There has been very limited commentary on the recent military events in Ukraine: The enormous explosion of the munitions depot at Khmelnitsky in Western Ukraine as the result of a Russian strike (Ukraine says drones, but I wonder about that …). This may reflect growing Russian anger at provision of large amounts of munitions of a more advanced nature. Very real possibility of significant NATO casualties at this site.
Hitting to all fields with this post Mark. Recent news that India is asking for all its treasures, gems, etc. back from Britain's pre-colonial rule. Coincidence the "Patriot front" march occurs as Zhou attends Howard University to declare "White Supremacy Terrorism". President Z is indeed still out of the country... French President Macro today called Russia a "vasal' of China. Imagine that. Even after his recent trip to China. Twitter has some limited mentions of the US ADM-160 decoy to "cloak" the British Storm Shadow missile. Has got to be US/NATO driven. Prez Z turns down the Pope's offer to mediate and instead asks for Ukraine's blessing. LOL. I don't see Putin/Russia backing down from defending its sovereignty.
PM Sunak married money, so maybe she could help with the transfer? What goes around comes around, no?
“Murty has a 0.93% stake in her father’s Indian software company, Infosys, worth approximately $715 million. That represents the bulk of the couple’s estimated net worth of £730 million ($830 million), according to the Sunday Times Rich List, an annual ranking of the wealthiest people in Britain.” (CNN)
Neocons, neocommies, and neocolonialists, the Venn diagram of their levels of insanity has so much overlap, it requires extreme magnification to see the differences.
Hmmmm. Black eye either way, but possibly worst of all this way:
Prigozhin comments on downed military aircraft in Bryansk region, suggests involvement of Russian air defenses{Russia shoots down 4 of their own planes in Russian airspace}
Russia has a vast intelligence network of informants in Ukraine. They track every major arms shipment from NATO members. Over the last 2 weeks billions worth of supplies for the ‘counter offensive’ have been destroyed. US taxpayer dollars go up in flames.
That was my basic idea, at least initially, and remains my default. Read Simplicius carefully. I think he understands that NATO involvement would be a quite complex affair and he doesn't draw final conclusions to my understanding. It's a wait and see situation. Russian silence is interesting.
Russian silence this time vs the Moscow drone attack as nothing from Medevdev yet. Russia waiting for NATO to blow their own cover. Just a matter of time IMO.
Rather than the routine doing them in, if there was NATO involvement it would be more like the Russians, knowing Ukrainian capabilities, shaped their tactics in that light. NATO would have taken advantage of that, but that would be an incredible escalation. I'm pausing on that.
Official Russia has been pretty silent, which suggests ongoing inquiry. That's a given, of course, so no conclusions to be drawn from that alone. However, one would think that by now type of missile could be determined. We'll see.
The Russians are probably checking and investigating three times and one more for good measure. If they determine this was a Direct and Intentional NATO attack/deliberate escalation the stakes are incredibly high.
On a side note...how interesting that Ze was out of Ukr for the Kremlin strike and this.
Yes, I think “shock and awe” is MKB shorthand for, as you say, “meaningful” RF responses. Re the Euros’ brilliant idea on more shooting-oneself-in-foot sanctions, as Mark says, what could go wrong?!
When you say "the US is shedding friendships and strategic relationships around the world at a head spinning pace" bear in mind that the US is not us. They lost us a long time ago. We are all busy prepping for the economic disaster and breakdown of authority that is coming our way, and have little time or sympathy for their grandiose plans of empire.
The powers that be in D.C. and Brussels expected a short war, either Russia winning quickly or giving up quickly. It is why they were so gung-ho in shoveling money and weapons into Ukraine- they didn't expect to have to do it for very long. A long stalemate that uses up lots of weapons and money wasn't the deal they expected to have made.
As ever, thank you Mr Wauck for your blog. Happy Mother's Day to you and all. The calm in Ukraine is 'funky': so many players and schemes! I still put rank fetid corruption by bad powerful people at the top of my cause list. Regarding a neo-con fever dream to get us to an active WW3, what is on offer in the public sphere seems too complex to be a good description (yeah, Ukraine and byzantine, I know) - I say this because the neo-cons' MO is to just fabricate causes to drive actions. If they wanted a cause, they'd just make it happen false-flag style. Good chance we'll never collectively know the guts of the Ukraine war story. As to Wagner in Africa - seems like Wagner Group has success-credibility by way of the Ukraine war and allowance by Russia/CCP to project some muscle in Africa. Likely plenty of African nations (Nigeria, DRC, Sudan (nice naval port you got there, Vlad), etc) that would be happy to get help with internal armed violent groups. Great way to cover a flank on the Middle East and win support from a nascent powerful resource rich continent. Add in refugee flow control through Northern Africa - lots of acquired leverage
One wonders to what extent Biden is even aware of the neocon machinations, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. More worryingly, the neocons do not seem to be able to adjust to or even understand the extent to which their delusions are rapidly destroying whatever soft power and credibility the US had in the world while simultaneously demonstrating the fallibility of our military hardware. Speaking of which, I think the Russians are gaining a tremendous amount of valuable intelligence on how NATO and US weapons and reconnaissance operate. That dose not bode well for any future efforts against Russia - or for any ability to prevent the Russians from rolling back NATO borders to their 1997 lines should Russia choose to do so (I do not think they will, but do many things happening in the world right now are the very things I thought would never happen ...)
Like many here I long for the days of the US being the “good guys” like I thought they were in my youth - but that may have been mistaken.
I keep wracking my brain trying to figure out which WH aide, cabinet member, or lawyer is coming up with this crap and force feeding down Zhou’s throat to regurgitate?
Hitting to all fields with this post Mark. Recent news that India is asking for all its treasures, gems, etc. back from Britain's pre-colonial rule. Coincidence the "Patriot front" march occurs as Zhou attends Howard University to declare "White Supremacy Terrorism". President Z is indeed still out of the country... French President Macro today called Russia a "vasal' of China. Imagine that. Even after his recent trip to China. Twitter has some limited mentions of the US ADM-160 decoy to "cloak" the British Storm Shadow missile. Has got to be US/NATO driven. Prez Z turns down the Pope's offer to mediate and instead asks for Ukraine's blessing. LOL. I don't see Putin/Russia backing down from defending its sovereignty.
PM Sunak married money, so maybe she could help with the transfer? What goes around comes around, no?
“Murty has a 0.93% stake in her father’s Indian software company, Infosys, worth approximately $715 million. That represents the bulk of the couple’s estimated net worth of £730 million ($830 million), according to the Sunday Times Rich List, an annual ranking of the wealthiest people in Britain.” (CNN)
"India is asking for all its treasures, gems, etc. back"
I saw that. Luv it.
Oh, the irony . . . French President Micron calling another nation a vassal, pot calls kettle black!
BTW, I spelled Macron's name Micron deliberately.
On Africa, what if Russian / Iranian backed assets start targeting US forces in Africa.
6,500 US troops in Africa, vs only 900 in Syria.
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/us-military-west-africa/
And with the Turkish elections over, I expect Syria to heat up.
How soon we forget… https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tongo_Tongo_ambush
“Over time, JNIM has evolved from a terrorist organization into an insurgent group that controls territory, Jones told Task & Purpose.”
Gee… according to Biden then White Supremacy can evolve…. Never been part of an insurgery group before but I do control a small bit of territory.
Neocons, neocommies, and neocolonialists, the Venn diagram of their levels of insanity has so much overlap, it requires extreme magnification to see the differences.
Hmmmm. Black eye either way, but possibly worst of all this way:
Prigozhin comments on downed military aircraft in Bryansk region, suggests involvement of Russian air defenses{Russia shoots down 4 of their own planes in Russian airspace}
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4153198/posts
My guess is new equipment from Nato, Russians had adopted a routine, and got ambushed. SIMPLICIUS has good coverage.
Ukraine is not playing up their involvement due to Nato hardware used, especially since it was used for targets in Russian airspace, not defensively.
Kim Dotcom
@KimDotcom
Russia has a vast intelligence network of informants in Ukraine. They track every major arms shipment from NATO members. Over the last 2 weeks billions worth of supplies for the ‘counter offensive’ have been destroyed. US taxpayer dollars go up in flames.
That was my basic idea, at least initially, and remains my default. Read Simplicius carefully. I think he understands that NATO involvement would be a quite complex affair and he doesn't draw final conclusions to my understanding. It's a wait and see situation. Russian silence is interesting.
Russian silence this time vs the Moscow drone attack as nothing from Medevdev yet. Russia waiting for NATO to blow their own cover. Just a matter of time IMO.
Rather than the routine doing them in, if there was NATO involvement it would be more like the Russians, knowing Ukrainian capabilities, shaped their tactics in that light. NATO would have taken advantage of that, but that would be an incredible escalation. I'm pausing on that.
Official Russia has been pretty silent, which suggests ongoing inquiry. That's a given, of course, so no conclusions to be drawn from that alone. However, one would think that by now type of missile could be determined. We'll see.
The Russians are probably checking and investigating three times and one more for good measure. If they determine this was a Direct and Intentional NATO attack/deliberate escalation the stakes are incredibly high.
On a side note...how interesting that Ze was out of Ukr for the Kremlin strike and this.
To complement Mark’s post, Bahdrakumar’s latest, always insightful:
https://www.indianpunchline.com/ukraine-war-the-short-view/
Insightful, except I don’t believe the Russians are into shock and awe. Their strikes seem more meaningful.
The mention of the EU doing 3rd party sanctions is going to get a lot of pushback. Another reason for Countries to not trade in Dollars or Euros.
Yes, I think “shock and awe” is MKB shorthand for, as you say, “meaningful” RF responses. Re the Euros’ brilliant idea on more shooting-oneself-in-foot sanctions, as Mark says, what could go wrong?!
Hungary and Austria already stated pushback.
Under emergency powers with Prez Z out of country he’s in charge.
A defection would be quite interesting.
When you say "the US is shedding friendships and strategic relationships around the world at a head spinning pace" bear in mind that the US is not us. They lost us a long time ago. We are all busy prepping for the economic disaster and breakdown of authority that is coming our way, and have little time or sympathy for their grandiose plans of empire.
It is us unless you have 81M ballot stuffing mules and Zuck bucks to share.
Large numbers of illegal immigrants may cause disruptions and chaos, leading the government to declare martial law "for the safety of the people".
Clogging up cell phone towers with their newly minted govt issued cell phones. That’ll be chaos alright.
…and thus never letting a crisis go to waste…
The powers that be in D.C. and Brussels expected a short war, either Russia winning quickly or giving up quickly. It is why they were so gung-ho in shoveling money and weapons into Ukraine- they didn't expect to have to do it for very long. A long stalemate that uses up lots of weapons and money wasn't the deal they expected to have made.
Never thought sour grapes could be so expensive.
As ever, thank you Mr Wauck for your blog. Happy Mother's Day to you and all. The calm in Ukraine is 'funky': so many players and schemes! I still put rank fetid corruption by bad powerful people at the top of my cause list. Regarding a neo-con fever dream to get us to an active WW3, what is on offer in the public sphere seems too complex to be a good description (yeah, Ukraine and byzantine, I know) - I say this because the neo-cons' MO is to just fabricate causes to drive actions. If they wanted a cause, they'd just make it happen false-flag style. Good chance we'll never collectively know the guts of the Ukraine war story. As to Wagner in Africa - seems like Wagner Group has success-credibility by way of the Ukraine war and allowance by Russia/CCP to project some muscle in Africa. Likely plenty of African nations (Nigeria, DRC, Sudan (nice naval port you got there, Vlad), etc) that would be happy to get help with internal armed violent groups. Great way to cover a flank on the Middle East and win support from a nascent powerful resource rich continent. Add in refugee flow control through Northern Africa - lots of acquired leverage
You mean drag queen story hour at local tribal libraries is frowned upon?
One wonders to what extent Biden is even aware of the neocon machinations, but I suppose it doesn’t really matter. More worryingly, the neocons do not seem to be able to adjust to or even understand the extent to which their delusions are rapidly destroying whatever soft power and credibility the US had in the world while simultaneously demonstrating the fallibility of our military hardware. Speaking of which, I think the Russians are gaining a tremendous amount of valuable intelligence on how NATO and US weapons and reconnaissance operate. That dose not bode well for any future efforts against Russia - or for any ability to prevent the Russians from rolling back NATO borders to their 1997 lines should Russia choose to do so (I do not think they will, but do many things happening in the world right now are the very things I thought would never happen ...)
Like many here I long for the days of the US being the “good guys” like I thought they were in my youth - but that may have been mistaken.
I wonder if we will see downed US aircraft in Syria, using Russian Tech with a third party pushing the button.
Same with more missile attacks.
I don't think we'd be informed if such did come to pass
Yep. Nordstream group would swoop in undetected and cleanup in aisle 2.
One does wonder.
We’ve gotten ourselves into one hell of a shit storm.
Our “ leaders” have gotten us into one hell of a shit storm. 😣
https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2023/05/14/elon-busts-biden-over-his-divisive-speech-at-howard-with-one-perfect-line-n745622
I keep wracking my brain trying to figure out which WH aide, cabinet member, or lawyer is coming up with this crap and force feeding down Zhou’s throat to regurgitate?
A despicable display of outright malice and lies by our Huckster-in-Chief
No other way to get them affordably. Africans know what's up, I think.
Disagree. Stalk and wait for the next mistake.