After Vilnius, Rumors Of Wars
Viktor Orban of Hungary brought clarity to the burning question, When will this awful carnage in Ukraine end? There’s only one thing standing in the way of peace. The former Interior Minister of Ukraine has stated (h/t Simplicius) that—but for NATO, and the promise of HIMARS—Ukraine would have capitulated in March 2022. Orban lets the cat out of the bag, the only reason this crime against humanity continues:
The Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán stated earlier today during a Radio Interview that, “Ukraine has Lost its Sovereignty, it has No Money, No Military Industry, it receives everything from the West,” with him further saying during the Interview that the War could be over whenever the United States decides it so.
The reality:
Highlights
@highlightsnews1
According to Scott Ritter, Russia is on the verge of a strategic military victory by the end of this summer and NATO and the US are aware of their inability to supply Ukraine with enough munitions and equipment to keep them competitive on the battlefield.
Mark Ames
@MarkAmesExiled
Hersh: "Careful readers of the Washington Post and the New York Times can sense that the current Ukraine counter-offensive is going badly because stories about its progress, or lack thereof, have mostly disappeared from their front pages in recent weeks."
Behind the scene:
Crack-up in NATO between the politicians who want war with Russia and the generals who want to save their armies & weapons from defeat. Listen to Col Jacques Baud on War of the Worlds, Saturday July 15. https://tntradiolive.podbean.com/category/war-of-the-worlds/…
In DC, it’s business as usual as Milley speaks up for the MIC—they need more money to deliver those weapons to Taiwan. The weapons are not sitting in a warehouse somewhere—they need to be built, and that requires money. “Speed up delivery” means: Spend money faster:
Reuters
@Reuters
US needs to speed up delivery of weapons to Taiwan - US general http://reut.rs/3XSgJrF
1:05 AM · Jul 14, 2023
And the Uniparty does what it does best:
Every House Democrat - including all members of the Squad - voted against @RepMTG's amendment to eliminate $300 million in funding for the Ukraine proxy war from the NDAA. They were joined by most Republicans.
Republicans kill Marjorie Taylor Greene's hopes of blocking Ukraine funding
House Republicans took up one of the congresswoman's more controversial amendments to the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act on Thursday. 89 341
At the same time, on the same measure, CNN reports:
House passes defense bill after adopting controversial amendments targeting abortion policy and other issues. The House voted Friday to pass a sweeping defense policy bill following a contentious debate and the adoption of controversial amendments that touched on hot-button social issues.
Which just goes to show that all politics in the US is domestic. I approve of this, but the point is that there’s no constituency in the US for a moral and reasonable foreign policy, one that would seek peace rather than war profits and predatory hegemony. One wonders whether this ever occurred to them:
People appear to imagine that if Russia and NATO went to war we would see another Ukraine conflict. That is never going to happen. Russia would hit strategic targets across Europe almost immediately and also North America within minutes. They would be fighting war, not a SMO.
Douglas Macgregor makes a number of excellent points in one of his recent videos. Among them, he explains why Putin is waiting to go on the offensive. Bear in mind that Macgregor has been predicting a massive Russian offensive for the past year or so. Macgregor explains that this is a war without precedent. Forget about “combined arms” warfare, he says. This is about all-seeing ISR seamlessly linked to the ground forces. Putin is loath to accept heavy casualties. Before launching that major offensive Putin may ultimately need to take out surveillance satellites—a massive escalation, given that satellites provide an early warning system for possible nuclear attacks. Blinding satellites would put the world on a hair trigger nuclear war basis. That appears to be at least an element of the Neocon bet that they can continue as is—bluffing that Putin won’t take that step.
This leads to a point that Alexander Mercouris has been making in recent days. Given that, rationally speaking, the stage is set for negotiations, why are there no negotiations. Mercouris contends that there are no credible persons that Russia could negotiate with. The Ukrainians have waged a scorched earth campaign against Russian speaking inhabitants of former Ukraine and against their living spaces. They have broken agreements left and right, waging cultural war against all things Russian and insulting Russia and its government. The US and Europe are no better as prospective negotiators. Zhou and the Neocons? They’re the ones behind all of the above that applies to Ukraine. This is a real problem, so the drums of war continue.
Speaking of nuclear war, knowledgeable military experts have long noted the major escalation that provision of F-16s would represent. F-16s are nuclear capable, so Russia, as a matter of prudence, would have to regard any F-16 as carrying nukes.
The Sirius Report
@thesiriusreport
Russia has made it clear that providing F-16s to Ukraine is crossing a red line. Not because it's an F-16 but because of its potential payload.
The major risk is Russia then decides to declare war and implement 100% of its firepower, instead of 20% as during the SMO.
11:53 PM · Jul 13, 2023
Lavrov: No Choice But To Treat F-16s In Ukraine As Nuclear Threat
There’s also a lot of talk about this development:
Elijah J. Magnier
@ejmalrai
If @JoeBiden is ording reservists to be deployed in Europe on the Baltic front, is he not preparing for a larger war, aware that #Ukraine is failing?
Ordering the Selected Reserve and Certain Members of the Individual Ready Reserve of the Armed Forces to Active Duty.
https://whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/07/13/ordering-the-selected-reserve-and-certain-members-of-the-individual-ready-reserve-of-the-armed-forces-to-active-duty/…
10:28 PM · Jul 13, 2023
Larry Johnson sounds the alarm, too:
Operation Atlantic Resolve is the name for the U.S. military response to Russia’s Special Military Operation. While the number of troops being activated and deployed is not large, is Biden making a direct threat to Russia that is likely to elicit a very unpleasant response from Putin?
In terms of bolstering U.S. military capabilities this is a nothing-burger. But it is the symbolism and the thinking behind this decision that is frightening. But this is not all.
According to one of my retired CIA buddies, at least two B-52s are on the ground at an U.S. Air Force in Alaska. This is highly unusual, according to another old friend who flew B-52s. Moving these planes forward to Alaska is stupid saber rattling. This is not going to assuage Russian concerns about Western intentions, it is going to move the Russians to hair-trigger status.
And do not forget about U.S. plans to send nuclear capable F-16s to Ukraine:
Big Serge sees this development as worrying, but offers a different explanation:
Big Serge
@witte_sergei
The number is small, so my initial suspicion is they are calling back people with system specific knowledge to fill particular readiness gaps.
To be clear, I do *not* believe this signals any intent to intervene on the ground in Ukraine. But activating the IRR isn't something you would do on a whim, so the institutional rot and the personnel situation must be worse than they are letting on.
In other words, the US isn’t just running out of munitions. Our Woke military is also running out of key trained personnel. Imagine that. This fits in with the reports of the sorry state of preparedness of our military. We’ve heard about the low level of preparedness of the F-35 fleet. Now we hear about our most modern submarines: Nearly 40% of US attack submarines in or awaiting repair as shipyards face worker shortages, supply chain issues. The Navy’s target is for only half that number, 20%, to be in for repairs at any given time, but there’s this issue:
The growing number of ships in maintenance stems from a shortage of workers able to carry out the necessary work and a lack of space at the maintenance shipyards, according to the report. In addition, supply chain issues have affected the availability of repair parts, especially since many submarine components are from sole-source supplies.
Awkward. Where are those parts coming from, I wonder? How could their be a supply chain issue when all you need to do is put the parts on a train or a truck, right?
I’ll end with this item about what the Barr and Wray were hiding from Americans. To be clear, I don’t buy the idea that this is what the war on Russia is about—that was coming regardless, not because Zelensky blackmailed the hapless Zhou:
NEW: House Oversight member, Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene, has confirmed that the "unnamed" foreign national who allegedly bribed Joe and Hunter Biden with $10 million, was none other than Burisma founder Mykola Zlochevsky.
The now infamous FBI FD-1023 form provide by Wray had redacted Zlochevsky's name but detailed a $10 million bribe to the Bidens with someone connected to Burisma. Putting it all together...
We know that Zlochesvsky was already paying Hunter an exorbitant sum, $83,000/mo, to sit on the board of his Ukrainian energy company. We know Zlochevsky was facing a corruption investigation in Ukraine by prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
We know then-Vice President Joe Biden accused Shokin of corruption. We know that then-VP Biden successfully threatened to pull a $1 billion US loan guarantee as leverage to push for Shokin’s removal.
We know Shokin was replaced by Yuriy Lutsenko, who cleared Zlochevsky and Burisma of criminal charges in 2019.
We know that Zlochevsky and his associates were eventually charged in 2020 for attempting $6 million in bribes to halt the ongoing investigation (the guy has a history of bribes).
And we know that Zlochevsky was a rich, corrupt foreign oligarch who needed the type of help only connected, corrupt DC cronyism could deliver.
And it all points to one conclusion: Joe and James and Hunter were willing to sell out American interests to keep the Ukrainian money flowing.
And now hundreds of billions of your taxpayer money is flowing back to Ukraine. Get it, now?
“The USA could end this war in five minutes”, Orbán said.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/top-democrats-know-biden-not-running-2nd-term-report