Middling to Zero Good News

World War III On the Agenda

Steve Witkoff, who is due to resume talks with Iran this coming Saturday in Oman is reported to have changed the tone of what he says Iran needs to do. A few days ago he appeared to support Iran’s continuing to enrich uranium but only to a ceiling of 3.67% (too low for some medical applications). But now, today, he says that Iran must totally eliminate its nuclear program, not even allowing Iran to enrich uranium to the lowest levels necessary for civilian use. Witkoff also talks of the need for Iran to eliminate its nuclear weaponization program, as well as certain categories of missile.

Witkoff’s change of position is almost certainly the consequence of pressure from Trump who likely calculates that the only way in which he is going to be able to get his neocon adversaries to accept some kind of US exit from Ukraine is if he gives them what they want in Iran. What they want in Iran is war. So Witkoff’s new terms are such as to force Iran to reject them: they totally contravene its national sovereignty; the return to a discourse of “weaponization” flies in the face of all the best of intelligence services who say that Iran has no program for the weaponization of its nuclear assets; and the mention of missiles is a slap in the face of Iranian sources who have said that the question of missiles is non-negotiable.

Iran should feel supported in walking once more to the precipice, since it is now a member of the BRICS, its has a strategic partnership with Russia and a close relationship with China, which imports some 30%-40% of its oil from Iran.

Genociding the Middle East

Israel is proceeding with its plan for what it odiously describes as the voluntary migration of Palestinians from Gaza. The most likely destination fo this very involuntary and illegal expulsion of Palestinians is the Sinai desert in Egypt (expulsion to places like the Sudan or Somalia will be much more challenging and scarcely less inhumane, even assuming evidence of Sudanese or Somali approval of which I have seen none).

It remains to be seen whether al-Sisi’s Egypt will show more resolve in helping Israel genocide the Palestinians (blocking their entry, depriving them of assistance or through other means) than in finally standing up to its Western backers and to Israel and doing what the majority of Egyptians want it to do: protect Palestine, collaborate with Yemen and other Arab parties, and bring this horrific narrative to a kinder, more honorable and ennobling end. Don’t hold your breath.

Two-thirds of the Palestinian population of Gaza is either under active displacement orders or within no-go zones. Some refuse to leave. 400,000 have been newly displaced in the space of a month. The scene is being set for one of the world’s most grotesque war crimes by an Israeli prime minister who is under threat of criminal charges and imprisonment at home, with the support of a US President whose campaign was financed by billionaire Zionists and whose cabinet is Zionist through and through.

Zelenskiy Glares

So Witkoff, charming and billionaire he may be, knowledgable beyond the realm of real estate, perhaps no, and his own man, not so much:

How will this play out in Ukraine? Zelenskiy - who has not observed Witkoff’s over-hyped achievement of a 30 days partial cease fire with respect to attacks on Russian energy facilities, much to the delight of Europe which wants to keep the US enmeshed in the Ukraine imbroglio for ever and which has made a Black Sea ceasefire impossible - has presented bills to the RADA that will extend the period of marial law by another 90 days (extending his illegal presidency for the same period, of course) from May 9th to August 6, along with more mobilization. Ukrainian MP Maryana Bezuhla has called for Ukraine to break off diplomatic relations with the US.

Trump is furious with Zelenskiy and complains, not for the first time, that the battle in Ukraine is “Biden’s War,” although in his first term Trump did much to beef up Ukrainian defenses and forces in preparation for this war, and has not put an end to the flow of US weapons and intelligence to Ukraine.

Zelenskiy has made it clear that he is not going to agree any unconditional ceasefire on Russian terms and probably on no terms that do not involve Russia giving back all the territory that it has acquired.

Russia has made it clear that it is not going to agree any unconditional ceasefire on Ukrainian or on European terms. Zelenskiy has not even revoked the October 2022 decree that forbids any Ukrainian from negotiating with Putin.

The US has yet to put up a proposal that looks like one that either Russia or Ukraine would be willing to accept or even one that Russia would be content to see the US impose on Ukraine. And Russia, which reportedly recruits between 1,000 and 1,400 men each day, has recently launched a major offensive that takes in advances in the Chernihiv and Sumy areas in the north, the Kupyansk, Lyman, Siversk, Toretsk, Pokrovsk and Zapporizhzhia areas further south.

Negotiations over Ukraine are challenging enough, and Trump makes them a grest more complicated with absurd proposals about US owning Ukrainian mineral rights, pipelines and, essentiually, Ukraine, and somewhat more sensible but not totally Ukraine-related issues about the normalization of relations between the US and Russia.

And all this comes amidst the outrageous lunacy of a gargantuan global tariff policy` that will not actually, in the long term, if in any term, actually benefit the US (actually, the reverse) on the basis of no sensible public debate whatsoever and that involves an economic and possibly a hot war against the second strongest (actually the strongest in PPP terms) economy on the globe. It cannot work, as Trump fondly imagines, to re-industrialize the US, because all the infrastructure to support such a policy has wasted away and China is light-years ahead. This is not about cheap labor; it is about superior technology, strategic know-how, purposeful education and excellence of tactics. Trump is at least a quarter to half a century too late.

European Flatulence

The stink bombs continue to explode at regular intervals across Europe. Starmer and Macron, it turns out, are in league with General Kellogg, Trump’s other “peace” envoy whose ideas of peace in Ukraine embrace the self-proposed roles of Britain and France (and the Baltic states) as the “saviors” or protectors or agents provocateurs of a post-ceasefire Ukraine, at continuing enormous expense to the European taxpayer and which appear otherwise unworkable for Russia.

Leader of this cabal, Britain’s Keir Starmer, whose poll rating is sinking at the fastest rate in British history only nine months of becoming Prime Minister, can boast of an army of only 70,000, some planes, a few dozen tanks, a few ships (not all of them seaworthy) and submarines (its nuclear weapons requiring US parts and permission to use), its missile stockpiles denuded by free handouts to Ukraine, is having difficulty keeping Britain’s last, unprofitable, Chinese owned, steele blast furnace alight.

But this doesn’t stop the British and British intelligence from supporting Israeli genocide and general meddling around in Central Europe, the Balkans and the Middle East (as Alex Kraimer has recently argued) with the hope of igniting new fronts against Russia, whether this be taking over the role of USAID in promoting anti-Russian sentiment in Georgia, or advising Romania how to pervert free elections, or encouraging resistance in Bosnia-Herzegovina to Bosnian Serbian defection, and stoking an uprising against Vucic in Serbia, who overseas one of the fastest rates of economic growth in Europe.

Fredriech Merz, who has already wrangled a deal to remove the constraint of German debt limits and is soon to be formally declared chancellor of Germany seeks a massive German rearmament program. For hors d’ouevre he would like to spearhead the MGGA with the gift of Taurus missiles to Ukraine, the kind that depend absolutely on German operators on the ground and will all but require Russia to begin practiuce for the targetting of German facilities - long before Merz has had the time to borrow the first $10 of the $800 billion borrowing spree that perhaps he dreams will hand ownership of Germany to the international banks and global hedge funds, an interest to which he has dedicted most of his life hitherto.

The Ukraine Battlefield

Trump appears to have accepted Russia’s explanation of a recent strike in Sumy that killed several citizens and injured dozens, that this was a mistake (the intended target was a military meeting), indicative, perhaps, of Trump’s current pro-Russian and anti-Zelenskiy reading of events. Mainstream media condemnation sits uncomfortably with its relative silence over Western complicity with the deaths in Gaza and the very many more to come, and its silence on the evidence of Ukrainian masterminding of assassination attempts on Trump during his campaign, as discussed by Joe Lauria yesterday in Consortium News.

The latest I have gleaned from Dima’s midday report today, April 15th, on Military Summary Channel:

In Ukraine’s Sumy oblast, Russia has control of Vodoahy, is fighting for Vladimrovky and Belovody, and attacking UAF positions near Nova Sich much further south. In the area of Gornal, Russia is surrounding a church and monastery complex with underground facilities that is now a UAF base for a force of around 300 Ukrainian soldiers some element of which has murdered the commander who was trying to talk surrender terms to the Russians.

The Ukrainians have been all but been defeated in the Russian oblast of Kursk with Russian retaking most of Guyevo. In Belgorod, where Ukrainians have been largely evicted from Popovka and Demidovka, Russians have now taken the battle into Kharkiv territory, stopping Ukrainian advances in the vicinity of Prokhody. Russia has discovered and dislodged another Ukrainian position to the north near Kucherov, as Russia prepares a campaign much further to the west towards Myropilia.

Russia’s offensive in North Kupyansk, west of Lyman Pershyi, has been halted. Russia in recent days made advances westerwards towards the territories of Husynka, and Tyshchnivka, but this has not been confirmed. In the Siversk direction, Russian forces are moving towards Hryhorivka, west of Bilohorivka and, if successful, will move further west towards Serebrianke.

Little new Russian advance has been reported from Chasiv Yar where Russia controls only some half of the settlement ever after nearly a year of fighting. If at some point it does manage to achieve a breakthrough here then the next obvious destination to the west is Kostiantynivka.

Russia has held the urban connurbation of Toretsk to the south for some weeks now, despite a number of Ukrainian counterattacks northwest of the city, where Russia has now taken Nepivka and is bombing UAF positions north of Toretsk and Dylivka. To the south of Toretsk, Russia has taken control of the village of Valentynivka and Russian troops have entered Sukha Balka (west of Niu York which is under Russian control), an area of intensve Ukrainian fortifications.

Russian forces and attacks are moving west from here toward Stara Mykolaivka, Kalynove towards Zelene Pole,

and Tarashivka with a more distant aim of moving on to Malynivka, which lies a few kilometers from Pokrovsk. The southern part of the city of Pokrovsk has suffered intense damage from Russian drones and artillery, and Russian forces are aiming to take the southern perimeter of the city before staging a direct attack on the city.

South of Pokrovsk,Russian forces have attacked Odredne, moving north of Razdolne to Bahatyr, not far from Vesele (under Russian occupation) and Fedorivka (south of Siversk), and have taken control over Dniproenergiya in the direction of Novosilkivske, possibly with a view to continuing west to Schevchenka.