Ukraine News and stuff

Gilbert Doctorow on the current crop of dem's hypocrisy.

It’s not just the Nation that overlooks its own party’s war criminals that commit war crimes. The current crop of the dem base who say that they are anti war are fully in favor of the Ukraine war because Putin’s orcs invaded Ukraine and deny that NATO expansion or the Nazis had anything to do with it. And apparently don’t know about Obama and Biden’s role in the brutal Ukraine coup. But this isn’t new because they cheered when the war criminals Bush/Cheney finally left office they then got behind all the wars and war crimes that Obama/Biden started doing and now they are either fully silent on the Biden/Harris wars and war crimes or are fully in favor of them.

“The Nation”: New positioning with a lead article on ‘Henry Kissinger, War Criminal’

However, I write to discuss something vastly more important than etiquette. The point is the author’s line of attack: Kissinger is condemned for drawing out the Vietnamese war for the political benefit of his sponsor, Richard Nixon, thereby causing a vast number of deaths of combatants and civilians that otherwise could have been avoided if the war had ended that much earlier. For this sin, Kissinger is branded a ‘war criminal.’

I have to wonder how the author and his editors at The Nation have managed to isolate the case of Kissinger and his offense from the reality of American foreign and military policy these past 25 years. The country has been governed by one certifiable war criminal after another. What do we say about George W. Bush, about Dick Cheney who are also “still at large”? What about Barack Obama and his drone attacks that murdered wedding parties and inflicted other misfortunate collateral damage in Middle East countries without ever being held to account.

But the most remarkable criminal of all is the present incumbent of the Oval Office and his comrades Tony Blinken and Victoria Nuland, who, are prolonging a hopeless war in and about Ukraine by sending a hundred billion dollars of military “assistance” to Kiev, the only result of which is that tens of thousands of Ukrainians are being slaughtered on the fields of battle to no purpose whatsoever. Is this not cynical use of war to enforce American domination over its vassal-like allies in Europe and Asia? Yet this criminal president enjoys the support of the publisher of The Nation and of the Progressive Democrats whom the publication has as its core audience.
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However, if this lead article in The Nation is an indication of where the publication’s newly appointed Leftist president is taking it, then it is high time for the magazine to call it a day and fold.

The Nation like a lot of leftist news sites came down with a fatal case of TDS during Trump and the democrat’s war against him. Yes Trump was a horrible president, but I don’t think he was as bad as democrats made him out to be. One case in point is Trump’s war on the press and his dragging Julian Assange out of the Ecuadorian embassy and Biden continuing his persecution and keeping him in Belmarsh prison until he can be extradited here to stand trial under the Espionage Act and the WH pixie press spokesperson not calling on those she dislikes because of where they work. Biden has continued so many of Trump’s policies that democrats rode his ass on when he did them.

Ukraine's Suicidal Offensive is Bleeding Out While the CIA Loses Its Mind

Over the last week Ukrainian officials have been insisting that the long-promised counter offensive is delayed until the West can pony up more tanks, ammunition, artillery and other weapons. But, there has been a noticeable uptick in Ukrainian attacks on Russian positions. These assaults apparently were carried out as a symbolic gesture to appease Western demands that Ukraine do something to the Russians.

You can tell that the Ukrainian attacks have been a bust by the very subdued reporting of the activity in the Western press. John Helmer of Dances With Bears provides a grim summary of the effort:

On May 12, in the first day of their scheme, 1,725 Ukrainian men were killed on the Donbass front. This is the worst day’s military casualty rate since the US coup in Kiev launched the war in February 2014.

According to the Financial Times, this killing didn’t happen. Instead, the headline reads: “Ukrainian counter-offensive takes shape with the first gains around Bakhmut.” The Washington Post announced likewise: “How Ukrainian forces denied Russia victory in Bakhmut by Victory Day”. The New York Times repeated: “Ukraine’s Advances Near Bakhmut Expose Rifts in Russian Forces”. According to this propaganda, these successes were bloodless on the Ukrainian side.

A NATO forces veteran observes: “An entire regiment has been destroyed. This is cynical trading in flesh.

In fact, what happened on the battlefield was dozens of Ukrainian troop movements in different directions along a front of more than ninety kilometres.

According to the NATO veteran, “this is more propaganda offensive than real offensive. They scraped together enough gear, ammunition and manpower to make a barely audible tactical bang. It’s a punch with nothing behind it. Those guys are already dead. This isn’t even wishful thinking. It’s cynical trading in flesh.”

Helmer’s report coincides with recent postings on Ukrainian Telegram channels of row after row of fresh graves in three Ukrainian cities — Khmelnytskyi, Cherkassy and Transcarpathia. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then these video clips are worth a library of books.

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It’s not only the number of fresh graves that are mind numbing, but the hospitals are also overflowing and reporting that it’s hard to get enough medical supplies and drugs to treat them.

Bakhmut has been fully captured by the Wagner Army this morning. Lol…this site is going to be in a big surprise when Ukraine loses the war. They’re being told that Bakhmut isn’t really important to Ukraine, but they don’t explain why Zelensky tried so hard to recapture it and sacrificed tens of thousands of lives.

Ukraine Update: Russia's Bakhmut collapse bodes ill for its future defenses

Russia has a history of centuries of military fuckups while barbarically attacking its neighbors. Putin can’t shoulder the blame unless he has a time machine.

Umm…how many times have countries tried to capture Russia only to be defeated every time?

I think one reason Zelensky is sacrificing so many people is so there’s no one to fight the plans he has to let foreign investors loot what’s left of the country after the war.

Sowing Seeds of Plunder: A Lose-Lose Situation in Ukraine

It’s a lose-lose situation for Ukrainians. While they are dying, financial institutions are insidiously supporting the consolidation of farmland by oligarchs and Western financial interests.

Depending on which sources to believe, between 100,000 and 300,000 Ukrainian soldiers (possibly more) have died during the conflict with Russia. That figure, of course, does not include civilian casualties.

But it is not the purpose of this article to explore these issues. Much has already been written on this elsewhere. But billions of dollars’ worth of military hardware has been sent to Ukraine by the NATO countries and hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainians have died.

They died in the belief that they were protecting their nation – their land. A land that is among the most fertile in the world.

Professor Olena Borodina of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine says:

Today, thousands of rural boys and girls, farmers, are fighting and dying in the war. They have lost everything. The processes of free land sale and purchase are increasingly liberalised and advertised. This really threatens the rights of Ukrainians to their land, for which they give their lives.”

Borodina is quoted in the February 2023 report by the Oakland Institute War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine’s Agricultural Land, which reveals how oligarchs and financial interests are expanding control over Ukraine’s agricultural land with help and financing from Western financial institutions.

Aid provided to Ukraine in recent years has been tied to a drastic structural adjustment programme requiring the creation of a land market through a law that leads to greater concentration of land in the hands of powerful interests. The programme also includes austerity measures, cuts in social safety nets and the privatisation of key sectors of the economy.

A video on this was posted Sunday, but maybe you missed it. Great read! Also Zelensky is going to let WEF install all their plans for the rest of the world and further sell out his country. Maybe the people who are refugees elsewhere will be able to stop this madness from happening, but those tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people lying in fresh graves won’t.

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snoopydawg's picture

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The Ukraine Refugee Question

Last Saturday the Washington Post published an exposé of classified American intelligence documents showing that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, working behind the back of the Biden White House, pushed hard earlier this year for an expanded series of missile attacks inside Russia. The documents were part of a large cache of classified materials posted online by an Air Force enlisted man now in custody. A senior official of the Biden administration, asked by the Post for comment on the newly revealed intelligence, said that Zelensky has never violated his pledge never to use American weapons to strike inside Russia. In the view of the White House, Zelensky can do no wrong.

Zelensky’s desire to take the war to Russia may not be clear to the president and senior foreign policy aides in the White House, but it is to those in the American intelligence community who have found it difficult to get their intelligence and their assessments a hearing in the Oval Office. Meanwhile, the slaughter in the city of Bakhmut continues. It is similar in idiocy, if not in numbers, to the slaughter in Verdun and the Somme during World War I. The men in charge of today’s war—in Moscow, Kiev, and Washington—have shown no interest even in temporary ceasefire talks that could serve as a prelude to something permanent. The talk now is only about the possibilities of a late spring or summer offensive by either party.

But something else is cooking, as some in the American intelligence community know and have reported in secret, at the instigation of government officials at various levels in Poland, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Czechoslovakia, and Latvia. These countries are all allies of Ukraine and declared enemies of Vladimir Putin.

This group is led by Poland, whose leadership no longer fears the Russian army because its performance in Ukraine has left the glow of its success at Stalingrad during the Second World War in tatters. It has been quietly urging Zelensky to find a way to end the war—even by resigning himself, if necessary—and to allow the process of rebuilding his nation to get under way. Zelensky is not budging, according to intercepts and other data known inside the Central Intelligence Agency, but he is beginning to lose the private support of his neighbors.
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Weeks ago I learned that the American intelligence community was aware that some officials in Western Europe and the Baltic states want the war between Ukraine and Russia to end. These officials have concluded that it is time for Zelensky to “come around” and seek a settlement. A knowledgeable American official told me that some in the leadership in Hungary and Poland were among those working together to get Ukraine involved in serious talks with Moscow. “Hungary is a big player in this and so are Poland and Germany, and they are working to get Zelensky to come around,” the American official said. The European leaders have made it clear that “Zelensky can keep what he’s got”—a villa in Italy and interests in offshore bank accounts—“if he works up a peace deal even if he’s got to be paid off, if it’s the only way to get a deal.”

There is a reality that some elements in the American intelligence community can’t ignore, the official said, even if the White House is ignoring it: “Ukraine is running out of money and it is known that the next four or months are critical. And Eastern Europeans are talking about a deal.” The issue for them, the official told me, “is how to get the United States to stop supporting Zelensky,” The White House support goes beyond the needs of the war: “We are paying all of the retirement funds—the 401k’s—for Ukraine.

And Zelensky wants more, the official said. “Zelensky is telling us that if you want to win the war you’ve got to give me more money and more stuff. He tells us, ‘I’ve got to pay off the generals.’ He’s telling us”—if he is forced out of office—“he’s going to the highest bidder. He’d rather go to Italy than stay and possibly get killed by his own people.”

Putin can stay where he is”—in power—“despite his failure to wipe Ukraine off the map as an independent state. And he thought he would win the war with just one airborne division”—a sardonic reference to Russia’s failed effort in the first days of the war to seize a vital airport by parachuting in an attack force.

Well Russia has captured 1/5 of Ukraine in a year while America is still not in control of Iraq and after 20 effing years in Afghanistan ran with its tail between its legs so I wonder if Hersh wants Russia to go all shock and awe on Ukraine and damn how many civilians are killed or if the country is left uninhabitable? Ahh well at least he didn’t say that Russia invaded unprovoked and unwarranted…sheesh! Russia never said that it was going to conquer all of Ukraine, but rid the country of Nazis and push NATO’s borders back to where they were in 1991.

Also isn’t it interesting how the large cache of classified documents were posted in private chat rooms that not many people had access to, but now the government stenographers have been posting them on their websites for all the world to see?

After reading more of this I’m still leaning towards Hersh being a limited hangout for the government for some unknown reason. Possibly he’s a mouthpiece for the intelligence agencies that disagree with what the neocon Blinken, Nuland and Sullivan have talked Biden into doing. Seriously read this and change my mind.

Reading the comments shows that others agree with me. Hersh says that people have told him….and that’s what he’s written on. No named sources shouldn’t be taken seriously. Didn’t we learn that during Russia Russia Russia? Hersh was told to write this by unnamed sources.

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@snoopydawg

"Well Russia has captured 1/5 of Ukraine in a year while America is still not in control of Iraq and after 20 effing years in Afghanistan ran with its tail....."

America hasn't been into imperialism in quite a while. We didn't want Iraq, nor Afghanistan. On the other hand a certain country has been annexing portions of it's neighbors for the past couple of decades, and it really wanted Ukraine.

Not sure how someone can support obvious imperialism, but there you have it.

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TheOtherMaven's picture

@ban nock

I guess you are confusing "ownership" with "control". The USA was quite satisfied with installing obedient puppets in other countries...as long as the puppets stayed obedient. When they didn't, or when the puppets were challenged - war, devastation, destruction.

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There is no justice. There can be no peace.

snoopydawg's picture

@TheOtherMaven

Saddam….then we executed him.
Gaddaffi…then we got him executed.
Bin Laden..then we executed him.
Zelensky…stay tuned….

As for US imperialism that we no longer do:
We’re still in Iraq.
We’re still droning in Afghanistan.
We’re still squatting on 1/3rd of Syria and stealing their oil.
We’re doing who knows what the fck in Somalia
We’re finally going to stop bombing and genociding in Yemen.
We’re sending our ships through the Taiwan straight or strait (?) and we’re continuing to build bases to surround China.
We’re still in 154 countries in Africa.
We’re still in gawd only knows what countries around the world and far away from home.

But boy I’m damn glad that America has stopped its 80 year of imperialism! I guess arming and supporting Ukraine so they can fight Russia over there so we don’t have to fight them here isn’t imperialistic at all.

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@ban nock I missed that.
Seems people were given a vote on it.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

snoopydawg's picture

@on the cusp

I was quoting others that say Russia has conquered those territories when you’re right that people voted to be Russian again because they wanted Russia to protect them from the Ukraine government and its Nazi troops which they are still doing when they bomb the Donbas territories.

Shitlibs are dreaming up ways to destroy the Kerch bridge and destroy areas in Crimea. Seriously check the orange blob. You know that site full of anti war folks.

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@snoopydawg I would like a name, location, and description of any territory Russia has annexed, and support of their accusation or characterization of Russian imperialism.
My own opinion, formed on facts, can be changed, when shown other facts.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

into a victory.

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I wonder how many square km of territory Ukraine will retake or how many Russia will add to what they have taken so far.

Any wagers? Loser to add tagline of winner's choice to username?

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slowly but surely the world is allowed to wake up to options -
beyond the dictates of DC. American dreams of total domination
have gone to the bank and are vaguely realizing the kitty is getting
pretty skinny. Won't hear about that in the MSM.

Fighting WW2 indefinitely, in these changing times, with stronger
economies, resources and cultural interests makes the weapons
produced by the west somewhat passe.

thanks for the essay snoop

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when the Ukranians use DPU rounds (or Russia blows up DPU rounds in warehouses before they can be used) the wind will carry radioactive dust over Ukraine and into Poland and Germany, then to England or Sweden. And the half life of Uranium 234 is 245,500 years. Thanks England!

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On to Biden since 1973

Creosote.'s picture

@doh1304
But I recently learned that Bayer and others producing the classic poisonous "weed kiler" glypohsate have bought immense acreages of what was once known as the breadbasket of Russia (Crimea and Ukraine) or Europe.
I had thought/hoped that among his other actions Putin had been able to make strong progress in keeping these "weed" killers out of Russia. If only this war could get Bayer/Monsanto and their like out of Russia that would be tremendously valuable to the whole world.
Wonder what those wealthy corporations are contributing to Elensky.
Macgregor says the topsoil in Ukraine can range to depths up to fifteen feet and that in years past railroad cars of it were shipped to various parts of Europe. In Ukraine, tanks sink irrecoverably in it after a cold winter thaw.

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snoopydawg's picture

@Creosote.

On how Zelensky has sold Ukraine out to the globalists and what it’s going to cost the people of Ukraine. They got put under austerity measures after the coup and when Ukraine accepted the IMF loan and people suffered from it so I don’t know how much more they can sacrifice. You gotta wonder how much of Ukraine will be left after the war ends. One thing tho is there will be less men around to protest against what Zelensky has done.

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@snoopydawg

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soryang's picture

War Crimes? Hadn't heard of that. Is Doctorow's flippant remark meant as sarcasm regarding the impunity of US officials?

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語必忠信 行必正直

Cassiodorus's picture

this diary.. It wasn't a thick diary full of Ukraine news, but it did have some Ukraine news and it was -- I thought -- soulful.

"And the waves/ Roar on the beach/ like a squadron of F-16s..."

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

studentofearth's picture

@Cassiodorus corruption with specific details. The casual acceptance of the corruption as a normal part of defense contraction illustrated the depth of the corruption at all levels of military and political process.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

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