Hot Summer Ahead

Paths to World War Three

Discussing the speed with which the West rejected Putin’s peace offer of June 13th, - even though this was the subject that most preoccupied huddled delegates to the ill-named Swiss Peace Conference over the weekend - Pepe Escobar earlier today shared with Judge Napolitano his expectation of some major development in the war over the next few weeks. He thought this might take the form of some kind of ISIS-K style false flag, or a major Western hit on Russian targets that would cause extensive damage to civilian populations.

Like many people, Escobar seems to presume that Russia is winning on the battlefields even if the progress is extremely slow. Russia has encountered some choppy water around the northern borderlands these past few days. Additionally, while some advances elsewhere are certainly perceptible, a few of them seem eternal, like the important Russian advance on Chasiv Yar that never seems to get beyond the eastern microdistrict, or the forever attempt by Russian forces to complete their takeover of Krasnohoriivka. Of course, this is in part the nature of warfare, with the inevitable twists and turns; it doubtless also reflects the challenges of very modern warfare (notably the centrality of drones and of blanket surveillance); furthermore, there is the not improbable explanation that the real Russian purpose is to exhaust and deplete Ukrainian troops through attrition - after all, one of Russia’s key terms for peace is demilitarization of Ukraine.

Escobar also shares that there is very sensitive concern in Moscow about the state of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, suggesting perhaps there is some embarrassment in the Kremlin about this (in effect it is a non-discussible topic). Escobar is inclined to the view, one that he indicates may be quite common among Russian security and business classes, that the Ministry of Defense has not done enough to protect the fleet. There is similar concern about incidents such as the one reported a few days ago of a Ukrainian strike on an Su-57 parked out in the open, without shelter, presumably because shelters for these extremely expensive machines had not been built.

The community of opinion to which Escobar refers is also inclined to think that Putin’s peace deal was too generous; a view with which I tend to agree but, if Putin was assuming that the deal would not be acceptable in any case, he may have deemed it better to leave it on record that Russia had, indeed, made a very generous offer. For example, it said nothing about Odessa, Kharkiv, Kiev, or the Black Sea. It sought only a commitment to neutrality and withdrawal from the Donbass as conditions for a ceasefire and the commencement of negotiations.

A successor to Putin would likely be far tougher than he.

Putin has been looking very confident lately, as at Saint Petersburg a few days ago for the economics conference, in his address to the Russian Foreign Ministry last Thursday, and his visit yesterday to North Korea. There have certainly been some notable Russian successes on the battlefield, although, as I indicated a moment ago, these are beginning to look a little worn. All this is occurring with increasing escalation of nuclear rhetoric which, I have consistently argued, must always entail an exponential escalation in the real chances of something irreparable happening as a result of accident, incorrect signals, faulty interpretations, that kind of thing. To the rhetoric is added actual, physical damage inflicted on Russian nuclear infrastructure, as when Ukrainian drones hit nuclear early warning radar stations a few weeks ago, with the potential effect of “blinding” Russia to incoming ICBMs and heightening Moscow propensity to nervousness and over-reaction. Additionally, we have seen Russia engage in exercises of its tactical nuclear weapons fleet; NATO engage in nuclear offensive simulations re. Kaliningrad; and a Russian fleet of nuclear-capable (perhaps even nuclear-armed vessels) visiting La Havana, which is only 257 miles from Miami. Yesterday we have heard the chief of NATO talking of increasing the alert level of NATO nuclear readiness and of increasing the number of NATO nuclear warheads.

NATO exercises on Russian borders for the better part of this year have been amongst the most flagrantly aggressive since its foundation. Western green-lighting of “Ukrainian’ (i.e. NATO directed) cruise missiles against Russian targets on or over Russian territory, intensifies the risks because Russia cannot know in advance which missiles, if any, are carrying nuclear warheads. The same is true of F-16s which, if they have not already arrived in Ukraine or, more likely, have arrived at Romanian or Polish airfields for lauches against Russian targets (Ukrainian airfields either being too short or having been damaged), invite immediate extension of the war and enhance the likerlihood of resort to nuclearization of the war if, for no better reason, they increase levels of uncertainty to unbearable levels.

Writing for Global Research, Drago Bosnic writes today that the political West expects to accumulate large concentrations of troops along Russia’s borders. There could be up to half a million NATO soldiers stationed in Eastern Europe alone, heavily armed and maintaining high battle readiness. According to Western military sources, there are no less than 300,000 troops stationed along the borders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine in offensive formation in the shape of a focus on air superiority, rapid deployment of frontline troops, special forces. NATO commanders worry that they do not yet have sufficient weaponry such as air defenses and longer-range missiles. The delivery of F-16s will serve as a cover for NATO air incursions, followed by land forces. In addition, I have recently posted details of NATO exercises in Scandinavia, of preparations for Scandinavian offensive action (mainly from Finland, of course, and also Norway, which shares some Arctic coastline with Russia) into Russia. Local governments have already agreed privileged transportation of military personnel and materiel across European borders and border zones in which law is NATO military law).

Do such preparations in any way determine an eventual defeat for Russia. Most certainly not. Russia can meet NATO troops levels; it can meet NATO weaponry levels; it has a much better and cheaper infrastructure for weapons production, and it has some very powerful friends, including China which already accounts for the bulk of global manufacturing.

Weaponizing Children

One of the purposes of the Swiss Peace Conference which, as I argued yesterday, couched its entire conversation on the basis that Ukraine and therefore NATO were innocent victims trying to repair damage done to them. As is normal in such fora, the cry of Bucha as a Russian war crime took no account of the many solid efforts to discredit this claim (often used, as in the New York Times yesterday, as an “explanation” for the failure of effective peace talks in Istanbul in March-April 2022 which actually came to an end as a result of deliberate sabotage by UK prime minister Boris Johnson acting for Washington). As for Bucha, Scott Ritter has demonstrated that Russian troops had left the area before the atrocities. These were more likely, in my view, to have been the work of Ukrainian or even Western special forces, wreaking vengeance on collaborators and creating a false flag to be used for propaganda purposes.

Another contentious issue has to do with the charges by the International Criminal Court that Russia deliberately seized Ukrainian children and transplanted them to Russia, sending them to “re-education” camps or giving children to Russian families to adopt. These grossly exaggerated claims are addressed in a piece published two days ago by Helen Andrews in The American Conservative. Are the charges true? Very plausibly, Russian defenders say that the children were evacuated from the war zone due to concerns for their safety and that children can be claimed by their Ukrainian parents or guardians in person with the proper documentation. Whereas Kiev says that more than 19,000 children have been affected, Moscow says the figure is 600. Andrews cites a Wall Street Journal story this week that finds that the problem is a great deal more complicated than some people have imagined. Qatar, for example, in trying to reunited Ukrainian children with parents and guardians, confronted myriad logistical and political challenges, managing to reunite only a total of 70 children by July 2023.

One challenge is paperwork. Russian authorities will not hand over a child simply on a Ukrainian claimant’s say-so. Foster parents do not always want the children back. Many children were living in orphanages. Because children in Ukrainian orphanages often have living parents who hope one day to reclaim the children, Russian authorities are sometimes unwilling to place war orphans in new homes, as they don’t know which ones still have parents in Ukraine who might want them back. There is also a big problem about child trafficking in Ukraine. In short, there are very good reasons why Russian authorities will not release a child simply because someone in Ukraine claims to be his rightful guardian.

In April this year, Michel Chossudovsky put this issue in broader context. He notes, for a start, that since 2014 civilian populations and objects such as schools were the deliberate targets of UAF and Azov Battalion attacks, in blatant violation of the Law of Armed Conflict (LOAC). In accordance with the LOAC, Moscow took the decision starting in February 2014 to come to the rescue of Donbass civilians, including children.

The accusation in Switzerland last weekend that Russia has committed genocide-like deportation of Ukrainian children can in no way be sustained. The ICC, argues Chossudovsky, takes no account of the rights of civilians in a war zone, and fails to acknowledge that killing children in a war zone, as has the Azov Battalion since 2014 - generously funded by the “international community” - is a crime against humanity. Since 2014, Donbass residential neighbourhoods, schools, hospitals, ambulances, etc. had been routinely targeted. From the 2014 Euromaidan and the US sponsored coup d’etat to February 2022, up to 14,000 Donbass residents have been killed. 

“Yet fleeing the war zone to save your children is tagged by the I.C.C. as “deportation”…Starting in 2014, thousands of Donbass families including children were provided safe haven in Russia, as part of a humanitarian initiative under the auspices of  Moscow’s Ministry of Emergency Situations. Russian families have welcomed them and provided assistance. Many of the children who were provided safe haven in Russia are orphans whose parents were killed by the Azov Battalion. And this is categorized by the I.C.C. and the mainstream media as the “kidnapping of children” by the President of the Russian Federation…..The I.C.C. has carefully turned a blind eye to the endless war crimes committed by US-NATO.”