Unanswered Questions

Presidential Elections

Russia, the West’s beloved example of “authoritarianism” has completed a plausible presidential election - giving Putin, with 87% of the vote, another six years as President - even in the new oblasts of Donbass, while the supreme example of what the West likes to call “democracy” has effectively abolished elections until the war is over (or Ukraine is no more) and is well on the route to outright dictatorship. As for the West’s own version of “democracy” it is clearer by the day that any system that produces a contest between two gross septuagenarian plutocrats (quite a few years older and less experienced than Putin, who is 71) who are both more than comfortable with Israeli genocides is a democracy worse than autocracy. No wonder the Pope broke ranks with the hysterical West and sent Putin his congratulations

As Alexander Mercouri argues today in his daily broadcast that given the collective West’s hysterical and entirely unreasonable anger about Russia, the majority of the Russian people will unite behind their leader, and also notes that there were several competing candidates. He cites a desperate Western media attempt to pass off images showing lines of people standing in line to vote as people protesting the election! There are, certainly, questions as to the wisdom in 2020 of allowing Putin to stand for two more terms (following the total of three terms he had then served, interrupted by a period in which Medvedev was President and Putin was Prime Minister).

Ukraine’s attempt to embarrass Putin and the elections in an operation involving 5,000 men, by trying to invade Russian territory and seize nuclear weapons and advance on the town of Galveron, failed catastrophically, with a loss of 600 Ukrainian soldiers and many tanks and other materiel. TASS reports Putin as saying that Russian armed forces have taken the initiative, in some areas shredding the enemy into pieces, and advancing cautiously every day and maybe moving beyond “progressive attrition,” suggesting a genuine offensive is now in sight, perhaps involving something beyond the Donbass in Kharkiv, Kiev and Odessa regions.

Questions Why?

I have yet to see a proper analysis of the reasons why only now has Ukraine launched major drone swarms on Russian territory. If it could do so in the week of Russian presidential elections why could it not do so the previous week? Russia claims to be shooting down 95%, a suspiciously high percentage. And we know that many Russian refineries have been hit, with a likely negative impact on global oil prices (which curiously may have a positive impact on oil tax revenues to Moscow) which will make the war more expensive for Ukraine. A likely benefit to Ukraine from these attacks is improved understanding of Russian air defenses. The drones themselves are less damaging than missiles or bombs, a lot less. But damage they do and people are killed. On Belgorod City, the consequences already are severe. Belgorod is the next Donetsk City.

Why are we not hearing more about comparable Russian drone and missile attacks on Ukraine, at this point? We are hearing about Russian hits on Ukrainian drone warfare bases but not of the kind of nationwide strikes we saw in 2023 and earlier this year. This is all the stranger given the continuing deterioration of Ukrainian air defenses.

Even if, as seems to be the case, Ukrainian attacks on the north and north east borderlands have been almost fully repulsed, how do we reconcile mountains of evidence of Ukrainian deterioration with Ukrainian willingness to engage in offensive operations? These include a concentration of 45,000 troops in Zapporizhzhia. Could it be that Ukraine has been saving resources, including 155mm shells, for such last-ditch displays, and to what point? Is the purpose simply to squeeze more money from complicit politicians in the West to drag out the conflict to Biden’s possible ouster in November or beyond?

Does Ukraine have a large enough supply of drones to keep up its recent barrages? Are these all coming from the Czech Republic? How long can the supplies last? What is Russia doing to monitor the entry of drones from Europe to Ukraine and to identify firing zones? At what point might Russia decide its existential security is threatened and must proceed if not to nuclear weapons, then at least use of hypersonic missiles against any of the sources of threat in a world without “red lines,” which Macron appears to believe is what we now live in.

Next point of distraction for Ukraine appears to be Transnistria, of which we are about to hear a lot more.

Dima of the Military Summary Channel predicts that Putin will be obliged to secure Belgorod by advancing the process of establishing a buffer zone - why has this been delayed? Ukraine is (again) reported to be evacuating towns and villages in Kupyansk area -is it preparing for a Russian advance (most likely) or for an offensive? Establishing a buffer zone in an area with a city of one million, Kharkiv, sounds like a bigger military operation than any we have seen so far. What could possibly go wrong?

The Russian MoD says there are 36,000 foreigners and mercenaries in Ukraine, of whom 6,000 have been killed.

A Future for NATO?

Larry Johnson considers whether NATO will survive a loss in Ukraine. He thinks not, especially if Trump is returned in November and pulls out of NATO (which he will do if Europe does not come up with a much larger proportion of the cost - which is the moment when Ray McGovern says NATO will have to “grow up” and face the contradiction between spending more money on Ukraine while European economies sink).

Asked whether the addition of Sweden and Finland would make much difference Johnson points out that these countries were needed by NATO to make up NATO’s weakness in manpower. Britain has ony 75,000 active servicemen now - they had as many as 50,000 in their US colony before US independence. The French military is telling Macron that the war is already lost, and has nothing remotely like the industrial capability to produce the necessary stream of weapons. A few combat aircraft is grossly insufficient, and F-35s simply don’t cut it. Trump, says Johnson, is calling out all this European nonsense theatrics. Jonson considers that Russian intelligence, especially in the form of FSB, is “hands-down” superior to the CIA. The CIA is notoriously out of touch with the nations and cultures with which it attempts to meddle. In Israel, the CIA is in bed with Israeli intelligence, likely more dependent on Mossad than Mossad is dependent on the CIA. And Mossad is the one that either deliberately looked the other way on October 7 or simply dropped the ball when receiving intelligence from female intelligence agents on the border.

Ray McGovern today in interview with Judge Napolitano, cites the latest US intelligence community threat assessment (at least the unclassified version) as providing no evidence whatsoever that Russia is an actual threat to Europe, but merely providing a pretext for the armaments industry to continuing profiting from war for as long as possible, or at least to the November presidential elections.

The basic premise of this tawdry intellectual exercise by the way, is that Russia and China are very naughty because they are violating the (US-invented, unexplained and unquestioned) “rules-based” order. This is about as pathetic as the kind of premises that underlie the headlines of practically all opinion pieces I see in “Foreign Affairs,” and most of those I see in “Foreign Policy.” Intelligence of any kind cannot thrive in such a twisted mental universe as these.

The assessment does claim that Putin has provided North Korea with ICBMs which could strike any part of the continental part of the USA. The claim is controversial to the extent that some analysts sare reported by Reuters as having said that while North Korea's missiles show similarities with Russian designs, they are not exactly the same and Pyongyang has several ways of gathering technical data from other countries, including computer hacking. “Researchers at California's James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) in a draft report shared with Reuters, pointed to what they called factual inaccuracies, including mistaking the Russian Topol-M and Yars ICBMs, and misidentifying a spent Hwasong-18 rocket stage as a “decoy canister” designed to defeat anti-missile systems. Asked about those concerns, Postol called them "unsupported assertions", saying in an email that his critics had not provided him with any technical evidence to comment on.”

As Ray McGovern notes, it is remarkable that there has been virtually no public conversation about this since summer 2023.

Battlefronts

On the borderlands, the Russian MOD reported that Ukraine lost 150 soldiers in the past 24 hours, and 5 armored vehicles, on the Ukrainian side of the border. Ukraine in retaliation has continued bombing Belgorod city, using cluster rounds for this purpose. There were at least eleven killed. Russia claims to have destroyed 17 incoming Vampire missiles in the past 24 hours. There were at least eleven killed. Russia claims to have destroyed 17 incoming Vampire missiles in the past 24 hours. Russia has also attacked targets in the city of Sumy, dropping 200 FAB aerial bombs over the past week of which 100 were fired on Velykja-Pysarivka an area of main concentration of Ukrainian forces for the borderlands attacks.

In the Kharkiv area, it is rumored that Ukraine has ordered the evacuation of citizens from 55 settlements close to the border, bringing to 100 the total number of settlements evacuated since last August. The latest evacuations are mandatory. Ukrainian troops will use houses and other buildings as fortifications.

In the past 24 hours Ukraine has bombed the settlement of Tyotkino in the Kursk region and destroyed an ammo depot. On the other side of the border, Russia bombed the village of Ryzhiivka and destroyed ammo depots. In the Grayvoron area, which was the target of some of the Ukrainian attempts over the past few days, there are no reports of ground activity.

Much further south the main activity of the past 24 hours has been around Siversk, near Bakhmut. Nearby, east of Heorhiivka (on which Russia has advanced into the eastern end of the settlement) Russia has been focused on the forest area of Bilohorivka, after many previous failed attempts, and now trying to attack it from the south, from the direction of Zolotarivka. Ukraineand Russia battle for control over the eastend end of Ivanivkse. There are fierce clahses in the region east of Klishchiivka and Andrivka.

In Avdievka area, Russia is in control of most of Orlivka and Tonenke (whence Ukrainian forces are retreating), and some of Berdychi (eastern end and part of the centre), and is battling for control over the railway north of Krasnohorivka to the east of Berdychi. Russia is encountering Ukrainian resistance in the western part of the settlement of Novomykhailivka. Russia is progressing its construction of a railyway connection between Rostov, Mariupol, Berdyansk and Crimea. It is seeking to resolve the situations in Krasnohorivka and Pervomaiske to the south in their favor. Most of the Bradley Square salient has been reoccupied by Russia. Russia has advanced on Myrne south of Huliaipole, where Russia has intensified its activity around Huliaipole, perhaps in preparation for a major Zapporizhzhia offensive here.

Nearer Bakhmut, there continue to be maor clashes in the Bohdanivka, Ivanivske (largely captured by the Russians), and Chasiv Yar. In the North, Ukraine is experiencing very heavy losses in areas such as Synkove, Kupyansk, and Izium.

As it seems more likely that Russia will take all of the Donbass to the Dnieper, in circumstances in which Ukrainian fortification lines seem dangerously patchy and weak, the collective West and Ukraine will need to advance evacuation plans for cities such as Kiev, and to plan for waves of refugees heading for neighboring countries.

Palestine

Meantime in the Middle East, Netanyahu (now deeply embarrassing to US Democrats and Republicans, who would prefer the marginally different Benny Gantz, who would be just as anti-Hamas, but a little less sold out to the far-out Zionists on Netanyahu’s cabinet) has approved plans for an IDF ground operation on Rafah which will significantly increase, even double, Israel’s current rate of mass murder. Senator Chuck Schumer’s distaste for all this, and for Netanyahu, appears to have the support even of AIPAC (bearing in mind, as Larry Johnson reminds us in interview this morning with Judge Napolitano) that US citizens under the age of 40 are more likely to be pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli). Schumer’s opinion about who should be Israel’s prime minister is of little consequence, or relevance, compared to the question of why the US is still sending weapons to a genocidal regime.

As Mercouris argues thoday, stopping the flow of weapons is something that US leaders can actually do and can do right away; as would be a US call for a real ceasefire resolution in the UNSC allowing for immediate humanitarian aid to Gaza (as opposed to building piers into the Mediterranean). Deciding on behalf of Israel who should be its prime minister, on the other hand, is not something that US leaders can actually do in any simple or straightforward way and even were it to happen would not necessarily lead to a change of policy on behalf of the Israeli government.

Not only is this exercise in religious fanaticism on the part of Israel-ISIS, all on the pretext of proven Israeli lies and disinformation about October 7, catapulted by slavish western mainstream media such as the New York Times and CNN, evil in itself but it will likely destroy Israel. It exposes the fabrications of Zionist ideology, eats up Israeli wealth with expenditure on reserves and compensation, drives a wave of emigration from Israel, kills its burgeoning IT industry, and annihilates the idea of Israeli military strength and cultural superiority. Against the forces of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis Israel faces the possibility of a thoroughgoing military defeat and the resurgence of Iran as the single most important regional power, a member of the BRICS, and an ally of Russia and China. Might a one state Palestine incorporate a former apartheid Israel?

Zionism, Not Judaism is the Problem

Anya Parampil (wife of Max Blumenthal) tells Judge Napolitano in interview today that Zionism is “falling,” by which she is referring to the unmasking of the real role of AIPAC in Washington.

This is now becoming more openly recognized in a “mask-off moment” as a Zionist, rather than a Jewish lobby organization. Finally, and far too late, more citizens of the US are coming to appreciate the extent to which Zionism is distinct from the Jewish community (much of which has no roots in the Biblical Middle East), and yet has been seen, falsely, to “stand in” for the Jewish community even though it embraces views that are abhorrent (e.g. the justifications given for calling for the killings of women and children) to nearly all human beings.

In the name of supporting Zionism, the US has engaged in many destabilizations that have been counterproductive for Israel. Netanyahu, in fact, is very Americanized and had his brother not acquired fame for heroism in Israel, would likely still be living in the USA. He is the link that can especially manipulate the USA, not least because of his control of Israeli media amd his popularity among anti-liberal Israelis. Until recently, when he eventually sought political survival and stay out of prison by depending on the right wing parties, he was seen as the “only one,” not of the left (which was incompatible with apartheid Israel) nor on the right (which is incompabile with anything other than fanatic religious extremism).

For too long Christians have been unable to distinguish between Zionism and Judaism or between Zionism and non-religious Jews. Napolitano mentions he is still waiting for the Pope to condemn Zionism, which of course he should. The US has no rational interest in the slaughter in Gaza, which makes everyone less secure.