesn’t have. In order to make any possible difference, these drones would need to be used as soon as humanly possible. So, which other options does this leave for the regime? Well, it’s rather simple, but also very dangerous. Here’s why.
With the transfer of US combat drones, we may see American operators directly involved in their usage in combat. And the dangerous part is that these operators don’t even need to be stationed in Ukraine. The “Reaper” drones can be controlled via satellite links. The operator may be located somewhere in Germany, Italy or even the US mainland. And the legally gray area comes with the possible transfer of jurisdiction over these operators to the official Ukrainian military command. Strictly speaking, even though this would still mean that the US and NATO wouldn’t be directly involved, in case that the Kremlin finds about it (which it most certainly would), they would hardly see it as non-involvement. And if Moscow is to see it that way, we are talking about what would basically be direct US intervention. And we all know what kind of danger that poses to the world.
The obvious question arises – what should Russia do in that case? Decades of diplomatic efforts by the Kremlin have fallen on deaf ears. Why would the ever increasingly belligerent West listen to reason now, after doing everything in their power to push Ukraine into this bloodbath and after investing trillions to encircle Russia and weaken its position in Europe and the post-Soviet near abroad? Russia’s massive advantage, both qualitative and quantitative, in developing and deploying hypersonic weapons doesn’t seem to deter the US. Not even the recent combat usage of the “Kinzhal”, a highly maneuverable air-launched hypersonic weapon, in service with the Russian Aerospace Forces since 2017, doesn’t seem to deter the US. One way or the other, Russia will simply not allow the US to kill Russian soldiers with impunity. Is Washington DC so out of touch with reality, that they’re ready to raise the stakes so high?
And if anyone is to think this is plain paranoia and that it is based on circumstantial evidence, Russia’s reaction in recent days most certainly isn’t. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has recently “strongly advised” against sending additional US weapons to Ukraine. While Russia has protested NATO arming of the Kiev regime for years, this is the first time it has issued a stark warning to the United States. Now, Russia may not need to strike targets in the US mainland, but since these combat drones need to fly from somewhere, this may well be NATO airports in Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania or any other NATO member state, all of which are in the striking distance of Russian ballistic, cruise or hypersonic missiles. The question remains, what’s next?