by Gilbert Doctorow via Gilbert Doctorow.

In today’s 40-minute chat with host Nima Alkhorshid, we reviewed many of the issues I raised in my latest analytical article entitled “For Russia, recovering Kursk is no walk in the rose garden.”

https://youtu.be/59Rh6x8mi1w

I was particularly appreciative of the possibility to explain the methodological errors I perceive in most of my peers in the “dissident movement” opposing the Washington narrative who are most visible on youtube these days. I said this not for purposes of self-promotion, but to restore reason and balance to what has become a highly emotional interpretation of what is going on in the Russia-Ukraine war.

At issue is the use by my peers of backroom channels in Russia from retired or active military officers, from political scientists to produce here in the West what looks like impressive “scoops” but may in fact be something quite different: by this I mean that colleagues are likely being played by their Russian contacts to disseminate misleading or inaccurate information which makes the Russian military operations look like the proverbial walk in the rose garden, which makes the Ukrainians look like a depleted, rag tag force. No, as one highly authoritative Russian military expert who is a member of the upper house of the bicameral Russian legislature explained on a Russian talk show two days ago, there is fierce fighting going on in Kursk, not just some ‘bombs away’ from Russian jets dropping glider bombs. “Fierce fighting” means there are heavy casualties on both sides, and the effort to expel the Ukrainians from Kursk will take some time.

All of the challenges for the Russians in Kursk are due to the role the United States has and is playing there. The USA is supplying real-time satellite reconnaissance and command and control assistance to the Ukrainians. Moreover, all of the equipment the Ukrainians are using was delivered by the USA precisely with this mission in mind. And the same Russian panelist on The Great Game says this preparation by the United States means that Russia’s enemy on the ground in Kursk is in better fighting form than the Russians.

And then there is the possible, maybe likely connection between the US-planned and driven invasion of Kursk and the positioning of two US aircraft carriers in the Eastern Mediterranean, where they can as easily launch a first nuclear strike against Russia as be used to intervene in an Israeli-Iran war, which is all we hear about in major Western media.

Nonetheless, the single biggest issue in this interview is where are the Russian experts in the West, who know the language and culture as well as I do? We do not hear from them. The work of commenting on the war has been left to folks who are highly skilled geopolitical and military experts but who lack the in-depth area knowledge and the language skills essential if they were to test what information they are being given by their sources before passing it along to their viewers and readers.

Yes, such Russian experts do exist. I am not alone in a vacuum. There are several hundred if not thousands of them in the United States. Nearly all are serving as professors or instructors in universities, where they will be fired at once if they open their mouths and say what I say in public At my age that is not a problem, since I no longer have to work for a living. Others of them have jobs in think tanks, like RAND, where the very notion of resistance to the Washington narrative is heresy.

by Owen Matthews via Spectator

On the face of it, the ‘no limits’ partnership between Russia and China declared weeks before Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022 appears to be going from strength to strength. Last week, Chinese Premier Li Qiang spent four days in Moscow and signed off on what Putin described as ‘large-scale joint plans and projects’ that would ‘continue for many years’. Russia’s trade with China has more than doubled to $240 billion since the invasion, buoying the Kremlin’s coffers with oil money and substituting goods sanctioned by the West. Moscow and Beijing have also stepped up joint military exercises. Last month, Chinese and Russian long-range bombers were spotted patrolling together near Alaska just days after joint live-fire naval drills in the South China Sea, the first such exercises since 2016.

Is China – with Russia, Iran and North Korea in tow – forging the same kind of axis that threatened world peace in the 1940s? Could Putin and Xi Jinping be ‘wondering if it is their historical mission to usher in a new age of what they may think of as necessary violence’, as the American historian and diplomat Philip Zelikow has recently warned? The reality of the new Sino-Russian pact may be less threatening – and more complex – than it appears.

First and foremost, Beijing’s economic ties with Russia remain small beer compared with the $1.5 trillion of annual trade China does with the US and Europe. China may be Russia’s largest economic partner, but Russia is only China’s 13th. Beijing has also been careful to avoid becoming entangled in western economic sanctions on Moscow, with a slew of Chinese companies quitting Russia after the invasion. Among them was Sinopec, one of the biggest investors in the Russian energy sector, which froze negotiations on a planned $500 million investment in a petrochemical factory in Russia. Two leading Chinese banks – ICBC and Bank of China – pulled out, along with UnionPay, a Chinese payment system that was considered a lifeline for many Russians following the exit of Visa and Mastercard in March 2022.

Crucially, the Chinese government has also suspended plans for Power of Siberia 2 (POS-2), a 1,700-mile-long natural gas pipeline that was to link gas fields in western Siberia to northern China. That mega-project could have made up for the catastrophic loss of European gas markets in the wake of the September 2022 destruction of the €20 billion Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines – yet there is no mention of POS-2 in China’s long-term economic plans for the rest of the decade. Even when the project was first mooted a decade ago, the Chinese refused to fund POS-2. Neither did they contribute a penny to the smaller and partially completed Power of Siberia 1, which links gas wells in eastern Siberia to the Chinese grid, and was financed entirely by Russia’s Gazprom. Perhaps taking a lesson from the Kremlin’s use of gas cut-offs as a political tool against Europe in 2014 and again in 2022, Beijing prefers instead to rely on domestic supplies of coal for 56 per cent of its energy.

China has also green-lit the construction of 21 new nuclear power plants over the past two years alone, and has added more renewable capacity than the rest of the world combined. China, just like India and Turkey, is happy to import Russian oil – which currently trades at a discount thanks to a price cap of $60 a barrel imposed by the EU and US. But when it comes to committing itself to relying on Russian gas supplied through fixed pipelines, Beijing’s answer has been a strong no.

Since the start of the war, an avalanche of Chinese goods has taken over Russian markets abandoned by western retailers, accounting for 70 per cent of smartphones and 49 per cent of new cars sold last year. But alongside consumer durables are many high-tech components that Russia needs to keep its war effort going, Nato has alleged. In a stinging statement at the alliance’s 75th anniversary meeting in Washington last month, the bloc’s leaders accused China of being a ‘decisive enabler’ of Russia’s war against Ukraine and said its ‘large-scale support for Russia’s defence industrial base’ are ‘enabling Moscow to wage its war’. Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg urged Beijing to ‘cease all material and political support to Russia’s war effort’.

That accusation drew a sharp rebuke from the Chinese, who blasted the Nato statement as ‘filled with Cold War mentality and belligerent rhetoric’, and denounced it as ‘provocative with obvious lies and smears’. Beijing insists that it’s neutral in the Ukraine conflict and wishes only to ‘promote peace talks and seek political settlement’ on the basis of the United Nations Charter. Just weeks before a ‘peace summit’ organised by Ukraine and its western allies in Switzerland in June, China published its own six-point peace plan jointly with Brazil.

On the face of it, that kind of talk appears to support Kyiv’s position much more than Putin’s. But at the same time, the Beijing peace plan also condemned ‘expanding military blocs’ – a clear dig at Nato’s expansion and involvement in the war. China – which stayed away from Volodymyr Zelensky’s summit in June – instead suggested a separate international peace conference that would have representation from both Kyiv and Moscow. The Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba discussed the idea with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi during a three-day visit to Beijing last month. Xi had previously spoken at length by phone to Ukraine’s President, talks which Zelensky described as ‘long and meaningful’. Zelensky has now backed, in principle, some kind of talks with Russia in November – an example of China’s potential as a middleman in the endgame of the war.

Clearly, China’s ‘no limits’ partnership with Russia does, in fact, have very distinct limits – and is being conducted very firmly on Beijing’s terms. President Xi ‘does not want to be seen to be abandoning Putin and does not want him to fail’, argues Sir Lawrence Freedman of King’s College London. ‘But it is a choice. He is not under any obligation. While he may give Putin considerable latitude, there are limits on the partnership, for example when it comes to threats to use nuclear weapons, and he has made it clear that Russia is not an ally. Most importantly, he never pretends that this is a coming together of equals. China is by far the senior partner.’

China has refused to provide Moscow with military assistance (at least publicly), forcing Putin’s military to scour the world buying up old Soviet-model shells and artillery from as far afield as North Korea and Syria. It has also refused officially to recognise Crimea as Russian territory and has abstained from, rather than voted against, UN resolutions condemning Putin’s invasion.

So what does China really want from its relationship with Russia? First and foremost, Beijing wishes to prevent the normalisation of the use of tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield – a development which would radically change the military calculus of a possible Chinese annexation of Taiwan.

Second, Beijing wishes to stop Nato’s strategic turn to focus on the Asia-Pacific region – a recalibration led by Washington and backed by both Republicans and Democrats. In her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris vowed that America – not China – ‘wins the competition for the 21st century’, and that ‘we strengthen, not abdicate, our global leadership’. She also spoke of an ‘enduring struggle between democracy and tyranny’. At the same time, former president Donald Trump has often spoken of Europe’s need to look after its own security and for the US to focus on China.

Beijing’s fundamental national interest is to keep the US – and Nato – out of Asia, and to avoid a hot conflict with Washington. Ultimately, the chief value of Russia – as well as China’s other rogue associates, such as Iran and North Korea – is as bit-part actors in that vitally important strategic game. ‘Fundamentally [Beijing] has no interest whatsoever in the outcome of the Ukraine conflict, beyond preventing nuclear use and avoiding the collapse of the [Putin] regime,’ says one senior western official who has been in close contact with Chinese leaders during the war.

One optimistic scenario is that Beijing could help Europe solve its Russia problem by brokering a peace settlement in Ukraine and reining in Putin, while Europe could in turn help Beijing by restraining American bellicosity towards China. At the other end of the spectrum, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that a post-Putin Russia could one day find itself having more in common with Europe than with its great Eurasian rival.

Historically, Russia and China have been natural enemies rather than allies. Putin launched his war on Ukraine on the basis of a historic narrative of imperial conquest and ancient rights. But by that same logic, China has an excellent case for reclaiming swaths of Manchuria sliced off by Russia during the Qing dynasty. Indeed, though Ukraine’s current incursion into Russia’s Kursk region is commonly described as the first foreign invasion since 1941, it’s actually the Chinese who last took a chunk of territory from Moscow, when they occupied Zhen-bao (or Damansky) Island on the Ussuri river in March 1969. A Soviet T-62 tank that was captured during that 1969 border war is now on display at the Military Museum of the Chinese People’s Revolution – a place of pilgrimage for every senior Chinese officer and a reminder that just a generation ago Moscow and Beijing were at war.

China’s friendship with the Kremlin is purely pragmatic, limited and highly transactional. Putin’s war has, for the first time in centuries, effectively cut off the western-facing head of the Russian double-headed eagle, forcing it to look exclusively eastwards for economic and diplomatic succour. That weakness suits Beijing well, providing not just cheap energy but also the pick of Russian technology and human resources (Huawei, for instance, has reportedly recruited hundreds of top Russian engineers since the start of the war). A weaker Russia means a stronger China – which, for the moment, suits Xi’s ambitions to challenge America for global supremacy just fine.

(Excerpt)

by John Helmer, Moscow

Full text: https://johnhelmer.net/kursk-belgorod-bryansk-is-president-putin-preparing-for-istanbul-ii/print/

Remember the old adage — sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never harm me.

In the war by the US and its Anglo-European allies to destroy Russia since 1945, the propaganda war has been lost by the Russians many times over. That war is still being lost [3].

But for the first time since 1945, the battlefield war is being won by the Russian General Staff.

The uncertainty which remains is whether President Vladimir Putin will continue to restrict the General Staff’s war plans in order that Putin can go to negotiations with the Americans on terms which will forego the demilitarization and denazification of the Ukrainian territory between Kiev and the Polish border, and concede to the Kiev regime unhindered control of the cities to the east — Kharkov, Odessa, Dniepropetrovsk.

Call those terms Istanbul-II. As with the draft terms initialled in Istanbul at the end of March 2022 [4], Istanbul-II amounts to an exchange of dominant Russian military power for US and Ukrainian signatures on paper with false intention and temporary duration.

The US administration says it believes Putin will concede. It also believes that by staging its war of pinpricks — that’s the drone, artillery and missile barrages fired by the Ukrainian military, directed by the US and UK – in the Black Sea and Russia’s western border regions, Putin’s red lines and threats of retaliation are exposed [5] as empty bluff. The same interpretation of Putin, and confidence that he will accept US terms, are the foundation of the Ukraine “peace plan” of Donald Trump’s advisors [6]. The Trump plan’s offer of “some limited sanctions relief” reflects the conviction in Washington that Putin’s oligarch constituency can be bribed to push Putin into the same “frozen war” concessions as Roman Abramovich got Putin to accept at Istanbul-I – until the General Staff stopped them both.

Putin’s restrictions on the General Staff’s proposals for neutralizing the US and British air surveillance and electronic warfare operations; and his orders to stand by while the Ukrainians have assembled several thousand forces, first to cross into Kursk, and then into Bryansk and Belgorod, are now as visible in Moscow as they have been in Washington.

Moscow sources believe it was the Kremlin which was taken by surprise by the Kursk attack on August 6, but not the General Staff and the military intelligence agency GRU. They understood the battlefield intelligence as it was coming in and requested Putin’s agreement to respond. In retrospect, they say “we told you so”; they imply their hands were tied by the Kremlin orders.

“My understanding for now,” says one of the sources, “is that these are pinpricks that feel painful but they are not life threatening. Russia will not take any land, for now, other than the four regions. It should be the eight regions but it’s obvious Putin doesn’t have the will and the military does not have the capacity to hold. So we will see Ukrainians inside Kursk for a while. But it should be downplayed because it should not be allowed to be a bargain chip in negotiations the other side is aiming at.”

Putin said this himself, the source points out at his meeting on August 12 [7] with the Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, and others. “These [Kursk] actions clearly aim to achieve a primary military objective: to halt the advance of our forces in their effort to fully liberate the territories of the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics, the Novorossiya region.” Putin also said: “It is now becoming increasingly clear why the Kiev regime rejected our proposals for a peaceful settlement, as well as those from interested and neutral mediators…. It seems the opponent is aiming to strengthen their negotiating position for the future. However, what kind of negotiations can we have with those who indiscriminately attack civilians and civilian infrastructure, or pose threats to nuclear power facilities? What is there to discuss with such parties?”

“It’s obvious at this point,” comments a military source, “that the Americans and Ukrainians have decided that Putin will come to terms if they snatch enough Russian territory and keep up their strikes behind the Russian lines…The Ukrainians are going for broke in the north while the centre collapses. But they know, no matter how expensive it is, the longer they remain on the attack, the worse it looks for the Russian leadership. They also have the measure of Putin who gives orders for half measures.”

This is also obvious in the Security Council in Moscow. The Council’s deputy secretary, ex-president Dmitri Medvedev, made the point explicitly in his Telegram account declaration on August 21 [8], implying that until he had said it, no one else dared: “In my opinion, recently, even theoretically, there has been one danger – the negotiation trap, into which our country could fall under certain circumstances; for example. Namely, the early unnecessary peace talks proposed by the international community and imposed on the Kiev regime with unclear prospects and consequences.” Medvedev was referring to Istanbul-I. “After the neo-Nazis committed an act of terrorism in the Kursk region, everything has fallen into place. The idle chatter of unauthorized intermediaries on the topic of the beautiful world has been stopped. Now everyone understands everything, even if they don’t say it out loud. They understand that there will BE NO MORE NEGOTIATIONS UNTIL THE COMPLETE DEFEAT OF THE ENEMY! [Medvedev’s caps]”

Medvedev’s reference to the “idle chatter of unauthorized intermediaries” is to the Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, whom Putin endorsed at the Kremlin on July 5 for the ill-concealed purpose of sending a message to presidential candidate Trump with whom Orban talked on July 10. For that story, click [9].

Days before his meeting with Orban, Putin had announced [10] his abandonment of the demilitarization, denazification objectives of the Special Military Operation in exchange for “the complete withdrawal of all Ukrainian troops from the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and from the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.”

This change of objective has not yet been acknowledged by the Kremlin media; it is opposed [11] by the Russian military and by the majority of Russian voters. “War is war — either we go to war or surrender” – is a popular slogan on Russian social media for Putin to stop restricting the General Staff.

“The problem for the Russians,” comments a military source, “is that they, especially the Kremlin, the Defense Ministry, and the Foreign Ministry have lost the propaganda war. This puts them in a bad spot as they need more than stopping, then pushing the Ukrainians back in Kursk, or a Donbass victory, in order to recover. They need to knock the Ukrainians out of the war. But on that Putin says one thing — he does another.”

The Ukrainian border crossing began between 5 and 5:30 in the morning of August 6.

The first reports from the Defense Ministry in Moscow were false. On the afternoon of August 7, Chief of the General Staff, Valery Gerasimov, in a public briefing of the president and other officials, claimed [12]: “At 5.30 am on August 6, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine numbering up to 1,000 people went on the offensive with the aim of capturing a section of the territory of the Sudzha District in the Kursk Region. The joint actions by the state border covering units together with border guards and reinforcement units, air strikes, missile forces, and artillery fire stopped the enemy’s advance into the territory in the Kursk direction…We will complete the operation by defeating the enemy and reaching the state border.”

This Ukraine force count was much too low; their advance was not stopped; the restoration of the state border has not been achieved after three weeks of fighting. Either Gerasimov knew much better and was lying to Putin for public propaganda; or else he didn’t know what the true situation was.

The General Staff’s misdirections were repeated by the only independent Russian media sources not directly under state control – the military bloggers, the best of whom are Boris Rozhin (Colonel Cassad) and Mikhail Zvinchuk (Rybar). Rozhin tried to downplay the attack through the first day, relying on Defense Ministry and region official releases. Rozhin’s first report appeared at 10:12 on the morning of August 6: [14] “The governor of the Kursk region reported an attempt by the enemy forces to break through on the territory of the region. The attack was carried out by limited forces and was repulsed. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation and the FSB did not allow the breakthrough of the enemy’s forces”. This was false.

Gerasimov’s report to Putin exposed himself, the General Staff, and the Defense Ministry to a round of allegations of incompetence and negligence which were published a week later by media under Kremlin control. These allegations [15] include a failure by Russian intelligence to detect the concentration of Ukrainian forces in advance of the border crossing, and a personal failure by Gerasimov to “ignore several warnings about a Ukrainian buildup near the Kursk border. ” An anonymously sourced report by a non-Russian reporter with a record of plagiarism and fabrication claims to be based on “hawks in the siloviki apparatus [who] don’t make it a secret that Gerasimov should be fired” and replaced, the reporter claimed, by a combination of the discredited General Sergei Surovikin and the head of the Federal Security Service, Alexander Bortnikov.

The campaign against Gerasimov also appears to be a defence of Putin’s advance knowledge and his operational orders to Gerasimov before August 6 [15]: “President Putin’s reaction to the Kursk invasion was visible in his body language. He was furious for the flagrant military/intel failure; for the obvious loss of face; and for the fact that this buries any possibility of rational dialogue about ending the war.”

Moscow sources explain these are Kremlin claims aimed at whitewashing Putin’s refusal to allow the General Staff to extend their operations into the Ukrainian Sumy region to break up the attack concentration in advance; and at concealing Putin’s purpose in preparing for the Istanbul-II negotiations. The sources also point out that the National Guard, the well-armed and highly mobile presidential force, has failed to appear in any role in the Kursk region, not even in defence of the predictable target of the Kurchatov nuclear power plant. The Guard commander, Victor Zolotov, Putin’s former bodyguard, did not appear in the Kremlin meetings on the Kursk operation until August 12, when he was at the bottom of the table on Putin’s right, sitting opposite Gerasimov; in the Kremlin record [7] Zolotov had nothing to say….

As the Russian analysts struggle to explain what has happened at Kursk, they have largely ignored the history illustrated in this chart and this map. In order to blame the regional administrations and scapegoat the governors, as the Kremlin has encouraged, the record of repeated requests to put the regions on a war footing in advance – not an anti-terrorism operation after the event – has been censored, along with the record of Putin’s temporizing, procrastination, and refusal. For Putin’s comparable form in responding to high-casualty coalmine accidents in Kemerovo region and to coke and steel plant pollution in Chelyabinsk, both of them caused by oligarch supporters of the president, click to read this [40] and this [41].

Because Martyanov is based in the US, he has used his military reports to imply political blame at the level of the civilian regional administrations. “The best equipped Ukrainian (practically all of it fresh NATO hardware) and motivated troops, and NATO generals who planned this catastrophe for them, covered part (about 11-12 kilometers) of what is called the security zone, which was not prepared (why, we will know in a due time–administration of Kursk Oblast has a lot to answer for)…”

The national politician closest to the war front has carefully reversed the scapegoating down the command line, and at the same time held the Kremlin to account for its insistence on the war as an anti-terrorist operation. This is Dmitri Rogozin [42] – at one time the civilian minister in charge of the military-industrial complex, a potential presidential successor, and currently senator for Zaporozhye . According to Rogozin as early as August 7 [43], “the transfer of responsibility for restoring order and legality in these territories to the National Anti-Terrorist Committee, which is headed by the FSB and which includes or involves all those who are necessary for the case, including the Ministry of Defense, is also a recognition of the fact that in the person of the Kiev regime we are dealing with terrorists, and not with the state. With all the consequences…”

By that last phrase Rogozin (right) meant that since the Kursk attack was a terrorist operation directed by terrorists in Kiev, the Russian anti- terrorist operation should extend to Kiev, Putin’s restrictive orders to the General Staff should be lifted, and the “terrorist regime” should be destroyed throughout the territory to the Polish, Romanian and Hungarian borders. “The situation in the world and in our country has changed radically, and these decisions are urgently needed.” Rogozin was addressing [43] Putin as the decision-maker.

“[Alexander] Syrsky is not a Ukrainian,” Rogozin said on August 11, referring to the Russian- born Ukrainian general staff chief. “He’s one of our traitors. Zelensky is also not a Ukrainian. He’s one of the Jewish traitors. They don’t feel sorry for Ukrainians. They’ll definitely throw them at us… Zelensky is threatening us with a series of terrorist attacks across the country, including the Urals, Siberia and the Far East. That’s how you should understand his words. If his threats are not military, but terrorist in nature, he positions himself as the leader of a state terrorist organization and is subject to liquidation. I hope that my logic is clear and obvious to those who should immediately make a decision to start planning an operation to eliminate Zelensky.”

This is as close as a national politician has come so far to reverse the logic of Putin’s proposals for Istanbul-II, and instead to empty the territory of its “terrorists” and their weapons to the full limits of the demilitarization and denazification goals of February 2022.

“Whoever is to blame on the Russian side for the invasion of Kursk,” comments [45]a military source, “this is officially now a tar baby for the Ukrainians. They can’t afford to stay but they can’t afford to leave either. They should thank their lucky stars for Putin. It not for him, they’d have no place to leave for or return to.”

Reversing the operational logic of the anti-terrorism operation has a domestic political corollary which Rozhin admitted ruefully on August 24. [46] “Many people are already talking about the need to use useful organizational solutions of the Stalinist period, especially in terms of mobilizing the country and society in war conditions, starting with the former de-stalinizer [Dmitri] Medvedev, who now scares the directors of defense factories with Stalin’s letters from the Second World War. The reason for this is simple — referring to the previous historical experience, in the 20th century, in terms of decisions in a difficult period for the country, there is no one to turn to except Stalin. Well, not to Gorbachev nor to Nicholas II.”

For “organizational solutions of the Stalinist period”, read the end of the Russian oligarchy.

An oligarch source in Moscow denies this. “The oligarchs are having the best time in the last two decades inside Russia,” the source says. “None of them wants to leave for the west and no one is asking Putin to make any compromise with the US. Everyone understands the money is not coming back; they have written off their London, their Sardinia properties. Their children are fine in the US and UK with their new nationalities, but they were not going to return anyway. So no, there is no real pressure from oligarchs on Putin for a war settlement. But everyone wants some sanctions softened.”

by Gilbert Doctorow

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2024/08/27/for-russia-recovering-kursk-is-no-walk-in-the-rose-garden/

In my last appearance on Judging Freedom, Judge Napolitano asked me whether the Ukrainian invasion of the Kursk region would be ended by the time of our next chat, two days from today. The implicit assumption behind this question is that the Russians were doing so well destroying all the NATO-supplied tanks, personnel carriers and other advanced equipment, they were killing and maiming so many Ukrainian troops by their carpet bombing and heavy glide bombing of the region, that none but a rag tag collection of invaders would be left to liquidate or take prisoner in the several days ahead.

This assumption was founded in the confident declarations of my peers in the Opposition or, shall we say, ‘dissident’ movement in the United States. And their certainty, which was reflected in the over-hyped titles given to the recordings of their interviews on youtube came from back channels in Russia that my peers have been using for their public statements.

For example, the very widely watched Scott Ritter revealed in a recent interview that he has been in touch with the commander of the Chechen forces now engaged in Kursk, Alaudinov. Such contact is entirely credible given the fact that Ritter visited Grozny earlier this year, met with the republic’s leader Kadyrov, participated in a review of the Chechen troops and surely met with some of their military chiefs.

Indeed, in view of the seeming consensus that the Russian recovery of Kursk is proceeding apace, with 4,000 of the estimated 12,000 invaders having been killed up to last Thursday, I also foresaw an early end to the conflict, though not necessarily measured in one week. As I explained, the Russian Ministry of Defense only claims territorial gains when it has thoroughly combed the territory and assured itself there are no enemy forces hiding out here or there. The 1,000 square kilometers initially occupied by the Ukrainians are a lot of ground to comb

However, I have had my reasonable doubts about the value of using such back channels as Alaudinov. Back in the days of the battle for Bakhmut, we saw a lot of Alaudinov on the Sixty Minutes news and talk show. Each day presenter Olga Skabeyeva warmly welcomed him on air and he handled himself very well, speaking optimistically of Russia’s progress but giving no specifics that could be of use to the enemy. In short, his lips were sealed. I find it hard to believe that such a professional soldier and patriot would give anything of use to a foreigner, however friendly he or she might be to the Russian cause.

Last night’s edition of the talk show The Great Game gave a very different picture of the state of conflict in Kursk from what my peers are saying and of where this proxy war may be headed NOW, not in some distant future.

See https://rutube.ru/video/f8abcf8a37c43568ef44089025726934/

The key personality in this discussion was Frants Klintsevich, identified on the video as leader of the Russian Union of Veterans of Afghanistan. His Wikipedia entry further informs us that after serving as a Duma member for many years he is now a Senator, i.e., a member of the upper chamber of Russia’s bicameral legislature. He has represented the city administration of Smolensk in the western part of the Russian Federation, where he is no stranger, having been born just across the border in what is now the independent state of Belarus.

For 22 years ending in 1997, Klintsevich was an officer in Russia’s Armed Forces, serving primarily with the parachutists, meaning that he has guts and knows what it means to face battle. He retired with the rank of colonel, but continued his military education in the Military Academy of the General Staff, graduating in 2004. He also has a Ph.D. in psychology and is a gifted linguist, with command of German, Polish, and Belarussian. He is a member of the steering committee of the ruling United Russia party. I bring this out to make the point that Klintsevich is no garden variety ‘talking head’ but a very authoritative source.

And his testimony on The Great Game is the kind of Open Source on which I rely to say what I do about current Russian affairs.

Klintsevich’s commentary last night was intended to sober up the television audience and explain why the fight in Kursk is far more complicated and challenging than anyone is saying either on Russian or on Western news. It suggests that Russian casualties among its armed forces may be far more serious than anyone would suppose.

Klintsevich’s commentary lays the foundation for a dramatic Russian escalation of the proxy war into a hot war threatening to become WWIII. Why? Because the so-called Zelensky gambit in Kursk is fully enabled by the United States and its NATO allies, using skills, satellite and airborne reconnaissance, command and control resources in real time that are superior to anything the Russians possess. It also has Western including U.S. boots on the ground. And in conditions like this, the disadvantaged side faces a strong temptation to go for the great equalizer, nuclear arms, to defend itself and to assure its victory.

Klintsevich also said what I have not seen elsewhere, given the ubiquitous belief in Opposition interviews that the Ukrainians in Kursk are cut off from sources of supply: that Kiev has now raised the number of its forces sent to Kursk from 12,000 to 20,000.

In short, the Zelensky gambit that is being enabled fully by the United States is not a PR stunt but a full-blown invasion intended to be the vanguard of what will be an air assault on Russia’s strategic assets far in the rear using JASSM, Storm Shadow and other long-range missiles launched from F16s.

Klintsevich has further intimated that the two U.S. aircraft carriers and their escorts now in the Eastern Mediterranean may be there not to contain Iran but for an all-out attack on Russia using their jets to deliver nuclear strikes. I add to his analysis that this may explain the knock-out of Russia’s early warning radar stations in the south of the country by Ukrainian drones acting on orders from Washington.

So far, the Russian response to these gathering storm clouds has been two days in succession of massive missile and drone attacks on critical infrastructure in Ukraine. But let us not have any illusions: if the Russians sense that the United States is about to pounce on them, to use the assets in Ukraine and beyond not just against Russian planes, which have been moved back beyond the 900 km range of the JASSM and Storm Shadows, but on critical civilian infrastructure to disable the war effort, then a preventive Russian attack on NATO, on the continental United States. not to mince words, is entirely conceivable.

All of this is sure to play out in the weeks before 4 November and the U.S. elections. The Biden administration is evidently committed to a struggle to the death. Who will flinch? Who will “win” is an open question. Washington, you have been forewarned by Mr. Klintsevich, who is surely speaking on behalf of the Kremlin.

by Germán Gorraiz Lopez- Analyst

After the asymmetric punishment inflicted by Israel in Gaza, all basic infrastructure, Schools, mosques, hospitals and 90 per cent of buildings were reportedly destroyed by systematic aerial bombardments resulting in over 40,000 Palestinian civilian casualties and several thousand more buried among the rubble.
The real objective of the Gaza military campaign would be to provoke a second nakba in which 1,5 million Palestinians will be forced to leave a Gaza that has become a pile of rubble and human remains, making it impossible for displaced people to return and for Palestinians to be confined in an open-air concentration camp located in Rafah, Situation described by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk as “apocalyptic while warning ” of the growing risk of genocide”.
Such a forced confinement of the Gaza population would be a pressure measure to open its border and Palestinians to settle in the Sinai Peninsula, after which Israel will proceed with the unilateral declaration of sovereignty over Gaza and its maritime areas.
Israel, new gas node?
Under the Oslo peace agreements, Palestinian territorial waters would be extended to 20 nautical miles in the Mediterranean and following the agreement signed in 1999 between the Palestinian National Authority and British Gas Group, prospecting determined that the gas reserves in the area would amount to / 1.4 trillion cubic meters, of which 60% would be Palestinian and the rest Israeli.
This amount would allow for years to meet the electricity needs of the Gaza Strip, and also export abroad but its exploitation required the tripartite agreement between Israel, Hamas and the PNA but after the invasion of Gaza by Israel, Netanyahu would have decided to take control of the sea routes and exploration of the gas reserves that would be integrated into Israel’s offshore facilities.
The stated objective would be to make Israel a key node for the supply of fossil fuel through pipelines connected to the European continent from the Tamar and Leviathan deposits, of what would be a paradigm the fact that bypassing international law and even before starting the invasion of Gaza Farm, Netanyahu granted 12 licenses six companies to explore and discover additional offshore natural gas fields.
The next Anglo-Jewish objective would be to proceed with the construction of the Ben Gurion Canal, a project named after the founder of the Israeli regime, David Ben Gurion, which was conceived in the late 1960s with a view to creating an alternative route to the Suez Canal, the main maritime route linking Europe and Asia, which would thus come under Jewish-American control.
Subsequently, in the second phase of ethnic cleansing undertaken by Israel, we will see the expulsion of the Arab population from East Jerusalem and the unstoppable expansion of Israeli settler settlements in the West Bank, Ramallah remains as a Palestinian islet in an ocean of Israeli colonies where he will languish until his death an Abbas become mere servant of Israel.
The two-state theory will therefore remain an impossible utopia to germinate given the intransigence of Israel and the United States in negotiating a lasting peace that implies the mutual recognition of the States of Israel and Palestine.

by Iliya Tsukanov via Sputnik

Russia has vowed a military response to US’ plans to deploy strategic, ground-based missiles in Germany by 2026. Scott Ritter, a former UN weapons inspector-turned international affairs observer who literally wrote the book on arms control in Europe in the 1980s, tells Sputnik why the prospective deployment is so dangerous.

The White House announced plans to deploy three types of strategic missiles in Germany last week, with the new capabilities set to include:

Ground-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, which became available to the Pentagon after the US unilaterally scrapped the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia in 2019. The Raytheon-manufactured missiles have a range anywhere from 460-2,500 km, and can be armed with conventional or low-to-intermediate yield nuclear warheads.

The SM-6 – a long-range surface-to-air-missile system which can be launched from the US Army’s new Typhon Mid-Range Capability (MRC) missile system, or the Aegis Ashore air and missile defense systems the US has deployed in Romania and Poland. Manufactured by Raytheon. Firing range of 240-460 km.

Unnamed ‘hypersonic’ capabilities widely speculated to be the Army’s Dark Eagle Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) – the only one of the half-a-dozen plus US hypersonics programs anywhere near operational status. Developed by Lockheed Martin. Reported range up to 3,000 km. Payload unknown.

“It’s the Dark Eagle that is perhaps the most destabilizing,” former weapons inspector and US Marine Corps intelligence officer Scott Ritter told Sputnik. “While it is not a nuclear-capable missile, it is a system that has the ability to strike deep inside Russia with precision hypersonic warheads that are virtually impossible to intercept,” Ritter explained.

With such a system, the observer noted, Pentagon planners and hawks in Washington may be tempted to launch aggression against Russian military and leadership targets. This would be in line with the DoD’s long-running Conventional Prompt Strike (formally Prompt Global Strike) initiative – a program which has been in the works since the 2000s.

“This is an extraordinarily destabilizing development, and Russia has said it will respond,” Ritter said, noting that while “the specifics of a Russian response aren’t known,” it’s possible that it may include resuming development of the RS-26 Rubezh – a solid-fueled intermediate-range ballistic missile with a nuclear multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle (MIRV) or maneuverable reentry vehicle (MaRV) payload.

Artist’s impression of RS-26 Rubezh’s possible configuration on the base of the RS-24 Yars ICBM mobile ground-based launched strategic missile system.
© Photo : MilitaryRussia.ru

“It’s believed that Russia could bring this system back into operation and deploy it in short order. The RS-26 is a road-mobile system that has the ability of carrying three Avangard hypersonic [glide vehicle] warheads that are nuclear-capable,” Ritter said.

The former weapons inspector, who wrote a book on his experiences working with the On-Site Inspection Agency in the late 1980s to verify the USSR’s compliance with the then-recently ratified INF Treaty – which was designed to dramatically reduce nuclear tensions in Europe by eliminating all US and Soviet ground-launched missiles in the 500-5,500 km range, told Sputnik that Washington’s plans to deploy missiles in Germany again are eerily familiar to him.

“We’ve gone back in time. It’s back to the 1980s, back to a situation where the United States and NATO and Russia once again face off with weapons that are inherently destabilizing. One mistake, one miscalculation, one misjudgment could lead to a situation where these missiles are fired in anger, and this would lead to the potential of a general nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia,” Ritter warned.

“The American and German decision to deploy the intermediate-range capable systems into Europe is one of the most dangerous decisions that have been made by the US and NATO in a season of dangerous decisions. It’s an irresponsible escalation that, unless it’s reversed, can only lead to very tragic conclusions. It’s déjà vu all over again. We got rid of these weapons once. We made the world safer. The question is, can we do it again? And I would say with the current American and European leadership, the current American and German leadership, I’m not holding out much hope,” the observer summed up.