Peace, Not So Much

Alternative Voices

I am pleased to see that there has been a posting early this morning and at the usual time from the Military Summary Channel, followed by its usual midday report. Returning to Judging Freedom, I note that in addition to what had been thme site’s most recent report, an interview with Aaron Mate originally put up last Wednesday I believe, there was another from the same day, with Alastair Crooke. Perhaps by tomorrow it will be clear whether Napolitano’s YouTube posts will resume as normal. If there was something afoot in the way of blocking YouTube posts, one might expect it to affect Alexander Mercouris’ London-based daily broadcast which, to my mind, seems usually and with impressive certitude of judgment and amplification of detail, to interpret developments in a light that is as favorable to Russia as circumstances permit (which could, of course, simply reflect the empirical reality on the ground). That too was operating normally yesterday and today, as was its sister channel, The Duran.

Nuclear Dangers

We appear to be living moments of very great risk and danger. There have been recent rumors, referred to but not validated by the Russian MoD, of a planned attrack of some kind on the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (and/or on the Zapporizhzhia plant that Ukraine has actually attacked very recently, setting fire to one of the cooling towers) that Kiev will then blame on Russia with the explanation that Russia will aims to exploit that supposed self-sabotage as a pretext for attacking any of Ukraine’s three remaining operational nuclear plants. Should there be any truth to such rumors, the Russian MoD has indicated, then the reprisals will be severe (one might imagine the use of tactical nuclear weapons).

A Botched Peace

This comes hard on the heels of revelations that Qatar and other intermediaries have for some time now been working towards an agreement between the two sides as to the possibility of a ceasefire limited to attacks by either side on the energy facilities of their opponent. Such a deal would have been more advantageous to Ukraine than to Russia, and Mercouris today makes the observation that Russia would likely only have given this idea some favorable consideration if it expected that the war was close to an end, in any case.

Ukraine has been FPV-droning Russian electricity and oil and gas facilities for many weeks or months, and a week or so ago there were reports that Belgorod’s electricity network had been shut down. I dont know what the current status is. But the overall impact of these is not comparable to Russia’s regular missile and drone strikes across the entire territory of Ukraine. These had stopped for a while, recently, and as I noted in my post yesterday, Dima claimed that this cessation was the consequence of improved supply of Ukrainian air defense systems, many of which Russia has now destroyed in the last 48 hour so so.

But the other reason, perhaps an alternative explanation, perhaps an additional explanation, may be that Russia ceased attacks on energy facilities while the Qatari-brokered talks were continuing. However, this mediation effort has now come to a halt in the light, most likely, of the Kursk invasion. There was a Russian missile strike on Kiev last night. There is some speculation that this employed fake missiles in order to provoke disclosure of the locations of Ukrainian air defense systems. It may be a prelude to a resumption of strikes across Ukraine.

The Battlefields

Overall, Dima concludes that Ukrainian advances in Kursk are slowing. Mercouris notes a growing skepticsm about the operation in western mainstream media and growing alarm about Russian advances westwards towards Pokrovsk. The Washington Post and others have expressed their view that the Kursk invasion has sabotaged the recent negotiations towards a limited energy ceasefire, and has given cause by one of the intermediaries, China, for extreme anger, which it directs towards the USA.

Well to the west of Glushkovo, close to the border with Ukraine, in a line from Tyotkino to Popovo-Lezhachi, Russia has been destroying bridges over the Seym, probably indicating intention to withdraw Russian troops and leave an area marked out on the Ukrainian side by the settlements of Otruba, Doroshivka and Bolaro-Lezhachi, in Ukrainian control.

Ukraine’s main efforts appear to center on attempts to capture Korenevo. These have been unsuccessful, so far. Ukraine has attempted to strike the settlement from the north and northeast with as many as ten attempts, all repelled, with a loss of 50 soldiers. In addition, Ukraine has been attempting an advance from Lyubimovka, north of Snagost, to Komopovka. This too has been repelled.

But to the east, Ukraine is having more success. A Ukrainian presence is again reported in Martynovka, probably as a result of an attack from the north, starting from Russkoe Porechnoe, an area under Ukrainian control, so that Ukraine controls the north and the southwest of Martynovka, with Russia still in the southeast. Ukraine is demonstrating more intense activity towards the north from Plekhovo, and is advancing towards Ulanok from Borki, possibly forcing Russian troops to fall back to Belitsa.

Clashes have also been occurring in Olgovka, Komarovka, and Russkoye. Russia says Ukrainian advances here have been repelled, but there is clearly still a Ukrainian presence in Olgovka. Russia claims to have hit Ukrainian positions and assets in Borki, Fenaseyevka, Cherkeskaya, Konopelka, Novoivanovka, Mikhailovka and Snagost. In the village of Kositsia, south west of Russkoe Porechnoe, Russia claims to have hit a major concentration of Ukrainian forces.

Russia, meanwhile, is subjecting the Ukrainian city of Sumy to heavy bombing.

Elsewhere on the combat lines, Russia appears to be on the Ukrainian side of the Sherebetz river near Makalaivka. Further south, Russian forces are penetrating Toretzk from Zalizne and from Pivnichne. In Pivnichne, Russian forces have established control over the landfill, giving them greater fire control over Toretsk.

A little further south is the important Pokrovsk area, increasingly vulnerable to Russian advances. These are taking place mainly to the southwest of Pokrovsk, in a line that currently runs through Hrodivka in the north (where Russian forces are entering the eastern end of the settlement), and including Krasni Yar, Novohrodivka and Selydove. I am skeptical that Russia will actually try to take Pokrovsk, although it will likely do all it can to weaken supplies to the city and undermine Ukrainian army positions in and around it. But I don’t think Russians can hope to encircle it, or to safely secure all the coal mines and terrikoms in the area they are now acquiring.

Middle East

There has been a great deal of discussion in recent days about the possibility of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. Current talks are continuing without the presence of Hamas, and there is still much concern (quite correctly, in my view) tas to whether Israel can be trusted not to break such a ceasefire at any point in subsequent negotiations where it feels that its interests are not best served.

The situation for Palestinians in Gaza, in particular, but also in the West Bank, appears to grow worse with every passing day, and Israel’s sense of impunity to grow more toxic, with continuing, vicious and pointless bombings of civilians, a more and more restricted space in which the people of Gaza can move (nowhere is safe), with mounting evidence of knowing complicity and supply of weapons to Israel, in a policy of abetted genocide by US, British and other Western authorities.

Western rhetoric against Iran has escalated in recent days, with the West taking the absurd position that Iran is the aggressor. Israel has warned that if Iran does strike against Israel, then Israel, with the support of the US, Britain, Germany, France and Italy, will unleash maximum retaliation against Iran. I believe that at that point we will be in World War Three.

Color Revolutions

I must return soon to the question of Venezuela, and the proposal, emanating from Brazil’s President Lulu, for a new election (so far rejected by the right-wing opposition), which is a response, so far as I understand, to the continuing lack of transparency by the Maduro government concerning ballot tallies in many districts. The crisis of Venezuela is in large measure the result of long-standing US aggression towards one of the most important global sources of oil, and severe, economy-crippling US sanctions imposed since the time of Hugo Chavez, against whom the US had participated in at least one failed coup attempt. Venezuela has for so long been smeared and misrepresented by the egregious deceptions of pro-neocon propaganda through western mainstream media that it is inadvisable to accept any of their accounts of what is going on until these have been soundly interrogated by more neutral, knowledgable sources.

Meanwhile, in Bangladesh, the result of the recent uprising against now-deposed Sheikh Hasina appears to have been a US-instigated coup (disguised by the usual panoply and noise from eager and angry middle class youth, amidst stories of violence against the protestors, while security forces melt away), one that has replaced Hasina with a long-established Washington supporter, Muhamad Yunis.

The real goal is thought by some to be intended as a warning shot against the bows of India and India’s major role in the BRICS and as an increasingly sympatheic ally of its old friend, Russia, and to establish control over the Bay of Bengal, where the US has long wanted to establish a naval base. This is disappointing to India and China. China does not have a coastline in the Bay but could be in firing distance from any such base. Hasina and her father, the founder of Bangladesh, had been close allies of India. All this may exacerbate a deterioration of relations between the US and India, and prompt a further improvement in relations between India and China, with US fomenting of trouble for India in hot-spots such as Kashmir.