Debkafiles – March 17, 2022

“Unacceptable and unforgivable,” was the Kremlin’s response to the US president’s branding of Vladimir Putin as “a war criminal,” on Wednesday, March 16. Incensed rather than cowed by sanctions and international condemnation, the Russian president is likely to double down on his war offensive against Ukraine – regardless of the spreading death, human misery and ravaged cities. An expanding confrontation therefore cannot be ruled out for the foreseeable future.

President Joe Biden spoke after the horror of Russia’s bombing of a theater in Mariupol where more than a thousand people including many children were sheltering against the constant shelling. The death toll is unknown as are the numbers still buried under the rubble while rescuers are prevented from reaching the scene.

Although the White House previously stopped short of accusing the Russians of war crimes in the Ukraine pending an investigation, President Joe Biden was now ready to say bluntly: “I think [Putin] is a war criminal.” His press secretary Jen Psaki said that Biden was “speaking from the heart” (not the head?). An investigation into war crimes was still underway, she said, aware that some form of due process is required for a charge of war crimes.

The president, however, did not stop at oratory. The $800 m military aid package he approved for Ukraine reportedly included 100 kamikaze drones, apparently referring to Switchblade 300 or Switchblade 600. (See photo.) The former can pinpoint strikes on personnel and the latter aims to destroy tanks and armored vehicles. The Switchblades are essentially robotic smart bombs equipped with cameras, guidance systems and explosives. They can be programmed to strike targets miles away and hover over objectives until ordered to strike.

The US aid package will also include 800 anti-aircraft systems, 9,000 anti-armor systems and 20 million rounds of ammunition.

Moscow was seen in Washington as expanding its targets beyond the Ukraine border with the assault by 30 Russian cruise missiles on the large Ukrainian Yavrov military facility outside Lviv near the Polish border. The Russian defense ministry said that the air strike destroyed a large quantity of weapons supplied by foreign nations and that the Yavrov base had long been used to train Ukrainian military personnel, often with instructors from the United States and other NATO countries. For Putin, this Ukrainian base embodied his complaint that NATO had expanded to Eastern Europe close to Russian territory.

https://www.debka.com

Brandon Smith – March 9, 2022

In an article I published in April of 2018, World War III Will Be An Economic War, I outlined a number of factors that portend a large scale conflict between East and West and why this war would be mainly economic in nature. I investigated how this conflict would actually benefit globalists and globalist institutions seeking to bring down multiple nations’ economies while hiding the engineered crisis behind a wall of geopolitical chaos and noise.

The goal? To convince the masses that national sovereignty was a plague that only leads to mass death, and that the “solution” is a one-world system – conveniently managed by the globalists, of course.

One issue which I used to get a lot of arguments over was the idea that countries like Russia and China would end up so closely aligned. People claimed there were too many disparities and that the countries would ultimately turn on each other in the middle of a financial crisis.

Well, it’s four years later and now we’re going to see if that is true or not. So far, it looks like I was correct.

My position has long been that certain nations have been preparing for a collapse of the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency (the primary currency used in the majority of trade around the world). My belief is that America’s top economic position is actually an incredible weakness; the dollar’s hegemony is not a strength, but an Achilles heel. If the dollar was to lose reserve status, the whole of the U.S. economy and parts of the global economy would implode, leaving behind only those who prepared – those who saw the writing on the wall and planned ahead.

The dollar crash coalition

There are four nations that have been actively positioning for the crash of the dollar. They include: China, Russia, India, Brazil, and in part South Africa (also known as the BRICS). The BRICS are rarely mentioned in the mainstream media anymore, but there was a time around a decade ago when they were discussed regularly.

My fascination with the BRICS back then was primarily due to their economic behaviors. Specifically, their bilateral trade agreements which cut out the dollar as a reserve currency, and the fact that they were stockpiling tons upon tons of gold.

It was as if they had some kind of inside information that an economic war was coming, and they were getting ready to decouple from the dollar and the global supply chain.

https://www.birchgold.com

Lee Brown – March 2, 2022

Russia said it was ready Wednesday for the second round of peace talks with Ukraine — while giving a chilling warning that a third world war would certainly involve nuclear weapons.

The invading nation’s “delegation will be in place to await Ukrainian negotiators,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said — as Russian forces continued the devastating air and land assault for the seventh day.

Video footage showed yet another series of brutal bomb blasts Wednesday as Russian forces also claimed to have taken control of the area around Ukraine’s largest nuclear power plant, Zaporizhzhia.

Already, more than 2,000 Ukrainian civilians have been killed, the country’s emergency service said — as the number of people fleeing could reach 1 million within hours, the UN refugee agency warned.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba later confirmed his nation’s delegation would be at the peace talks Wednesday, even after President Volodymyr Zelensky had said Russia must “first stop bombing people” for the talks to continue.

https://nypost.com

Debkafiles – February 24, 2022

Vladimir Putin early Thursday, Feb. 24, announced a special military operation in the Donbas “to demilitarize” the region, amid unconfirmed reports of a huge seaborne landing in the Black Sea port of Odessa. Explosions were heard in Kyiv, Mariupol, Odessa, Lvov and Kharkiv.

President Joe Biden will address the nation at noon on Thursday, after condemning Russia’s as “alone responsible” for “choosing a premeditated war” by an “unprovoked and unjustified attack.” The United States and its Allies and partners will respond in a united and decisive way, he said. “The world will hold Russia accountable.”

In an early morning address, Putin said the “special military operation” he had launched comes in response to threats coming from Ukraine. He added that Russia doesn’t have a goal to occupy the country. Putin said responsibility for bloodshed “lies with the Ukrainian “regime.” He insisted that the operation was targeting military installations and avoiding populated areas. Putin told Ukrainian service members to “lay down their arms and go home.”

The Russia’s defense ministry also denied attacking Ukrainian cities – saying it is targeting military infrastructure, air defense and air forces with “high-precision weapons.” Explosions nonetheless ripped through Kyiv, the capital, Mariupol and Kharkiv.

Unconfirmed reports said that Russian forces had destroyed or rendered unusable the Ukrainian navy and taken control of Boryspil Airport in Kiev. Other reports spoke of a huge seaborne landing in Odessa involving large landing craft and helicopters shortly after dawn. Ukraine’s access to the Black Sea and Azov Sea was cut off.

Ukraine was on Wednesday placed on a war footing and a state of emergency declared; 200,000 military reservists called up; border areas restricted and citizens given right to arm themselves.

https://www.debka.com

Michael Snyder – February 24, 2022

We now have a war that the vast majority of us never wanted.  All of our lives are going to be turned upside down, the global economy is going to be absolutely eviscerated, and countless numbers of people are going to die.  I am very angry with Vladimir Putin and the Russians for launching a full-blown invasion, because it didn’t need to happen.  And I am also very angry with the Biden administration because it would have been so easy to find a diplomatic solution to this crisis.  Unfortunately, the time for diplomacy is now over and World War III has begun.

On Thursday, State Department spokesman Ned Price made a stunning admission regarding what this war is really all about.

According to Price, Russia and China “also want a world order”, but he warned that if they win their world order “would be profoundly illiberal”…

China has given “tacit approval” for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s latest invasion of Ukraine, in the judgment of U.S. officials, as part of a joint effort to undermine the institutions that American and allied leaders established to minimize conflict in the decades following World War II.

“Russia and the PRC also want a world order,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Wednesday. “But this is an order that is and would be profoundly illiberal. … It is an order that is, in many ways, destructive rather than additive.”

It would take an entire book to unpack everything that Price said there.

First of all, by stating that Russia and China “also want a world order”, he was tacitly admitting that the United States and other western nations desire to have a “world order” of their own.

And he implied that what we are witnessing is a battle over who will ultimately run the “world order”.

http://endoftheamericandream.com

Newsmax – February 18, 2022

The Russian military on Friday announced massive drills of its strategic forces, a stark reminder of the country’s nuclear might amid Western fears that Moscow might be preparing to invade Ukraine.

The Defense Ministry said Russian President Vladimir Putin will personally oversee Saturday’s exercise, which will involve multiple practice launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles and cruise missiles.

The ministry said it planned the maneuvers some time ago to check the readiness of Russia’s military command and personnel, as well as the reliability of its nuclear and conventional weapons.

The war games follow U.S. President Joe Biden’s warning on Thursday that Russia could invade Ukraine within days.

Western fears focus on an estimated 150,000 Russian troops — including about 60% of Russia’s overall ground forces — concentrated near Ukraine’s borders. The Kremlin insists it has no plans to invade.

But Moscow has demanded that the U.S. and its allies keep Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations out of NATO, not deploy weapons in Ukraine and pull back NATO forces from Eastern Europe.

Washington and its allies bluntly rejected the Russian demands, and Moscow threatened to take unspecified “military-technical measures” if the West continued to stonewall.

Russia holds massive drills of its strategic nuclear forces on an annual basis, but the maneuvers planned for Saturday pointedly involve the Black Sea Fleet. The fleet is based on the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

https://www.newsmax.com

Itamar Marcus – February 9, 2022

If you want to know what is really at the heart of the Palestinian conflict with Israel, don’t ask the politicians or the diplomats. Go to the real experts: Palestinian children. Unlike the rest of the world, they’ve been paying close attention to what their leaders and educators have been teaching them — and they’re already signing their lessons in blood.

For years, children interviewed on state TV have been echoing the messages they’ve been taught by the Palestinian Authority (PA) and Fatah: that Israel has no right to exist, and that their goal — for which they are anxious to sacrifice their lives — is Israel’s destruction.

Twelve-year-old Abd, who lives in a refugee camp just outside the PA capital of Ramallah, explained his life goals on PA TV: “The Jews stole our land from us and I have been waiting 12 years already… and my grandfather has been waiting 70 years. … I hope to return to Lod, my city … I feel that tomorrow I will return and liberate Palestine. … Every day, every minute, and every year I imagine that I’m in Lod…” (PA TV, November 3, 2020 and May 23, 2021) Lod is an Israeli city not far from Tel Aviv. The child lives near Ramallah, but Lod, he says, is “my city.”

Surprising? Not if you’ve been following the PA education of its children.

Palestinian children are indoctrinated to believe that they are victims of Israel’s existence from birth (“I have been waiting 12 years already”). The PA Ministry of Education recently included a giant map of “Palestine” that erased all of Israel in an event at a PA school. The words on the poster were explicit: “Palestine — the entire land is ours, from the [Mediterranean] Sea to the [Jordan] River.” (Facebook, PA Ministry of Education, November 16, 2021)

What about Israel’s right to exist? That is non-existent in the PA child’s world. Palestinian children are taught that Israelis are “foreigners who came from all ends of the earth, foreigners who did not know Palestine and did not live in it — neither them nor their fathers and forefathers.”

https://www.algemeiner.com

Newsmax – February 3, 2022

Paratroopers with the U.S. Army boarded aircraft on Thursday to leave for Eastern Europe amid escalating tensions between Ukraine and Russia.

The soldiers were departing from Fort Bragg in North Carolina. Around 1,700 service members, mainly from the 82nd Airborne Division, are being deployed to Poland, while 300 others will move to Germany.

“What you’re seeing out here today… is a facility that we typically use for paratroopers before they load out to conduct their operation,” U.S. Army spokesman Matthew Visser said.

“Right now it’s being used for the pre-mobilization for soldiers from 18th Airborne Corps and 82nd Airborne Division who are fulfilling their order to deploy to Europe, both to Germany and to Poland, in support of assuring our NATO allies and our partners in deterring Russia,” he said.

The United States said  on Wednesday it will send a total of nearly 3,000 extra troops to Poland and Romania to shield Eastern Europe from a potential spillover from the crisis over the massing of Russian troops near Ukraine.

Russia has denied plans to invade Ukraine. On Thursday, it accused Washington of ignoring its calls to ease the standoff.

https://www.newsmax.com

Andrew Roth – January 23, 2022

Russia has sent troops more than 4,000 miles to Ukraine’s borders and announced sweeping naval drills as Moscow expands its preparations for a potential attack on Ukraine as negotiations appear at a deadlock.

Six Russian landing ships capable of carrying main battle tanks, troops and other military vehicles travelled through the Channel en route to the Mediterranean last week in a deployment that could bolster an amphibious landing on Ukraine’s southern coast if Vladimir Putin orders an attack. Ukraine’s military intelligence has claimed that Russia is hiring mercenaries and supplying its proxy forces in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions with fuel, tanks and self-propelled artillery in preparation for a potential upsurge in fighting.

And a large military force, including Iskander short-range ballistic missiles, elite spetsnaz troops and anti-aircraft batteries, has arrived in Belarus from Russia’s eastern military district, an extraordinary deployment that western officials and analysts say could enable Moscow to threaten Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.

The new deployments have worried US officials. “What concerns us is the total picture,” said a senior state department official in a briefing last week. “It is the amassing of 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s borders combined with moving forces into Belarus over the weekend … these numbers are beyond, of course, what we would expect with regard to a normal exercise.”

The new forces in Belarus, the official added, represent an “increased capability for Russia to launch this attack, increased opportunity, increased avenues, increased routes”.

The US president, Joe Biden, last week said that Putin himself may not know what he plans to do. But the results are either reckless brinkmanship or preparations for a large-scale military operation.

https://www.theguardian.com

Jonny Tickle – January 21, 2021

Trials of the state-of-the-art Zircon sea-launched hypersonic cruise missile are currently being completed, and the projectiles will be deployed to the Russian Navy later this year, a deputy defense minister revealed on Thursday.

The Zircon has made significant headlines worldwide for its capabilities, and last year it was named by US Navy Admiral Charles A. Richard as a threat to America.

“Because of these challenges, our current terrestrial- and space-based sensor architecture may not be sufficient to detect and track these hypersonic missiles,” he said.

With testing now nearing an end, the high-speed guided projectile is due to be deployed in the near future.

“State tests of the Zircon sea-based hypersonic cruise missile are being completed. Its serial deliveries will start in 2022,” Aleksey Krivoruchko told his superior, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu.

The Zircon missile has been undergoing testing for seven years and in recent times has been fired from both frigates and submarines, with most testing being undertaken in the White Sea, in Russia’s far north.

Last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that the tests were proceeding well.

“Now, it is especially important to develop and implement the technologies necessary to create new hypersonic weapons systems, high-powered lasers, and robotic systems that will be able to effectively counter potential military threats, which means they will further strengthen the security of our country,” he said.

https://www.rt.com