Seymour Hersh has embodied Western propaganda yet again in another post, RUSSIA'S STALLED WAR IN UKRAINE – The conflict's transformation into a drone war has turned the tide | Seymour Hersh | Apr 22
"The war in Ukraine, which began with Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion in February 2022, has gone on longer than the Soviet war against Nazi Germany. With its huge army and population, Russia seemed in the early years to be on the verge of winning only to have Putin, behaving like the irrational czars of the past, reject peace plans that gave him control of some of the territory his troops had taken inside eastern Ukraine. And now, I have been told, a war that Russia seemed to be winning has turned in the last year into an economic and military nightmare for Putin and the Russian army led by General Valery Gerasimov, the battle-tested commander who is one of three men in Russia with access to the nation's nuclear codes."
"The war is now a war of drones, in the view of one military expert who has toured the front under cover, with Ukraine holding a distinct edge.
Bedraggled Russian soldiers at the front find themselves under deadly drone attack the moment they crawl out of their bunkers. "Ukraine has a vast drone surveillance network that is picking off Russians as soon as they appear," the expert told me. He added that he was repelled by the horrid living conditions for all the soldiers on both sides of the front lines... [paywall]"
Yet Russia has gained control of about 1700 sq. km in the past year?
If you still hold the view that the war in Ukraine is "unprovoked" and is about Ukrainian independence, do read Jeffery Sachs' article on Russophobia over the past 200 years.
And there is similar content to Sy Hersh's article on House of El: Russia COLLAPSES Despite Iran Oil Windfall – Ukraine Destroys 40% Export Capacity, $2.3B LOST – House of El:
"Russia should be cashing in on the biggest oil shock in years. Instead, its economy is contracting, its refineries are burning, and the war machine is starting to run into the limits of its own design.
Why Russia's first economic contraction since 2022 matters far beyond one bad GDP print.
How soaring oil prices failed to rescue Moscow because the infrastructure needed to profit from them keeps getting hit.
Why Ukrainian drone strikes on export terminals, refineries, and pipelines are undermining Russia at the exact moment it needs energy revenue most.
What rising deficits, weak oil tax income, and banking crisis warnings reveal about the fragility beneath Russia's war economy.
How labor shortages, high interest rates, and inflation are squeezing companies, workers, and the wider financial system at the same time.
Why the Iran war, which should have handed Moscow a windfall, instead exposed the structural vulnerabilities Ukraine has learned to exploit.
What viewers will learn about the deeper contradiction at the heart of Russia's economy: a state built around war that is now being weakened by the costs of sustaining it.
This is not just a story about oil prices or one tense Kremlin meeting. It is about what happens when a war economy depends on export revenues it can no longer reliably produce—and why even a geopolitical shock in Russia's favor is no longer enough to save it."
Just exactly how does a country that is self-sufficient in every resource need export income to sustain a war effort? So it has foreign income to by weapons from whom? Yes it coordinates with Iran and North Korea for their expertise in manufacture, otherwise they make everything they need onshore.
I am hoping to assemble better information about the "SMO" in Ukraine, and how a Russian invasion could have been avoided. I am very interested in understanding which particular events amounted to cumulative pressure toward invasion, ranked in order of importance, and what exactly prevented them from being ameliorated.
As well, which particular events were "red line" events causing a direct trigger to invade, and what was needed from the West to ameliorate each of these pressures. Much of this is covered in Sachs' article, cited above, but more detail from the Russian perspective would be welcome.
Russia deserves a security zone and an end to the outright hate continuously expressed toward it. The term "Russophobia" is inadequate - a "fear" of Russia. That term may refer to the "narrative" that government and their captive media present to the public, but internally, the supposed leaders express nothing but hate for Russia and hope for its failure, breakup and capture, in the Empire's commitment to control the entire world.
And Russia is just supposed to sit there and take all these intrusions to their territory?
All the EU countries (including Canada) are arming up for their final Great War against Russia, as a feeble method of boosting their failing economies. Yes, there is division in Russia as to the next steps, with certain Generals inclined to bomb European centres and possibly with nuclear weapons. Fortunately President Putin retains control and great patience. But eventually, Europe will have to face some costs for their continuous war on Russia. Yes, Russia is truly having a struggle in Ukraine, since they are actually facing all the forces, supply and funding of NATO in NATO's proxy war against Russia, unfortunately consuming Ukraine's farmland and population with little regard.
This war is again a part of the Empire of the West trying to control the entire world, with their latest war front being all of Asia. Russia is surrounded by hostile bases right up against their borders, from the Arctic to China including CIA activity in the "Stans"; Iran is surrounded by U.S. bases and so is China, with the first and second layer of islands defences strategy. A major goal of Western (U.S.) domination is to be able to tell which countries can buy or sell oil, as expressed by various weaponizations of the world-reserve currency via sanctions, and seizure of nations (Venezuela, Iran) or their tankers (Iran, Russia, Venezuela) or blocking supply, such as the blockade of Cuba, the U.S. military blockade of Iranian ports, and trying to block shipments of heavy crude to China from both Venezuela and Iran. Next up appears to be cooperation from Indonesia to block shipments to China through the Malacca Strait.
In a related matter, how does the reduction in volume in world oil supply caused by European-built Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries compare to the reduction of supply from the Persian Gulf?
The European Commission's Directorate-General for Energy (DG ENER) is concerned about the constricted energy supply due to the war on Iran by the outlaw regimes of isra3l and USA. Yet the EU serves as the rear-area for the war in Ukraine. A "rear-area" is the area away from the front where manufacture and distribution centers are located. Russia can and does bomb any such location within Ukraine, so that manufacture has moved into the other European countries, even into UK where they make drones to deliver to the front in Ukraine. And make no mistake, this front (Ukraine) is also the UK's front in THEIR war against Russia. And the EU-made drones are now flying into Russia over Estonia (or from inside Estonia?) to attack Russian refineries and export facilities, crippling a significant portion of world energy supply. So if Europe goes dark or freezes this winter, they can look in the mirror, I'm not listening to their tears.
And along this same line, we have Europe's largest land mass, Canada, also being antagonistic to the world's three major powers - Russia, China and Iran, by calling Iran and their other participants in the "Axis of Resistance" terrorists for trying to defend the majority of the world from the genuine terror of the American and zionist Empire; for staging war games in the Baltic States right against Russia's borders; and for participating in maritime "patrols" along China's coast in their pathetic defence of a "democratic" Taiwan.
Since they now have Victor Orbán out of the way, who was blocking this pathetic Ukrainian funding initiative, the EU has approved borrowing Euro-90M to give to Ukraine as a loan, believe it or not! Canada makes these loans to Ukraine as well, funded from national debt. These fundings of the war against Russia via Ukraine are provided as loans because the nitwits imagine that Russia is going to LOSE, and the EU will be paid back via Russia's reparations payments to Ukraine. Have they priced in their more-likely LOSSES for when Ukraine/NATO is finally defeated and the West (NATO) and the principles UK and USA are required to pay reparations to Russia?
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson has some interesting comments on the topic of world powers: 'China's Xi Jinping is moving to SUBSTITUTE the dollar with the renminbi and become the number one FINANCIAL POWER in the world'
China, India, Russia, and all the other countries are moving toward BRICS more rapidly than I would have thought, precisely because of the mistakes the US is making and their fear of those mistakes, as well as their comfort with China and the other members.
So much of the meaningful commerce of the world is being generated there. Renewables. EVs. Batteries. Everything essential to survive this period of enormous climate crisis is generated there, for profit, massive profit in some cases, compared to what we're doing in this country.
BRICS just has to hold on to what it's got. Watch what Xi Jinping has said in his latest edict, following right on from Deng Xiaoping and all the series of manifestos of Chinese communism:
"After triumphing in every field of state power, the one I lack is financial power. I am now going to substitute the renminbi for the dollar in world trade. That makes me the number one financial power in the world." And furthermore it gets rid of SWIFT, it gets rid of sanctions, it gets rid of all the nasty things the empire does to other nations.
We have almost 2 billion people under sanctions. If we decided tomorrow to lift them, it would take 10 years because OFAC would have so much trouble sorting through all the intricacies involved. Xi Jinping is going to get rid of that power, the power of the United States to sanction other people.
— Former Chief of Staff at the State Department, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, on the latest episode of New Order.
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