From Ukraine, Russia To NATO and the Arctic

Have you all noticed how much the Arctic is being mentioned along side the Russian/Ukraine conflict? We’re going to get to that after covering the reports directly below. Okay? Okay!

UN Refuses to Back Ukraine ‘Genocide’ Claims

Ravina Shamdasani, the spokesperson for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), was addressed on the issue by journalists on Friday, RT reported.

“No, we have not documented patterns that could amount to [genocide],” she responded.

Shamdasani pointed out there were “a lot of these legal qualifications – crimes against humanity and genocide – at the end of the day would be for a court of law to determine”.

Ukraine: Russian forces renew offensive, now control 80% of portion of Donbas

(LVIV, Ukraine) — The Luhansk governor said Russian forces now control 80% of the region, which is one of two regions that make up the Donbas in eastern Ukraine.

One of Russia’s stated goals is to expand the territory in the Donbas under the control of Moscow-backed separatists.

Before Russia invaded on Feb. 24, the Kyiv government controlled 60% of the Luhansk region.

The US and UK made Russia’s invasion of Ukraine possible. I saw it happen

A few excerpts- I’m not fussy on most of the article- But the touching on of history is worth recalling. Nothing happens in a vacuum.

Joe Biden wants ‘regime change’ in Russia. Last time the US did this, the result was kleptocratic capitalism and soaring unemployment

US president Joe Biden has called for ‘regime change’ in Russia, a statement that should recall previous US-led regime change crusades – in Chile, Iraq and Afghanistan, among many.

To put it mildly, these episodes have not been unmitigated successes. But the regime change initiative that deserves our scrutiny today was the United States’ most ambitious, and is the most relevant to Biden’s latest demand. This is because it concerned Russia and Ukraine themselves 30 years ago.

So what was the foreign-directed strategy? Although different proponents had variants, it enshrined a doctrine – known as ‘shock therapy’ – fostered by economists at Harvard, the London School of Economics and elsewhere.

One cannot overemphasise the folly of the anti-state ideology at a time when what was desperately needed was the nucleus of a professional civil service, backed by a proper legal system. But all the western financial advisers wanted was full-blown capitalism, which they saw as leading to a ‘Russian Boom’, in which ‘democracy and free markets have taken root for good’.

The third plank of the shock therapy sequencing was mass privatisation. It began as a bit of a joke, with privatisation ‘shares’ being handed out like confetti. I still have a voucher somewhere, given to me by the mayor of St Petersburg. But privatisation soon became a wild-west plunder. The World Bank, USAID, the new European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London and other foreign bodies allocated vast amounts to assist in speeding up the transfer to the new ‘entrepreneurs’. Over 15,000 state firms were sold off; kleptocrats became oligarchs overnight; their American and other foreign ‘advisers’ became multi-millionaires. This is when the criminality stretched across the Atlantic.

In sum, the US’s regime change strategy had generated a venal kleptocracy, and in line with that today we have globally a morally indefensible form of rentier capitalism where plutocrats are funding major political parties and politicians in their interest.

Check out the embedded interview below as the plunder is mentioned

Russia, Ukraine and the Arctic (Finland- Sweden).

It’s connected. Have you all noticed how large Canada is looming in this situation? I often wonder about the role of Finland in all this as well? Finland already participates in NATO activities. Perhaps some of the arms alleged to be earmarked for Ukraine are going to surreptitiously make their way to Finland? With those jihadi mercenaries that had made their way to Finland too?

War in Ukraine threatens geopolitical balance in the Arctic

Russia’s senior diplomat at the Arctic Council intergovernmental forum, Nikolai Korchunov, spoke out on April 17 about NATO’s increased presence in the Arctic since the war in Ukraine began. He said long-planned military drills between NATO, Finland and Sweden in the region in March were “a cause for concern” for Russia.

Previous reports at my big tech censored blog

https://web.archive.org/web/20181102211634/https://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com/2018/10/with-russia-in-its-crosshairs-canada.html

https://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com/2018/10/with-russia-in-its-crosshairs-canada.html

From the article below:

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2018/10/29/with-russia-in-its-cross-hairs-canada-moves-to-buy-a-sub-hunter/

https://web.archive.org/web/20191114101050/https://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com/2018/07/nato-needs-strategy-for-countering.html

https://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com/2018/07/nato-needs-strategy-for-countering.html