A useful background to understand the present conflict in Ukraine...

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SCOTT RITTER: On Speaking Plain 'Putin,' Part Two
December 20, 2023
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Because of their grossly inaccurate assessments of the Russian president and his country, "Putin Whisperers" in the West have Ukrainian blood on their hands.


Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday at a meeting of the Defence Ministry Board. (Artem Geodakyan, TASS)

By Scott Ritter
Special to Consortium News

Read Part One of this two-part series.

Russians who lived through the 1990s remember the decade quite differently from Michael McFaul, the former U.S.  ambassador/Stanford University professor. One such person is Marat Khairullin, a Russian journalist who has reported on Russia since the end of the Soviet Union.

In a remarkable essay published on his Substack account (I urge anyone interested in the reality of modern Russia and the war between Russia and Ukraine to subscribe), Khairullin lays out the connection between the war that McFaul and his fellow critics call Putin's own, and the Russian people.

Entitled "Russia I am trying to forget," Khairullin describes a time — the 1990s— where humanity was put on hold because of the corruption and depravations of the Yeltsin government, and reminds his readers that this is the Russia to which McFaul and the other erstwhile Western Russian "experts" want to return, something which Vladimir Putin has sworn to never allow to happen.

The goal of the collective West in promoting and sustaining the Russian-Ukraine conflict is to remove Putin from power and install a Yeltsin-like clone in his stead. Arat's article serves as a stark warning about the consequences of such an outcome for the Russian people.

For Their Miserable Apartments

Khairullin recalls one assignment, in the early 1990s, where he traveled to "a small Ural town" to investigate an allegation of particular cruelty. "Lonely old people who remembered the Great Patriotic War (WWII) were evicted from their apartments throughout all the Russia," Khairullin recalled.

"This happened everywhere — Moscow, Balashikha, St. Petersburg, Ufa, Kazan, Vladivostok...but in big cities, old people were spared, forced to assign these damned apartments to new owners and then evicted to live in some abandoned villages. In small towns, old people were simply mowed down."

Khairullin's investigation uncovered collusion between the town's bureaucracy, the local police and the local mafia. "In a very short period of time (just a couple of years) that has passed since Yeltsin's sovereignty was established in this classic Stalinist industrial town, 136 lonely pensioners had gone missing, and their apartments had changed ownership."

The local police had a list of pensioners and their apartments. This list was turned over to the mafia, who simply took the pensioner out to the edge of town and murdered him or her. "The person disappears," Khairullin noted, "after that they immediately clean the apartment up, and the next day they move in, the body of the person has not yet cooled down, but they are already in charge."

Khairullin had to flee the Ural town in the trunk of a car to avoid being killed himself by the local mafia, who took umbrage at his investigation after being tipped off by the local police.

Khairullin condemns Yeltsin "for the death of these hundreds of thousands of old people abandoned to the mercy of fate," and believes that the current Russian-Ukraine conflict is being fought in part "simply to make sure that our lonely old people would no longer be killed in the thousands for the sake of their miserable apartments."


Dec. 9, 1993: Yeltsin, second from right, in Brussels to visit NATO Secretary General Manfred, on right. (NATO)

Khairullin tells of other experiences gained traveling "around the once great country where Democracy and Yeltsin had won." One in particular hits hard. "I was a very callous person then," Khairullin writes. "I almost never cried."

And then he met Kuzmich, Aksa, and Sima.

Kuzmich was the local senior police officer of "some kind of God forgotten town, an eternal 'polustanok' [waypoint] on one of the endless outskirts of Russia." He took Khairullin on a tour of the local train yard.

"And suddenly," Khairullin writes, "Kuzmich rushed somewhere to the side, between the carriages, we caught up with him only when he was already dragging a kicking lump out of some hole. 'Don't you scratch, little devil, you know I won't do anything...' Kuzmich groaned, bringing out a grimy kid at most 8-10 years old into the light of the moon."

This was Aksa.

Kuzmich took Aksa and Khairullin to the basement of the police building, where he sat the boy down at a table and fed him a sandwich.

"'Wait, that's not all...', Kuzmich said. "The door suddenly opened slightly and a girl of about six slipped through the crack and sat down next to Aska and took his hand. 'Here, meet Sima,' Kuzmich grinned: 'I have about thirty of them running around the station here, but these ones are in love ... Real love, they hold on to each other — she works in the carriages with shift workers, and this one guards her...Yes Seraphim? How much did you do today? Come on eat...'. Sima just bowed her head and began to smile at the floor quietly...Even then I noted what a nice, childlike smile she had."

Khairullin and Kuzmich smoked cigarettes while Aksa and Sima ate and drank tea, before falling asleep in their chairs.

"That's how it is here, correspondent," Kuzmich said. "The nearest orphanage is half a thousand miles away ... Yes, they escape from there...Where to place them...No one cares about them." Khairullin writes:

"As far as I remember, starting from year 1997, the U.N. annually issued a special report on torture in the police ('militia' at the time) — this, of course, was an unfriendly move by the United States, nevertheless, it spoke about the state of the law enforcement system in the country. At the same time more than a thousand people annually died from the bullets of murderers on the streets of the capital city of my tortured country.

And in the very year when Putin became prime minister [1999], another terrible study was released which stated that every third girl in Russia under the age of 18 had the experience of 'commercial sex.' This is how Western researchers found a tolerant term to label prostitution in our country.

And there also used to be a slave market in Russia (about 15 thousand Russians were sold annually without their consent) and a special market for sexual slavery — according to various estimates, up to half a million of our girls were held 'against their will' in foreign brothels..."

Nineties Mortality Rates


1992 flea market in Rostov-on-Don in southern Russia. (Brian Kelley, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)

According to Western researchers, "an extra 2.5-3 million Russian adults died in middle age in the period 1992-2001 than would have been expected based on 1991 mortality."

This figure does not include infant mortality rates, the fate of missing children like Aksa and Sima, or the murdered pensioners. Altogether,  it is believed at least 5 million Russians died as a direct result of the chaos that gripped Russia in the 1990's — a chaos that Michael McFaul derides as "mythology."

The 1990s is a reality that Khairullin Khairullin and the people of Russia will never forget, regardless of how people like McFaul, Applebaum, Kendall-Taylor and  Hill try to rewrite history.

Moreover, the linkage between the 1990s and the present in the minds of the Russian people is visceral — they support Russia's conflict with Ukraine and the collective West not because they have been misled by Putin, but rather because they know their own history — much better than western pundits such as McFaul and company.


1998: Russians protest the economic depression caused by market reforms with banner saying: "Jail the redhead!" referring to Anatoly Chubais, the Russian economist who oversaw Yeltsin-era  privatizations. (Pereslavl Week, Yu. N. Chastov, Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 3.0)

These pundits, whom I have classified as "Putin whisperers," have had a hugely detrimental impact on fact-based discourse about Russia today.

"Rather than dealing with the reality of a Russian nation seeking its rightful place at the table of a multi-polar world," I've previously noted, "the 'Putin whisperers' created a domestic market for their personification of all things Russian into the form of a single man" — Vladimir Putin.

"Russia stopped being a national security problem to be managed through effective diplomacy, but rather a domestic political issue which American politicians from both sides of the aisle used to scare the American people into supporting their respective visions of the world."

What Putin Told David Frost


Gennady Zyuganov in February 2019, during Putin's presidential address to the Federal Assembly. (Duma.gov.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

On March 5, 2000, shortly before Putin was inaugurated following his victory over Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Russian Communist Party, in the first presidential election following Boris Yeltsin's resignation, the famous (and now departed) BBC journalist David Frost sat down for an interview with the Russian president-elect. The transcript of this interview is essential reading for anyone who seeks to "speak Putin."

"My position," Putin told Frost,

"is that our country should be a strong, powerful state, a capable and effective state, in which both its citizens and all those who want to cooperate with Russia could feel comfortable and protected, could always feel in their own shoes — if you allow the expression — psychologically and morally, and well off.

But this has nothing to do with aggression. If we again and again go back to the terminology of the Cold War we are never going to discard attitudes and problems that humanity had to grapple with a mere 15–20 years ago.

We in Russia have to a large extent rid ourselves of what is related to the Cold War. Regrettably, it appears that our partners in the West are all too often still in the grip of old notions and tend to picture Russia as a potential aggressor. That is a completely wrong conception of our country. It gets in the way of developing normal relations in Europe and in the world."

Compare and contrast the tone and construct of Putin's response to Frost with comments made recently in an interview with the Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin, who asked the Russian leader if he would "have been called a naive person in the 2000s?"

Putin answered:

"I had a naive idea that the whole world — and above all, the so-called 'civilized' one understands what happened to Russia [after the collapse of the Soviet Union], that it has become a completely different country, that there is no longer any ideological confrontation, which means there is no basis for confrontation."

"If," Putin continued,

"something negative happens in the policies of Western countries towards Russia — in particular, support for separatism and terrorism on Russian territory was obvious, I, as director of the FSB, saw this, but in my naivety, I believed that this was simply the inertia of thinking and action. This was a naive view of reality."

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In his discussion with Frost, when the BBC interviewer asked if he viewed NATO as an enemy, Putin answered:

"Russia is part of the European culture. And I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and what we often call the civilized world. So it is hard for me to visualize NATO as an enemy. I think even posing the question this way will not do any good to Russia or the world. The very question is capable of causing damage. Russia strives for equitable and candid relations with its partners."


The BBC's David Frost interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on March 5, 2000. (Kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

'Now We'll Ruin Russia Too'

In his answer to Zarubin, one can detect the disappointment in Putin's words once the depth of betrayal by his erstwhile "partners" in the West had become clear.

"But the reality is," Putin said, that "later I became absolutely one hundred percent convinced" that his Western "partners," following the collapse of the Soviet Union, "thought that we [NATO] needed to be patient a little, 'now we'll ruin Russia too.'"  Putin said:

"Such a large country by European standards, with the largest territory in the world and a fairly large population compared to other European countries, is generally not needed. It is better — as the famous U.S.  politician Brzezinski proposed — to divide it into five parts, and these parts are separately subordinated to oneself and use resources, but based on the fact that everything separately will not have independent weight, independent voice, and will not have the opportunity to defend their national interests the way a united Russian state does. Only later did this realization come to me. And the initial approach was quite naive."

Putin said Russia's

"main concern is our own country, its place in the world today and tomorrow. When we are confronted with attempts to exclude us from the process of decision-making, this naturally causes concern and irritation on our part. But that does not mean we are going to shut ourselves off from the rest of the world. Isolationism is not an option. Victory is only possible when every citizen of this country feels that the values we promote yield positive changes in their day-to-day lives. That they're beginning to live better, eat better, feel safer and so on.

But in this sense one can say we are still very far from our goal. I think we are still at the start of that road. But I have no doubt that the road we have chosen is the right one. And our goal is to follow this road, and to make sure our policies are absolutely open and clear for the majority of the Russian people."

The fact that the layperson would be unable, in isolation, to readily identify Putin's statement as part of his answer to Frost or Zarubin underscores the consistency of Putin's position vis-à-vis Russia's relations with the West over the course of the past 23-plus years.

It also upends the narrative that Putin has somehow transitioned from one type of leader when he first entered office, to another, more autocratic and isolated leader today. The above quote was from the Frost interview, but it could have been made today, or at any time during Putin's more than two decades at the helm of the Russian Federation.

Words have meaning. Take, for instance, Putin's use of the term "Special Military Operation." It signifies something other than an invasion. Military operations do not rise to the level of full-scale war.

Putin has always sought negotiations with Ukraine — the proof of the pudding, they say, is in the eating: Up until the end of 2021, Putin promoted the Minsk Accords as the preferred mechanism for conflict resolution regarding Ukraine.

Once it became clear that neither Ukraine, France nor Germany (the three signatories to the Minsk Accords) was serious about their implementation, Russia next sought to negotiate directly with the United States and NATO, promulgating two draft treaties which were turned over to Russia's Western partners for their evaluation and consideration in December 2021.


Dec. 7, 2021: U.S. President Joe Biden, on screen during video call with Putin. (Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Both the U.S. and NATO gave short shrift to Russia's proposals, leading to the decision to initiate the "Special Military Operation" on Feb. 24, 2023. Here is where the importance of words comes into play — rather than seeking the strategic defeat and destruction of Ukraine, which one would normally expect from a military operation of the scope and scale of the one undertaken on Feb. 24.

Whisperers' Malign Influence

Russia — according to Davyd Arakhamiia, leader of the Servant of the People faction (Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's party), who led the Ukrainian delegation during peace talks with the Russians in Belarus and Turkey in March 2022, was willing to exchange peace with Ukraine in exchange for Ukraine refusing to join NATO. Ultimately Ukraine, under pressure from then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, rejected the Russian offer.

The collective West, not fully comprehending the limitations built into the term "Special Military Operation,"perceived weakness from Russia's willingness to negotiate. The main reason for this lack of comprehension was the influence that the "Putin Whisperer's" had on those who wrote the lexicon used to define and decipher Russia's goals and objectives regarding NATO and Ukraine.

Had they "spoken Putin" (as any genuine expert could, and would), there is a good chance the collective West could have avoided the military embarrassment, economic consequences and geopolitical isolation that has taken place in the months since Ukraine walked away from the peace table.

Because of their grossly inaccurate assessments of Putin and Russia, Hill, Kendall-Taylor, Applebaum, McFaul, and a host of other "Putin Whisperer's" have the blood of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians on their collective hands.

Their crime was not just that they did not know how to "speak Putin," but rather that they deliberately refused to try, instead choosing a path of deliberate obfuscation and deceit when it came to defining Russia and its leader for the western audience.

When advising on issues of national security involving Russia, the failure to "speak Putin" on the part of anyone charged with influencing and/or making Russia policy, borders on the point of criminal negligence.

And if your job is to provide assessments on Russia of a more commercial nature, the failure to "speak Putin" means not only that you're not very good at your job, but also that perhaps it is time to begin considering finding another career.

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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PATRICK LAWRENCE: Russia's Turn From the West
January 22, 2024
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Sergei Lavrov's recent comments are a case of the subtext being vastly larger than the text. 


Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, during Russia-UAE talks in December 2023. (Sergei Savostyanov, TASS)

By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News

Sergei Lavrov, Russia's steady, able, intellectually quick foreign minister, last week held one of those wide-ranging press conferences he and his boss favor. Lavrov's remarks are subtly delivered but of a significance we must not miss.

Tass published a useful summary of them on Jan. 18.

Here are a few of Lavrov's pithier remarks. The first of these appeared under the subhead, "On friends of Russia." I take the liberty of minorly cleaning up the English translation:

"Relations between Russia and China currently experience the best period of their centuries-long history.

Their relations are firmer, more reliable, and more advanced than a military union as we understood these in the previous Cold War-era.

In all cases, the interests of Russia and China reach a common denominator after negotiation, and this is an example for resolution of any issues by any other participants in global communication.

Relations of particularly privileged cooperation with India develop gradually. Russia also takes relations with African states to a truly strategic level. It develops relations with the Latin American continent. Russia's close circle also includes Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Qatar."

Here is Lavrov on the BRICS–Plus group, which expanded last year from its original members, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa:

"About 30 states are interested in rapprochement with BRICS. This association has a great future. Being a superregional global structure, BRICS symbolizes the diversity of a multipolar world."

At one point Lavrov turned, inevitably, to the conflict in Ukraine:

"It is not up to Ukraine to decide when to stop and when to talk seriously about realistic preconditions for the end of this conflict. It is necessary to talk with the West about it.

The West wants no constructive resolution that would take Russia's legitimate concerns into account. This is indicated by incitement and coercion of Kiev for increasingly aggressive use of long-range weapons to strike Crimea, in order to make it unsuitable for life, as well as deep into Russian territory, and not only incitement, but the handover of corresponding weapons as well."

Three practical questions as Russia's top diplomat interpreted them in a review of "Russia's diplomatic work in 2023," as TASS put it. This is fine as it is, but Lavrov's comments are a case of the subtext being vastly larger than the text. Russia's objective in 2024 — this is TASS again — is "to remove any dependence on the West."

I am sure you know the old adage, derived from an 18th century Christian hymn, "God moves in mysterious ways." So does history. Let us, then, consider this history in brief. Lavrov's press conference brims with implied references to it.

Notions of Progress


Red Square, Moscow, 2015. (Misha Sokolnikov, Flickr,
CC BY-ND 2.0)

Russia is considered among the scholars what is called "a late developer." Such nations are so named because they were a century or more behind the West as it entered the age of scientific and industrial advances and then — regrettably enough, I would say — on to the Age of Materialism. Railroads, telegraph lines, steamships, photography, Bessemer steel, and all the rest: Late developers, lagging in these technologies, looked Westward with envy well-mixed with a felt inferiority.

The premier case of late development is Japan. Among Russians as among the Japanese, the condition of being "behind" produced profound confusion as to identity and their place in the modern world. This confusion is still easily detected.  At its core lie two very consequential misunderstandings.

One, there is the fraudulent Western notion of "progress" as this became an orthodoxy from the mid–19th century onward. I say "fraudulent" because history does not advance in anything like a straight line, and progress is measured in the West strictly according to material advances. In matters of ethos, humaneness, equality, environmental stewardship, the settling of conflicts — of the human spirit altogether — the West remains more primitive than many "primitive" societies.

Two, and the larger point here, from the 19th century onward, there was only one way to modernize. All colonized people who chose the capitalist road understood the imperative this way: modernization = Westernization. All of a sudden, to advance, to make a future in the modern world, meant to repudiate who one was and imitate being someone else.

How hard is it to imagine the deep disturbances and distortions — at bottom psychological but also political, social, economic, and cultural — that arose in consequence of this misapprehension? I count the equation of modernizing with Westernizing, as measured by the extravagant damage it did, among the gravest errors of the late 19th century and all through the 20th to our time.

Russia has spent nearly three centuries in this state of turmoil and — maybe not too strong a term — disorientation. Periods of orthodox conservatism have been followed by cycles of Westward-looking liberalization, this followed by a return to previously abandoned traditions, which have included over many years a return to reaction and a new valorization of one or another kind of nativism and nationalism.

A New Course 


U.A.E. welcoming ceremony for Russian President Vladimir Putin, Abu Dhabi, Dec. 6, 2023. (President of Russia)

There is another factor to consider. From the 1830s onward to NATO's post–Cold War expansions, the horrific U.S.–led program to turn the Russian Federation into a capitalist greedfest after the Soviet Union's collapse, and now the conflict in Ukraine, Russia's struggle to understand itself has been accompanied by more or less incessant Western efforts decisively to reshape Russia in the West's image.

We cannot understand Lavrov's press conference, or many, many of the things Vladimir Putin has said these past few years, without this historical context. In so many words, all of them well-chosen, the foreign minister and the president have announced that Russia will no longer look Westward as it advances into the 21st century. Modernization will no longer mean Westernization.

It would be altogether impossible to overstate the historical magnitude of what Russia has set as its new course. We live in the most interesting times, to put this point another way — even if most of us, mesmerized by the propaganda of eternal Western superiority, cannot see five feet in front of us as the most significant events of our time unfold.

Many things will now fall into place. Lavrov, in enumerating the members of Russia's "close circle," describes, a couple of years on, the "new world order" the Chinese frequently reference.

The 5,000–word charter Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping made public two years ago next month, "Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China on International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development," can be understood now as what your columnist called it at the time: the most important political document to be issued so far in the 21st century.

Gordon Hahn, the accomplished scholar of Russia and Eurasia, last week offered a superb history of Russia's relations with the West during an appearance last week on The Duran, the daily web program produced by Alexander Mercouris and (in this case) Glenn Diesen. In the course of this long, rich interview Hahn notes, "Putin, as he has stated over and over again now recently, the [Russian] elites routinely demonstrate that they do not trust anyone in the West anymore." He elaborates:

"For Russia, it looks now, the West is no longer its 'Other.'... Russia has always identified itself, motivated itself, driven itself in relation to Europe. Now Putin is turning away from that. He said that we are no longer to define ourselves, look at ourselves, through the European prism. For now, we will put all our eggs in one basket, and that is Eurasia.... This close bilateral relationship, of Europe as Russia's Other, is ending, and therefore the cycle [from conservatism to Westernization and back] is probably ending."

This moment has been a long time coming. A shallow peruse of the past brings us back to 1990–91, when Michail Gorbachev accepted Washington's assurance — without a signed document, imprudently — that NATO would not expand eastward from the reunified Germany.

As is well-known, 30 years of betrayals and diplomatic dishonesty followed as Moscow sought a new security architecture that would provide the Russian Federation a place in that "common European home" for which Gorbachev longed.

"I am extremely pessimistic," Hahn says of the outlook for U.S.–Russian relations. "I can't see that, even with an agreement between Russia and Ukraine, the West will cease trying to expand NATO. They will try to repeat the same scenario unless something changes in the West itself, in Washington."

The world turns, even as the West declines or is incapable of turning with it. The teaser on The Duran's segment with Gordon Hahn reads, "Russia ends 300 years of west-centric foreign policy." This is big. It rarely gets bigger. History's mysterious ways lie before us.

Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for the International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon.  Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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ICJ Rules Against Ukraine v Russia on Terrorism, MH17
February 1, 2024
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In a blow to Ukraine, the World Court ruled Russia didn't finance terrorism in Donbass and the court refused to blame Moscow for the downing of Flight MH17.


ICJ delivers ruling in Ukraine v. Russia Wednesday at The Hague. (U.N. TV Screenshot)

By Joe Lauria
in The Hague, Netherlands
Special to Consortium News



The World Court ruled on Wednesday that Russia did not finance terrorism in its defense of separatists in Ukraine and the court refused to find Russia guilty of downing Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 as Ukraine had asked.   

The case was brought to the ICJ by Ukraine in 2017, three years after the U.S.-backed coup in Kiev overthrew the democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych.

When Russian speakers in Donbass rebelled against the unconstitutional change in government that they had voted for, the coup leaders in 2014 launched what it called an "anti-terrorist" military operation to put down the rebellion.   

Russia responded by helping ethnic Russians with arms and other military equipment. Ukraine claimed to the court that that was in breach of a treaty barring terrorism financing.

But the ICJ ruled on Wednesday that the treaty only covered cash transfers made to alleged terrorist groups. This "does not include the means used to commit acts of terrorism, including weapons or training camps," the Court said in its judgement.

"Consequently, the alleged supply of weapons to various armed groups operating in Ukraine... fall outside the material scope" of the anti-terrorism financing convention, the Court ruled. The Court also said it had no evidence to show that any of the armed militias in Donbass fighting against the government could be characterized as terrorist groups.

The ICJ found only that Russia was, "failing to take measures to investigate facts... regarding persons who have allegedly committed an offense."  It added that the court "rejects all other submissions made by the Ukraine."



The ruling is highly significant in undermining Kiev's claim to be fighting a war against terrorists in Donbass, an essential part of the Ukraine's and the West's narrative in justifying its brutal operation that left more than 10,000 civilians dead.

Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 amid indications that Kiev was beginning a new offensive against Donbass. Ukraine and the West had failed to implement two peace agreements negotiated in Minsk and endorsed by the U.N. Security Council.  Western and Ukrainian officials later admitted they never had any intention of implementing the deal and pretended to to buy time to build up its forces against Russia.

Rejected MH17 Claim

In its complaint to the Court, Ukraine had also claimed that Russia was responsible for the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014, killing all 298 civilian passengers and crew on board. Kiev wanted Russia to pay compensation to the victims.

But the court refused to rule whether Russia was responsible and to order compensation.  This ruling appears to contradict the results of the official investigation into the incident.

The Dutch Safety Board (DSB) and a Dutch-led joint investigation team (JIT) concluded in 2016 that the plane was shot down by ethnic Russian separatist using a missile supplied by Russia. Moscow has denied involvement in the incident.


Russian legal team listening to ICJ's ruling on Wednesday. (U.N. TV Screenshot)

The ruling on MH17 came two weeks after the European Court of Justice decided that the Dutch government was not required to release information it has about the incident.  The Dutch news outlet RTL Nieuws had brought the case before the ICJ.

It wanted to now what reports the Dutch government had gotten regarding Ukrainian airspace before the plane was shot down.  The government refused to release that information and the European court ruled it did not have to divulge information regarding aviation safety.

No Discrimination

Ukraine was also denied compensation for what it said was discrimination against ethnic Tatars and Ukrainians in Crimea after Russia annexed the peninsula in 2014.

The court only agreed that Russia failed to protect Ukrainian language education in Crimea. This complaint came as Ukraine passed laws discriminating against the Russian language in the country.

CN's Joe Lauria was outside the World Court on Wednesday before the ruling came down:



Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe

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Throwing Good Money After Bad in Ukraine?
February 16, 2024
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Ray McGovern and Lawrence Wilkerson argue the U.S. should accept that no amount of U.S. funding will change Russia's will and means to prevail in Ukraine.



Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky displaying a present given by then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after his speech to U.S. Congress on Dec. 21, 2022. (C-Span still)

By Ray McGovern and Lawrence Wilkerson
Special to Consortium News

As U.S. House members grapple with whether to give $60 billion more to Ukraine, they must also grapple with the checkered nature of the intelligence they've been fed.

On July 13, 2023, President Joe Biden announced Russian President Vladimir Putin "has already lost the war." That was six days after C.I.A. Director William Burns, normally a sane voice, had called the war a "strategic failure" for Russia with its "military weaknesses laid bare."

Earlier, in December 2022, National Intelligence Director Avril Haines reported that the Russians were experiencing "shortages of ammunition" and were "not capable of indigenously producing what they are expending."

We advise caution, as these same people now say that Ukraine can prevail if the U.S. provides $60 billion more. Do they think they can change geography, overcome Russian industrial might, and persuade the Russians that Ukraine should not be a core interest of theirs?

Obama's Reasons

Recall President Barack Obama's reasons for withholding lethal weapons from Ukraine. In 2015, The New York Times reported on Obama's reluctance: "In part, he has told aides and visitors that arming the Ukrainians would encourage the notion that they could actually defeat the far more powerful Russians, and so it would potentially draw a more forceful response from Moscow."

Senior State Department officials spelled out this rationale:

"If you're playing on the military terrain in Ukraine, you're playing to Russia's strength, because Russia is right next door. It has a huge amount of military equipment and military force right on the border. Anything we did as countries in terms of military support for Ukraine is likely to be matched and then doubled and tripled and quadrupled by Russia."

The above words were spoken by then-Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken on March 5, 2015 to an audience in Berlin. It turns out President Obama was right. It is hard to understand why Blinken (and Biden) chose the way of President Donald Trump, who gave lethal weapons to Ukraine, over the way of Obama.

So much for geography and relative strength. What about core interests? In 2016 President Obama told The Atlantic that Ukraine is a core interest of Russia but not of the U.S. He warned that Russia has escalatory dominance there: "We have to be very clear about what our core interests are and what we are willing to go to war for."

[See: VIPS MEMO: To President Biden —Avoiding a Third World War]

Earlier, when a saner William Burns was ambassador to Russia, he warned of Moscow's "emotional and neuralgic reaction" to bringing Ukraine into NATO. Braced on the issue by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in February 2008, Burns reported that Russia's opposition was based on "strategic concerns about the impact on Russia's interests in the region" and warned then that "Russia now feels itself able to respond more forcefully".

Burns added:

"In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene."

Regime Change in Kiev


Feb. 18, 2014: Protesters throwing pieces of brick pavement at Ukrainian troops obscured by the smoke of burning tires in Kiev. (Mstyslav Chernov, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)

The overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 gave immediacy to Russia's warnings on Ukraine and its fear that the West would try to effect "regime change" in Russia, as well.

In a major commentary, "Russian Military Power", published in December 2017, the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency concluded:

"The Kremlin is convinced the U.S. is laying the groundwork for regime change in Russia, a conviction further reinforced by the events in Ukraine. Moscow views the United States as the critical driver behind the crisis in Ukraine and the Arab Spring and believes that the overthrow of former Ukrainian President Yanukovych is the latest move in a long-established pattern of U.S.-orchestrated regime change efforts ..."

Is Putin paranoid about "U.S. regime change efforts?" D.I.A. did not think him paranoid. And surely Putin has taken note of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's remarks in April 2022:

"One of the US's goals in Ukraine is to see a weakened Russia. ... The US is ready to move heaven and earth to help Ukraine win the war against Russia."

In sum: Russia has both the will and the means to prevail in Ukraine – no matter how many dollars and arms Ukraine gets.

Obama was right; Russia sees an existential threat from the West in Ukraine. And nuclear powers do not tolerate existential threats on their border. Russia learned this the hard way in Cuba in 1962.

Last, there is zero evidence that after Ukraine, Putin will go after other European countries. The old Soviet Union and its empire are long gone. Thus, President Trump's recent remarks, in which he threw doubt on the U.S. commitment to defend NATO countries from a nonexistent threat, is nonsense – sheer bombast.

Ray McGovern, former army infantry intelligence officer and later chief of C.I.A.'s Soviet Foreign Policy Branch; was also C.I.A. one-on-one briefer of The President's Daily Brief 1981-1985.

Lawrence Wilkerson, Colonel (USA, ret.), Distinguished Visiting Professor, College of William and Mary; former Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.

 Post Views: 2,063
Tags: Antony Blinken Barack Obama C.I.A. Central Intelligence Agency

[Jafar]

Ukraine aid's best-kept secret: Most of the money stays in the U.S.A.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/29/ukraine-military-aid-american-economy-boost/

Good analysis on how "Industrial Military Complex" works.
In more easy-to-digest terms it is:
1. US Government issue bonds (Loan in the name of US Citizens).
2. US Federal Reserve issue new US Dollars and bought the bonds. (Printing money out of thin air)
3. US Government issue contract to US corporations to procure weapons (Spending the loan in the name of US Citizens)
4. US Government sign "Military Aid" deal with Ukraine government (Loan in the name of Ukraine citizens)

Who are the victims here?
1. US Citizens; need to survive with higher price on common goods and services (US Dollar inflation)
2. Ukraine Citizens; the above plus need to repay the loan for generations to come (debt enslavement) plus need to sacrifice lives to use the weapons.
3. Russian Citizens: sacrificing their lives to be the receiving end of the weapons usage.

Just in case somebody then came up with a conclusion of:
If that's the case, Putin / Russian government is the good guy then!
The Russian "Industrial Military Complex" is also working in the exact same way!!

[almarh0m]

SCOTT RITTER: The Minds of Desperate Men
March 5, 2024
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France's Emmanuel Macron last week suggested the suicidal idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine to confront Russia militarily.


French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, right, in 2022. (NATO, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

"O mischief, thou art swift, to enter in the thoughts of desperate men!"

—Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 1

With these words, William Shakespeare, the immortal bard, captures the psychology of men who, believing they are confronted with a situation for which there is no hope of resolving, undertake actions that will inevitably lead to their death.

Although set in 14th century Mantua, Italy, Shakespeare's tragedy could easily have been transported in time to present day France, where French President Emmanuel Macron, in the role of a modern Romeo, after learning of the demise of his true love, Ukraine, decides to commit suicide by encouraging the dispatch of NATO troops to Ukraine to confront Russia militarily.

Macron was hosting a crisis meeting last week, convened to discuss the deteriorating conditions on the battlefield in Ukraine following the Russian capture of the fortress city of Adviivka. The meeting was attended by senior representatives from NATO member states, including the U.S. and Canada.

"We should not exclude that there might be a need for security that then justifies some elements of deployment," Macron said during a press conference convened after the meeting. "But I've told you very clearly what France maintains as its position, which is a strategic ambiguity that I stand by."

The other participants of the meeting immediately rushed forward to announce that, from their perspective, there was no "strategic ambiguity" — the dispatch of NATO forces to Ukraine was not on the table.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who attended the Paris talks, rejected Macron's proposal out of hand. "What was agreed from the beginning among ourselves and with each other also applies to the future," Scholtz declared, "namely that there will be no soldiers on Ukrainian soil sent there by European states or NATO states."

Scholz's statement was echoed by other NATO leaders, leaving France standing alone to bear the consequences of Macron's "strategic ambiguity."

Even as NATO rushed forward to bring clarity to Macron's stance, Russia made it quite clear what the consequences of any precipitous deployment of NATO forces to Ukraine would be. Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin spokesperson, declared that, in the event of any NATO deployment into Ukraine,

"we should not talk about the probability but about the inevitability [of a direct war with NATO]. That's how we assess it."

Peskov noted that most NATO nations participating in the Paris conference "maintain a fairly sober assessment of the potential dangers of such an action and the potential danger of being directly involved in a hot conflict, involving them on the battlefield."

He also noted Macron's stance regarding "the need to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia," an objective shared by the U.S. and the NATO secretary general.

Putin Responds

In his annual address to the Russian Parliament, delivered a few days after Macron gave his press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin removed any ambiguity as to what the consequences of any NATO intervention in Ukraine would be.

"We remember the fate of those who once sent their contingents to the territory of our country," Putin said, referring to the past invasions of Russia by Hitler and Napoleon. "But now the consequences for potential interventionists will be much more tragic."

And, just to drive the point home, Putin went on to describe Russia's most recent advances in the field of strategic nuclear weapons — a new nuclear-powered cruise missile, the Burevestnik, which is in the final stages of development, and the deployment of Sarmat heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles and Avangard hypersonic warheads that are immune to Western anti-missile defenses.

Putin pointed out that two of these new Russian weapons — the Zircon and Kinzhal —have seen combat duty in the Ukrainian conflict.

The NATO leaders "must grasp that we also have weapons capable of striking targets on their territory," Putin said. "Everything they are inventing now, spooking the world with the threat of a conflict involving nuclear weapons, which potentially means the end of civilization — don't they realize this?"

The clearest evidence available that NATO leaders do not realize the consequences of their actions comes in the form of a transcript of a conversation, released by the editor-in-chief of RT, Margarita Simonyan, on her page on the VK social network, which has four senior German military officers discussing how they planned to implement instructions given to them by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius regarding the delivery of the Taurus cruise missile to Ukraine.


Putin presenting RT's Simonyan with an award in May 2019. (Kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

As the transcript shows, the assurances given by German Chancellor Scholz that Germany would not become directly involved in the Ukraine conflict were little more than a lie.

In addition to discussing the logistical issues involving the transfer of these weapons, the German officers discussed their possible employment, including how they could be used to attack the Crimea Bridge connecting the Crimean Peninsula with southern Russia.

"The [Crimean] bridge in the east is hard to hit, as that's quite a narrow target, but the Taurus can do that, and it can also hit ammo depots," one of the German officers noted, prompting a reply by another, who declared that "there is an opinion that the Taurus will handle that (hit the Crimean Bridge) if the French Dassault Rafale fighter jet is used."


The Crimean or Kerch Strait Bridge connecting the Taman Peninsula of Krasnodar Krai in Russia with the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea. (Rosavtodor.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

Scholz has been reticent about joining Britain and France, which have transferred Storm Shadow and Scalp long-range missiles, respectively, to Ukraine.

"What is being done in the way of target control and accompanying target control on the part of the British and the French can't be done in Germany," Scholz said after the Paris gathering, referring to the indirect role played by Britain and France in enabling Ukrainian pilots to launch the Storm Shadow and Scalp missiles from modified SU-24 aircraft.

"Everyone who has dealt with this system knows that," Scholz noted, implying the need for a direct role by German military personnel in the targeting and operation of the Taurus missile.

"German soldiers must at no point and in no place be linked to targets this (Taurus) system reaches," Scholz said, adding "not in Germany either."

Scholz, it appears, understands the potential consequences of German involvement in the targeting and operation of any Taurus missiles used by Ukraine against Russia.

"This clarity is necessary," Scholz said. "I am surprised that this doesn't move some people, that they don't even think about whether, as it were, a participation in the war could emerge from what we do."

Clearly there is a disconnect between the German chancellor and his defense minister.


NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and Pistorius in June 2023. (NATO, Flickr, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

In case the German officers and their minister failed to "realize" the potential consequences of their actions, the Russian military, a day after Putin's address to the Russian Parliament, carried out what it called "a combat training launch of a mobile-based solid-propellant intercontinental ballistic missile PGRK Yars, equipped with multiple warheads."

The Yars missile, launched from the Plesetsk test facility located south of Saint Petersburg, can carry between three and six independently targetable nuclear warheads.

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, "The training warheads arrived at the designated area at the Kura training ground on the Kamchatka Peninsula" after flying a range of nearly 4,200 miles.

When I was a weapons inspector, back in 1988-1990, working at the Votkinsk missile production facility, we inspected the SS-25 "Topol" intercontinental ballistic missile, the predecessor of the "Yars" missile recently tested by Russia.

When the first three missiles inspected exited the factory, the U.S. inspectors took to naming them after American cities that could ostensibly be their targets — Pittsburgh, Des Moines and Chicago. The powers that be, back in Washington, D.C., quickly discouraged this practice, given the sensitivity that accrues to the issue of thermonuclear war.

One must wonder if the Russian soldiers responsible for launching the Yars missile took the time to name their warheads, and if they did, which cities would have been chosen to christen them.

There is no doubt that had the Russian soldiers turned to former President Dmitri Medvedev for advice after he received news about the intercepted conversation, the warheads would likely have been named after German cities — Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Nuremburg, Dusseldorf.

"The eternal enemies, the Germans, have become our archenemies again," Medvedev fumed in a post on his Telegram channel.

The Germans would be well advised to reflect long and hard on their actions, actions which could precipitate a conflict that, as Putin has noted, "potentially means the end of civilization — don't they realize this?"

Don't they?

"O mischief, thou art swift, to enter in the thoughts of desperate men!"

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

 Post Views: 3,028

[almarh0m]

SCOTT RITTER: The CIA & the Russian Fascists Who Fight Russia
March 18, 2024
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Disrupting the Russian presidential election and creating an atmosphere of weakness around Putin is precisely what the U.S. intelligence agency would seek to engender.


Russian President Vladimir Putin after take a flight in a military aircraft, Feb. 22. (Dmitry Azarov, Kommersant)

By Scott Ritter
Special to Consortium News

In the days leading to the Russian presidential election that concluded on Sunday, a network of three Russian paramilitary organizations working under the auspices of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, or GUR, launched a series of attacks on the territory of the Russian Federation.

The purpose of the attacks was clear — to disrupt the three-day Russian presidential election by creating an atmosphere of weakness and impotence around President Vladimir Putin designed to undermine his authority, legitimacy and appeal at the voting booth.

The operation was months in the planning, and involved the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), the Freedom of Russian Legion (LSR), and the Siberia Battalion. All three of these organizations are controlled by the GUR, whose spokesman announced the attacks.

Left unsaid is the degree to which the C.I.A. was involved in what amounts to an invasion of the territory of the Russian Federation by forces operating under the umbrella of what is openly acknowledged to be a proxy war between the United States and its NATO allies against Russia.

While Ukraine maintains the attacks by the RDK, LSR, and Siberia Battalion are the actions of "patriotic Russians" opposed to Putin, the involvement of the GUR in organizing, training, equipping, and directing these forces makes their attack on Russian soil a direct extension of the proxy war between Russia and the West.

Given the extensive involvement of the C.I.A. in the work of the GUR, it is highly unlikely that an action of this scope and scale could have been executed without the knowledge of the C.I.A. and in the attacks, including its goals and objectives.

Indeed, the presence of high-end U.S. military equipment, including M-2 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), in the order of battle in the attack by Russian insurgent forces points to a direct U.S. role, as does the political nature of the mission of election disruption, which has been a long-term objective of the C.I.A. in Russia stretching back decades.

Relationship Begun in 2014


Chief Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence of Ukraine in Kiev, 2013. (Dmitry Trikutko, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

The C.I.A.'s relationship with the GUR is well-established, dating back to 2014, according to The Washington Post, when the C.I.A. worked with the GUR to establish a network of bases along the Ukrainian-Russian border from which to conduct intelligence operations against Russia, including missions that involved operations on Russian soil.

The C.I.A. intercepted Russian communications, captured Russian drones for follow-on technical exploitation, and oversaw the recruitment and operation of spy rings operating on Russian soil.

In the lead up to Russia's initiation of the Special Military Operation (SMO) against Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, the C.I.A. expanded its relationship with the GUR to include specialized training provided by members of the Ground Division of the C.I.A.'s Special Activities Group, responsible for covert paramilitary operations.

The training was focused on unconventional and guerrilla warfare skills that would help facilitate the creation and sustainment of anti-Russian insurgencies carried out by "stay behind" teams operating on any Ukrainian territory that was occupied by Russian forces.

After the SMO began, ethnic Russians who had served since 2014 within the ranks of the neo-Nazi, Ukrainian nationalist, paramilitary organization known as the Azov Regiment organized themselves into a separate organization known as the Russian Volunteer Corps, or RDK.


Members of the Russian Volunteer Corps on 24 May 2023. (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

The RDK modeled itself after the Russian Liberation Army, an entity organized, trained, and equipped by the Nazi Germans during World War Two which was comprised of Russian prisoners of war. Russians today often refer to the RDK members as "Vlassovites," after Russian General Andrei Vlasov, who was captured by the Germans and later defected to their cause.

Vlasov recruited Russian prisoners of war into what was known as the Russian Liberation Army, which eventually consisted of two divisions comprising some 30,000 troops. Most of Vlasov's "army" were either killed in combat, or taken prisoner by the Soviet Union, where they were treated as traitors and punished accordingly (the enlisted sentenced to lengthy terms in the Gulag, and the leaders hung.) The RDK was able to attract several hundred former Azov fighters and new recruits into its ranks.

A second ethnic Russian military unit, created in the aftermath of the SMO, is comprised primarily of Russian military defectors and prisoners of war. Known as the Freedom of Russia Legion (LSR), it consists of several hundred soldiers organized into two battalions. The LSR operates as part of the International Legion of the Ukrainian Territorial Army.



However, it is controlled by the GUR, according to GUR chief Kyrylo Budanov, as opposed to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.

The third ethnic Russian military unit operating with Ukraine is the so-called Siberian Battalion, composed of ethnic Russians and non-Russian ethnicities from the Siberian territories of the Russian Federation.

The members of this formation are volunteers from Russian Siberia who are opposed to Putin's government. Like the LSR, the Siberian Battalion operated as a GUR-controlled part of the Ukrainian Territorial Army and is said to consist of around 300 men, according to a report in Euronews.

The incursion over the weekend by the GUR-controlled, anti-Putin, Russian forces is not the first instance of its kind. In March and April 2023, several small cross-border attacks were carried out by forces affiliated with the Russian Volunteer Corps RDK.

More telling was a larger attack made on May 22, 2023. The timing of this attack, which lasted less than a day, seemed to coincide with the fall of the hotly contested city of to the Russian private military company Wagner.

The capture of Bakhmut by Wagner signaled the beginning of a rapid deterioration in relations between the head of the Wagner Group, the one-time Putin loyalist, insider Yevgeny Prigozhin, and the Russian military leadership, in particular Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff General Valeri Gerasimov.


From left: Putin, Shoigu and Gerasimov during a 2019 military exercise. (Kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

On June 23, 2023, Prigozhin led thousands of his Wagner fighters in a rebellion which saw him occupy the Russian headquarters of the SMO in Rostov-on-Don, and march on Moscow. While the rebellion was quashed within 24 hours, many of the Wagner fighters said that they had participated only because they were told they would be deploying on to Russian soil, where Wagner was prohibited by law from operating, to defend against further incursions from the RDK.

Information that emerged after Prigozhin's abortive rebellion showed that the Wagner leader had been in frequent contact with the Ukrainian GUR in the months leading up to his insurrection, and that the RDK attacks were part of a coordinated effort orchestrated by the GUR, designed to weaken and perhaps bring down Putin's government.

The Biden administration acknowledged having detailed intelligence beforehand about Prigozhin's revolt, and yet did not provide any warning to the Russian government, suggesting that the C.I.A. was at a minimum cognizant of the GUR operation and tacitly supported it.


A crowd in Rostov-on-Don watching a tank with flowers sticking out of its muzzle during the so-called Wagner Rebellion, June 24, 2023. (Fargoh, Wikimedia Commons, CC0)

The presence of U.S. weapons, including Humvee vehicles, in the possession of the RDK fighters on the weekend likewise hinted at a broader U.S. involvement in their training and equipping, involvement which, given the prohibition on the deployment of U.S. military forces in a training capacity on Ukrainian soil since the initiation of the SMO, pointed to the C.I.A.'s Ground Division as the facilitating unit.

The Russian government has assessed that the total strength of the GUR-controlled forces that attacked Russia in the leadup to the presidential election completed on Sunday numbered around 2,500 men, supported by at least 35 tanks and scores of armored vehicles, including a significant number of U.S.-supplied M-2 Bradley IFVs.

The scope and scale of the military operation, which included helicopter-borne forces inserted behind Russian lines, is such that it could not have been accomplished without the knowledge of the C.I.A. Moreover, the tactics and equipment used (helicopter raids, M-2 Bradley vehicles) strongly suggest a more direct role by the C.I.A. in both the planning and training of the mission and the troops involved.

The C.I.A.'s Ground Division is composed of veterans of the C.I.A.'s secret wars in both Syria and Afghanistan, where the C.I.A. trained secret armies to carry out their own secret wars in support of C.I.A. objectives.


Ukrainian special forces unit in Kabul during the 2021 Kabul airlift. (Defence Intelligence of Ukraine, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0)

The discrediting of Putin's government with an eye to his removal from power has been a goal of the C.I.A. since 2005, when the C.I.A., together with British intelligence, began actively working to create viable political opposition movements inside Russia.

While these efforts have largely failed (the recent death in a Russian prison of Alexei Navalny, believed to have been a creation of the C.I.A., underscores the scope and scale of this failure), the C.I.A.'s covert political warriors in the Political Action Group of the Special Activities Center continue to try to undermine Putin through various means.

Given the Russian government's stated goal of producing a large turnout in the election as a way to certify Putin's legitimacy, disrupting voter turnout by creating instability and a lack of confidence would be precisely the kind of cause and effect relationship the C.I.A. would seek to engender.

The fact that the RDK leadership openly bragged that their ongoing attacks were a) designed to disrupt the Russian presidential election and b) were planned months before the attack, is a strong indicator that, given the intimate nature of the C.I.A.-GUR relationship, that the C.I.A. was at a minimum knowledgeable of, and most likely a facilitator, of the GUR-led attacks using Ukrainian-controlled Russian insurgents.

To understand the gravity that surrounds the possibility — indeed, probability — that the C.I.A. was involved, however peripherally, in an attack on Russian soil designed to disrupt a Russian presidential election, one only need reflect on how the United States would react if Russian intelligence services collaborated with Mexican drug cartels to create a well-armed insurgent army composed of Mexican-Americans who attacked U.S. territory from across the U.S.-Mexican border in order to influence the outcome of November's U.S. presidential election.

The United States would view it as an act of war and respond accordingly.

Manifest Danger of Nuclear Conflagration

The Biden administration is overseeing a Ukrainian policy that is rapidly collapsing around it.

America's NATO allies, concerned by the lack of leadership from the Biden administration when it comes to Ukraine, are threatening to dispatch troops to Ukraine to bolster a flagging Ukrainian military. The Russian government has warned that any such move would be construed as an attack on Russia, and potentially create the conditions for a general nuclear war between Russia and the collective West.

Now, amid such a tense environment, it appears the C.I.A. has not only green-lighted an actual invasion of the Russian Federation, but more than likely was involved in its planning, preparation and execution.

Never in the history of the nuclear era has such danger of nuclear war been so manifest.

That the American people have allowed their government to create the conditions where foreign governments can determine their fate and the C.I.A. can carry out a secret war which could trigger a nuclear conflict, eviscerates the notion of democracy.

Government of the people, by the people, and for the people seems like a distant dream. In its stead the future of America appears to be in the hands of a rogue intelligence agency that long ago abandoned any pretense of accountability and operating under the rule of law.

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

[almarh0m]

Angela Merkel and François Hollande's crime against peace
by Thierry Meyssan
A controversy has arisen over my analyses of the personal responsibility of former Chancellor Angela Merkel and former President François Hollande in the current war in Ukraine. My colleagues claim that I made it all up and that these two personalities are innocent. I'd just be peddling Russian disinformation.
This controversy is not insignificant: my opponents are trying to whitewash our political leaders, and in so doing they are serving the Western narrative of the war in Ukraine and justifying it.
So here are the facts and documents on which I rely. You be the judge.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | PARIS (FRANCE) | 16 APRIL 2024
DEUTSCH ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΆ ESPAÑOL FRANÇAIS ITALIANO NEDERLANDS NORSK PORTUGUÊS РУССКИЙ


Angela Merkel and François Hollande lying to Vladimir Putin.
Afew mainstream media colleagues have launched a controversy over an extract from a lecture I gave in Colmar last month [1]. They dispute what I said about the personal responsibility of former Chancellor Angela Merkel and former President François Hollande for the current war in Ukraine.


Here, in detail, are the facts I have reported and the documents on which I relied, which they deny.

CRIMES AGAINST PEACE
On December 28, 2022, President Hollande gave an interview in Paris to Théo Prouvost of the Kyiv Independent [2] , which my opponents have confused with the sketch by Russian comedians Vovan and Lexus that he inspired [3]. In it, he claims to recognize himself in the remarks made a few days earlier by the former German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to Zeit [4]. In it, she declared that she had signed the Minsk agreements, not to protect the people of the Donbass and put an end to the war being waged against them by the Kiev authorities, but to give them time to arm themselves. François Hollande explicitly confesses: "Yes, Angela Merkel is right on this point. The Minsk agreements stopped the Russian offensive for a while. What was very important was to know how the West would use this respite to prevent any new Russian attempt".

The "Russian attempt" he refers to is not Moscow sending Russian troops, but the private initiative of billionaire Konstantin Malofeyev to send Cossacks to support the people of the Donbass, as he had done for the Bosnian Serbs.

Angela Merkel's and François Hollande's comments were confirmed by the Secretary General of Ukraine's National Defense and Security Council, Oleksiy Danilov, who resigned three weeks ago after insulting the Chinese special envoy [5]..

The Minsk agreements were negotiated in two stages:

• The first protocol was signed, on September 5, 2014, by Ukraine, Russia and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). It was also initialed by the governors of Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts. At the time, these oblasts, though called "republics" like the former Soviet regions, had no ambitions for independence. The protocol instituted a ceasefire, the release of hostages, the withdrawal of troops from both sides, including Konstantin Malofeyev's Cossacks, and a general amnesty. It also provides for decentralization of powers, local elections and a national dialogue.


In 2019, Angela Merkel invited a Russian delegation to Berlin. In the second row, Vladislav Surkov was seated next to Sergey Lavrov. At the time, Surkov was banned from entering the European Union. EU sanctions are therefore variable in their application.
Not much happened, however, apart from the withdrawal of Konstantin Malofeyev's Cossacks at the urging of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who took a dim view of a modern oligarch behaving like a Tsarist-era Grand Duke.

• The second protocol was signed six months later, on February 11, 2015. Negotiations took place under the responsibility of the OSCE, again between Kiev, Donetsk and Lugansk. This time, Germany, France and Russia acted as guarantors ("Normandy format").

It contains more or less the same provisions as the first protocol, but is more detailed. Above all, it states that decentralization, which has not taken place as agreed, will have to be achieved through constitutional reform.

Russia feared that this second protocol would not be applied any more than the first. Vladislav Sourkov, who had been in charge of this dossier at the Kremlin, later explained this and not that it did not want to apply it, as Le Figaro [6] wrongly interpreted it. Moreover, it was Moscow [7], not Berlin or Paris, that submitted the protocol to the Security Council for approval.


Vyacheslav Volodin, Chairman of the Russian State Duma.
TOWARDS A NUREMBERG 2 TRIAL
Reacting to Chancellor Merkel's and President Hollande's remarks, Vyacheslav Volodin, Chairman of the State Duma (i.e. the lower house), immediately intervened to express his indignation at these confessions. Then, after the Christmas holidays, he published his comments on his Telegram channel [8]. This led to two dispatches, one from the Tass agency [9] and another from the Ria-Novosti agency [10], which my opponents also ignore.

In his capacity as Chairman of the State Duma, he first quotes President Vladimir Putin: "If a fight is unavoidable, you must strike first". Then he declares: "The confessions of a representative of the Kiev regime and former German and French leaders should be used as evidence before an international military tribunal. These leaders were plotting to start a World War with predictable consequences. They deserve to be punished for their crimes.

In describing the statements made by Angela Merkel, François Hollande and Oleksiy Danilov as evidence of "crimes", he is referring to the "crimes against peace" enunciated at the Liberation by the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. According to this authority, recognized by all UN member states, these are the most serious crimes, even more so than "crimes against humanity". They are therefore not subject to any statute of limitations.

Angela Merkel, François Hollande and Oleksiy Danilov have not yet been the subject of an arrest warrant, but they have already been reported. For the time being, there is no jurisdiction capable of judging their crimes. This is why President Vyacheslav Volodin alluded to the idea of an "international military tribunal" (equivalent to the Nuremberg Tribunal). Such a tribunal has yet to be set up following the war in Ukraine. There is no doubt that, unless France, Germany and Ukraine agree, Angela Merkel, François Hollande and Oleksiy Danilov will have to answer for "crimes against Peace".

I can only deplore the fact that my opponents have not found the above-mentioned documents. In reality, this is quite normal: they are only interested in Anglo-Saxon or European press agencies that refuse to take into account the Russian point of view. They take the official narrative at face value and don't do their due diligence.

WHY THE MINSK AGREEMENTS WERE NEVER IMPLEMENTED
Russia, as I mentioned above, presented the second protocol to the Security Council on February 17, 2015. This was the subject of resolution 2202. In the annex, Moscow had the text of the protocol and the statement by the four heads of state adopted: Vladimir Putin (Russia), Petro Poroshenko (Ukraine), François Hollande (France) and Angela Merkel (Germany). During the debates, Ukraine's permanent representative in New York expressed his satisfaction at the unwavering support of the United Nations.

In passing, it should be noted that China's permanent representative made clear at the time the position he still holds today: peace can only be lasting if the concerns of all parties are addressed.


In August 31, 2015, Sloboda's "integral nationalists" kill police officers during the Rada vote. The constitutional reform was never adopted.
Yet the second Minsk agreement has not been implemented. In the Donbass, sporadic clashes have always taken place, with each side blaming the other. Moreover, Kiev wanted the amnesty to be proclaimed after the local elections, while the leaders of the Donbass Oblates wanted it to be proclaimed beforehand. This would have enabled them to stand in the elections, which they would probably have won. Constitutional amendments were indeed put to the vote on August 31, 2015, at the Verkhovna Rada, in the presence... of the US special envoy, the Straussian Victoria Nuland, who had organized the 2014 coup (known as "EuroMaidan"). Elected representatives of the "integral nationalist" Sloboda party tried to block the vote and invaded the gallery, shouting "Shame!" and "Treason!" [11]. Meanwhile, outside the Assembly, clashes broke out between police and "integral nationalist" militiamen, leaving 4 dead and 122 injured. A qualified majority was not reached in the Rada, and the constitutional reform was not adopted.

These riots were the biggest since the overthrow of the elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, by the Sloboda "integral nationalists", supported by Victoria Nuland. President Petro Poroshneko condemned them, but wasn't told twice. It was clear that if he persisted in implementing the Minsk agreements, he too would be overthrown.

Courageous, but not foolhardy, he suddenly denounced the second Minsk protocol. According to him, former president Leonid Kuchma's signature on the Ukrainian side was worthless because he had not been accredited by the Verkhovna Rada. Yes, but Petro Poroshenko was present at the negotiations, as acting Ukrainian President, he raised no objections when the agreements were signed, nor when they were ratified by the Security Council, and he signed a joint declaration in which he undertook to implement them. Henceforth, he shared the same bad faith as President François Hollande and Chancellor Angela Merkel.

President Petro Poroshenko immediately appointed the Sloboda militia to put pressure on the people of the Donbass. This is the sinister Azov division of the "White Führer", Andriy Biletsky. Over a period of seven years, 80,000 fighters would battle it out. Kiev's men killed between 17,000 and 21,000 of their own Donbass population. Poroshenko set up an apartheid, a two-tier citizenship: Russian speakers in the Donbass were no longer entitled to any public services, schools or pensions.

The United Nations Security Council did not intervene, at most issuing a presidential statement on June 6, 2018 [12]. Once in power, President Volodymyr Zelensky tried to reconnect the threads by convening a Normandy-format meeting, but to no avail.

President Petro Poroshenko announced that he would do nothing more for the Ukrainian citizens of Donbass.
THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT THE PEOPLE OF DONBASS
On November 2, 2021, the President appoints Dmytro Yarosh, the leading figure of the "integral nationalists" and a long-time CIA agent [13], as advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, General Valerii Zaluzhnyi. He quickly drew up a plan for an attack on the Donbass [14], to be launched on March 9, 2022.

However, at an impromptu ceremony in the Kremlin on February 21, Moscow suddenly recognized the Donestk and Loughansk People's Republics as independent states. The following day, it launched a "special military operation". Russian troops converged from both their own border and that of Belarus to prevent any regrouping of Ukrainian forces in the Donbass. It destroyed Kiev's military airport, but did not seek to take the capital. Within a few weeks, it had liberated most of the Donbass.

For months, Russia avoided uttering the word "war". It explained that it was intervening exclusively to put an end to the suffering of the civilian population of Donbass. On the contrary, the West accused Russia of having "invaded" Ukraine in order to conquer it. However, Russia has merely applied Resolution 2202 and the declaration of the heads of state that negotiated the Minsk agreements. In fact, in order to reserve this possibility, it reproduced it as an annex to the resolution. To say that Russia invaded Ukraine would imply that France "invaded" Rwanda when it put an end to the Tutsi genocide in 1994. No one thinks so. It simply implemented Resolution 929 and saved millions of lives.

Strangely enough, Russia did not raise the "responsibility to protect" argument. This is because it had opposed the formulation of this concept, which was only adopted by the United Nations in 2005. However, she would finally use it, on February 12, 2024, at a meeting of the Security Council that she would convene. She would set out her invariable position, but this time she would use the same diplomatic language as her interlocutors.

WAR PROPAGANDA
As I conclude this article, I'd like to come back to what my colleagues have written. According to them, I have invented the responsibility of François Hollande and Angela Merkel in the current war, and I am relaying Russian disinformation by claiming that Moscow did not invade Ukraine. They probably wrote these articles with the intention of undermining my credibility.

Perhaps they didn't realize that by writing this nonsense in mainstream media, they were misleading the public and ultimately relaying the propaganda of war supporters.

Thierry Meyssan
Translation
Roger Lagassé