General Harald Kujat is a former head of the German Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) and the former Chairman of NATO’s Military Committee. Having held the top military position in both Germany and NATO, General Kujat offers his expertise on how the West and Russia ended up fighting a proxy war in Ukraine. General Kujat discusses the failure to reach a common understanding after the Cold War, the toppling of President Yanukovych in Ukraine, the sabotage of the Minsk agreement and the Istanbul peace negotiations, and the West’s lies about an “unprovoked” and “full-scale invasion” of Ukraine. When Boris Johnson came to Ukraine to sabotage the peace negotiations in 2022, one of Zelensky’s close associates summed up the essence of Johnson’s visit: “Johnson brought two simple messages to Kyiv. The first is that Putin is a war criminal; he should be pressured, not negotiated with. And the second is that even if Ukraine is ready to sign some agreements on guarantees with Putin, they are not. We can sign [an agreement] with you [Ukraine], but not with him. Anyway, he will screw everyone over”.

Targeting Rafah was going to result in massive civilian casualties- The Israeli government knew this for a fact as it had been stated repeatedly and they still went ahead with the onslaught. Not a mistake. An intention

Link

UN Security Council schedules emergency meeting on situation in Rafah after Israeli air strikes kill 45 people and wound dozens

For months Israel has been preparing for an offensive in Gaza’s southernmost city – the makeshift home of more than a million people fleeing the conflict.

Rafah, which sits on the border with Egypt, has become a refuge teeming with tent camps over the past six months.

Rafah Mayor Ahmed Al-Sofi said the IDF had declared the area to be safe.

“The civil defence workers were unable to help anyone and the hospitals ceased to function,” he said.

The attack has brought a new wave of condemnation of Israel, even from its strongest supporters.

The US National Security Council said in a statement the “devastating images” from the strike on Rafah were “heartbreaking”.

Other nations were more blunt.

The Foreign Office of Germany, which has been a staunch supporter of Israel for decades, said: “The images of charred bodies, including children, from the air strike in Rafah are unbearable.”

Then Germany tells Israel to investigate the incident themselves- Utter nonsense. Having spent far too long dissecting war propaganda and other media lies it’s clear to me Germany is looking for Israel to come up with a cover story and quick!

Egypt and Israel exchanged gunfire at the border as well

A senior Ukrainian military official played a key role in the sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea last year, according to a joint investigation by The Washington Post and Der Spiegel published Saturday.

Roman Chervinsky, a colonel in Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces, was the “coordinator” of the Nord Stream operation, people familiar with his role told the US and German newspapers.

They quoted officials in Ukraine and elsewhere in Europe, as well as others with knowledge of the operation, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Chervinsky oversaw the logistics and supervised a team of six people who rented a sailboat under false identities and used diving equipment to place explosive charges on the pipelines, the American newspaper detailed.

He neither planned the operation nor acted alone, taking his orders from Ukrainian officials, The Washington Post wrote.

But not Zelensky?

Through his attorney, Chervinsky denied any role in the sabotage of the pipelines.

“All speculations about my involvement in the attack on Nord Stream are being spread by Russian propaganda without any basis,” Chervinsky said in a written statement to The Washington Post and Der Spiegel.

Yah, than why is it that US and German media are spreading this narrative? Bolstering the narrative created by the West? But, I’m supposed to believe this is Russian propaganda- ROFLMAO!!

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has repeatedly denied that his country was involved in the pipeline explosions.

“I would never do that,” he told the German daily Bild last June, adding that he would “like to see proof.”

According to The Washington Post, the sabotage operation was conceived while keeping Zelensky in the dark.

The Washington Post and Der Spiegel said they had contacted the Ukrainian government for a reaction to their joint investigation, but had received no response.

This is not so called Russian propaganda.

Chervinsky is currently on trial in Kyiv, accused of abusing his power in an attempt to get a Russian pilot to defect.

He claims that the prosecution is political retaliation for his criticism of Zelensky, according to media reports.

But it sure feels like Western propaganda aka 5 eyes media lies.

A year after the Nord Stream pipeline attacks, European energy markets are shaken – and the Americans are happy

Just the facts..

• One of the most audacious crimes of the 21st century remains unsolved
• The culprits remain unknown, though there are plenty of suspects.

Oh the culprits can be figured out quite easily when we think of which party benefits the most!

• What is known is that the attack has turned the German energy market on its head.

• Europe’s biggest economy and industrial power is still reeling from energy shortages, to the point that it is reopening mothballed coal plants ahead of winter to keep the lights on. Before the invasion, Germany was powered by scads of cheap and allegedly reliable Russian gas. But no longer.

• Five months after the sabotage, veteran U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh laid the blame squarely on the Americans themselves

• Citing a single unnamed source (as is his style) in his Substack post, he said the CIA was behind the plot, was assisted by Norway, and that U.S. President Joe Biden approved the pipelines’ destruction. Indeed, Mr. Biden seemed intent on making sure Nord Stream 2 would never deliver gas to Germany. At a news conference three weeks before the invasion, he said, “If Russia invades … then there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it. I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.”

• Mr. Hersh’s reporting received little attention in the U.S. media and was dismissed as risible by some skeptics. Never mind that several other investigative stories later in the year, on both sides of the Atlantic, named no first-hand sources when they raised alternative scenarios.

Yah, never mind that the alternative scenarios named no sources at all and yet were given scads of attention

• Chief among them was that a Ukrainian group used a rented 15-metre sailing yacht called the Andromeda to plant the explosives on the pipelines at depths of 70 to 80 metres – theoretically within the range of expert divers.

• It seems the culprits will not be found soon. What is clear is that the destruction of the pipelines has played a huge role in overhauling the German and European energy markets at amazing speed – at huge economic cost.

• The high energy prices have punished German growth, making it the worst performer among the big developed economies. Both the EU and the International Monetary Fund expect the German economy to shrink this year.

• The only winners are the Americans, who are no doubt delighted about the Nord Stream pipelines’ status as Russian relics on the seabed.

The only winners are the American who are no doubt delighted the pipelines were blown.. Cui Bono?

Old dependencies and regional security

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia continued to act as the guarantor of regional security for the local regimes in Central Asia and partly in the Caucasus (Armenia): on the one hand, by organising the Collective Security Treaty (CSTO) and maintaining military bases in the region (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Armenia) and, on the other hand, by bilaterally balancing out military-technical cooperation.

It is true that Russia continues to operate military bases in Armenia and Central Asia even after the start of the war in Ukraine. At the same time, regulating the access of Central Asian guest workers to the Russian labour market is an important lever for influencing its neighbouring countries. But this combination of instruments is increasingly losing its effectiveness in view of the comprehensive sanctions that are slowly leaving their mark on the Russian economy.

New players emerge

In comparison, China appears a much more attractive partner. Chinese economic influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus has been growing for years through infrastructure investments and the Belt and Road Initiative. A look at the trade statistics reveals a constant shift in trade flows. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia and, a distant second, the EU, have been the region’s most important trading partners. However, over the past decade, the EU’s share of the trade volume of countries in the region has fallen everywhere (except Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan), most notably in Armenia, Georgia and Kazakhstan.

During the Karabakh war in the summer 2020, Turkey already profiled itself as a key military player and arms supplier. His balancing position between Kyiv and Moscow makes President Recep Erdoğan a potential mediator in the war in Ukraine. However, Turkey and Iran are purely transactional actors, seeking to play the relative instability in the region to achieve situational – economic or security – gains. Against this background, Turkey is strikingly one of the countries (alongside China and India) that has increased its trade volume with Russia the most in the course of the war.

The message is clear: any perception of a region as ’lying between the stools’ is an outdated view of the regional security order inspired by now-extinct geopolitical paradigms. The local rulers are striving to secure their rule, to preserve the territorial integrity of their states, to continue to pursue their distinctively transactional style of foreign policy and, ultimately and above all, to generate security and prosperity for their respective countries. They are interested in diversifying their foreign and economic policy partners (in the spirit of risk spreading). In this context, the EU is just one player among many. These countries’ foreign policy orientation is therefore primarily not a question of conviction – according to the motto:  ’join us because we have the better system’ – but more the recognition of security policy and economic realities.

Therefore, strategically and in line with its own values, the EU needs to try to expand its influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus on the realistic premises that Russia will remain a major player, China will continue to gain influence, and new players like Turkey will increasingly want to have a say.  

I’d written at my old site about the role of France in Armenia- Way larger than is usually acknowledged.

The goal, therefore, cannot be to force Russia and China out of Central Asia or the South Caucasus. The EU totally lacks the means to do that, unable as they are to make good the missing elements of internal and external security.

Should, however, Germany and the EU nonetheless succeed in helping these states emerge from the current geopolitical and economic crisis with greater stability, a great deal will already have been achieved. For this, greater account must be taken of these countries’ own perspectives. In most cases, the starting point here will be their desire to stabilise their power.

Attention should be paid in concrete, small-scale economic cooperation situations, to the fulfillment of production standards, employee and human rights and environmental protection. These will successively have more positive effects than the unrealistically demanding attitudes that marked the German-Russian modernisation partnership.

Germany is unable to play any sort of substantive role in this area- given it’s current economic decline

Still, Armenia and the situation in that region is important because the destabilization of Iran and still more destabilization of Turkey will be very harmful to these two nations, both of whom, have been trying to make their own way in this world. As mentioned in this linked piece.

Below is a link to a report from 2014 transferred here for you to read. Perhaps some of you have been around for a long time and recall this info? If not.. read below

Planned NATO facility in Poland expected to raise tensions with Russia

Published in the Globe and Mail a few days ago

The sights and sounds of war have been common in the southeastern Polish city of Rzeszów since the first days of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The city’s airport, which is defended by a pair of U.S. Patriot anti-aircraft missile systems, rumbles day and night with cargo aircraft delivering the latest loads of Western military support to Kyiv, and the highways east of the city are clogged with trucks carrying everything from bridge-building equipment to recently trained Ukrainian recruits.

Rzeszów’s militarized feel could soon become a permanent state of affairs under a plan to build a new NATO facility on the outskirts of the city, which sits less than 100 kilometres from the Ukrainian border.

Konrad Fijolek, the city’s mayor, made local headlines last month when he told Poland’s Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper that NATO was planning a new base in Rzeszów and that “American, British and Canadian troops will be permanently stationed here.”

Yup, he said a new military base with an American, British and Canadian permanent presence

Canadian officials downplay this news, but, my feeling is the mayor has more credibility

“We are sure that this base will be here, although neither our government nor NATO has officially confirmed it yet,”

Mr. Fijolek said. It wasn’t clear from the mayor’s remarks when the new facility would be opened.Canadian and Polish officials with direct knowledge of the matter have confirmed to The Globe and Mail that there is a plan to build a new NATO facility in Rzeszów – although it will be more of a repairs and logistics centre than the large-scale military base Mr. Fijolek hinted at.

But it’s going to be more like a maintenance facility rather than a large scale military base… weasel wording, noted. It’s going to be a military base/maintenance facility

“We are going to establish a maintenance facility in partnership with the U.S. and the U.K. No intent to have a large Canadian presence,” said the Canadian official, who added that the facility’s main role will be repairing Ukrainian tanks ( what is its alternative role/s- lies of omission are still lies and there are lies embedded in those statements) and other armoured vehicles. NATO has supplied Ukraine with hundreds of main battle tanks and other fighting vehicles, many of which have been damaged over the course of a seven-week-old Ukrainian counteroffensive that has struggled to break through well-established Russian defensive lines.The official, whom The Globe is not naming because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the matter, said Mr. Fijolek was making the facility “sound bigger than what it is in terms of people” and that no Canadian troops would be stationed in Rzeszów long-term with their families.

So how about a short term stationing with families? How is long term vs short term defined?

The NATO media office in Brussels responded to questions from The Globe with a statement that read in part “we are significantly strengthening deterrence and defence for all Allies, enhancing our resilience against Russian coercion, and supporting our partners to counter malign interference and aggression.” The Department of National Defence in Ottawa did not reply to e-mailed questions from The Globe by the time of publication.

Few cities have been more rapidly transformed by Russia’s 17-month-old war against Ukraine than Rzeszów (pronounced “Zhesh-oof”). The city has seen its prewar population of 200,000 surge with the influx of about 30,000 Ukrainian refugees plus a reported 1,700 U.S. soldiers, who maintain a forward base near the city’s Jasionka Airport.

The city’s role has brought visits from U.S. President Joe Biden, who met with members of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed in the area, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who named Rzeszów one of four Polish “rescuer cities” that were first and fastest in providing aid to Ukrainian refugees fleeing the invasion.

Germany down and out. Poland is NATO’s eastern front now.

APNews

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The German economy is still failing to grow, figures showed Friday, as the country that should be the industrial powerhouse for all of Europe struggles with high energy prices, rising borrowing costs and a lagging rebound from key trading partner China.

Economic output in Germany stagnated in the April-to-June quarter, the Federal Statistics Office said. That follows a decline of 0.1% in the first three months of the year and a drop of 0.4% in the last three months of 2022 as the energy shock from Russia’s war in Ukraine echoed through Europe’s largest economy.

It comes after the International Monetary Fund forecast this week that Germany would be the globe’s only major economy to shrink this year, even with weak economic growth around the world amid rising interest rates and the threat of growing inflation.

In Germany, the economy has been buffeted by several challenges. Above all, its long-term dependence on Russian natural gas to fuel industry backfired when the invasion of Ukraine led to the loss of most of Moscow’s supply and to higher costs for energy-intensive industries such as metals, glass, cars and fertilizer.

“What Germany needs is a targeted impulse for investment and breathing room for our energy-intensive industry,” he said.

Yet the slowdown does not resemble a classic recession because jobs are abundant, with companies competing for workers and complaining of skills shortages. The unemployment rate was only 2.9% in May, well below the eurozone’s 6.5% — one of the lowest rates on record.

Carsten Brzeski, chief eurozone economist at ING, has described Germany’s situation as a “slowcession,” with the economy “stuck in the twilight zone between stagnation and recession.”

He said Friday that recent data “do not bode well for economic activity in the coming months.”

“In fact, weak purchasing power, thinned-out industrial order books, as well as the impact of the most aggressive monetary policy tightening in decades, and the expected slowdown of the U.S. economy, all argue in favor of weak economic activity,” Brzeski said in a note.

Germany’s woes are calling forth comparisons with the late 1990s, when high labor costs held back the country’s competitiveness. A series of labor market reforms under former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in 2003-2004 helped restore economic growth and Germany’s position as an export powerhouse selling industrial machinery and vehicles to the rest of the world.

Germany has no energy resources to restore it’s powerhouse position-

June 15, 2023 at 6:32 am•Edit

About the german pipelines
Nord Stream Blast – Thoughts on the “Ukraine Version
Western services and media now report every week about new findings on the blasting of the Nord Stream pipelines last September. Even if these findings contradict the research of the well-connected journalist Seymour Hersh, they are not implausible and therefore cannot be excluded from the outset. If one hypothetically assumes that these findings are correct, this would raise a whole series of uncomfortable questions for the U.S. government and even more so for the German government. After all, it would be a matter of state terrorism, if not an act of war against German and European energy supplies. Committed by Ukraine; a country that the German government sees as a value partner and even ally, and which receives not only financial but also military aid worth billions from Germany. By Jens Berger.

If the version favored by the services and the media is correct, it was the Dutch military intelligence service MIVD that allegedly informed the U.S. and German services as early as last spring about indications of a planned Ukrainian commando operation to blow up the Nord Stream pipelines. According to this information, the planned attack was to take place in July 2022. At least the Americans took this warning so seriously, according to press reports, that the CIA allegedly warned Ukraine to carry out such a plan. To what extent this detail is true, however, is another open question, since the Americans had a great self-interest in the demolition. Two months later, as is well known, the blast took place.

Be that as it may – according to the reports, the German services were also warned by the Dutch and at the latest here the story becomes interesting. If the USA took this warning so seriously that Ukraine was formally warned, what was the assessment of the Germans? And why? Obviously, there was no warning to Ukraine by the German services or even the German government. Did they – unlike the USA – not take the Dutch reports seriously? Did they perhaps even accept the risk? Or did they take the reports seriously, warn Ukraine as well, and then were coldly betrayed by Ukraine? Questions upon questions. It is interesting that these questions are not asked by the media. This is incomprehensible, since these same media apparently consider the version of Ukrainian perpetration to be probable. But if one says A, one must also say B and ask the right questions.

The blowing up of the Nord Stream pipelines is probably the biggest case of state terrorism in post-war history. The victims of this attack are not only Russia, but also, first and foremost, Germany and the other EU states that were supplied with cheap natural gas via Nord Stream. If the Ukrainian perpetration is confirmed, it can be assumed that an act of war of this dimension could not have been carried out without the knowledge and approval of the Ukrainian government. The statement that circles of the Ukrainian military did not inform their government about the attack out of “self-protection” is completely implausible.

If the version is confirmed, this cannot remain without consequences. How stupid do you have to be to continue to support a state that has committed an act of war of this dimension on our infrastructure? Strangely enough, however, this question is not asked either. People insist that Ukraine is behind the attacks, but refuse to draw the consequences. There can be two reasons for this:

One is that one has already given up one’s sovereignty and one’s own interests to such an extent that one allows a country like Ukraine to play tricks on one’s nose in front of the world public.
Or the whole story is just a diversionary tactic to avoid asking the more serious question of the consequences in the event of American perpetration.

Take your pick. Neither answer is a credit to our government.

Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

This so called news appears to be an attempt to shore up the narrative put out by the Americans- The BND doesn’t assess the theory as credible or plausible. Overall it reads like a way to deflect from what could only have been American involvement from inception to completion. Octogen still requires TNT to perform. And the article acknowledges the obvious fact that the Russian were not involved in blowing up the pipeline

There is increasing evidence of Ukrainian perpetrators
Oktogen is much lighter than TNT, could be transported by a relatively small boat, and could have been taken to the bottom of the Baltic Sea by experienced combat divers. The often-put-up thesis that the assassins could only have brought the explosives to the site of the attack because of its weight with a larger ship and possibly a mini-submarine is no longer applicable.

So, what is Oktogen?  It's Octogen or HMX

HMX, also called octogen, is a powerful and relatively insensitive nitroamine high explosive, chemically related to RDX. The compound's name is the subject of much speculation, having been variously listed as High Melting Explosive, High-velocity Military Explosive, or High-Molecular-weight RDX.[1] 

HMX is used in melt-castable explosives when mixed with TNT, which as a class are referred to as "octols". Additionally, polymer-bonded explosive compositions containing HMX are used in the manufacture of missile warheads and armor-piercing shaped charges.

HMX is also used in the process of perforating the steel casing in oil and gas wells. The HMX is built into a shaped charge that is detonated within the wellbore to punch a hole through the steel casing and surrounding cement out into the hydrocarbon bearing formations. The pathway that is created allows formation fluids to flow into the wellbore and onward to the surface.[4][5]

The Hayabusa2 space probe used HMX to excavate a hole in an asteroid in order to access material that had not been exposed to the solar wind.[6]

Ongoing research aims to reduce its sensitivity and improve some manufacturing properties.[7][8


Intelligence services suspect Ukrainian perpetrators

The traces found by the Federal Criminal Police Office coincide with the assessments of several intelligence services, according to which the authors are to be located in Ukraine. The secret services are now wondering whether the deed could have been carried out by an uncontrolled commando or by Ukrainian secret services - and to what extent parts of the Ukrainian government apparatus might have been in the picture.

However, it is still unclear exactly on what basis these assessments are made. 

At the BND, however, the report was assessed as not very credible.

 The New York Times was the first to report such an assessment by US authorities in March.

Of course share some thoughts… I’ve posted a few excerpts below but suggest the piece be read entirely at the link above. Both hubby and I found it an interesting read.

This war began in the early morning hours of June 22, 1941, when the German Wehrmacht jumped off its start lines and implemented Operation Barbarossa. This operation, like the larger war that it inaugurated, was unprecedented in its scope. The German force numbered well over three million men – dwarfing the forces involved in the invasions of Poland or France. Even more uniquely, however, Barbarossa was an attempt to wage a campaign of maneuver and annihilation on a genuinely continental scale. The planned areas of operation ranged from the Baltic States and Leningrad in the north all the way to Crimea in the south. The entire battlespace was on the order of half a million square miles. This is entirely unique. Neither before nor after would any army attempt a fully continental scale operation – and for good reason.

Barbarossa and its immediate follow up operation (Operation Typhoon) are much mythologized and frequently misrepresented in popular histories. The most simplistic story that is usually told centers strongly on the Russian winter. The Germans, it is said, were on the verge of capturing Moscow when they were caught out by the onset of winter weather, which froze their advance and allowed the USSR to recover (usually, it is said, with the generous aid of American lend-lease). A slightly more sophisticated, but still incorrect story points to the decision in the early autumn to redirect forces towards Kiev as a critical moment – allegedly, this reflected Hitler getting distracted by secondary objectives and causing a fatal delay which left the Germans unable to reach Moscow in time.

The failure of Barbarossa was in fact rooted in the highest conceptions of the operation, rather than in the details of its implementation. Barbarossa failed because it was simply impossible to successfully wage a continental scale maneuver campaign in the Soviet Union with the resources available to the German Wehrmacht in 1941. Tellingly, Barbarossa achieved all its objectives – but these successes did not translate to strategic victory.