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FTR#‘s 1259 and 1260 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lies?, Parts 21 & 22

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“Polit­i­cal language…is designed to make lies sound truth­ful and mur­der respectable, and to give an appear­ance of solid­i­ty to pure wind.”

— George Orwell, 1946

EVERYTHING MR. EMORY HAS BEEN SAYING ABOUT THE UKRAINE WAR IS ENCAPSULATED IN THIS VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24

ANOTHER REVEALING VIDEO FROM UKRAINE 24

Mr. Emory has launched a new Patre­on site.

Vis­it at: Patreon.com/DaveEmory

FTR#1259 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

FTR#1260 This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: Updat­ing cov­er­age of the Ukraine war, the title of this series comes from the late, bril­liant polit­i­cal come­di­an Mort Sahl’s 1976 auto­bi­og­ra­phy Heart­land. Mort Sahl was one of Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tors in the New Orleans DA’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the assas­si­na­tion of JFK.

The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of a pow­er­ful eco­nom­ic motive for bait­ing Rus­sia into the Ukraine war–creating a pre­text for oblig­ing Europe and Ger­many to forego use of the Nord­stream 2 pipeline and sev­er the EU from con­sump­tion of Russ­ian nat­ur­al gas.

” . . . . The only way left for U.S. diplo­mats to block Euro­pean pur­chas­es is to goad Rus­sia into a mil­i­tary response and then claim that aveng­ing this response out­weighs any pure­ly nation­al eco­nom­ic inter­est. As hawk­ish Under-Sec­re­tary of State for Polit­i­cal Affairs, Vic­to­ria Nuland, explained in a State Depart­ment press brief­ing on Jan­u­ary 27: ‘If Rus­sia invades Ukraine one way or anoth­er Nord Stream 2 will not move for­ward.’ The prob­lem is to cre­ate a suit­ably offen­sive inci­dent and depict Rus­sia as the aggres­sor. . . .”

Lviv, Ukaine, Sum­mer of 2018. Cel­e­bra­tion of the 75th anniver­sary of the 14th Waf­fen SS Divi­sion (Gali­cian). Note the Ukrain­ian hon­or guard in the back­ground.

In FTR#1245, we detailed Swiss intel­li­gence offi­cer Jacques Baud’s analy­sis of Ukraine’s impend­ing assault on the eth­ni­cal­ly and lin­guis­ti­cal­ly Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion of East­ern Ukraine and Biden’s sign­ing off on that oper­a­tion in order to real­ize Amer­i­can and West­ern Euro­pean goals.

Next, we present an oblique, pos­si­bly very sig­nif­i­cant ele­ment. A For­eign Pol­i­cy arti­cle dis­cussing a for­bear­er of EU pres­i­dent Ursu­la Von Der Leyen’s who was a key Third Reich offi­cial in Gali­cia (West­ern Ukraine).

It appears that Joachim Frei­herr von der Leyen was a mem­ber of the promi­nent silk mer­chant fam­i­ly into which Ursu­la mar­ried.

Con­ven­tion­al fam­i­ly trees make no men­tion of him: ” . . . . Joachim Frei­herr von der Leyen ( Sep­tem­ber 28, 1897 in Haus Meer , Büderich (Meer­busch) ; † 1945 in Dres­den ) was a Ger­man lawyer and admin­is­tra­tive offi­cial who worked as a dis­trict admin­is­tra­tor in the occu­pied coun­tries of Czecho­slo­va­kia and Poland dur­ing the Nation­al Social­ist peri­od and as a dis­trict cap­tain of the dis­trict of Gali­cia was involved in the orga­ni­za­tion of the Holo­caustVon der Leyen comes from the von der Leyen fam­i­ly of silk barons in Krefeld. . . .”

Next, we high­light the ongo­ing lion­iza­tion of Ukrain­ian Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments in the main­stream U.S. press.

A long spread in the Sun­day New York Times beat­i­fies the Nazi Azov Reg­i­ment, the chief Ukrain­ian unit defend­ing the Azovstal steel works.

Anoth­er NYT piece presents a hero­ic por­tray­al of a Ukrain­ian sabo­teur from the Nazi/fascist Azov and Right Sec­tor units: ” . . . . Before the war, Svarog occa­sion­al­ly joined week­end train­ing with Right Sec­tor and Nation­al Corps, a branch of the Azov move­ment, both of which are aligned with para­mil­i­tary units in Ukraine. . . .”

Com­bat Hel­mets of the Azov units.

The ele­va­tion of Ukrain­ian Nazis and fas­cists by the U.S. is exem­pli­fied by a Pen­ta­gon-spon­sored ath­let­ic com­pe­ti­tion: ” . . . .This August, dur­ing the Depart­ment of Defense’s annu­al War­rior Games at Dis­ney World in Orlan­do, Flori­da, lib­er­al come­di­an Jon Stew­art award­ed a Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary vet­er­an named Ihor Halush­ka the ‘Heart of the Team’ award for ‘inspir­ing his team’ with his ‘per­son­al exam­ple.’ Halush­ka hap­pens to have been a mem­ber of the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion, which has been armed by the US and inte­grat­ed into the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard. . . . Per­haps the most famous Ukrain­ian War­rior Games par­tic­i­pant is Yulia Palevs­ka, who the New York Times has dubbed ‘a sym­bol of Ukrain­ian brav­ery and self-sac­ri­fice.’. . . . Yulia Palevs­ka and Ihor Halush­ka were mem­bers of the fas­cist Right Sec­tor orga­ni­za­tion and Azov Bat­tal­ion, respec­tive­ly. . . .”

The extreme nature of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor Nazis and fas­cists in the polit­i­cal driver’s seat in Ukraine are illus­trat­ed by the names of peo­ple on their “kill list”: “ . . . . Why this site is allowed to oper­ate is a good ques­tion. But you can access it eas­i­ly, and even donate mon­ey to help the ’cause’ – if you are sym­pa­thet­ic to Nazis and think that assas­si­nat­ing peo­ple for their opin­ions is a whole­some way to sup­port Ukraine. The co-founder of “Pink Floyd” [Roger Waters] is known for his sup­port of impris­oned Wik­ileaks’ cre­ator Julian Assange, and for his oppo­si­tion to impe­ri­al­ism and war, as well as for his awe­some music, loved by mil­lions around the world. . . . . Even Hen­ry Kissinger’s name is on the list despite his long his­to­ry of Rus­so­pho­bia. But since he dared to air his con­cerns about how the US is tee­ter­ing toward war with Rus­sia and Chi­na . . . .”

Next, we fur­ther devel­op Ukraine’s enemies/death list, not­ing the expe­ri­ence of for­mer Marine Corps intel­li­gence offi­cer Scott Rit­ter.

Join­ing Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and Hen­ry Kissinger on the list, sev­er­al of the mem­bers of which have been mur­dered, Rit­ter notes the pres­ence of OUN/B youth camps in this coun­try, pos­si­ble breed­ing grounds for assas­sins.

Zelen­sky “nor­mal­izes” Stephan Ban­dera

Fur­ther­more, Rit­ter cor­rect­ly locates those OUN/B youth camps in the polit­i­cal con­tin­u­um stretch­ing from the Third Reich, through the Cold War, up to today—a con­tin­u­um inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion.

“ . . . . I had to dri­ve past Ellenville, a sleepy lit­tle town that is home to a camp belong­ing to the Ukrain­ian Amer­i­can Youth Asso­ci­a­tion which, every sum­mer, coor­di­nates with the Orga­ni­za­tion for the Defense of Four Free­doms of Ukraine to hold a ‘Heroes’ Hol­i­day’ hon­or­ing vet­er­an of the Ukrain­ian People’s Army and the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists. . . . That a mon­u­ment to men respon­si­ble for geno­ci­dal mass mur­der and who, in the case of two of them (Shukhevych and Ban­dera) open­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with Nazi Ger­many, could be erect­ed in the Unit­ed States is dis­turb­ing. [NB—Konovalets coop­er­at­ed with the Third Reich as well, D.E.] That every year Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can adher­ents of the odi­ous ide­ol­o­gy of Stepan Ban­dera gath­er to cel­e­brate his lega­cy at a “children’s camp” where the youth are arrayed in brown uni­forms that make them look like what they, in fact, are — ide­o­log­i­cal storm troop­ers for a hate­ful neo-Nazi ide­ol­o­gy that pro­motes the racial supe­ri­or­i­ty of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple, is a nation­al abom­i­na­tion. . . . Ban­dera has been ele­vat­ed to the sta­tus of a nation­al hero in Ukraine, and his birth­day is con­sid­ered a nation­al hol­i­day. . . . The lega­cy of Stepan Ban­dera is at the very heart of what pass­es for Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism today. It dom­i­nates the polit­i­cal are­na inside Ukraine, where all com­pet­ing polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy and affil­i­a­tions have been out­lawed by Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky. . . .”

In FTR #907, we not­ed the pro­found pres­ence of the Ukrain­ian fas­cists in the Unit­ed States, as well as their oper­a­tional con­nec­tions to the Third Reich. In FTR #1072, we not­ed the Ukrain­ian youth cadre in the U.S., and its affil­i­a­tion with the OUN/B milieu in Ukraine.

Our next item out these con­nec­tions, not­ing:

1. The CYM orga­ni­za­tion and its pres­ence in the U.S.

2. The deci­sive involve­ment of post-World War II emi­gres in the growth of that move­ment.

3. CYM’s close affil­i­a­tion with the OUN/B.

4. CYM’s uni­formed, mil­i­tary ori­en­ta­tion: ” . . . . Among the most pop­u­lar activ­i­ties are mil­i­tary-style games where campers are divid­ed into two teams that have to dodge or cap­ture their oppo­nents by mov­ing stealth­ily and orga­niz­ing ambush­es. . . . .”

Fur­ther solid­i­fy­ing the con­ti­nu­ity between the Third Reich, the Gehlen Org and the GOP, we note that, while it was the BND (the intel­li­gence ser­vice of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic) the “Org” was financ­ing the East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist groups that encom­passed the CYM camps in the U.S.

Our pro­grams con­clude with excerpts of anoth­er inter­view with Swiss intel­li­gence offi­cer Jacques Baud.

In the pro­gram, we note Ukraine’s “mir­ror imag­ing” of the polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary aspects of the war, rep­re­sent­ing Ukrain­ian atroc­i­ties and war crimes as Russ­ian.

In turn, West­ern media slav­ish­ly report the Ukrain­ian pro­pa­gan­da as fact, a dynam­ic Mr. Emory has cit­ed as cement­ing the Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Amer­i­ca, begun dur­ing the clos­ing stages of World War II.

Baud cites Ukrain­ian oper­a­tions behind Russ­ian lines: “ . . . . This is a ter­ror­ist cam­paign tar­get­ing pro-Russ­ian Ukrain­ian per­son­al­i­ties and offi­cials. It fol­lows major changes in the lead­er­ship of the SBU, in Kiev, and in the regions, includ­ing Lvov, Ternopol since July. It is prob­a­bly in the con­text of this same cam­paign that Darya Dug­i­na was assas­si­nat­ed on August 21. The objec­tive of this new cam­paign could be to con­vey the illu­sion that there is an ongo­ing resis­tance in the areas tak­en by the Rus­sians and thus revive West­ern aid, which is start­ing to fatigue. These sab­o­tage activ­i­ties do not real­ly have an oper­a­tional impact and seem more relat­ed to a psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tion. It may be that these are actions like the one on Snake Island at the begin­ning of May, intend­ed to demon­strate to the inter­na­tion­al pub­lic that Ukraine is act­ing. What the inci­dents in Crimea indi­rect­ly show is that the pop­u­lar resis­tance claimed by the West in Feb­ru­ary does not exist. . . .”

Colonel Baud also high­lights Ukraine’s shelling of the Zapor­i­hizia Nuclear Pow­er Plant: “ . . . . By bomb­ing the plant, Ukraine could also be try­ing to pres­sure the West to inter­vene in the con­flict, under the pre­text that Rus­sia is seek­ing to dis­con­nect the plant from the Ukrain­ian pow­er grid before the fall. This sui­ci­dal behavior—as stat­ed by UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al António Guterres—would be in line with the war waged by Ukraine since 2014. There is strong evi­dence that the attacks on Ener­go­dar are Ukrain­ian. The frag­ments of pro­jec­tiles fired at the site from the oth­er side of the Dnieper are of West­ern ori­gin. It seems that they come from British BRIMSTONE mis­siles, which are pre­ci­sion mis­siles, whose use is mon­i­tored by the British. Appar­ent­ly, the West is aware of the Ukrain­ian attacks on the ZNPP. This might explain why Ukraine is not very sup­port­ive of an inter­na­tion­al com­mis­sion of inquiry and why West­ern coun­tries are putting unre­al­is­tic con­di­tions for send­ing inves­ti­ga­tors from the IAEA, an agency that has not shown much integri­ty so far. . . .”

Colonel Baud sums up the role of ter­ror cen­tral to the Naz­i­fied Ukrain­ian regime, par­rot­ed by West­ern MSM: “ . . . . Ukrain­ian crimes were begin­ning to be revealed on social net­works, and on 27 March Zelen­sky feared that this would jeop­ar­dize West­ern sup­port. This was followed—rather opportunely—by the Bucha mas­sacre on 3 April, the cir­cum­stances of which remain unclear. Britain, which then had the chair­man­ship of the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, refused three times the Russ­ian request to set up an inter­na­tion­al com­mis­sion of enquiry into the crimes of Bucha. Ukrain­ian social­ist MP Ilya Kiva revealed on Telegram that the Bucha tragedy was planned by the British MI6 spe­cial ser­vices and imple­ment­ed by the SBU. The fun­da­men­tal prob­lem is that the Ukraini­ans have replaced the ‘oper­a­tional art’ with bru­tal­i­ty. . . .”

1. The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of a pow­er­ful eco­nom­ic motive for bait­ing Rus­sia into the Ukraine war–creating a pre­text for oblig­ing Europe and Ger­many to forego use of the Nord­stream 2 pipeline and sev­er the EU from con­sump­tion of Russ­ian nat­ur­al gas.

” . . . . The only way left for U.S. diplo­mats to block Euro­pean pur­chas­es is to goad Rus­sia into a mil­i­tary response and then claim that aveng­ing this response out­weighs any pure­ly nation­al eco­nom­ic inter­est. As hawk­ish Under-Sec­re­tary of State for Polit­i­cal Affairs, Vic­to­ria Nuland, explained in a State Depart­ment press brief­ing on Jan­u­ary 27: ‘If Rus­sia invades Ukraine one way or anoth­er Nord Stream 2 will not move for­ward.’ The prob­lem is to cre­ate a suit­ably offen­sive inci­dent and depict Rus­sia as the aggres­sor. . . .”

In FTR#1245, we detailed Swiss intel­li­gence offi­cer Jacques Baud’s analy­sis of Ukraine’s impend­ing assault on the eth­ni­cal­ly and lin­guis­ti­cal­ly Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion of East­ern Ukraine and Biden’s sign­ing off on that oper­a­tion in order to real­ize Amer­i­can and West­ern Euro­pean goals.

“How Europe Was Pushed Towards Eco­nom­ic Sui­cide;” Moon of Alaba­ma; 5/18/2022.

With the active help from Europe’s ‘lead­er­ship’ the U.S. is suc­ceed­ing in ruin­ing Europe.

As Michael Hud­son, a research pro­fes­sor of Eco­nom­ics at Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri, Kansas City, wrote in ear­ly Feb­ru­ary, before Rus­si­a’s inter­ven­tion in Ukraine:

Amer­i­ca no longer has the mon­e­tary pow­er and seem­ing­ly chron­ic trade and bal­ance-of-pay­ments sur­plus that enabled it to draw up the world’s trade and invest­ment rules in 1944–45. The threat to U.S. dom­i­nance is that Chi­na, Rus­sia and Mackinder’s Eurasian World Island heart­land are offer­ing bet­ter trade and invest­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties than are avail­able from the Unit­ed States with its increas­ing­ly des­per­ate demand for sac­ri­fices from its NATO and oth­er allies.

The most glar­ing exam­ple is the U.S. dri­ve to block Ger­many from autho­riz­ing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to obtain Russ­ian gas for the com­ing cold weath­er. Angela Merkel agreed with Don­ald Trump to spend $1 bil­lion build­ing a new LNG port to become more depen­dent on high­ly priced U.S. LNG. (The plan was can­celled after the U.S. and Ger­man elec­tions changed both lead­ers.) But Ger­many has no oth­er way of heat­ing many of its hous­es and office build­ings (or sup­ply­ing its fer­til­iz­er com­pa­nies) than with Russ­ian gas.

The only way left for U.S. diplo­mats to block Euro­pean pur­chas­es is to goad Rus­sia into a mil­i­tary response and then claim that aveng­ing this response out­weighs any pure­ly nation­al eco­nom­ic inter­est. As hawk­ish Under-Sec­re­tary of State for Polit­i­cal Affairs, Vic­to­ria Nuland, explained in a State Depart­ment press brief­ing on Jan­u­ary 27: “If Rus­sia invades Ukraine one way or anoth­er Nord Stream 2 will not move for­ward.” The prob­lem is to cre­ate a suit­ably offen­sive inci­dent and depict Rus­sia as the aggres­sor.

In mid Feb­ru­ary OSCE observ­er not­ed that the artillery bom­bard­ment of Don­bas by the Ukraini­ans increased from a hand­ful to over 2,000 explo­sions per day. Rus­sia react­ed to these attack prepa­ra­tions by rec­og­niz­ing the Don­bas republics, sign­ing defense agree­ments with them and by final­ly com­ing to their help.

Short­ly after the launch of the Russ­ian mil­i­tary oper­a­tion Pro­fes­sor Hud­son fur­ther devel­oped his ear­li­er thoughts:

The recent prod­ding of Rus­sia by expand­ing Ukrain­ian anti-Russ­ian eth­nic vio­lence by Ukraine’s neo-Nazi post-2014 Maid­en regime aims at forc­ing a show­down. It comes in response to the fear by U.S. inter­ests that they are los­ing their eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal hold on their NATO allies and oth­er Dol­lar Area satel­lites as these coun­tries have seen their major oppor­tu­ni­ties for gain to lie in increas­ing trade and invest­ment with Chi­na and Rus­sia.
...
As Pres­i­dent Biden explained, the cur­rent mil­i­tary esca­la­tion (“Prod­ding the Bear”) is not real­ly about Ukraine. Biden promised at the out­set that no U.S. troops would be involved. But he has been demand­ing for over a year that Ger­many pre­vent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from sup­ply­ing its indus­try and hous­ing with low-priced gas and turn to the much high­er-priced U.S. sup­pli­ers.
...
[T]he most press­ing U.S. strate­gic aim of NATO con­fronta­tion with Rus­sia is soar­ing oil and gas prices. In addi­tion to cre­at­ing prof­its and stock-mar­ket gains for U.S. com­pa­nies, high­er ener­gy prices will take much of the steam out of the Ger­man econ­o­my.

In ear­ly April Pro­fes­sor Hud­son took anoth­er look at the sit­u­a­tion:

It is now clear that the New Cold War was planned over a year ago, with seri­ous strat­e­gy asso­ci­at­ed with America’s per­ceived to block Nord Stream 2 as part of its aim of bar­ring West­ern Europe (“NATO”) from seek­ing pros­per­i­ty by mutu­al trade and invest­ment with Chi­na and Rus­sia.
...
So the Russ­ian-speak­ing Donet­sk and Luhan­sk regions were shelled with increas­ing inten­si­ty, and when Rus­sia still refrained from respond­ing, plans report­ed­ly were drawn up for a great show­down last Feb­ru­ary – a heavy West­ern Ukrain­ian attack orga­nized by U.S. advi­sors and armed by NATO.
...
Euro­pean trade and invest­ment pri­or to the War to Cre­ate Sanc­tions had promised a ris­ing mutu­al pros­per­i­ty among Ger­many, France and oth­er NATO coun­tries vis-à-vis Rus­sia and Chi­na. Rus­sia was pro­vid­ing abun­dant ener­gy at a com­pet­i­tive price, and this ener­gy sup­ply was to make a quan­tum leap with Nord Stream 2. Europe was to earn the for­eign exchange to pay for this ris­ing import trade by a com­bi­na­tion of export­ing more indus­tri­al man­u­fac­tures to Rus­sia and cap­i­tal invest­ment in rebuild­ing the Russ­ian econ­o­my, e.g. by Ger­man auto com­pa­nies, air­craft and finan­cial invest­ment. This bilat­er­al trade and invest­ment is now stopped – for many, many years, giv­en NATO’s con­fis­ca­tion of Russia’s for­eign reserves kept in euros and British ster­ling.

The Euro­pean response to the U.S. proxy war against Rus­sia was based on media dri­ven hys­teric mor­al­iz­ing or maybe mor­al­iz­ing hys­te­ria. It was and is nei­ther ratio­nal nor real­is­tic.

The Euro­pean ‘lead­er­ship’ decid­ed that noth­ing but the eco­nom­ic sui­cide of Europe was suf­fi­cient to show Rus­sia that Brus­sels was seri­ous­ly miffed. Dimwit nation­al gov­ern­ments, includ­ing the Ger­man one, fol­lowed that pro­gram. Should they stay on their course the result will be a com­plete de-indus­tri­al­iza­tion of west­ern Europe.

In the words of one seri­ous observ­er:

Today, we see that for pure­ly polit­i­cal rea­sons, dri­ven by their own ambi­tions, and under pres­sure from their US over­lord, the Euro­pean coun­tries are impos­ing more sanc­tions on the oil and gas mar­kets which will lead to more infla­tion. Instead of admit­ting their mis­takes, they are look­ing for a guilty par­ty else­where.
...
One gets the impres­sion that West­ern politi­cians and econ­o­mists sim­ply for­get basic eco­nom­ic laws or just choose to ignore them.
...
[S]aying no to Russ­ian ener­gy means that Europe will sys­tem­i­cal­ly and for the long term become the world’s most cost­ly region for ener­gy resources. Yes, prices will rise, and resources will go to counter these price hikes, but this will not change the sit­u­a­tion sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Some ana­lysts are say­ing that it will seri­ous­ly or even irrev­o­ca­bly under­mine the com­pet­i­tive­ness of a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of Euro­pean indus­try, which is already los­ing ground to com­pa­nies from oth­er parts of the world. Now, these process­es will cer­tain­ly pick up pace. Clear­ly, the oppor­tu­ni­ties for eco­nom­ic activ­i­ty, with its improve­ments, will leave Europe for oth­er regions, as will Russia’s ener­gy resources.

This eco­nom­ic auto-da-fe… sui­cide is, of course, the inter­nal affair of the Euro­pean coun­tries.
...
Now our part­ners’ errat­ic actions – this is what they are – have result­ed in a de fac­to growth in rev­enue in the Russ­ian oil-and-gas sec­tor in addi­tion to the dam­age to the Euro­pean econ­o­my.
...
Under­stand­ing what steps the West will take in the near future, we must reach con­clu­sions in advance and be proac­tive, turn­ing the thought­less chaot­ic steps of some of our part­ners to our advan­tage for the ben­e­fit of our coun­try. Nat­u­ral­ly, we should not hope for their end­less mis­takes. We should sim­ply, prac­ti­cal­ly pro­ceed from cur­rent real­i­ties, as I said.

Vladimir Putin, Meet­ing on oil indus­try devel­op­ment, May 17 2020, Krem­lin, Moscow

1b. Next, we present an oblique, pos­si­bly very sig­nif­i­cant ele­ment. A For­eign Pol­i­cy arti­cle dis­cussing a fore­bear­er of EU pres­i­dent Ursu­la Von Der Leyen’s who was a key Third Reich offi­cial in Gali­cia (West­ern Ukraine).

It appears that Joachim Frei­herr von der Leyen was a mem­ber of the promi­nent silk mer­chant fam­i­ly into which Ursu­la mar­ried.

Con­ven­tion­al fam­i­ly trees make no men­tion of him: ” . . . . Joachim Frei­herr von der Leyen ( Sep­tem­ber 28, 1897 in Haus Meer , Büderich (Meer­busch) ; † 1945 in Dres­den ) was a Ger­man lawyer and admin­is­tra­tive offi­cial who worked as a dis­trict admin­is­tra­tor in the occu­pied coun­tries of Czecho­slo­va­kia and Poland dur­ing the Nation­al Social­ist peri­od and as a dis­trict cap­tain of the dis­trict of Gali­cia was involved in the orga­ni­za­tion of the Holo­caustVon der Leyen comes from the von der Leyen fam­i­ly of silk barons in Krefeld. . . .”

“The Aris­to­crat­ic Inep­ti­tude of Ursu­la Von Der Leyen” by Peter Kuras; For­eign Pol­i­cy; 4/30/2021.

How the EU president’s fam­i­ly con­nec­tions explain her rise to power—and fail­ures using it dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

. . . . Von der Leyen’s fam­i­ly tree traces a lega­cy of pow­er and bru­tal­i­ty, incor­po­rat­ing not only some of Germany’s most sig­nif­i­cant Nazis but also some of Britain’s largest slave traders and, through mar­riage, some of the Unit­ed States’ largest slave own­ers. Von der Leyen is descend­ed direct­ly from James Lad­son, who owned more than 200 slaves when the Civ­il War broke out. . . .

1c. “Joachim Frei­herr von der Leyen;“Wikipedia.org

Joachim Frei­herr von der Leyen ( Sep­tem­ber 28, 1897 in Haus Meer , Büderich (Meer­busch) ; † 1945 in Dres­den ) was a Ger­man lawyer and admin­is­tra­tive offi­cial who worked as a dis­trict admin­is­tra­tor in the occu­pied coun­tries of Czecho­slo­va­kia and Poland dur­ing the Nation­al Social­ist peri­od and as a dis­trict cap­tain of the dis­trict of Gali­cia was involved in the orga­ni­za­tion of the Holo­caust .

Von der Leyen comes from the von der Leyen fam­i­ly of silk barons in Krefeld. [This is the fam­i­ly of Ursu­la’s in-laws–D.E.] His father , Friedrich Lud­wig von der Leyen , was may­or of Büderich and dis­trict admin­is­tra­tor of the dis­trict of Neuß , and lived with his fam­i­ly in Schloss Haus Meer until his death in 1945.

From 1915 to 1918 von der Leyen took part in the First World War and from 1919 to 1920 he was a mem­ber of a Freiko­rps . He was a mem­ber of the Young Ger­man Order and from 1926 to 1933 of the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsol­dat­en . He joined the NSDAP on Feb­ru­ary 1, 1940. [1]

He stud­ied law and passed the first state exam­i­na­tion in 1926, and then on Decem­ber 22, 1928 the major state exam­i­na­tion in law. In 1933 he was a per­ma­nent rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the chief of police in Uerdin­gen and from April 1934 at the police head­quar­ters in Wup­per­tal . After the smash­ing of the rest of the Czech Repub­lic , he became pro­vi­sion­al Ober­lan­drat in the dis­trict of Deutschbrod , based in Deutschbrod in the Pro­tec­torate of Bohemia and Moravia , and in 1940, after the occu­pa­tion of France , became head of the admin­is­tra­tive depart­ment of the mil­i­tary admin­is­tra­tive dis­trict OFK 591 in Saint-Ger­main-en-Layeappoint­ed.

At the end of July 1942 he suc­ceed­ed Otto Bauer as dis­trict cap­tain in the dis­trict of Lem­berg-Land in the dis­trict of Gali­cia, the dis­trict gov­er­nor there was Otto Wächter . Bauer remained head of the dis­tric­t’s inter­nal admin­is­tra­tion. Berthold Püt­ter, the dis­trict cap­tain of Lem­berg-Grodek , had been draft­ed into the Wehrma­cht , and the dis­trict admin­is­tra­tion had been merged with Lem­berg-Land.

The fact that von der Leyen was informed about the Jew­ish actions in advance is doc­u­ment­ed, as was the case with a num­ber of oth­er dis­trict cap­tains. [2]

He is said to have died of gas poi­son­ing after the air raid on Dres­den .

Von der Leyen had only been head of his manor for a short time . His wid­ow Huber­ta von der Leyen man­aged the busi­ness, which his son Friedrich Hein­rich von der Leyen II took over in 1970.

Lit­er­a­ture [ edit edit source ]

Markus Roth : Mas­ter peo­ple. The Ger­man dis­trict cap­tains in occu­pied Poland — career paths, rule prac­tice and post-his­to­ry. Wall­stein Ver­lag: Goet­tin­gen 2009. ISBN 978–3‑8353–0477‑2

Dieter Pohl: Nation­al Social­ist Per­se­cu­tion of the Jews in East Gali­cia 1941–1944. Orga­ni­za­tion and imple­men­ta­tion of a state mass crime. Old­en­bourg, Munich 1997, ISBN 3–486-56313–0 ( full text avail­able dig­i­tal­ly ).

2. Next, we high­light the ongo­ing lion­iza­tion of Ukrain­ian Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments in the main­stream U.S. press.

A long spread in the Sun­day New York Times beat­i­fies the Nazi Azov Reg­i­ment, the chief Ukrain­ian unit defend­ing the Azovstal steel works.

“Last Stand at the Steel­works: Inside an 80-Day Siege” by Michael Schwirtz; The New York Times; 7/24/2022; pp. 1–16 [West­ern Print Edi­tion]

3. Anoth­er NYT piece presents a hero­ic por­tray­al of a Ukrain­ian sabo­teur from the Nazi/fascist Azov and Right Sec­tor units: ” . . . . Before the war, Svarog occa­sion­al­ly joined week­end train­ing with Right Sec­tor and Nation­al Corps, a branch of the Azov move­ment, both of which are aligned with para­mil­i­tary units in Ukraine. . . .”

“Ukraini­ans Behind Ene­my Lines Tell Invaders: You’re Nev­er Safe” by Andrew W. Kramer; The New York Times; 8/18/2022; pp. A1-A7.

. . . . Before the war, Svarog occa­sion­al­ly joined week­end train­ing with Right Sec­tor and Nation­al Corps, a branch of the Azov move­ment, both of which are aligned with para­mil­i­tary units in Ukraine. . . .

4. The ele­va­tion of Ukrain­ian Nazis and fas­cists by the U.S. is exem­pli­fied by a Pen­ta­gon-spon­sored ath­let­ic com­pe­ti­tion: ” . . . .This August, dur­ing the Depart­ment of Defense’s annu­al War­rior Games at Dis­ney World in Orlan­do, Flori­da, lib­er­al come­di­an Jon Stew­art award­ed a Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary vet­er­an named Ihor Halush­ka the ‘Heart of the Team’ award for ‘inspir­ing his team’ with his ‘per­son­al exam­ple.’ Halush­ka hap­pens to have been a mem­ber of the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion, which has been armed by the US and inte­grat­ed into the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard. . . . Per­haps the most famous Ukrain­ian War­rior Games par­tic­i­pant is Yulia Palevs­ka, who the New York Times has dubbed ‘a sym­bol of Ukrain­ian brav­ery and self-sac­ri­fice.’. . . . Yulia Palevs­ka and Ihor Halush­ka were mem­bers of the fas­cist Right Sec­tor orga­ni­za­tion and Azov Bat­tal­ion, respec­tive­ly. . . .”

“Jon Stew­art and the Pen­ta­gon hon­or Ukrain­ian Nazi at Dis­ney World” by Alexan­der Rubin­stein; The Gray Zone; 8/31/2022.

Defense Depart­ment-spon­sored “War­rior Games” fea­tured lib­er­al come­di­an Jon Stew­art award­ing a mem­ber of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion at Dis­ney World. The Pen­ta­gon refused to tell The Gray­zone whether US tax­pay­ers fund­ed the for­eign com­peti­tors’ trav­el.

This August, dur­ing the Depart­ment of Defense’s annu­al War­rior Games at Dis­ney World in Orlan­do, Flori­da, lib­er­al come­di­an Jon Stew­art award­ed a Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary vet­er­an named Ihor Halush­ka the “Heart of the Team” award for “inspir­ing his team” with his “per­son­al exam­ple.”

Halush­ka hap­pens to have been a mem­ber of the neo-Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion, which has been armed by the US and inte­grat­ed into the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard. The award-win­ning ultra-nation­al­ist wore a sleeve over his left arm as he accept­ed the prize, pre­sum­ably to cov­er up his tat­too of the Nazi Son­nen­rad, or Black Sun.

Because the War­rior Games are spon­sored by the Pen­ta­gon, Amer­i­can tax­pay­ers like­ly paid to send Ukrain­ian Nazis like Halush­ka to Dis­ney World. Indeed, at least two mem­bers of a Ukrain­ian team of wound­ed vet­er­an ath­letes flown to Orlan­do, Flori­da are con­firmed mem­bers of neo-Nazi groups in their coun­try. Yulia Palevs­ka and Ihor Halush­ka were mem­bers of the fas­cist Right Sec­tor orga­ni­za­tion and Azov Bat­tal­ion, respec­tive­ly.

The pair are part of a team of forty Ukrain­ian vet­er­ans par­tic­i­pat­ing in the War­rior Games. They were joined at the cer­e­mo­ny for this year’s com­pe­ti­tion by Dar­ius Ruck­er, the for­mer vocal­ist for the glo­ri­fied bar band Hootie & the Blow­fish, and lib­er­al come­di­an Jon Stew­art.

Dur­ing the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny, Stew­art award­ed the Azov Battalion’s Halush­ka with the “Heart of the Team” award. The announc­er pro­claimed that Ihor “inspires his team with his per­son­al exam­ple and his unique sense of humor. Sgt. First Class Ihor Halush­ka embod­ies the spir­it and deter­mi­na­tion that is the heart of Team Ukraine.” 

Stew­art tri­umphant­ly bel­lowed “Ihor!” as the Nazi was pre­sent­ed with his tro­phy.

Jon Stew­art awards Ihor Halush­ka with the “Heart of the Team” award

Pri­or to Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary of this year, main­stream out­lets from the Dai­ly Beast to Vox to For­eign Pol­i­cy, and even the US gov­ern­ment pro­pa­gan­da out­let Voice of Amer­i­ca, have each acknowl­edged the Azov Battalion’s embrace of Nazism. Right Sec­tor group has been sim­i­lar­ly iden­ti­fied as a fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion. Since the inva­sion, how­ev­er, West­ern cor­po­rate media has down­played the pres­ence of Nazis in the Ukrain­ian armed forces as groups like Azov have tak­en on promi­nent front-line roles.

Reached by phone, War­rior Games com­mu­ni­ca­tion direc­tor Travis Clay­tor would not tell The Gray­zone who cov­ered the trav­el expens­es of Team Ukraine and oth­er for­eign com­peti­tors. Clay­tor mere­ly stat­ed that the Depart­ment of Defense is “not respon­si­ble” for their costs. How­ev­er, he not­ed that “the rela­tion­ship with each team is dif­fer­ent.” Ukraine and Cana­da are the only for­eign teams par­tic­i­pat­ing in this year’s com­pe­ti­tion.

While promis­ing this reporter a more com­plete response by email, Clay­tor has so far failed to deliv­er. 

video on the DoD War­rior Games YouTube chan­nel enti­tled “Fam­i­ly Night at Mag­ic King­dom” shows some mem­bers of Team Ukraine enjoy­ing a night out at the world-famous theme park.

This year’s War­rior Games are tak­ing place at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Com­plex at Walt Dis­ney World Resort. Com­pe­ti­tions include shoot­ing, wheel­chair rug­by, cycling, pow­er­lift­ing, indoor row­ing, wheel­chair bas­ket­ball, field, golf, track, swim­ming, sit­ting vol­ley­ball and archery.

This is the first year Team Ukraine has par­tic­i­pat­ed in the War­rior Games. Its ath­letes came away with at least 18 gold medals.

Ukraine’s team is com­posed of the same vet­er­an-ath­letes that par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Invic­tus Games, a sim­i­lar com­pe­ti­tion of wound­ed vet­er­ans found­ed by Prince Har­ry after the Eng­lish roy­al attend­ed the War­rior Games. Ukraine’s Invic­tus Games team and War­rior Games team are both led by Oksana Gor­bach, accord­ing to the Ukrain­ian Min­istry of Vet­er­ans Affairs.

“The orga­ni­za­tion­al team of the War­rior Games in Ukraine includes the Min­istry of Vet­er­ans Affairs of Ukraine, the Cen­ter for Strate­gic Com­mu­ni­ca­tions ‘Strat­Com Ukraine,’ the NGO ‘Invic­tus Ukraine Games,’ the Strong­man Fed­er­a­tion of Ukraine, the ‘Come Back Alive,’” the Min­istry of Vet­er­ans Affairs web­site states. Strat­Com Ukraine, like the Min­istry of Vet­er­ans Affairs, is a gov­ern­men­tal body, while the oth­ers appear to be Ukrain­ian NGOs.

As the Gray­zone report­ed, the head of Ukraine’s vet­er­ans affairs agency attend­ed a 2019 neo-Nazi black met­al con­cert fea­tur­ing sev­er­al anti­se­mit­ic met­al bands, and pro­mot­ed the event on Face­book.

Accord­ing to a delet­ed arti­cle from 2017 on an Azov Bat­tal­ion web­site, at least three mem­bers of the noto­ri­ous ultra­na­tion­al­ist fight­ing force have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Invic­tus Games. Because Azov iden­ti­fied the com­peti­tors by their call signs, and there­fore did not dis­close their real names, it is not pos­si­ble to deter­mine whether they also com­pet­ed in the 2022 War­rior Games.

While the team page on the Invic­tus Games web­site mere­ly states that Ihor Halush­ka was a mem­ber of Ukraine’s Nation­al Guard, an expand­ed bio on the web­site makes it clear he was a mem­ber of Azov.

An unlist­ed YouTube video by the Invic­tus Games on YouTube offers a close-up of Halush­ka work­ing out with Nazi Black Sun sym­bol tat­tooed on his left elbow clear­ly vis­i­ble. Halush­ka opt­ed to cov­er the fas­cist sym­bol dur­ing pho­to ops at the War­rior Games.

Halush­ka has nev­er been shy about his ties to the Azov Bat­tal­ion. Dur­ing the Invic­tus Games this April, he whipped out an Azov flag as he accept­ed a gold medal, which was host­ed in The Hague – where war crim­i­nals are nor­mal­ly tried, not award­ed. Like­wise, in Orlan­do, Haluskha wore an Azov Bat­tal­ion t‑shirt as he accept­ed a gold medal for indoor row­ing. He was hon­ored days lat­er as the “heart” of his team.

“sym­bol of Ukrain­ian brav­ery” was mem­ber of fas­cist Right Sec­tor

Per­haps the most famous Ukrain­ian War­rior Games par­tic­i­pant is Yulia Palevs­ka, who the New York Times has dubbed “a sym­bol of Ukrain­ian brav­ery and self-sac­ri­fice.” 

Palevs­ka gained inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion this March when she hand­ed off footage she had filmed in Mar­i­upol to a jour­nal­ist with the Asso­ci­at­ed Press. The video showed Palevs­ka evac­u­at­ing Azov Bat­tal­ion sol­diers from the Azovstal steel plant in Mar­i­upol when she was cap­tured by Russ­ian forces. Three months lat­er, she was released.

Palevska’s release by Rus­sia was such a notable event in Ukraine that Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky per­son­al­ly remarked on the devel­op­ment.

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press down­played her links to the Azov Bat­tal­ion, writ­ing “Rus­sia has por­trayed Taira as work­ing for the nation­al­ist Azov Bat­tal­ion… But the AP found no such evi­dence, and friends and col­leagues said she had no links to Azov.”

How­ev­er, Palevs­ka was a mem­ber of anoth­er neo-Nazi for­ma­tion sim­i­lar­ly incor­po­rat­ed into the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary – a fact not men­tioned by main­stream media out­lets that vault­ed her to war hero sta­tus this March.

A 2019 Bloomberg Busi­ness­week report iden­ti­fied Palevs­ka as “a for­mer mem­ber of Right Sec­tor,.” (“There’s no such thing as ex-Right Sec­tor,” she claimed). After leav­ing the group “amid infight­ing,” she orga­nized a team of com­bat medics named after her World of War­craft char­ac­ter, “Taira’s Angels.”

Bloomberg’s cor­re­spon­dent met with Palevs­ka in Mar­i­upol, which was then con­trolled by the Azov Bat­tal­ion. Palevska’s medic group “runs through about $20,000, half of it from abroad, in cash, fuel, and med­ical sup­plies every month,” he report­ed.

“Every­one I talk to describes [Palevs­ka], dap­pled with Bud­dhist tat­toos and sport­ing dyed blue hair, as moti­vat­ed pure­ly by patri­o­tism,” he added.

In a pho­to post­ed by the offi­cial Face­book page for Ukrain­ian War­rior Games team, Palevska’s tat­too of the ultra­na­tion­al­ist slo­gan “Glo­ry to Ukraine, Glo­ry to the Heroes” is clear­ly vis­i­ble.

Anoth­er mem­ber of Palevska’s media group was “wear­ing a T‑shirt from the neo-Nazi appar­el com­pa­ny Sva Stone and an Iron Cross ring,” accord­ing to Bloomberg.

It is dif­fi­cult to believe that Palevs­ka and Halush­ka are the only mem­bers of Team Ukraine that have belonged to neo-Nazi groups. 

A pho­to post­ed on the team’s offi­cial Face­book page show five team mem­bers per­form­ing a fas­cist salute in front of a War­rior Games ban­ner.

Team Ukraine per­forms a fas­cist salute in front of a Depart­ment of Defense ban­ner

In oth­er pho­tos, a mem­ber of the team wear­ing a War­rior Games t‑shirt can be seen hold­ing a Right Sec­tor flag; and sev­en vet­er­ans asso­ci­at­ed with the team bear the flag of the 14th Waf­fen Grenadier Divi­sion of the Schutzstaffel (SS), a WWII-era Nazi mil­i­tary for­ma­tion made up of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists.

Amer­i­can tax­pay­ers have already forked $60 bil­lion over to Ukraine since the war broke out in 2014. They are there­fore enti­tled to know whether the Depart­ment of Defense paid Team Ukraine’s trav­el expens­es.

Video from the Depart­ment of Defense shows the Ukrain­ian team deboard­ing on the tar­mac at MacDill Air Force Base. Did they even pass through Cus­toms?

The Pentagon’s War­rior Games has refused to answer these ques­tions and stonewalled The Gray­zone ever since.

While the pres­ence of neo-Nazis with­in Ukraine’s fight­ing forces may come as lit­tle sur­prise to crit­i­cal observers of NATO’s con­flict with Rus­sia, their invi­ta­tion to Dis­ney World by the Depart­ment of Defense is with­out a doubt one of the weird­est episodes in the Ukraine proxy war.

5. The extreme nature of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor Nazis and fas­cists in the polit­i­cal driver’s seat in Ukraine are illus­trat­ed by the names of peo­ple on their “kill list”: “ . . . . Why this site is allowed to oper­ate is a good ques­tion. But you can access it eas­i­ly, and even donate mon­ey to help the “cause” – if you are sym­pa­thet­ic to Nazis and think that assas­si­nat­ing peo­ple for their opin­ions is a whole­some way to sup­port Ukraine. The co-founder of “Pink Floyd” [Roger Waters] is known for his sup­port of impris­oned Wik­ileaks’ cre­ator Julian Assange, and for his oppo­si­tion to impe­ri­al­ism and war, as well as for his awe­some music, loved by mil­lions around the world. . . . . Even Hen­ry Kissinger’s name is on the list despite his long his­to­ry of Rus­so­pho­bia. But since he dared to air his con­cerns about how the US is tee­ter­ing toward war with Rus­sia and Chi­na . . . .”

“Roger Waters Added to Ukraine Gov­’t Spon­sored Hit List” by Deb­o­rah Arm­strong; The Gray Zone; 8/25/2022.

Russian political analyst Daria Dugina, who was killed in a car bomb explosion in Moscow on Saturday, now appears as “liquidated” on the Ukrainian online hit list. The site was created under the watch of the Minister of Internal Affairs.

This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished by Deb­o­rah L. Arm­strong at Medium.com

Editor’s note: The IP address of Mirotvorets has been traced to a serv­er in Brus­sels, Bel­gium

I have writ­ten about the Ukrain­ian hit list known as Mirotvorets, or “Peace­keep­er,” twice before. The first time was in this arti­cle about inter­net cen­sor­ship, and the sec­ond time was when a 13-year-old Ukrain­ian girl, Faina Savenko­va, was added to the list for pub­licly speak­ing out against Kiev’s bloody war on Russ­ian-speak­ing civil­ians in the east­ern part of Ukraine, a region known as the Don­bass.

Screen shot of Faina Savenkova’s pro­file on Mirotvorets.

Mirotvorets is a data­base which lists thou­sands of jour­nal­ists, activists, and any­one else who is declared an “Ene­my of Ukraine.” Their per­son­al infor­ma­tion is pub­lished, such as the address­es of their homes, their phone num­bers and bank account num­bers; any­thing that can help them be eas­i­ly locat­ed. When the peo­ple on this list are mur­dered, like Ital­ian jour­nal­ist Andrea Roc­chel­li was, the word ЛИКВИДИРОВАН, “LIQUIDATED,” writ­ten in Ukrain­ian, is stamped across their pic­ture in big red let­ters.

And, as of August 22, Daria Dug­i­na, who was killed in a car bomb explo­sion in Moscow on Sat­ur­day, appears as “liq­ui­dat­ed” on the web­site, adding more cred­i­bil­i­ty to Russia’s asser­tion that she was assas­si­nat­ed by a Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist who rent­ed an apart­ment in the build­ing where Daria lived in order to sur­veil her pri­or to her killing. It is believed that she was killed because her father, Alexan­der Dug­in was referred to as “Putin’s brain” and “Putin’s spir­i­tu­al guide” in west­ern media, though these claims are real­ly just more spec­u­la­tion.

Ital­ian jour­nal­ist Andrea Roc­chel­li is list­ed as “liq­ui­dat­ed” on Mirotvorets site.

Daria Dug­i­na, Russ­ian war cor­re­spon­dent, is list­ed as “liq­ui­dat­ed” on Mirotvorets site.

It seems that almost any­one can be added to this kill list. Even Hen­ry Kissinger’s name is on the list despite his long his­to­ry of Rus­so­pho­bia. But since he dared to air his con­cerns about how the US is tee­ter­ing toward war with Rus­sia and Chi­na, Kissinger, who once sug­gest­ed drop­ping nuclear bombs on Moscow, is now declared an “Ene­my of Ukraine.”

Kissinger’s Mirotvorets pro­file.

Real­ly, so many peo­ple have been added to this list that it has now become a badge of hon­or among those opposed to Ukraine’s regime, when they are includ­ed on the Mirotvorets site.

Fil­mak­er Igor Lopatonok is tar­get­ed by Mirotvorets because of a film he worked on with Oliv­er Stone.

Why this site is allowed to oper­ate is a good ques­tion. But you can access it eas­i­ly, and even donate mon­ey to help the “cause” – if you are sym­pa­thet­ic to Nazis and think that assas­si­nat­ing peo­ple for their opin­ions is a whole­some way to sup­port Ukraine.

Here is Roger Waters’ pro­file:

Roger Waters’ pro­file on Mirotvorets.

The co-founder of “Pink Floyd” is known for his sup­port of impris­oned Wik­ileaks’ cre­ator Julian Assange, and for his oppo­si­tion to impe­ri­al­ism and war, as well as for his awe­some music, loved by mil­lions around the world.

Waters recent­ly referred to Joe Biden as a “war crim­i­nal” on CNN, and said that Biden is “fuel­ing the fire in Ukraine.”

“This war,” the musi­cian stat­ed, “is basi­cal­ly about the action and reac­tion of NATO push­ing right up to the Russ­ian bor­der, which they promised they wouldn’t do when [Mikhail] Gor­bachev nego­ti­at­ed the with­draw­al of the USSR from the whole of East­ern Europe.”

Waters also said that Crimea belongs to Rus­sia, because the major­i­ty of peo­ple liv­ing on the penin­su­la are Russ­ian.

The rock star’s views have out­raged the pro-NATO crowd and their Nazi friends, as well as the social jus­tice war­riors who froth at the mouth in sup­port of what­ev­er the main­stream media declares to be “the cur­rent thing.” Waters, who has always been some­thing of a dis­si­dent and anti-war, the way all rock stars used to be when rock and roll was still real, is attacked mer­ci­less­ly by the “woke” crowd, who are intol­er­ant of all who are not in lock­step with their views. . . .

6. Next, we fur­ther devel­op Ukraine’s enemies/death list, not­ing the expe­ri­ence of for­mer Marine Corps intel­li­gence offi­cer Scott Rit­ter.

Join­ing Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and Hen­ry Kissinger on the list, sev­er­al of the mem­bers of which have been mur­dered, Rit­ter notes the pres­ence of OUN/B youth camps in this coun­try, pos­si­ble breed­ing grounds for assas­sins.

Fur­ther­more, Rit­ter cor­rect­ly locates those OUN/B youth camps in the polit­i­cal con­tin­u­um stretch­ing from the Third Reich, through the Cold War, up to today—a con­tin­u­um inex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion.

“ . . . . I had to dri­ve past Ellenville, a sleepy lit­tle town that is home to a camp belong­ing to the Ukrain­ian Amer­i­can Youth Asso­ci­a­tion which, every sum­mer, coor­di­nates with the Orga­ni­za­tion for the Defense of Four Free­doms of Ukraine to hold a ‘Heroes’ Hol­i­day’ hon­or­ing vet­er­an of the Ukrain­ian People’s Army and the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists. . . . That a mon­u­ment to men respon­si­ble for geno­ci­dal mass mur­der and who, in the case of two of them (Shukhevych and Ban­dera) open­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with Nazi Ger­many, could be erect­ed in the Unit­ed States is dis­turb­ing. [NB—Konovalets coop­er­at­ed with the Third Reich as well, D.E.] That every year Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can adher­ents of the odi­ous ide­ol­o­gy of Stepan Ban­dera gath­er to cel­e­brate his lega­cy at a “children’s camp” where the youth are arrayed in brown uni­forms that make them look like what they, in fact, are — ide­o­log­i­cal storm troop­ers for a hate­ful neo-Nazi ide­ol­o­gy that pro­motes the racial supe­ri­or­i­ty of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple, is a nation­al abom­i­na­tion. . . . Ban­dera has been ele­vat­ed to the sta­tus of a nation­al hero in Ukraine, and his birth­day is con­sid­ered a nation­al hol­i­day. . . . The lega­cy of Stepan Ban­dera is at the very heart of what pass­es for Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism today. It dom­i­nates the polit­i­cal are­na inside Ukraine, where all com­pet­ing polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy and affil­i­a­tions have been out­lawed by Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky. . . .”

“SCOTT RITTER: The Death List” by Scott Rit­ter; Con­sor­tium News; 8/31/2022.

 The odi­ous lega­cy of Stepan Ban­dera dri­ves the sup­pres­sion of those who dare chal­lenge the nar­ra­tive of the Russ­ian-Ukrain­ian con­flict pro­mul­gat­ed by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, its West­ern allies and a com­pli­ant main­stream media.  

Stepan Ban­dera mon­u­ment in Ternopil, Ukraine, 2017. (Myko­la Vasylechko, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wiki­me­dia Com­mons)

In May 1986 I received orders to attend a coun­tert­er­ror­ism aware­ness course at the John F. Kennedy Spe­cial War­fare School, in Fort Bragg, North Car­oli­na. For the next two weeks I learned about the var­i­ous ter­ror­ist threats fac­ing the Unit­ed States mil­i­tary, and was taught var­i­ous skills to over­come them, such as high-speed eva­sive dri­ving, counter-sur­veil­lance method­ol­o­gy and reac­tive shoot­ing tech­niques.

Upon my return to Twen­ty-Nine Palms, where I was sta­tioned as a Marine Corps intel­li­gence offi­cer, I was giv­en the task of putting my new­ly learned skills to work by car­ry­ing out a base-wide coun­tert­er­ror­ism exer­cise. I bor­rowed a scout-sniper team from the infantry bat­tal­ion on base, and set them up in an apart­ment off base, where I turned them into a ter­ror­ist cell tasked with col­lect­ing intel­li­gence on the senior offi­cers who lived and worked on the base. The only rule was that the ter­ror­ists could not engage with civil­ians — no fam­i­lies were to be impact­ed by the drill.

Over the course of the next 30 days, my ter­ror­ist team was able to “assas­si­nate” every bat­tal­ion com­man­der, the reg­i­men­tal com­man­der and the base com­man­der, using impro­vised explo­sive devices and sniper fire — and had the pho­tographs to prove it.

The take­away from this exer­cise was that if some­one want­ed you dead, you were prob­a­bly going to die.

Vig­i­lance was your only real defense — to be alert for any­thing sus­pi­cious. In short, to live a life gov­erned by para­noia. In the age of ter­ror­ism, if you feel like some­one is seek­ing to do you harm, it is prob­a­bly because some­one is seek­ing to do you harm.

Using Those Skills

Through­out my pro­fes­sion­al life, I have had occa­sion to use the skills I learned at Fort Bragg on sev­er­al occa­sions — I was tar­get­ed for assas­si­na­tion while work­ing as a U.N. weapons inspec­tor in Iraq and I was informed that I was the sub­ject of a “hit” put out by the Russ­ian mafia for my role in break­ing up an illic­it mis­sile com­po­nent smug­gling ring.

I would con­duct a 360-degree inspec­tion of my vehi­cle before enter­ing it, look­ing for signs of tam­per­ing. And I would con­duct counter-sur­veil­lance drills while dri­ving, accel­er­at­ing at odd inter­vals to see if any­one kept pace, or rapid­ly exit­ing a high­way to see if any­one fol­lowed.

Today, I’m a 61-year-old writer liv­ing in the sub­urbs of Albany, New York. It’s a qui­et neigh­bor­hood, where every­one knows every­one. And yet, due to recent cir­cum­stances, I once again find myself inspect­ing my vehi­cle before get­ting inside, keep­ing a watch­ful eye out for strange vehi­cles dri­ving down my street and con­duct­ing counter-sur­veil­lance maneu­vers while dri­ving.

Why the para­noia? Sim­ply put, my name has been added to a Ukrain­ian “kill list.” Think I’m get­ting too wound up? Ask the fam­i­ly of Daria Dug­i­na, the 29-year-old daugh­ter of the Russ­ian philoso­pher Alexan­der Dug­in. Both she and her father were on the same list. Both were tar­get­ed for death by an assas­sin dis­patched by the Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vices. Only a last-sec­ond change of plans, which put Alexan­der Dug­in behind the wheel of a dif­fer­ent car, kept him from being killed in the blast that took the life of his daugh­ter.

Daria Dug­i­na. (1RNK, CC BY 3.0, Wiki­me­dia Com­mons)

I’ve been writ­ing for some time now about the Ukrain­ian Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion and their pub­li­ca­tion in mid-July of a “black­list” con­tain­ing the names of 72 intel­lec­tu­als, jour­nal­ists, activists and politi­cians from sev­er­al coun­tries who were labeled “Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists” by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment for hav­ing the audac­i­ty to speak crit­i­cal­ly, yet fac­tu­al­ly, about the ongo­ing Russ­ian-Ukrain­ian con­flict.

I took umbrage over this list for sev­er­al rea­sons, first and fore­most that the salaries of the Ukraini­ans who com­piled this list appeared to be paid by the U.S. tax­pay­er using funds appro­pri­at­ed by Con­gress for that very pur­pose. The idea of Con­gress pass­ing a law which empow­ered the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment to do some­thing — sup­press the First Amend­ment guar­an­tees of free speech and a free press — that Con­gress was Con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­hib­it­ed from doing angered me.

[Relat­ed: SCOTT RITTER: Chuck Schumer’s War on Free Speech]

So, too, did the fact that the Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion announced the exis­tence of this “black­list” at a func­tion orga­nized by a U.S.-funded NGO and attend­ed by State Depart­ment offi­cials who sat mute while their Ukrain­ian col­leagues labeled the per­sons on this list “infor­ma­tion ter­ror­ists” who deserved to be arrest­ed and pros­e­cut­ed as “war crim­i­nals.”

At the time, I cau­tioned that the use of such inflam­ma­to­ry lan­guage meant that the “black­list” could be turned into a “kill list” sim­ply by hav­ing a fanat­ic decide to take jus­tice into his or her own hands. Giv­en that the U.S. gov­ern­ment fund­ed the cre­ation of this list, orga­nized the meet­ing where it was pre­sent­ed to the world and gave an implic­it stamp of approval to the list and its accom­pa­ny­ing label­ing through the atten­dance of U.S. gov­ern­ment offi­cials, these fanat­ics don’t have to be for­eign sourced. Plen­ty of peo­ple in the U.S. adhere to the same hate-filled ide­ol­o­gy that exists in Ukraine today and which gave birth to the “black­list.”

Some of them are my neigh­bors.

In June I drove down to Bethel, New York (the site of the orig­i­nal Wood­stock music fes­ti­val), to par­tic­i­pate in a Spar­tan Obsta­cle Course Race. To get there, I had to dri­ve past Ellenville, a sleepy lit­tle town that is home to a camp belong­ing to the Ukrain­ian Amer­i­can Youth Asso­ci­a­tion which, every sum­mer, coor­di­nates with the Orga­ni­za­tion for the Defense of Four Free­doms of Ukraine to hold a “Heroes’ Hol­i­day” hon­or­ing vet­er­an of the Ukrain­ian People’s Army and the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists.

The camp boasts a “Heroes’ Mon­u­ment”, con­sists of a 42-foot-tall struc­ture with a Ukrain­ian tri­dent at the top flanked by the busts of Yevhen Kono­valets, Symon Petliu­ra, Roman Shukhevych and Stepan Ban­dera —four lead­ing fig­ures in the his­to­ry of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism, all of whom were involved in the mur­ders, col­lec­tive­ly, of hun­dreds of thou­sands of Jews, Poles and Rus­sians.

Ban­dera has been ele­vat­ed to the sta­tus of a nation­al hero in Ukraine, and his birth­day is con­sid­ered a nation­al hol­i­day.

That a mon­u­ment to men respon­si­ble for geno­ci­dal mass mur­der and who, in the case of two of them (Shukhevych and Ban­dera) open­ly col­lab­o­rat­ed with Nazi Ger­many, could be erect­ed in the Unit­ed States is dis­turb­ing.

That every year Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can adher­ents of the odi­ous ide­ol­o­gy of Stepan Ban­dera gath­er to cel­e­brate his lega­cy at a “children’s camp” where the youth are arrayed in brown uni­forms that make them look like what they, in fact, are — ide­o­log­i­cal storm troop­ers for a hate­ful neo-Nazi ide­ol­o­gy that pro­motes the racial supe­ri­or­i­ty of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple, is a nation­al abom­i­na­tion.

From Ellenville to Bethel, I saw evi­dence of this hate­ful real­i­ty in every blue-and-yel­low Ukrain­ian flag flut­ter­ing in the wind — and every red-and-black ban­ner of the Ban­dera-wor­ship­ping Ukrain­ian neo-Nazi fanat­ics that flut­tered next to them.

Stepan Ban­dera Lega­cy 

The lega­cy of Stepan Ban­dera is at the very heart of what pass­es for Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism today. It dom­i­nates the polit­i­cal are­na inside Ukraine, where all com­pet­ing polit­i­cal ide­ol­o­gy and affil­i­a­tions have been out­lawed by Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky.

It is behind the sup­pres­sion of all dis­sent­ing voic­es — for­eign and domes­tic — that dare chal­lenge the nar­ra­tive about the Russ­ian-Ukrain­ian con­flict being pro­mul­gat­ed by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, its West­ern allies, and a com­pli­ant main­stream media.

After Con­sor­tium News pub­lished my let­ter to my New York con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion (Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gilli­brand and Rep. Paul Tonko), in which I called them out for vot­ing for Pub­lic Law 117–128 appro­pri­at­ing $40 bil­lion in U.S. tax­pay­er mon­ey to under­write the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary, there was con­cert­ed action by oth­ers impact­ed by the Ukrain­ian “black­list,” which the leg­is­la­tion had fund­ed.  This was led by Diane Sare, the LaRouche Par­ty can­di­date chal­leng­ing Schumer for his Sen­ate seat.

The pub­lic­i­ty about con­gres­sion­al­ly-fund­ed sup­pres­sion of free speech appeared to be too much for those who are com­plic­it in a frontal assault on the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. The Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Disinformation’s “black­list” was removed from the inter­net.

Vic­to­ry, how­ev­er, was short lived. With­in days of the Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Disinformation’s “black­list” being tak­en down, a list pub­lished by the Ukrain­ian “Myrotvorets” (Peacemaker’s) Cen­ter incor­po­rat­ed names that had been on the Cen­ter for Coun­ter­ing Dis­in­for­ma­tion “black­list.”

Coat of Myrotvorets staff mem­ber with field ver­sion of their emblem on sleeve. (Shao, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wiki­me­dia Com­mons)

The Myrotvorets list has been in exis­tence since 2014 and has been described as “effec­tive­ly a death list for politi­cians, jour­nal­ists, entre­pre­neurs and oth­er pub­lic fig­ures who have been ‘cleared for fir­ing’” by the list’s cre­ators.

Daria Dugina’s name was on that list. 

And now so is mine, along with sev­er­al oth­er West­ern­ers, such as Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist Eva Bartlett and British rock musi­cian Roger Waters. 

Scott Rit­ter on the death list. (Click to enlarge).

The Biden admin­is­tra­tion is silent about this abom­i­na­tion.

So is Con­gress.

Accord­ing to 6 USCS § 101, the term ter­ror­ism is

“any activ­i­ty that involves an act that is dan­ger­ous to human life or poten­tial­ly destruc­tive of crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture or key resources; and is a vio­la­tion of the crim­i­nal laws of the Unit­ed States or of any State or oth­er sub­di­vi­sion of the Unit­ed States; and appears to be intend­ed to intim­i­date or coerce a civil­ian pop­u­la­tion, to influ­ence the pol­i­cy of a gov­ern­ment by intim­i­da­tion or coer­cion, or to affect the con­duct of a gov­ern­ment by mass destruc­tion, assas­si­na­tion, or kid­nap­ping.”

There is lit­tle doubt that the mur­der of Daria Dug­i­na was an act of ter­ror­ism per­pe­trat­ed on behalf of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. (Her pho­to on the list now has the word “liq­ui­dat­ed” writ­ten diag­o­nal­ly across it in red.)

While the Ukraini­ans deny any such alle­ga­tions, Russ­ian author­i­ties have assem­bled a con­vinc­ing fac­tu­al case to the con­trary.

The exis­tence of the Myrotvorets “death list” is an instru­ment of ter­ror and should be tak­en down at the insis­tence of the U.S. Gov­ern­ment.

The fail­ure of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment to shut down the Myrotvorets Cen­ter and con­demn its activ­i­ties would con­sti­tute mate­r­i­al sup­port of ter­ror­ism.

The U.S. should also rec­og­nize any orga­ni­za­tions which embrace the ide­ol­o­gy of Stepan Ban­dera as ter­ror­ist enti­ties — includ­ing those respon­si­ble for rais­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of brown-shirt­ed neo-Nazis in the heart­land of Amer­i­ca.

The “Hero’s Mon­u­ment” in Ellenville must be closed, and the stat­ues of Ban­dera and the oth­er three Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists removed from pub­lic view.

It is a nation­al dis­grace that U.S. cit­i­zens are sub­ject­ed to death threats from an erst­while ally of the Unit­ed States for sim­ply exer­cis­ing their Con­sti­tu­tion­al right of free speech. The adher­ents to the ide­ol­o­gy of Stepan Ban­dera, in Ukraine and in the Unit­ed States, must be treat­ed as ter­ror­ists, and pros­e­cut­ed with the same lev­el of inten­si­ty and pur­pose as were the fol­low­ers of al-Qae­da and the Islam­ic State.

Until this is done, I will have no choice but to take the appro­pri­ate pre­cau­tions to make sure that nei­ther my fam­i­ly nor I suf­fer the fate of Daria Dug­i­na.

7. Fur­ther solid­i­fy­ing the con­ti­nu­ity between the Third Reich, the Gehlen Org and the Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra in the U.S., we note that, while it was the BND (the intel­li­gence ser­vice of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic) the “Org” was financ­ing the East­ern Euro­pean fas­cist groups that were part of the Eth­nic Her­itage Out­reach Coun­cil.

Gehlen: Spy of the Cen­tu­ry by E.H. Cookridge; Ran­dom House [HC]; Copy­right 1971 by Euro­pean Copy­right Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed; ISBN 0–394-47313–2; pp. 362–363.

. . . . Gehlen even set up a num­ber of “cells” in the Unit­ed States. As ear­ly as 1963, the Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions com­mit­tee dis­cussed the activ­i­ties of the Julius Klein pub­lic rela­tions com­pa­ny, which had estab­lished branch­es in Wash­ing­ton, New York and Los Ange­les and also in Cana­da, employ­ing a fair­ly numer­ous staff with­out appar­ent­ly engag­ing on any pub­lic­i­ty busi­ness. From this firm, the trail led to the Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Cit­i­zens of Ger­man Ori­gin, which was receiv­ing large sub­si­dies from an unspec­i­fied Fed­er­al Ger­man gov­ern­ment department—the Bun­desnachri­ten­di­enst, it was lat­er estab­lished. This for­eign sub­sidy amount­ed to the hand­some sum of 280,000 dol­lars in 1964 and was increased in lat­er years. . . .

Not so sat­is­fac­to­ry at first were the expla­na­tions of Gehlen’s con­nec­tions with the large orga­ni­za­tions of Ukraini­ans, Poles, Lithua­ni­ans, Lat­vians and oth­er East Euro­pean immi­grants in the Unit­ed States, which received finance and advice from three “reg­is­tered” BND agents—Roman Hen­linger, alias “Dr. Grau,” Vic­tor Sale­mann and Alexan­der Wieber. . . .

8. In FTR #907, we not­ed the pro­found pres­ence of the Ukrain­ian fas­cists in the Unit­ed States, as well as their oper­a­tional con­nec­tions to the Third Reich. In FTR #1072, we not­ed the Ukrain­ian youth cadre in the U.S., and its affil­i­a­tion with the OUN/B milieu in Ukraine.

Our next item out these con­nec­tions, not­ing:

1. The CYM orga­ni­za­tion and its pres­ence in the U.S.

2. The deci­sive involve­ment of post-World War II emi­gres in the growth of that move­ment.

3. CYM’s close affil­i­a­tion with the OUN/B.

4. CYM’s uni­formed, mil­i­tary ori­en­ta­tion: ” . . . . Among the most pop­u­lar activ­i­ties are mil­i­tary-style games where campers are divid­ed into two teams that have to dodge or cap­ture their oppo­nents by mov­ing stealth­ily and orga­niz­ing ambush­es. . . . .”


“Ukrain­ian Youth Orga­ni­za­tion CYM thriv­ing in Amer­i­ca” by Askold Krushel­ny­cky; Kyiv Post; 07/29/2019

The Kyiv Post joined hun­dreds of peo­ple who came to a Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can Youth Asso­ci­a­tion camp and resort in New York state for an extend­ed week­end that includ­ed cel­e­brat­ing America’s Inde­pen­dence Day and com­mem­o­rat­ing Ukrain­ian heroes who fought through­out the ages for their country’s free­dom.

The asso­ci­a­tion is known by the Ukrain­ian acronym CYM – pro­nounced “SUM” – of its name “Spilka Ukrayin­skoyi Molo­di.” Along with the Ukrain­ian Scout­ing move­ment, Plast, it is one of the two main youth groups that flow­ered in the post-World War II dias­po­ra and taught younger gen­er­a­tions about their her­itage and ensured that the Ukrain­ian com­mu­ni­ty remained vibrant.

CYM has four camps in var­i­ous parts of the U.S. The New York one named after the near­est small town of 4,000 res­i­dents, Ellenville, is set in pic­turesque undu­lat­ing coun­try­side near the Catskill For­est Pre­serve nation­al park and its ter­ri­to­ry includes hills, woods and a stream filled with trout and bass. It was bought by the Ukrain­ian com­mu­ni­ty in the 1960s. . . .

. . . . There are ele­ments of mil­i­tary dis­ci­pline in CYM, as there are in oth­er youth orga­ni­za­tions such as the Scout­ing move­ment. They learn drill so that they can march or assem­ble in for­ma­tion.


They wear uni­forms for Sun­day church ser­vices and on some oth­er spe­cial occa­sions. Uni­forms con­sist of gray shirts with match­ing trousers or skirts. Dif­fer­ent col­ored ties denote age groups with green for the youngest, bur­gundy for teenagers, blue for young adults and brown for the over-thir­ties. CYM mem­bers around the world wear the same uni­form except for a shoul­der patch say­ing which coun­try they belong to. . . .

. . . . Among the most pop­u­lar activ­i­ties are mil­i­tary-style games where campers are divid­ed into two teams that have to dodge or cap­ture their oppo­nents by mov­ing stealth­ily and orga­niz­ing ambush­es. . . . .

. . . . The top­ics that fea­tured in talks for the old­er mem­bers this month includ­ed the his­to­ry of Ukraine’s strug­gles in the 20th cen­tu­ry for free­dom. Much time was devot­ed to the leader of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists, Stepan Ban­dera, as 2019 sees the 110th anniver­sary of his birth and 60th anniver­sary of his assas­si­na­tion by the Sovi­et KGB. . . .

. . . . After World War II, CYM start­ed to be rebuilt by refugees from Ukraine, tens of thou­sands of whom lived for sev­er­al years in dis­placed per­sons’ camps in Ger­many and Aus­tria. Ban­dera sup­port­ers were instru­men­tal in reviv­ing CYM in the West after the war and the asso­ci­a­tion is clear­ly streaked with their style of impas­sioned Ukrain­ian patri­o­tism. . . .

. . . . It also flour­ished in every coun­try with sig­nif­i­cant Ukrain­ian com­mu­ni­ties includ­ing the Unit­ed King­dom, Cana­da, Ger­many, Bel­gium, France, the Nether­lands, Argenti­na, Brazil, Aus­tralia and New Zealand. CYM has some 1,600 mem­bers in the U.S. in its 28 branch­es in 12 of America’s states. . . . .

. . . . The man head­ing up, for the fourth time, the camp for old­er CYM mem­bers this year is Myko­la Hryck­owian. His par­ents came to the U.S. after World War Two and both had staunch­ly patri­ot­ic back­grounds.

On July 7, with CYM mem­bers in full uni­form, and vis­i­tors also tak­ing part, there was a church ser­vice at the camp’s own chapel. That was fol­lowed by a wreath-lay­ing cer­e­mo­ny at a near­by mon­u­ment ded­i­cat­ed to all Ukraine’s inde­pen­dence heroes.

Dmitri Lenzcuk, as chief instruc­tor, was respon­si­ble for work­ing out the sched­ule of lessons and activ­i­ties for the camp. He is a sec­ond-gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­can whose grand­par­ents arrived in the U.S. after the war . . . .

9. Apol­o­gists for Ban­dera and his acolytes in the Zelen­sky regime have not­ed the offi­cial break between ele­ments of the Third Reich lead­er­ship and the OUN/B milieu fol­low­ing Ukraine’s dec­la­ra­tion of inde­pen­dence.

This “break” was—in essence—for PR pur­pos­es, as the UPA (OUN/B’s mil­i­tary wing) con­tin­ued to staff Nazi mil­i­tary units such as the 14th Waf­fen SS divi­sion.

Ban­dera was priv­i­leged: “ . . . .  Ban­dera had a two-room suite with paint­ings and rugs, was allowed to have con­ju­gal vis­its with his wife, per­formed no forced labor, wore no uni­form, was exempt from roll call, ate with the guards and did not lock his cell door at night. The Nazis released Ban­dera in 1944 after a meet­ing with Otto Sko­rzeny, Hitler’s top com­man­do, to car­ry out a cam­paign of ter­ror­ism against the advanc­ing Red Army. . . .”

“How Pre-WW II Ukrain­ian Fas­cists Pio­neered Bru­tal Ter­ror Tech­niques; Lat­er Improved By CIA, Now Iron­i­cal­ly Taught to Descen­dants” by Evan Reif; Covert Action Mag­a­zine; 6/9/2022.

. . . . Sev­er­al months after the dec­la­ra­tion of inde­pen­dence, which the Nazis did not accept, ten­sions would rise to such an extent that the Nazis arrest­ed Ban­dera, Stet­sko and oth­er lead­ers. After a peri­od of house arrest, they were trans­ferred to Sach­sen­hausen con­cen­tra­tion camp in 1943.

Bandera’s stay was not typ­i­cal, how­ever. Ban­dera had a two-room suite with paint­ings and rugs, was allowed to have con­ju­gal vis­its with his wife, per­formed no forced labor, wore no uni­form, was exempt from roll call, ate with the guards and did not lock his cell door at night.

The Nazis released Ban­dera in 1944 after a meet­ing with Otto Sko­rzeny, Hitler’s top com­man­do, to car­ry out a cam­paign of ter­ror­ism against the advanc­ing Red Army. The Nazis could have killed Ban­dera and Stet­sko at any time in the inter­im, but they did not. Rather, they made a great and suc­cess­ful effort to recruit them. . . .

10. Our pro­grams con­clude with excerpts of anoth­er inter­view with Swiss intel­li­gence offi­cer Jacques Baud.

Colonel Baud’s CV: Jacques Baud is a for­mer colonel of the Gen­er­al Staff, ex-mem­ber of the Swiss strate­gic intel­li­gence, spe­cial­ist on East­ern coun­tries. He was trained in the Amer­i­can and British intel­li­gence ser­vices. He has served as Pol­i­cy Chief for Unit­ed Nations Peace Oper­a­tions. As a UN expert on rule of law and secu­ri­ty insti­tu­tions, he designed and led the first mul­ti­di­men­sion­al UN intel­li­gence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years respon­si­ble for the fight, at NATO, against the pro­lif­er­a­tion of small arms. He was involved in dis­cus­sions with the high­est Russ­ian mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence offi­cials just after the fall of the USSR. With­in NATO, he fol­lowed the 2014 Ukrain­ian cri­sis and lat­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in pro­grams to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of sev­er­al books on intel­li­gence, war and ter­ror­ism, in par­tic­u­lar Le Détourne­ment pub­lished by SIGEST, Gou­vern­er par les fake newsL’affaire Naval­ny. His lat­est book is Pou­tine, maître du jeu? pub­lished by Max Milo.

For the edi­fi­ca­tion of the read­er, we present the full text of the inter­view here.

In the pro­gram, we note Ukraine’s “mir­ror imag­ing” of the polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary aspects of the war, rep­re­sent­ing Ukrain­ian atroc­i­ties and war crimes as Russ­ian.

In turn, West­ern media slav­ish­ly report the Ukrain­ian pro­pa­gan­da as fact, a dynam­ic Mr. Emory has cit­ed as cement­ing the Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Amer­i­ca, begun dur­ing the clos­ing stages of World War II.

Baud cites Ukrain­ian oper­a­tions behind Russ­ian lines: “ . . . . This is a ter­ror­ist cam­paign tar­get­ing pro-Russ­ian Ukrain­ian per­son­al­i­ties and offi­cials. It fol­lows major changes in the lead­er­ship of the SBU, in Kiev, and in the regions, includ­ing Lvov, Ternopol since July. It is prob­a­bly in the con­text of this same cam­paign that Darya Dug­i­na was assas­si­nat­ed on August 21. The objec­tive of this new cam­paign could be to con­vey the illu­sion that there is an ongo­ing resis­tance in the areas tak­en by the Rus­sians and thus revive West­ern aid, which is start­ing to fatigue. These sab­o­tage activ­i­ties do not real­ly have an oper­a­tional impact and seem more relat­ed to a psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tion. It may be that these are actions like the one on Snake Island at the begin­ning of May, intend­ed to demon­strate to the inter­na­tion­al pub­lic that Ukraine is act­ing. What the inci­dents in Crimea indi­rect­ly show is that the pop­u­lar resis­tance claimed by the West in Feb­ru­ary does not exist. . . .”

Colonel Baud also high­lights Ukraine’s shelling of the Zapor­i­hizia Nuclear Pow­er Plant: “ . . . . By bomb­ing the plant, Ukraine could also be try­ing to pres­sure the West to inter­vene in the con­flict, under the pre­text that Rus­sia is seek­ing to dis­con­nect the plant from the Ukrain­ian pow­er grid before the fall. This sui­ci­dal behavior—as stat­ed by UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al António Guterres—would be in line with the war waged by Ukraine since 2014. There is strong evi­dence that the attacks on Ener­go­dar are Ukrain­ian. The frag­ments of pro­jec­tiles fired at the site from the oth­er side of the Dnieper are of West­ern ori­gin. It seems that they come from British BRIMSTONE mis­siles, which are pre­ci­sion mis­siles, whose use is mon­i­tored by the British. Appar­ent­ly, the West is aware of the Ukrain­ian attacks on the ZNPP. This might explain why Ukraine is not very sup­port­ive of an inter­na­tion­al com­mis­sion of inquiry and why West­ern coun­tries are putting unre­al­is­tic con­di­tions for send­ing inves­ti­ga­tors from the IAEA, an agency that has not shown much integri­ty so far. . . .”

Colonel Baud sums up the role of ter­ror cen­tral to the Naz­i­fied Ukrain­ian regime, par­rot­ed by West­ern MSM: “ . . . . Ukrain­ian crimes were begin­ning to be revealed on social net­works, and on 27 March Zelen­sky feared that this would jeop­ar­dize West­ern sup­port. This was followed—rather opportunely—by the Bucha mas­sacre on 3 April, the cir­cum­stances of which remain unclear. Britain, which then had the chair­man­ship of the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, refused three times the Russ­ian request to set up an inter­na­tion­al com­mis­sion of enquiry into the crimes of Bucha. Ukrain­ian social­ist MP Ilya Kiva revealed on Telegram that the Bucha tragedy was planned by the British MI6 spe­cial ser­vices and imple­ment­ed by the SBU. The fun­da­men­tal prob­lem is that the Ukraini­ans have replaced the ‘oper­a­tional art’ with bru­tal­i­ty. . . .”

Our Lat­est Inter­view with Jacques Baud

Sep­tem­ber 1, 2022 Jacques Baud

We are pleased to bring you this fresh inter­view with Jacques Baud, in which we cov­er what is now hap­pen­ing in the geopo­lit­i­cal strug­gle that is the Ukraine-Rus­sia war. As always, Mr. Baud brings deep insight and clear analy­sis to the con­ver­sa­tion.

The Pos­til (TP): You have just pub­lished your lat­est book on the war in Ukraine—Oper­a­tion Z, pub­lished by Max Milo. Please tell us a lit­tle about it—what led you to write this book and what do you wish to con­vey to read­ers?

Jacques Baud (JB): The aim of this book is to show how the mis­in­for­ma­tion prop­a­gat­ed by our media has con­tributed to push Ukraine in the wrong direc­tion. I wrote it under the mot­to “from the way we under­stand crises derives the way we solve them.”

By hid­ing many aspects of this con­flict, the West­ern media has pre­sent­ed us with a car­i­cat­ur­al and arti­fi­cial image of the sit­u­a­tion, which has result­ed in the polar­iza­tion of minds. This has led to a wide­spread mind­set that makes any attempt to nego­ti­ate vir­tu­al­ly impos­si­ble.

The one-sided and biased rep­re­sen­ta­tion pro­vid­ed by main­stream media is not intend­ed to help us solve the prob­lem, but to pro­mote hatred of Rus­sia. Thus, the exclu­sion of dis­abled ath­letes, cats, even Russ­ian trees from com­pe­ti­tions, the dis­missal of con­duc­tors, the de-plat­form­ing of Russ­ian artists, such as Dos­toyevsky, or even the renam­ing of paint­ings aims at exclud­ing the Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion from soci­ety! In France, bank accounts of indi­vid­u­als with Russ­ian-sound­ing names were even blocked. Social net­works Face­book and Twit­ter have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly blocked the dis­clo­sure of Ukrain­ian crimes under the pre­text of “hate speech” but allow the call for vio­lence against Rus­sians.

None of these actions had any effect on the con­flict, except to stim­u­late hatred and vio­lence against the Rus­sians in our coun­tries. This manip­u­la­tion is so bad that we would rather see Ukraini­ans die than to seek a diplo­mat­ic solu­tion. As Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Lind­sey Gra­ham recent­ly said, it is a mat­ter of let­ting the Ukraini­ans fight to the last man.

It is com­mon­ly assumed that jour­nal­ists work accord­ing to stan­dards of qual­i­ty and ethics to inform us in the most hon­est way pos­si­ble. These stan­dards are set by the Munich Char­ter of 1971. While writ­ing my book I found out that no French-speak­ing main­stream media in Europe respects this char­ter as far as Rus­sia and Chi­na are con­cerned. In fact, they shame­less­ly sup­port an immoral pol­i­cy towards Ukraine, described by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, pres­i­dent of Mex­i­co, as “We pro­vide the weapons, you pro­vide the corpses!”

To high­light this mis­in­for­ma­tion, I want­ed to show that infor­ma­tion allow­ing to pro­vide a real­is­tic pic­ture of the sit­u­a­tion was avail­able as ear­ly as Feb­ru­ary, but that our media did not relay it to the pub­lic. My goal was to show this con­tra­dic­tion.

In order to avoid becom­ing a pro­pa­gan­dist myself in favor of one side or the oth­er, I have relied exclu­sive­ly on West­ern, Ukrain­ian (from Kiev) and Russ­ian oppo­si­tion sources. I have not tak­en any infor­ma­tion from the Russ­ian media.

TP: It is com­mon­ly said in the West that this war has “proven” that the Russ­ian army is fee­ble and that its equip­ment is use­less. Are these asser­tions true?

JB: No. After more than six months of war, it can be said that the Russ­ian army is effec­tive and effi­cient, and that the qual­i­ty of its com­mand & con­trol far exceeds what we see in the West. But our per­cep­tion is influ­enced by a report­ing that is focused on the Ukrain­ian side, and by dis­tor­tions of real­i­ty.

First­ly, there is the real­i­ty on the ground. It should be remem­bered that what the media call “Rus­sians” is in fact a Russ­ian-speak­ing coali­tion, com­posed of pro­fes­sion­al Russ­ian fight­ers and sol­diers of the pop­u­lar mili­tias of Don­bass. The oper­a­tions in the Don­bass are main­ly car­ried out by these mili­tias, who fight on “their” ter­rain, in towns and vil­lages they know and where they have friends and fam­i­ly. They are there­fore advanc­ing cau­tious­ly for them­selves, but also to avoid civil­ian casu­al­ties. Thus, despite the claims of west­ern pro­pa­gan­da, the coali­tion enjoys a very good pop­u­lar sup­port in the areas it occu­pies.

Then, just look­ing at a map, you can see that the Don­bass is a region with a lot of built-up and inhab­it­ed areas, which means an advan­tage for the defend­er and a reduced speed of progress for the attack­er in all cir­cum­stances.

Sec­ond­ly, there is the way our media por­tray the evo­lu­tion of the con­flict. Ukraine is a huge coun­try and small-scale maps hard­ly show the dif­fer­ences from one day to anoth­er. More­over, each side has its own per­cep­tion of the progress of the ene­my. If we take the exam­ple of the sit­u­a­tion on March 25, 2022, we can see that the map of the French dai­ly news­pa­per Ouest-France (a) shows almost no advance of Rus­sia, as does the Swiss RTS site (b). The map of the Russ­ian web­site RIAFAN © may be pro­pa­gan­da, but if we com­pare it with the map of the French Mil­i­tary Intel­li­gence Direc­torate (DRM) (d), we see that the Russ­ian media is prob­a­bly clos­er to the truth. All these maps were pub­lished on the same day, but the French news­pa­per and the Swiss state media did not choose to use the DRM map and pre­ferred to use a Ukrain­ian map. This illus­trates that our media work like pro­pa­gan­da out­lets.

Fig­ure 1 – Com­par­i­son of the maps pre­sent­ed in our media on 25 March 2022. It is this way of pre­sent­ing the Russ­ian offen­sive that has led to the asser­tion that the Russ­ian army is weak. It also shows that the infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by the Russ­ian media seems clos­er to real­i­ty than that giv­en by Ukraine.

Third­ly, our “experts” have them­selves deter­mined the objec­tives of the Russ­ian offen­sive. By claim­ing that Rus­sia want­ed to take over Ukraine and its resources, to take over Kiev in two days, etc., our experts have lit­er­al­ly invent­ed and attrib­uted to the Rus­sians objec­tives that Putin nev­er men­tioned. In May 2022, Claude Wild, the Swiss ambas­sador in Kiev, declared on RTS that the Rus­sians had “lost the bat­tle for Kiev.” But in real­i­ty, there was nev­er a “bat­tle for Kiev.” It is obvi­ous­ly easy to claim that the Rus­sians did not reach their objectives—if they nev­er tried to reach them!

Fourth­ly, the West and Ukraine have cre­at­ed a mis­lead­ing pic­ture of their adver­sary. In France, Switzer­land and Bel­gium, none of the mil­i­tary experts on tele­vi­sion have any knowl­edge of mil­i­tary oper­a­tions and how the Rus­sians con­duct theirs. Their “exper­tise” comes from the rumours from the war in Afghanistan or Syr­ia, which are often mere­ly West­ern pro­pa­gan­da. These experts have lit­er­al­ly fal­si­fied the pre­sen­ta­tion of Russ­ian oper­a­tions.

Thus, the objec­tives announced as ear­ly as Feb­ru­ary 24 by Rus­sia were the “demil­i­ta­riza­tion” and “denaz­i­fi­ca­tion” of the threat to the pop­u­la­tions of Don­bass. These objec­tives are relat­ed to the neu­tral­iza­tion of capa­bil­i­ties, not the seizure of land or resources. To put it blunt­ly, in the­o­ry, to achieve their goals the Rus­sians do not need to advance—it would be enough if Ukraini­ans them­selves would come and get killed.

In oth­er words, our politi­cians and media have pushed Ukraine to defend the ter­rain like in France dur­ing the First World War. They pushed Ukrain­ian troops to defend every square meter of ground in “last stand” sit­u­a­tions. Iron­i­cal­ly, the West has only made the Rus­sians’ job eas­i­er.

In fact, as with the war on ter­ror, West­ern­ers see the ene­my as they would like him to be, not as he is. As Sun Tzu said 2,500 years ago, this is the best recipe for los­ing a war.

One exam­ple is the so-called “hybrid war” that Rus­sia is alleged­ly wag­ing against the West. In June 2014, as the West tried to explain Russia’s (imag­i­nary) inter­ven­tion in the Don­bass con­flict, Rus­sia expert Mark Gale­ot­ti “revealed” the exis­tence of a doc­trine that would illus­trate the Russ­ian con­cept of hybrid war­fare. Known as the “Gerasi­mov Doc­trine,” it has nev­er real­ly been defined by the West as to what it con­sists of and how it could ensure mil­i­tary suc­cess. But it is used to explain how Rus­sia wages war in Don­bass with­out send­ing troops there and why Ukraine con­sis­tent­ly los­es its bat­tles against the rebels. In 2018, real­iz­ing that he was wrong, Gale­ot­ti apologized—courageously and intelligently—in an arti­cle titled, “I’m Sor­ry for Cre­at­ing the Gerasi­mov Doc­trine” pub­lished in For­eign Pol­i­cy mag­a­zine.

Despite this, and with­out know­ing what it meant, our media and politi­cians con­tin­ued to pre­tend that Rus­sia was wag­ing a hybrid war against Ukraine and the West. In oth­er words, we imag­ined a type of war that does not exist and we pre­pared Ukraine for it. This is also what explains the chal­lenge for Ukraine to have a coher­ent strat­e­gy to counter Russ­ian oper­a­tions.

The West does not want to see the sit­u­a­tion as it real­ly is. The Russ­ian-speak­ing coali­tion has launched its offen­sive with an over­all strength infe­ri­or to that of the Ukraini­ans in a ratio of 1–2:1. To be suc­cess­ful when you are out­num­bered, you must cre­ate local and tem­po­rary supe­ri­or­i­ties by quick­ly mov­ing your forces on the bat­tle­field.

This is what the Rus­sians call “oper­a­tional art” (oper­a­tiv­noe isk­oust­vo). This notion is poor­ly under­stood in the West. The term “oper­a­tional” used in NATO has two trans­la­tions in Russ­ian: “oper­a­tive” (which refers to a com­mand lev­el) and “oper­a­tional” (which defines a con­di­tion). It is the art of maneu­ver­ing mil­i­tary for­ma­tions, much like a chess game, in order to defeat a supe­ri­or oppo­nent.

For exam­ple, the oper­a­tion around Kiev was not intend­ed to “deceive” the Ukraini­ans (and the West) about their inten­tions, but to force the Ukrain­ian army to keep large forces around the cap­i­tal and thus “pin them down.” In tech­ni­cal terms, this is what is called a “shap­ing oper­a­tion.” Con­trary to the analy­sis of some “experts,” it was not a “decep­tion oper­a­tion,” which would have been con­ceived very dif­fer­ent­ly and would have involved much larg­er forces. The aim was to pre­vent a rein­force­ment of the main body of the Ukrain­ian forces in the Don­bass.

The main les­son of this war at this stage con­firms what we know since the Sec­ond World War: the Rus­sians mas­ter the oper­a­tional art.

TP: Ques­tions about Russia’s mil­i­tary rais­es the obvi­ous question—how good is Ukraine’s mil­i­tary today? And more impor­tant­ly, why do we not hear so much about the Ukrain­ian army?

JB: The Ukrain­ian ser­vice­men are cer­tain­ly brave sol­diers who per­form their duty con­sci­en­tious­ly and coura­geous­ly. But my per­son­al expe­ri­ence shows that in almost every cri­sis, the prob­lem is at the head. The inabil­i­ty to under­stand the oppo­nent and his log­ic and to have a clear pic­ture of the actu­al sit­u­a­tion is the main rea­son for fail­ures.

Since the begin­ning of the Russ­ian offen­sive, we can dis­tin­guish two ways of con­duct­ing the war. On the Ukrain­ian side, the war is waged in the polit­i­cal and infor­ma­tion­al spaces, while on the Russ­ian side the war is waged in the phys­i­cal and oper­a­tional space. The two sides are not fight­ing in the same spaces. This is a sit­u­a­tion that I described in 2003 in my book, La guerre asymétrique ou la défaite du vain­queur (Asym­met­ric War, or the Defeat of the Win­ner). The trou­ble is that at the end of the day, the real­i­ty of the ter­rain pre­vails.

On the Russ­ian side, deci­sions are made by the mil­i­tary, while on the Ukrain­ian side, Zelen­sky is omnipresent and the cen­tral ele­ment in the con­duct of the war. He makes oper­a­tional deci­sions, appar­ent­ly often against the military’s advice. This explains the ris­ing ten­sions between Zelen­sky and the mil­i­tary. Accord­ing to Ukrain­ian media, Zelen­sky could dis­miss Gen­er­al Valery Zoluzh­ny by appoint­ing him Min­is­ter of Defence.

The Ukrain­ian army has been exten­sive­ly trained by Amer­i­can, British and Cana­di­an offi­cers since 2014. The trou­ble is that for over 20 years, West­ern­ers have been fight­ing armed groups and scat­tered adver­saries and engaged entire armies against indi­vid­u­als. They fight wars at the tac­ti­cal lev­el and some­how have lost the abil­i­ty to fight at the strate­gic and oper­a­tive lev­els. This explains part­ly why Ukraine is wag­ing its war at this lev­el.

But there is a more con­cep­tu­al dimen­sion. Zelen­sky and the West see war as a numer­i­cal and tech­no­log­i­cal bal­ance of forces. This is why, since 2014, the Ukraini­ans have nev­er tried to seduce the rebels and they now think that the solu­tion will come from the weapons sup­plied by the West. The West pro­vid­ed Ukraine with a few dozen M777 guns and HIMARS and MLRS mis­sile launch­ers, while Ukraine had sev­er­al thou­sand equiv­a­lent artillery pieces in Feb­ru­ary. The Russ­ian con­cept of “cor­re­la­tion of forces,” takes into account many more fac­tors and is more holis­tic than the West­ern approach. That is why the Rus­sians are win­ning.

To com­ply with ill-con­sid­ered poli­cies, our media have con­struct­ed a vir­tu­al real­i­ty that gives Rus­sia the bad role. For those who observe the course of the cri­sis care­ful­ly, we could almost say they pre­sent­ed Rus­sia as a “mir­ror image” of the sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine. Thus, when the talk about Ukrain­ian loss­es began, West­ern com­mu­ni­ca­tion turned to Russ­ian loss­es (with fig­ures giv­en by Ukraine).

The so-called “counter-offen­sives” pro­claimed by Ukraine and the West in Kharkov and Kher­son in April-May were mere­ly “counter-attacks.” The dif­fer­ence between the two is that counter-offen­sive is an oper­a­tional notion, while counter-attack is a tac­ti­cal notion, which is much more lim­it­ed in scope. These coun­ter­at­tacks were pos­si­ble because the den­si­ty of Russ­ian troops in these sec­tors was then 1 Bat­tle Group (BTG) per 20 km of front. By com­par­i­son, in the Don­bass sec­tor, which was the pri­ma­ry focus, the Russ­ian coali­tion had 1–3 BTG per km. As for the great August offen­sive on Kher­son, which was sup­posed to take over the south of the coun­try, it seems to have been noth­ing but a myth to main­tain West­ern sup­port.

Today, we see that the claimed Ukrain­ian suc­cess­es were in fact fail­ures. The human and mate­r­i­al loss­es that were attrib­uted to Rus­sia were in fact more in line with those of Ukraine. In mid-June, David Arakhamia, Zelensky’s chief nego­tia­tor and close advis­er, spoke of 200 to 500 deaths per day, and he men­tioned casu­al­ties (dead, wound­ed, cap­tured, desert­ers) of 1,000 men per day. If we add to this the renewed demands for arms by Zelen­sky, we can see that the idea of a vic­to­ry for Ukraine appears quite an illu­sion.

Because Russia’s econ­o­my was thought to be com­pa­ra­ble to Italy’s, it was assumed that it would be equal­ly vul­ner­a­ble. Thus, the West—and the Ukrainians—thought that eco­nom­ic sanc­tions and polit­i­cal iso­la­tion of Rus­sia would quick­ly cause its col­lapse, with­out pass­ing through a mil­i­tary defeat. Indeed, this is what we under­stand from the inter­view of Olek­sei Arestovich, Zelensky’s advi­sor and spokesman, in March 2019. This also explains why Zelen­sky did not sound the alarm in ear­ly 2022, as he says in his inter­view with the Wash­ing­ton Post. I think he knew that Rus­sia would respond to the offen­sive Ukraine was prepar­ing in the Don­bass (which is why the bulk of his troops were in that area) and thought that sanc­tions would quick­ly lead to Russia’s col­lapse and defeat. This is what Bruno Le Maire, the French Min­is­ter of the Econ­o­my, had “pre­dict­ed.” Clear­ly, the West­ern­ers have made deci­sions with­out know­ing their oppo­nent.

As Arestovich said, the idea was that the defeat of Rus­sia would be Ukraine’s entry tick­et to NATO. So, the Ukraini­ans were pushed to pre­pare an offen­sive in the Don­bass in order to make Rus­sia react, and thus obtain an easy defeat through dev­as­tat­ing sanc­tions. This is cyn­i­cal and shows how much the West—led by the Americans—has mis­used Ukraine for its own objec­tives.

The result is that the Ukraini­ans did not seek Ukraine’s vic­to­ry, but Russia’s defeat. This is very dif­fer­ent and explains the West­ern nar­ra­tive from the first days of the Russ­ian offen­sive, which proph­e­sied this defeat.

But the real­i­ty is that the sanc­tions did not work as expect­ed, and Ukraine found itself dragged into com­bats that it had pro­voked, but for which it was not pre­pared to fight for so long.

This is why, from the out­set, the West­ern nar­ra­tive pre­sent­ed a mis­match between media report­ed and the real­i­ty on the ground. This had a per­verse effect: it encour­aged Ukraine to repeat its mis­takes and pre­vent­ed it from improv­ing its con­duct of oper­a­tions. Under the pre­text of fight­ing Vladimir Putin, we pushed Ukraine to sac­ri­fice thou­sands of human lives unnec­es­sar­i­ly.

From the begin­ning, it was obvi­ous that the Ukraini­ans were con­sis­tent­ly repeat­ing their mis­takes (and even the same mis­takes as in 2014–2015), and sol­diers were dying on the bat­tle­field. For his part, Volodymyr Zelen­sky called for more and more sanc­tions, includ­ing the most absurd ones, because he was led to believe that they were deci­sive.

I am not the only one to have noticed these mis­takes, and West­ern coun­tries could cer­tain­ly have stopped this dis­as­ter. But their lead­ers, excit­ed by the (fan­ci­ful) reports of Russ­ian loss­es and think­ing they were paving the way for regime change, added sanc­tions to sanc­tions, turn­ing down any pos­si­bil­i­ty of nego­ti­a­tion. As the French Min­is­ter of Econ­o­my Bruno Le Maire said, the objec­tive was to pro­voke the col­lapse of the Russ­ian econ­o­my and make the Russ­ian peo­ple suf­fer. This is a form of state ter­ror­ism: the idea is to make the pop­u­la­tion suf­fer in order to push it into revolt­ing against its lead­ers (here, Putin). I am not mak­ing this up. This mech­a­nism is detailed by Richard Nephew, head of sanc­tions at the State Depart­ment under Oba­ma and cur­rent­ly Coor­di­na­tor on Glob­al Anti-Cor­rup­tion, in his book enti­tled, The Art of Sanc­tions. Iron­i­cal­ly, this is exact­ly the same log­ic that the Islam­ic State invoked to explain its attacks in France in 2015–2016. France prob­a­bly does not encour­age terrorism—but it does prac­tice it.

The main­stream media do not present the war as it is, but as they would like it to be. This is pure wish­ful think­ing. The appar­ent pub­lic sup­port for the Ukrain­ian author­i­ties, despite huge loss­es (some men­tion 70,000–80,000 fatal­i­ties), is achieved by ban­ning the oppo­si­tion, a ruth­less hunt for offi­cials who dis­agree with the gov­ern­ment line, and “mir­ror” pro­pa­gan­da that attrib­ut­es to the Rus­sians the same fail­ures as the Ukraini­ans. All this with the con­scious sup­port of the West.

TP: What should we make of the explo­sion at the Saki air­base in the Crimea?

JB: I do not know the details of the cur­rent secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in Crimea. . We know that before Feb­ru­ary there were cells of vol­un­teer fight­ers of Praviy Sek­tor (a neo-Nazi mili­tia) in Crimea, ready to car­ry out ter­ror­ist-type attacks. Have these cells been neu­tral­ized? I don’t know; but one can assume so, since there is appar­ent­ly very lit­tle sab­o­tage activ­i­ty in Crimea. Hav­ing said that, let us not for­get that Ukraini­ans and Rus­sians have lived togeth­er for many decades and there are cer­tain­ly pro-Kiev indi­vid­u­als in the areas tak­en by the Rus­sians. It is there­fore real­is­tic to think that there could be sleep­er cells in these areas.

More like­ly it is a cam­paign con­duct­ed by the Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vice (SBU) in the ter­ri­to­ries occu­pied by the Russ­ian-speak­ing coali­tion. This is a ter­ror­ist cam­paign tar­get­ing pro-Russ­ian Ukrain­ian per­son­al­i­ties and offi­cials. It fol­lows major changes in the lead­er­ship of the SBU, in Kiev, and in the regions, includ­ing Lvov, Ternopol since July. It is prob­a­bly in the con­text of this same cam­paign that Darya Dug­i­na was assas­si­nat­ed on August 21. The objec­tive of this new cam­paign could be to con­vey the illu­sion that there is an ongo­ing resis­tance in the areas tak­en by the Rus­sians and thus revive West­ern aid, which is start­ing to fatigue.

These sab­o­tage activ­i­ties do not real­ly have an oper­a­tional impact and seem more relat­ed to a psy­cho­log­i­cal oper­a­tion. It may be that these are actions like the one on Snake Island at the begin­ning of May, intend­ed to demon­strate to the inter­na­tion­al pub­lic that Ukraine is act­ing.

What the inci­dents in Crimea indi­rect­ly show is that the pop­u­lar resis­tance claimed by the West in Feb­ru­ary does not exist. It is most like­ly the action of Ukrain­ian and West­ern (prob­a­bly British) clan­des­tine oper­a­tives. Beyond the tac­ti­cal actions, this shows the inabil­i­ty of the Ukraini­ans to acti­vate a sig­nif­i­cant resis­tance move­ment in the areas seized by the Russ­ian-speak­ing coali­tion.

TP: Zelen­sky has famous­ly said, “Crimea is Ukrain­ian and we will nev­er give it up.” Is this rhetoric, or is there a plan to attack Crimea? Are there Ukrain­ian oper­a­tives inside Crimea?

JB: First of all, Zelen­sky changes his opin­ion very often. In March 2022, he made a pro­pos­al to Rus­sia, stat­ing that he was ready to dis­cuss a recog­ni­tion of Russ­ian sov­er­eign­ty over the penin­su­la. It was upon the inter­ven­tion of the Euro­pean Union and Boris John­son on 2 April and on 9 April that he with­drew his pro­pos­al, despite Russia’s favor­able inter­est.

It is nec­es­sary to recall some his­tor­i­cal facts. The ces­sion of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 was nev­er for­mal­ly val­i­dat­ed by the par­lia­ments of the USSR, Rus­sia and Ukraine dur­ing the com­mu­nist era. More­over, the Crimean peo­ple agreed to be sub­ject to the author­i­ty of Moscow and no longer of Kiev as ear­ly as Jan­u­ary 1991. In oth­er words, Crimea was inde­pen­dent from Kiev even before Ukraine became inde­pen­dent from Moscow in Decem­ber 1991.

In July, Alek­sei Reznikov, the Ukrain­ian Min­is­ter of Defense, spoke loud­ly of a major counter-offen­sive on Kher­son involv­ing one mil­lion men to restore Ukraine’s ter­ri­to­r­i­al integri­ty. In real­i­ty, Ukraine has not man­aged to gath­er the troops, armor and air cov­er need­ed for this far-fetched offen­sive. Sab­o­tage actions in Crimea may be a sub­sti­tute for this “counter-offen­sive.” They seem to be more of a com­mu­ni­ca­tion exer­cise than a real mil­i­tary action. These actions seem to be aimed rather at reas­sur­ing West­ern coun­tries which are ques­tion­ing the rel­e­vance of their uncon­di­tion­al sup­port to Ukraine.

TP: Would you tell us about the sit­u­a­tion around the Zapor­izhzhia nuclear facil­i­ty?

JB: In Ener­go­dar, the Zapor­izhzhia nuclear pow­er plant (ZNPP), has been the tar­get of sev­er­al attacks by artillery, which Ukraini­ans and Rus­sians attribute to the oppos­ing side.

What we know is that the Russ­ian coali­tion forces have occu­pied the ZNPP site since the begin­ning of March. The objec­tive at that time was to secure the ZNPP quick­ly, in order to pre­vent it from being caught up in the fight­ing and thus avoid a nuclear inci­dent. The Ukrain­ian per­son­nel who were in charge of it have remained on site and con­tin­ue to work under the super­vi­sion of the Ukrain­ian com­pa­ny Ener­goatom and the Ukrain­ian nuclear safe­ty agency (SNRIU). There is there­fore no fight­ing around the plant.

It is hard to see why the Rus­sians would shell a nuclear plant that is under their con­trol. This alle­ga­tion is even more pecu­liar since the Ukraini­ans them­selves state that there are Russ­ian troops in the premis­es of the site. Accord­ing to a French “expert,” the Rus­sians would attack the pow­er plant they con­trol to cut off the elec­tric­i­ty flow­ing to Ukraine. Not only would there be sim­pler ways to cut off the elec­tric­i­ty to Ukraine (a switch, per­haps?), but Rus­sia has not stopped the elec­tric­i­ty sup­ply to the Ukraini­ans since March. More­over, I remind you that Rus­sia has not stopped the flow of nat­ur­al gas to Ukraine and has con­tin­ued to pay Ukraine the tran­sit fees for gas to Europe. It is Zelen­sky who decid­ed to shut down the Soyuz pipeline in May.

More­over, it should be remem­bered that the Rus­sians are in an area where the pop­u­la­tion is gen­er­al­ly favor­able to them and it is hard to under­stand why they would take the risk of a nuclear con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of the region.

In real­i­ty, the Ukraini­ans have more cred­i­ble motives than the Rus­sians that may explain such attacks against the ZNPP. , which are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive: an alter­na­tive to the big counter-offen­sive on Kher­son, which they are not able to imple­ment, and to pre­vent the planned ref­er­en­dums in the region. Fur­ther, Zelensky’s calls for demil­i­ta­riz­ing the area of the pow­er plant and even return­ing it to Ukraine would be a polit­i­cal and oper­a­tional suc­cess for him. One might even imag­ine that they seek to delib­er­ate­ly pro­voke a nuclear inci­dent in order to cre­ate a “no man’s land” and thus ren­der the area unus­able for the Rus­sians.

By bomb­ing the plant, Ukraine could also be try­ing to pres­sure the West to inter­vene in the con­flict, under the pre­text that Rus­sia is seek­ing to dis­con­nect the plant from the Ukrain­ian pow­er grid before the fall. This sui­ci­dal behavior—as stat­ed by UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al António Guterres—would be in line with the war waged by Ukraine since 2014.

There is strong evi­dence that the attacks on Ener­go­dar are Ukrain­ian. The frag­ments of pro­jec­tiles fired at the site from the oth­er side of the Dnieper are of West­ern ori­gin. It seems that they come from British BRIMSTONE mis­siles, which are pre­ci­sion mis­siles, whose use is mon­i­tored by the British. Appar­ent­ly, the West is aware of the Ukrain­ian attacks on the ZNPP. This might explain why Ukraine is not very sup­port­ive of an inter­na­tion­al com­mis­sion of inquiry and why West­ern coun­tries are putting unre­al­is­tic con­di­tions for send­ing inves­ti­ga­tors from the IAEA, an agency that has not shown much integri­ty so far.

TP: It is report­ed that Zelen­sky is free­ing crim­i­nals to fight in this war? Does this mean that Ukraine’s army is not as strong as com­mon­ly assumed?

JB: Zelen­sky faces the same prob­lem as the author­i­ties that emerged from Euro­maid­an in 2014. At that time, the mil­i­tary did not want to fight because they did not want to con­front their Russ­ian-speak­ing com­pa­tri­ots. Accord­ing to a report by the British Home Office, reservists over­whelm­ing­ly refuse to attend recruit­ment ses­sions . In Octo­ber-Novem­ber 2017, 70% of con­scripts do not show up for recall . Sui­cide has become a prob­lem. Accord­ing to the chief Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary pros­e­cu­tor Ana­toly Matios, after four years of war in the Don­bass, 615 ser­vice­men had com­mit­ted sui­cide. Deser­tions have increased and reached up to 30% of the forces in cer­tain oper­a­tional areas, often in favor of the rebels.

For this rea­son, it became nec­es­sary to inte­grate more moti­vat­ed, high­ly politi­cized, ultra-nation­al­is­tic and fanat­i­cal fight­ers into the armed forces to fight in the Don­bass. Many of them are neo-Nazis. It is to elim­i­nate these fanat­i­cal fight­ers that Vladimir Putin has men­tioned the objec­tive of “denaz­i­fi­ca­tion.”

Today, the prob­lem is slight­ly dif­fer­ent. The Rus­sians have attacked Ukraine and the Ukrain­ian sol­diers are not a pri­ori opposed to fight­ing them. But they real­ize that the orders they receive are not con­sis­tent with the sit­u­a­tion on the bat­tle­field. They under­stood that the deci­sions affect­ing them are not linked to mil­i­tary fac­tors, but to polit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions. Ukrain­ian units are mutiny­ing en masse and are increas­ing­ly refus­ing to fight. They say they feel aban­doned by their com­man­ders and that they are giv­en mis­sions with­out the nec­es­sary resources to exe­cute them.

That’s why it becomes nec­es­sary to send men who are ready for any­thing. Because they are con­demned, they can be kept under pres­sure. This is the same prin­ci­ple as Mar­shal Kon­stan­tin Rokossov­ki, who was sen­tenced to death by Stal­in, but was released from prison in 1941 to fight against the Ger­mans. His death sen­tence was lift­ed only after Stalin’s death in 1956.

In order to over­shad­ow the use of crim­i­nals in the armed forces, the Rus­sians are accused of doing the same thing. The Ukraini­ans and the West­ern­ers con­sis­tent­ly use “mir­ror” pro­pa­gan­da. As in all recent con­flicts, West­ern influ­ence has not led to a mor­al­iza­tion of the con­flict.

TP: Every­one speaks of how cor­rupt Putin is? But what about Zelen­sky? Is he the “hero­ic saint” that we are all told to admire?

JB: In Octo­ber 2021, the Pan­do­ra Papers showed that Ukraine and Zelen­sky were the most cor­rupt in Europe and prac­ticed tax eva­sion on a large scale. Inter­est­ing­ly, these doc­u­ments were appar­ent­ly pub­lished with the help of an Amer­i­can intel­li­gence agency, and Vladimir Putin is not men­tioned. More pre­cise­ly, the doc­u­ments men­tion indi­vid­u­als” asso­ci­at­ed” with him, who are said to have links with undis­closed assets, which could belong to a woman, who is believed to have had a child with him.

Yet, when our media are report­ing on these doc­u­ments, they rou­tine­ly put a pic­ture of Vladimir Putin, but not of Volodymyr Zelen­sky.

Fig­ure 2 – Although he is not men­tioned in the Pan­do­ra Papers, Vladimir Putin is con­sis­tent­ly asso­ci­at­ed with them. Where­as Volodymyr Zelen­sky is nev­er men­tioned in our media, even though he is wide­ly impli­cat­ed.

I am not in a posi­tion to assess how cor­rupt Zelen­sky is. But there is no doubt that the Ukrain­ian soci­ety and its gov­er­nance are. I con­tributed mod­est­ly to a NATO “Build­ing Integri­ty” pro­gram in Ukraine and dis­cov­ered that none of the con­tribut­ing coun­tries had any illu­sions about its effec­tive­ness, and all saw the pro­gram as a kind of “win­dow dress­ing” to jus­ti­fy West­ern sup­port.

It is unlike­ly that the bil­lions paid by the West to Ukraine will reach the Ukrain­ian peo­ple. A recent CBS News report stat­ed that only 30–40% of the weapons sup­plied by the West make it to the bat­tle­field. The rest enrich­es mafias and oth­er cor­rupt peo­ple. Appar­ent­ly, some high-tech West­ern weapons have been sold to the Rus­sians, such as the French CAESAR sys­tem and pre­sum­ably the Amer­i­can HIMARS. The CBS News report was cen­sored to avoid under­min­ing West­ern aid, but the fact remains that the US refused to sup­ply MQ-1C drones to Ukraine for this rea­son.

Ukraine is a rich coun­try, yet today it is the only coun­try in the for­mer USSR with a low­er GDP than it had at the col­lapse of the Sovi­et Union. The prob­lem is there­fore not Zelen­sky him­self, but the whole sys­tem, which is deeply cor­rupt­ed, and which the West main­tains for the sole pur­pose of fight­ing Rus­sia.

Zelen­sky was elect­ed in April 2019 on the pro­gram of reach­ing an agree­ment with Rus­sia. But nobody let him car­ry out his pro­gram. The Ger­mans and the French delib­er­ate­ly pre­vent­ed him from imple­ment­ing the Min­sk agree­ments. The tran­script of the tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion of 20 Feb­ru­ary 2022 between Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin shows that France delib­er­ate­ly kept Ukraine away from the solu­tion. More­over, in Ukraine, far right and neo-Nazi polit­i­cal forces have pub­licly threat­ened him with death. Dmit­ry Yarosh, com­man­der of the Ukrain­ian Vol­un­teer Army, declared in May 2019 that Zelen­sky would be hanged if he car­ried out his pro­gram. In oth­er words, Zelen­sky is trapped between his idea of reach­ing an agree­ment with Rus­sia and the demands of the West. More­over, the West real­izes that its strat­e­gy of war through sanc­tions has failed. As the eco­nom­ic and social prob­lems increase, the West will find it hard­er to back down with­out los­ing face. A way out for Britain, the US, the EU, or France would be to remove Zelen­sky. That is why, with the dete­ri­o­rat­ing sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine, I think Zelen­sky starts to real­ize that his life is threat­ened.

At the end of the day, Zelen­sky is a poor guy, because his best ene­mies are those on whom he depends: the West­ern world.

TP: There are many videos (grue­some ones) on social media of Ukrain­ian sol­diers engag­ing in seri­ous war crimes? Why is there a “blind spot” in the West for such atroc­i­ties?

JB: First of all, we must be clear: in every war, every bel­liger­ent com­mit war crimes. Mil­i­tary per­son­nel who delib­er­ate­ly com­mit such crimes dis­hon­or their uni­form and must be pun­ished.

The prob­lem aris­es when war crimes are part of a plan or result from orders giv­en by the high­er com­mand. This was the case when the Nether­lands let its mil­i­tary allow the Sre­breni­ca mas­sacre in 1995; the tor­ture in Afghanistan by Cana­di­an and British troops, not to men­tion the count­less vio­la­tions of inter­na­tion­al human­i­tar­i­an law by the Unit­ed States in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guan­tanamo and else­where with the com­plic­i­ty of Poland, Lithua­nia or Esto­nia. If these are West­ern val­ues, then Ukraine is in the right school.

In Ukraine, polit­i­cal crime has become com­mon­place, with the com­plic­i­ty of the West. Thus, those who are in favor of a nego­ti­a­tion are elim­i­nat­ed. This is the case of Denis Kireyev, one of the Ukrain­ian nego­tia­tors, assas­si­nat­ed on March 5 by the Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vice (SBU) because he was con­sid­ered too favor­able to Rus­sia and as a trai­tor. The same thing hap­pened to Dmit­ry Demya­nenko, an offi­cer of the SBU, who was assas­si­nat­ed on March 10, also because he was too favor­able to an agree­ment with Rus­sia. Remem­ber that this is a coun­try that con­sid­ers that receiv­ing or giv­ing Russ­ian human­i­tar­i­an aid is “col­lab­o­ra­tionism.”

On 16 March 2022, a jour­nal­ist on TV chan­nel Ukraine 24 referred to the Nazi war crim­i­nal Adolf Eich­mann and called for the mas­sacre of Russ­ian-speak­ing chil­dren. On 21 March, the mil­i­tary doc­tor Gen­nadiy Druzenko declared on the same chan­nel that he had ordered his doc­tors to castrate Russ­ian pris­on­ers of war. On social net­works, these state­ments quick­ly became pro­pa­gan­da for the Rus­sians and the two Ukraini­ans apol­o­gized for hav­ing said so, but not for the sub­stance. Ukrain­ian crimes were begin­ning to be revealed on social net­works, and on 27 March Zelen­sky feared that this would jeop­ar­dize West­ern sup­port. This was followed—rather opportunely—by the Bucha mas­sacre on 3 April, the cir­cum­stances of which remain unclear.

Britain, which then had the chair­man­ship of the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, refused three times the Russ­ian request to set up an inter­na­tion­al com­mis­sion of enquiry into the crimes of Bucha. Ukrain­ian social­ist MP Ilya Kiva revealed on Telegram that the Bucha tragedy was planned by the British MI6 spe­cial ser­vices and imple­ment­ed by the SBU.

The fun­da­men­tal prob­lem is that the Ukraini­ans have replaced the “oper­a­tional art” with bru­tal­i­ty. Since 2014, in order to fight the auton­o­mists, the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment has nev­er tried to apply strate­gies based on “hearts & minds,” which the British used in the 1950s-1960s in South-East Asia, which were much less bru­tal but much more effec­tive and long-last­ing. Kiev pre­ferred to con­duct an Anti-Ter­ror­ist Oper­a­tion (ATO) in the Don­bass and to use the same strate­gies as the Amer­i­cans in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fight­ing ter­ror­ists autho­rizes all kinds of bru­tal­i­ty. It is the lack of a holis­tic approach to the con­flict that led to the fail­ure of the West in Afghanistan, Iraq and Mali.

Counter-Insur­gency Oper­a­tion (COIN) requires a more sophis­ti­cat­ed and holis­tic approach. But NATO is inca­pable of devel­op­ing such strate­gies as I have seen first-hand in Afghanistan. The war in Don­bass has been bru­tal for 8 years and has result­ed in the death of 10,000 Ukrain­ian cit­i­zens plus 4,000 Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary per­son­nel. By com­par­i­son, in 30 years, the con­flict in North­ern Ire­land result­ed in 3,700 deaths. To jus­ti­fy this bru­tal­i­ty, the Ukraini­ans had to invent the myth of a Russ­ian inter­ven­tion in Don­bass.

The prob­lem is that the phi­los­o­phy of the new Maid­an lead­ers was to have a racial­ly pure Ukraine. In oth­er words, the uni­ty of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple was not to be achieved through the inte­gra­tion of com­mu­ni­ties, but through the exclu­sion of com­mu­ni­ties of “infe­ri­or races.” An idea that would no doubt have pleased the grand­fa­thers of Ursu­la von der Leyen and Chrys­tia Free­land! This explains why Ukraini­ans have lit­tle empa­thy for the country’s Russ­ian, Mag­yar and Roman­ian-speak­ing minori­ties. This in turn explains why Hun­gary and Roma­nia do not want their ter­ri­to­ries to be used for the sup­ply of arms to Ukraine.

This is why shoot­ing at their own cit­i­zens to intim­i­date them is not a prob­lem for the Ukraini­ans. This explains the spray­ing of thou­sands of PFM‑1 (“but­ter­fly”) anti-per­son­nel mines, which look like toys, on the Russ­ian-speak­ing city of Donet­sk in July 2022. This type of mine is used by a defend­er, not an attack­er in its main area of oper­a­tion. More­over, in this area, the Don­bass mili­tias are fight­ing “at home,” with pop­u­la­tions they know per­son­al­ly.

I think that war crimes have been com­mit­ted on both sides, but that their media cov­er­age has been very dif­fer­ent. Our media have report­ed exten­sive­ly about crimes (true or false) attrib­uted to Rus­sia. On the oth­er hand, they have been extreme­ly silent about Ukrain­ian crimes. We do not know the whole truth about the Bucha mas­sacre, but the avail­able evi­dence sup­ports the hypoth­e­sis that Ukraine staged the event to cov­er up its own crimes. By keep­ing these crimes qui­et, our media have been com­plic­it with them and have cre­at­ed a sense of impuni­ty that has encour­aged the Ukraini­ans to com­mit fur­ther crimes.

TP: Latvia wants the West (Amer­i­ca) to des­ig­nate Rus­sia a “ter­ror­ist state.” What do you make of this? Does this mean that the war is actu­al­ly over, and Rus­sia has won?

JB: The Eston­ian and Lat­vian demands are in response to Zelensky’s call to des­ig­nate Rus­sia as a ter­ror­ist state. Inter­est­ing­ly, they come at the same time a Ukrain­ian ter­ror­ist cam­paign is being unleashed in Crimea, the occu­pied zone of Ukraine and the rest of Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry. It is also inter­est­ing that Esto­nia was appar­ent­ly com­plic­it in the attack on Darya Dug­i­na in August 2022.

It seems that Ukraini­ans com­mu­ni­cate in a mir­ror image of the crimes they com­mit or the prob­lems they have, in order to hide them. For exam­ple, in late May 2022, as the Azovstal sur­ren­der in Mar­i­upol showed neo-Nazi fight­ers, they began to allege that there are neo-Nazis in the Russ­ian army. In August 2022, when Kiev was car­ry­ing out actions of a ter­ror­ist nature against the Ener­go­dar pow­er plant in Crimea and on Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry, Zelen­sky called for Rus­sia to be con­sid­ered a ter­ror­ist state.

In fact, Zelen­sky con­tin­ues to believe that he can only solve his prob­lem by defeat­ing Rus­sia and that this defeat depends on sanc­tions against Rus­sia. Declar­ing Rus­sia a ter­ror­ist state would lead to fur­ther iso­la­tion. That is why he is mak­ing this appeal. This shows that the label “ter­ror­ist” is more polit­i­cal than oper­a­tional, and that those who make such pro­pos­als do not have a very clear vision of the prob­lem. The prob­lem is that it has impli­ca­tions for inter­na­tion­al rela­tions. This is why the US State Depart­ment is con­cerned that Zelensky’s request will be imple­ment­ed by Con­gress.

TP: One of the sad­der out­comes of this Ukraine-Rus­sia con­flict is how the West has shown the worst of itself. Where do you think we will go from here? More of the same, or will there be changes that will have to be made in regards to NATO, neu­tral coun­tries which are no longer neu­tral, and the way the West seeks to “gov­ern” the world?

JB: This cri­sis reveals sev­er­al things. First, that NATO and the Euro­pean Union are only instru­ments of US for­eign pol­i­cy. These insti­tu­tions no longer act in the inter­ests of their mem­bers, but in the inter­ests of the US. The sanc­tions adopt­ed under Amer­i­can pres­sure are back­fir­ing on Europe, which is the big los­er in this whole cri­sis: it suf­fers its own sanc­tions and has to deal with the ten­sions result­ing from its own deci­sions.

The deci­sions tak­en by West­ern gov­ern­ments reveal a gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers who are young and inex­pe­ri­enced (such as Finnish Prime Min­is­ter San­na Marin); igno­rant, yet think­ing they are smart (such as French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron); doc­tri­naire (such as Euro­pean Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent Ursu­la von der Leyen); and fanat­i­cal (such as the lead­ers of the Baltic States). They all share some of the same weak­ness­es, not least of which is their inabil­i­ty to man­age a com­plex cri­sis.

When the head is unable to under­stand the com­plex­i­ty of a cri­sis, we respond with guts and dog­ma­tism. This is what we see hap­pen­ing in Europe. The East­ern Euro­pean coun­tries, espe­cial­ly the Baltic States and Poland, have shown them­selves to be loy­al ser­vants of Amer­i­can pol­i­cy. They have also shown imma­ture, con­fronta­tion­al, and short-sight­ed gov­er­nance. These are coun­tries that have nev­er inte­grat­ed West­ern val­ues, that con­tin­ue to cel­e­brate the forces of the Third Reich and dis­crim­i­nate against their own Russ­ian-speak­ing pop­u­la­tion.

I am not even men­tion­ing the Euro­pean Union, which has been vehe­ment­ly opposed to any diplo­mat­ic solu­tion and has only added fuel to the fire.

The more you are involved in a con­flict, the more you are involved in its out­come. If you win, all is well. But if the con­flict is a fail­ure, you will bear the bur­den. This is what has hap­pened to the Unit­ed States in recent con­flicts and what is hap­pen­ing in Ukraine. The defeat of Ukraine is becom­ing the defeat of the West.

Anoth­er big los­er in this con­flict is clear­ly Switzer­land. Its neu­tral sta­tus has sud­den­ly lost all cred­i­bil­i­ty. Ear­ly August, Switzer­land and Ukraine con­clud­ed an agree­ment that would allow the Swiss embassy in Moscow to offer pro­tec­tion to Ukrain­ian cit­i­zens in Rus­sia. How­ev­er, in order to enter into force, it has to be rec­og­nized by Rus­sia. Quite log­i­cal­ly, Rus­sia refused and declared that “Switzer­land had unfor­tu­nate­ly lost its sta­tus as a neu­tral state and could not act as an inter­me­di­ary or rep­re­sen­ta­tive.”

This is a very seri­ous devel­op­ment because neu­tral­i­ty is not sim­ply a uni­lat­er­al dec­la­ra­tion. It must be accept­ed and rec­og­nized by all to be effec­tive. Yet Switzer­land not only aligned itself with the West­ern coun­tries but was even more extreme than them. It can be said that in a few weeks, Switzer­land has ruined a pol­i­cy that has been rec­og­nized for almost 170 years. This is a prob­lem for Switzer­land, but it may also be a prob­lem for oth­er coun­tries. A neu­tral state can offer a way out of a cri­sis. Today, West­ern coun­tries are look­ing for a way out that would allow them to get clos­er to Rus­sia in the per­spec­tive of an ener­gy cri­sis with­out los­ing face. Turkey has tak­en on this role, but it is lim­it­ed, as it is part of NATO.

Fig­ure 3 – Coun­tries and orga­ni­za­tions that applied sanc­tions to Rus­sia. Although Switzer­land is a neu­tral coun­try, it stands on the first place. Accord­ing to own sources, this was done under pres­sure and black­mail from the Unit­ed States. Nev­er­the­less, this is a severe blow to the very prin­ci­ple of neu­tral­i­ty that will have con­se­quences in oth­er future con­flicts.

The West has cre­at­ed an Iron Cur­tain 2.0 that will affect inter­na­tion­al rela­tions for years to come. The West’s lack of strate­gic vision is aston­ish­ing. While NATO is align­ing itself with US for­eign pol­i­cy and reori­ent­ing itself towards Chi­na, West­ern strat­e­gy has only strength­ened the Moscow-Bei­jing axis.

TP: What do you think this war ulti­mate­ly means for Europe, the US and Chi­na?

JB: In order to answer this ques­tion, we first must answer anoth­er ques­tion: “Why is this con­flict more con­demnable and sanc­tion­able than pre­vi­ous con­flicts start­ed by the West?”

After the dis­as­ters of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Mali, the rest of the world expect­ed the West to help resolve this cri­sis with com­mon sense. The West respond­ed in exact­ly the oppo­site way to these expec­ta­tions. Not only has no one been able to explain why this con­flict was more rep­re­hen­si­ble than pre­vi­ous ones, but the dif­fer­ence in treat­ment between Rus­sia and the Unit­ed States has shown that more impor­tance is attached to the aggres­sor than to the vic­tims. Efforts to bring about the col­lapse of Rus­sia con­trast with the total impuni­ty of coun­tries that have lied to the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, prac­ticed tor­ture, caused the deaths of over a mil­lion peo­ple and cre­at­ed 37 mil­lion refugees.

This dif­fer­ence in treat­ment went unno­ticed in the West. But the “rest of the world” has under­stood that we have moved from a “law-based inter­na­tion­al order” to a “rules-based inter­na­tion­al order” deter­mined by the West.

On a more mate­r­i­al lev­el, the con­fis­ca­tion of Venezue­lan gold by the British in 2020, of Afghanistan’s sov­er­eign funds in 2021, and then of Russia’s sov­er­eign funds in 2022 by the US, has raised the mis­trust of the West’s allies. This shows that the non-West­ern world is no longer pro­tect­ed by law and depends on the good­will of the West.

This con­flict is prob­a­bly the start­ing point for a new world order. The world is not going to change all at once, but the con­flict has raised the atten­tion of the rest of the world. For when we say that the “inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty” con­demns Rus­sia, we are in fact talk­ing about 18% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion.

Some actors tra­di­tion­al­ly close to the West are grad­u­al­ly mov­ing away from it. On 15 July 2022, Joe Biden vis­it­ed Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) with two objec­tives: to pre­vent Sau­di Ara­bia from mov­ing clos­er to Rus­sia and Chi­na, and to ask him to increase its oil pro­duc­tion. But four days ear­li­er, MbS made an offi­cial request to become a mem­ber of the BRICS, and a week lat­er, on 21 July, MbS called Vladimir Putin to con­firm that he would stand by the OPEC+ deci­sion. In oth­er words: no oil pro­duc­tion increase. It was a slap in the face of the West and of its most pow­er­ful rep­re­sen­ta­tive.

Sau­di Ara­bia has now decid­ed to accept Chi­nese cur­ren­cy as pay­ment for its oil. This is a major event, which tends to indi­cate a loss of con­fi­dence in the dol­lar. The con­se­quences are poten­tial­ly huge. The petrodol­lar was estab­lished by the US in the 1970s to finance its deficit. By forc­ing oth­er coun­tries to buy dol­lars, it allows the US to print dol­lars with­out being caught in an infla­tion­ary loop. Thanks to the petrodol­lar, the US economy—which is essen­tial­ly a con­sumer economy—is sup­port­ed by the economies of oth­er coun­tries around the world. The demise of the petrodol­lar could have dis­as­trous con­se­quences for the US econ­o­my, as for­mer Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Ron Paul puts it.

In addi­tion, the sanc­tions have brought Chi­na and Rus­sia, both tar­get­ed by the West, clos­er togeth­er. This has accel­er­at­ed the for­ma­tion of a Eurasian bloc and strength­ened the posi­tion of both coun­tries in the world. India, which the US has scorned as a “sec­ond-class” part­ner of the “Quad,” has moved clos­er to Rus­sia and Chi­na, despite dis­putes with the lat­ter.

Today, Chi­na is the main provider of infra­struc­ture in the Third World. In par­tic­u­lar, its way of inter­act­ing with African coun­tries is more in line with the expec­ta­tions of these coun­tries. Col­lab­o­ra­tion with for­mer colo­nial pow­ers such as France and Amer­i­can impe­ri­al­ist pater­nal­ism are no longer wel­come. For exam­ple, the Cen­tral African Repub­lic and Mali have asked France to leave their coun­tries and have turned to Rus­sia.

At the Asso­ci­a­tion of South­east Asian Nations (ASEAN) sum­mit, the US proud­ly announced a $150 mil­lion con­tri­bu­tion to “strength­en its posi­tion in the broad­er geopo­lit­i­cal com­pe­ti­tion with Chi­na.” But in Novem­ber 2021, Pres­i­dent Xi Jin­ping offered $1.5 bil­lion to the same coun­tries to fight the pan­dem­ic and pro­mote eco­nom­ic recov­ery. By using its mon­ey to wage war, the US has no mon­ey left to forge and con­sol­i­date alliances.

The West’s loss of influ­ence stems from the fact that it con­tin­ues to treat the “rest of the world” like “lit­tle chil­dren” and neglects the use­ful­ness of good diplo­ma­cy.

The war in Ukraine is not the trig­ger for these phe­nom­e­na, which start­ed a few years ago, but it is most cer­tain­ly an eye-open­er and accel­er­a­tor.

TP: The west­ern media has been push­ing that Putin may be seri­ous­ly ill. If Putin sud­den­ly dies, would this make any dif­fer­ence at all to the war?

JB: It seems that Vladimir Putin is a unique med­ical case in the world: he has stom­ach can­cer, leuke­mia, an unknown but incur­able and ter­mi­nal phase dis­ease, and is report­ed­ly already dead. Yet in July 2022, at the Aspen Secu­ri­ty Forum, CIA Direc­tor William Burns said that Putin was “too healthy” and that there was “no infor­ma­tion to sug­gest that he is in poor health.” This shows how those who claim to be jour­nal­ists work!

This is wish­ful think­ing and, on the high­er end of the spec­trum, it echoes the calls for ter­ror­ism and the phys­i­cal elim­i­na­tion of Vladimir Putin.

The West has per­son­al­ized Russ­ian pol­i­tics through Putin, because he is the one who pro­mot­ed the recon­struc­tion of Rus­sia after the Yeltsin years. Amer­i­cans like to be cham­pi­ons when there are no com­peti­tors and see oth­ers as ene­mies. This is the case with Ger­many, Europe, Rus­sia and Chi­na.

But our “experts” know lit­tle about Russ­ian pol­i­tics. For in real­i­ty, Vladimir Putin is more of a “dove” in the Russ­ian polit­i­cal land­scape. Giv­en the cli­mate that we have cre­at­ed with Rus­sia, it would not be impos­si­ble that his dis­ap­pear­ance would lead to the emer­gence of more aggres­sive forces. We should not for­get that coun­tries like Esto­nia, Latvia, Lithua­nia, Poland or Geor­gia have nev­er devel­oped Euro­pean demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues. They still have dis­crim­i­na­to­ry poli­cies towards their eth­nic Rus­sians that are far from Euro­pean val­ues, and they behave like imma­ture agents provo­ca­teurs. I think that if Putin were to dis­ap­pear for some rea­son, the con­flicts with these coun­tries would take on a new dimen­sion.

TP: How uni­fied is Rus­sia present­ly? Has the war cre­at­ed a more seri­ous oppo­si­tion than what pre­vi­ous­ly exist­ed with­in Rus­sia?

JB: No, on the con­trary. The Amer­i­can and Euro­pean lead­ers have a poor under­stand­ing of their ene­my: the Russ­ian peo­ple are very patri­ot­ic and cohe­sive. West­ern obses­sion to “pun­ish” the Russ­ian peo­ple has only brought them clos­er to their lead­ers. In fact, by seek­ing to divide Russ­ian soci­ety in an effort to over­throw the gov­ern­ment, West­ern sanctions—including the dumb­est ones—have con­firmed what the Krem­lin has been say­ing for years: that the West has a pro­found hatred of Rus­sians. What was once said to be a lie is now con­firmed in Russ­ian opin­ion. The con­se­quence is that the people’s trust in the gov­ern­ment has grown stronger.

The approval rat­ings giv­en by the Lev­a­da Cen­tre (con­sid­ered by the Russ­ian author­i­ties as a “for­eign agent”) show that pub­lic opin­ion has tight­ened around Vladimir Putin and the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment. In Jan­u­ary 2022, Vladimir Putin’s approval rat­ing was 69% and the government’s was 53%. Today, Putin’s approval rat­ing has been sta­ble at around 83% since March, and the government’s is at 71%. In Jan­u­ary, 29% did not approve of Vladimir Putin’s deci­sions, in July it was only 15%.

Accord­ing to the Lev­a­da Cen­tre, even the Russ­ian oper­a­tion in Ukraine enjoys a major­i­ty of favor­able opin­ions. In March, 81% of Rus­sians were in favor of the oper­a­tion; this fig­ure dropped to 74%, prob­a­bly due to the impact of sanc­tions at the end of March, and then it went back up. In July 2022, the oper­a­tion had 76% pop­u­lar sup­port.

Fig­ure 4 – Not all Rus­sians sup­port the spe­cial oper­a­tion in Ukraine, but three quar­ters of the pop­u­la­tion do. Ukrain­ian war crimes, West­ern sanc­tions and the good man­age­ment of the econ­o­my by the Russ­ian author­i­ties explain this sup­port. [Source]

The prob­lem is that our jour­nal­ists have nei­ther cul­ture nor jour­nal­is­tic dis­ci­pline and they replace them with their own beliefs. It is a form of con­spir­a­cy that aims to cre­ate a false real­i­ty based on what one believes and not on the facts. For exam­ple, few know (or want to know) that Alek­sey Naval­ny said he would not return Crimea to Ukraine. The West’s actions have com­plete­ly wiped out the oppo­si­tion, not because of “Putin’s repres­sion,” but because in Rus­sia, resis­tance to for­eign inter­fer­ence and the West’s deep con­tempt for Rus­sians is a bipar­ti­san cause. Exact­ly like the hatred of Rus­sians in the West. This is why per­son­al­i­ties like Alek­sey Naval­ny, who nev­er had a very high pop­u­lar­i­ty, have com­plete­ly dis­ap­peared from the pop­u­lar media land­scape.

More­over, even if the sanc­tions have had a neg­a­tive impact on the Russ­ian econ­o­my, the way the gov­ern­ment has han­dled things since 2014 shows a great mas­tery of eco­nom­ic mech­a­nisms and a great real­ism in assess­ing the sit­u­a­tion. There is a rise in prices in Rus­sia, but it is much low­er than in Europe, and while West­ern economies are rais­ing their key inter­est rates, Rus­sia is low­er­ing its own.

The Russ­ian jour­nal­ist Mari­na Ovsyan­niko­va has been exem­pli­fied as an expres­sion of the oppo­si­tion in Rus­sia. Her case is inter­est­ing because, as usu­al, we do not say every­thing.

On 14 March 2022, she pro­voked inter­na­tion­al applause by inter­rupt­ing the Russ­ian First Chan­nel news pro­gram with a poster call­ing for end­ing the war in Ukraine. She was arrest­ed and fined $280.

In May, the Ger­man news­pa­per Die Welt offered her a job in Ger­many, but in Berlin, pro-Ukrain­ian activists demon­strat­ed to get the news­pa­per to end its col­lab­o­ra­tion with her. The media out­let Politi­co even sug­gest­ed that she might be an agent of the Krem­lin!

As a result, in June 2022, she left Ger­many to live in Odessa, her home­town. But instead of being grate­ful, the Ukraini­ans put her on the Mirotvorets black­list where she is accused of trea­son, “par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Kremlin’s spe­cial infor­ma­tion and pro­pa­gan­da oper­a­tions” and “com­plic­i­ty with the invaders.”

The Mirotvorets web­site is a “hit list” for politi­cians, jour­nal­ists or per­son­al­i­ties who do not share the opin­ion of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. Sev­er­al of the peo­ple on the list have been mur­dered. In Octo­ber 2019, the UN request­ed the clo­sure of the site, but this was refused by the Rada. It should be not­ed that none of our main­stream media has con­demned this prac­tice, which is very far from the val­ues they claim to defend. In oth­er words, our media sup­port these prac­tices that used to be attrib­uted to South Amer­i­can regimes.

Fig­ure 5 – Darya Dug­i­na marked as “Liq­ui­dat­ed.”

Ovsyan­niko­va then returned to Rus­sia, where she demon­strat­ed against the war, call­ing Putin a “killer,” and was arrest­ed by the police and placed under house arrest for three months. At this point, our media protest­ed.

It is worth not­ing that Russ­ian jour­nal­ist Darya Dug­i­na, the vic­tim of a bomb attack in Moscow on 21 August 2022, was on the Mirotvorets list and her file was marked “liq­ui­dat­ed.” Of course, no West­ern media men­tioned that she was tar­get­ed by the Mirotvorets web­site, which is con­sid­ered to be linked to the SBU, as this would tend to sup­port Russia’s accu­sa­tions.

Ger­man jour­nal­ist Ali­na Lipp, whose rev­e­la­tions about Ukrain­ian and West­ern crimes in the Don­bass are dis­turb­ing, has been placed on the web­site Mirotvorets. More­over, Ali­na Lipp was sen­tenced in absen­tia to three years in prison by a Ger­man court for claim­ing that Russ­ian troops had “lib­er­at­ed” areas in Ukraine and thus “glo­ri­fied crim­i­nal activ­i­ties.” As can be seen, the Ger­man author­i­ties are func­tion­ing like the neo-Nazi ele­ments in Ukraine. Today’s politi­cians are a cred­it to their grand­par­ents!

One can con­clude that even if there are some peo­ple who oppose the war, Russ­ian pub­lic opin­ion is over­whelm­ing­ly behind its gov­ern­ment. West­ern sanc­tions have only strength­ened the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the Russ­ian pres­i­dent.

Ulti­mate­ly, my point is not to take the same approach as our media and replace the hatred of Rus­sia with that of Ukraine. On the con­trary, it is to show that the world is not either black or white and that West­ern coun­tries have tak­en the sit­u­a­tion too far. Those who are com­pas­sion­ate about Ukraine should have pushed our gov­ern­ments to imple­ment the agreed polit­i­cal solu­tions in 2014 and 2015. They haven’t done any­thing and are now push­ing Ukraine to fight. But we are no longer in 2021. Today, we have to accept the con­se­quences of our non-deci­sions and help Ukraine to recov­er. But this must not be done at the expense of its Russ­ian-speak­ing pop­u­la­tion, as we have done until now, but with the Russ­ian-speak­ing peo­ple, in an inclu­sive man­ner. If I look at the media in France, Switzer­land and Bel­gium, we are still very far from the goal.

TP: Thank you so very much, Mr. Baud, for this most enlight­en­ing dis­cus­sion.

 

 

Discussion

34 comments for “FTR#‘s 1259 and 1260 How Many Lies Before You Belong to The Lies?, Parts 21 & 22”

  1. There’s no short­age of dis­turb­ing news cat­e­gories. But few cat­e­gories of sto­ries are more fun­da­men­tal­ly dis­turb­ing than sto­ries that should have been news but was­n’t. Sto­ries that just fell down the mem­o­ry hole. Or worse, were forced down the mem­o­ry hole. No news is very bad news in those kinds of sit­u­a­tions, because when a sto­ry is forced down the mem­o­ry hole it’s usu­al­ly a very impor­tant sto­ry. Impor­tant and sen­si­tive.

    That brings us to the lat­est sto­ry about Nazis in Ukraine to be shoved down the mem­o­ry hole. A sto­ry that real­ly tells itself because it’s a sto­ry about a sim­ple pho­to­graph: a PR pho­to-op made by Ukraine’s Pres­i­dent Zelen­sky in the recent­ly recap­tured city of Izyum last week. A pho­to with a sol­dier who appears to be part of Zelenksy’s per­son­al guard stand­ing direct­ly behind him, with a Totenkopf ‘Death’s Head’ patch on his back­pack. The patch is near­ly adja­cent to Zelenksy’s head in the pho­to and not hard to make out. In fact, peo­ple on the inter­net iden­ti­fied it almost imme­di­ate­ly. It’s unmis­tak­ably the same patch. Right there next to Zelenksy in a PR pho­to op.

    The pho­to did­n’t last long on Twit­ter. Zelenksy’s Face­book and Telegram accounts qui­et­ly took it down. Twit­ter then pro­ceed­ed to cen­sors a Mint­Press tweet of the pho­to as “sen­si­tive-con­tent”. And that, for the most part, was the end of the sto­ry. The whole inci­dent came and went with­out com­men­tary oth­er than the fol­low­ing Gray­zone report. The Pres­i­dent of Ukraine was being guard­ed by overt Nazis for a pho­to op and it’s such a non-sto­ry that it was active­ly ignored, cen­sored, and shoved down the mem­o­ry inter­net hole:

    The Gray­zone

    Zelen­sky qui­et­ly deletes pho­to of his bodyguard’s pro-Hitler patch

    Alexan­der Rubin­stein
    Sep­tem­ber 15, 2022

    The Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent pub­lished a pho­to­graph on his social media chan­nels show­ing one of his secu­ri­ty escorts bear­ing a patch ref­er­enc­ing the per­son­al body­guard unit of Adolf Hitler.

    On Sep­tem­ber 13, Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Vlodymyr Zelen­sky made a sur­prise trip to the city of Izyum in the Kharkov Region for a pho­to op fol­low­ing his military’s recap­ture of the town from Russ­ian forces. Dur­ing the vis­it, a sol­dier who appeared to be guard­ing Zelen­sky was pho­tographed wear­ing a Nazi-inspired patch on his uni­form.

    When the image drew crit­i­cism on social media, the Ukrain­ian president’s offi­cial Telegram and Face­book accounts qui­et­ly delet­ed it.

    In Izyum on Sep­tem­ber 14, Zelen­sky par­tic­i­pat­ed in a flag rais­ing cer­e­mo­ny to the tune of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Anthem and took self­ies with local civil­ians and sol­diers. While most of the men on the scene wore offi­cial mil­i­tary fatigues, it was not dif­fi­cult to see which ones were for lack of a bet­ter term, work­ing, and which ones were sim­ply present to par­tic­i­pate in the event.

    One pho­to­graph post­ed on Zelensky’s Telegram and Face­book accounts (archived here and here) cap­tured the pres­i­dent as he posed for self­ies with Ukrain­ian troops. As Zelen­sky flashed a smile for the cam­era of a cheer­ful ser­vice mem­ber, he was flanked by a heav­i­ly equipped sol­dier stand­ing guard and fac­ing the oppo­site direc­tion. Just over Zelensky’s right shoul­der, a small but sig­nif­i­cant patch could be seen on the back of the soldier’s flak vest.

    Social media users quick­ly iden­ti­fied the sym­bol. It was derived from the “Totenkopf,” (Ger­man for “Death’s Head”), an insignia wide­ly used in Nazi Ger­many. Badges incor­po­rat­ing the skull and bones motif were pop­u­lar­ized by Germany’s Death’s Head Units, whose orig­i­nal task was to serve as guards at con­cen­tra­tion camps. In Octo­ber 1939, some 6,500 mem­bers were task as front­line fight­ers in the attempt­ed con­quest of Europe and the Sovi­et Union, car­ry­ing out war crimes and eth­nic cleans­ing on their way.

    Zelensky’s body­guard appeared to sport a slight­ly altered ver­sion of the SS-Totenkopf’s patch; it was miss­ing the cross­bones and the skull was wear­ing a hel­met.

    How­ev­er, this reporter was able to find three online ven­dors based in Ukraine that sell the patch, which is brand­ed the “Oper­a­tor Skull” and man­u­fac­tured by a com­pa­ny called R3ICH, an explic­it ref­er­ence to Nazi Ger­many.

    While a clear and siz­able shot of the insignia dec­o­rat­ing Zelensky’s appar­ent body­guard has yet to emerge, enhanced ren­der­ings of the image demon­strate he was clear­ly sport­ing the same design man­u­fac­tured by R3ICH. Both badges fea­ture a skull wear­ing a hel­met, the head­gear is vir­tu­al­ly iden­ti­cal, the nose and eye holes share the same amount of space between them, the sil­hou­ettes are indis­tin­guish­able, and the tal­ly marks drawn on the hel­met appear in the same loca­tion.

    A clos­er look at the R3ICH’s “Oper­a­tor Skull” patch reveals an even more dis­turb­ing detail: a skele­ton key dis­played on the top right of the hel­met is a clear ref­er­ence to SS Divi­sion Leib­stan­darte, or Leib­stan­darte SS Adolf Hitler — Hitler’s per­son­al body­guard unit. The unit lat­er evolved into a Panz­er, or armored tank divi­sion and, like the Totenkopf, par­tic­i­pat­ed in sev­er­al inva­sions through­out Europe and the Sovi­et Union.

    While the SS Divi­sion Leib­stan­darte made its way through Kharkov — where this week Zelensky’s body­guard was pho­tographed with the “Oper­a­tor Skull” patch — dur­ing the Sec­ond World War, one of its units earned the nick­name “Blow­torch Bat­tal­ion” for its habit of burn­ing down Russ­ian-speak­ing vil­lages.

    After this reporter took to social media to report that Zelensky’s body­guard appeared to be wear­ing the “Oper­a­tor Skull” patch, no less than eight Twit­ter users assert­ed the image was pho­to­shopped. Shock­ing­ly, Twit­ter even deemed Mint­Press News’ tweet about the pho­to­graph to be “sen­si­tive con­tent,” an appar­ent attempt at dam­age con­trol on Zelensky’s behalf that reduced the image’s vis­i­bil­i­ty on the plat­form.

    The sight­ing of the Nazi patch recalled a 2018 inci­dent in which then-Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko posed with sol­diers bear­ing plac­ard fea­tur­ing the Nazi Totenkopf sym­bol. Newsweek spu­ri­ous­ly claimed, “The image includ­ed a skull and bones that appear to have been Pho­to­shopped onto the pho­to­graph of the Ukrain­ian troops.” How­ev­er, as The Gray­zone report­ed, the sol­dier stand­ing direct­ly beside Poroshenko was wear­ing the Nazi-inspired patch on his chest. The para­troop­ers lat­er apol­o­gized for dis­play­ing the Nazi sym­bol, fur­ther dis­cred­it­ing Newsweek’s spin.

    ...

    ———-

    “Zelen­sky qui­et­ly deletes pho­to of his bodyguard’s pro-Hitler patch” by Alexan­der Rubin­stein; The Gray­zone; 09/15/2022

    “When the image drew crit­i­cism on social media, the Ukrain­ian president’s offi­cial Telegram and Face­book accounts qui­et­ly delet­ed it.”

    It was an after­thought. That’s the sig­nif­i­cance of this sto­ry. It’s such a rou­tine occur­rence to see sol­diers sport­ing Nazi insignia that no one even both­ered to won­der if it was a good idea to have a ‘Death’s Head’ Totenkopf patch adja­cent to Zelen­sky’s head in this pho­to. Again, this was a pho­to op. They were pos­ing to take a pic­ture that would be shown across the world. And no one thought this was a prob­lem until it was post­ed on the inter­net and a bunch of peo­ple imme­di­ate­ly point­ed out what should have been total­ly obvi­ous:

    ...
    One pho­to­graph post­ed on Zelensky’s Telegram and Face­book accounts (archived here and here) cap­tured the pres­i­dent as he posed for self­ies with Ukrain­ian troops. As Zelen­sky flashed a smile for the cam­era of a cheer­ful ser­vice mem­ber, he was flanked by a heav­i­ly equipped sol­dier stand­ing guard and fac­ing the oppo­site direc­tion. Just over Zelensky’s right shoul­der, a small but sig­nif­i­cant patch could be seen on the back of the soldier’s flak vest.

    Social media users quick­ly iden­ti­fied the sym­bol. It was derived from the “Totenkopf,” (Ger­man for “Death’s Head”), an insignia wide­ly used in Nazi Ger­many. Badges incor­po­rat­ing the skull and bones motif were pop­u­lar­ized by Germany’s Death’s Head Units, whose orig­i­nal task was to serve as guards at con­cen­tra­tion camps. In Octo­ber 1939, some 6,500 mem­bers were task as front­line fight­ers in the attempt­ed con­quest of Europe and the Sovi­et Union, car­ry­ing out war crimes and eth­nic cleans­ing on their way.
    ...

    And note the sell­er of this patch: a com­pa­ny called R3ICH. The patch even had a ref­er­ence to Hitler’s SS body­guard unit. Sub­tle:

    ...
    Zelensky’s body­guard appeared to sport a slight­ly altered ver­sion of the SS-Totenkopf’s patch; it was miss­ing the cross­bones and the skull was wear­ing a hel­met.

    How­ev­er, this reporter was able to find three online ven­dors based in Ukraine that sell the patch, which is brand­ed the “Oper­a­tor Skull” and man­u­fac­tured by a com­pa­ny called R3ICH, an explic­it ref­er­ence to Nazi Ger­many.

    ...

    A clos­er look at the R3ICH’s “Oper­a­tor Skull” patch reveals an even more dis­turb­ing detail: a skele­ton key dis­played on the top right of the hel­met is a clear ref­er­ence to SS Divi­sion Leib­stan­darte, or Leib­stan­darte SS Adolf Hitler — Hitler’s per­son­al body­guard unit. The unit lat­er evolved into a Panz­er, or armored tank divi­sion and, like the Totenkopf, par­tic­i­pat­ed in sev­er­al inva­sions through­out Europe and the Sovi­et Union.
    ...

    And as before — when Petro Poroshenko had his own ‘Death’s Head’ moment in 2018 — the main­stream media start­ed off by play­ing dam­age con­trol:

    ...
    After this reporter took to social media to report that Zelensky’s body­guard appeared to be wear­ing the “Oper­a­tor Skull” patch, no less than eight Twit­ter users assert­ed the image was pho­to­shopped. Shock­ing­ly, Twit­ter even deemed Mint­Press News’ tweet about the pho­to­graph to be “sen­si­tive con­tent,” an appar­ent attempt at dam­age con­trol on Zelensky’s behalf that reduced the image’s vis­i­bil­i­ty on the plat­form.

    The sight­ing of the Nazi patch recalled a 2018 inci­dent in which then-Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko posed with sol­diers bear­ing plac­ard fea­tur­ing the Nazi Totenkopf sym­bol. Newsweek spu­ri­ous­ly claimed, “The image includ­ed a skull and bones that appear to have been Pho­to­shopped onto the pho­to­graph of the Ukrain­ian troops.” How­ev­er, as The Gray­zone report­ed, the sol­dier stand­ing direct­ly beside Poroshenko was wear­ing the Nazi-inspired patch on his chest. The para­troop­ers lat­er apol­o­gized for dis­play­ing the Nazi sym­bol, fur­ther dis­cred­it­ing Newsweek’s spin.
    ...

    This time it was Twit­ter cen­sor­ing, which makes this a good time to recall how Twit­ter has been aggres­sive­ly hir­ing senior staff from US nation­al secu­ri­ty agen­cies. Back in 2018 it was Newsweek. But as we’ve seen so many times, part of what makes this phe­nom­e­na so dis­turb­ing is how the West­ern media has effec­tive­ly white­washed its own cov­er­age of these groups as the con­flict has deep­ened and the rules of what’s ‘accept­able’ shift­ed. And that makes this a great time to take a look back at an impor­tant piece by Christo­pher Miller pub­lished in Buz­zFeed in Jan­u­ary of this year, weeks before the war broke out. As Miller’s report makes clear, when you see a solid­er with a Totenkopf on their uni­form, you’re very like­ly look­ing at a mem­ber of the Azov Batal­lion. And as Azov mem­bers also make clear, they have big plans for Ukraine. Long-term plans that go well beyond the cur­rent con­flict. Plans for Ukraine’s future that, in the words of one of the Azov mem­bers inter­viewed for this report, are “some­thing that in your coun­try you can’t say”:

    Buz­zFeed News

    Ukraine’s Far-Right Forces See An Oppor­tu­ni­ty In Russia’s Inva­sion Threat To Grow Their Vio­lent Move­ment

    The US sees the Azov move­ment as a “nation­al­ist hate group,” and human rights groups have accused it of tor­tur­ing civil­ians. But the far-right group is also pre­pared to fight for Ukraine, which is in need of troops against Russia’s stronger forces.

    Christo­pher Miller
    Buz­zFeed News Reporter
    Map of Kyiv, Ukraine

    Report­ing From Kyiv, Ukraine
    Post­ed on Jan­u­ary 31, 2022 at 4:59 pm

    KYIV — The first weapon pulled from the brown sacks deliv­ered in the back of a van was a shoul­der-fired rock­et-pro­pelled grenade launch­er. A machine gun fol­lowed. Then came oth­er high-pow­ered guns and explo­sives.

    The weapons were dis­played by burly men wear­ing mil­i­tary uni­forms adorned with an array of Nazi sym­bols: the SS-favored Totenkopf, per­haps bet­ter known as death’s head; the son­nen­rad, or black sun; the Wolf­san­gel; and many more. One patch with a masked skull read, “Born to kill for Ukraine.”

    As more sacks streamed in, it became appar­ent that the men had brought a small arse­nal. Where the arms came from is some­what of a mys­tery. One man said he had tak­en sev­er­al from the front line in east­ern Ukraine after fight­ing there in 2014 and 2015; anoth­er said it was a “state secret.”

    The weapons didn’t belong to any offi­cial mil­i­tary force but to mem­bers of Ukraine’s far-right Azov move­ment.

    As the world waits to see whether Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin uses the more than 100,000 troops massed at Ukraine’s bor­der to esca­late his 8‑year-long war against the coun­try, Ukraini­ans are prepar­ing to fight back. Among them are far-right para­mil­i­tary forces that also see this moment as a way to raise their pro­file, secure pop­u­lar favor, and pos­si­bly gain polit­i­cal influ­ence.

    And as they pre­pare, far-right extrem­ists across the West are watch­ing close­ly to see whether they will be suc­cess­ful — in both bat­tling Russ­ian forces and cement­ing their move­ment in the main­stream.

    The US State Depart­ment has called Azov a “nation­al­ist hate group,” human rights orga­ni­za­tions have accused it of abus­ing and tor­tur­ing civil­ians, and Face­book banned it for vio­lat­ing its hate speech rules. Experts who mon­i­tor transna­tion­al extrem­ism have warned that Azov has served as inspi­ra­tion for far-right groups in the US and the EU, and Buz­zFeed News has report­ed on Amer­i­can extrem­ists who went to Ukraine to train with the move­ment and learn from it in hopes of repli­cat­ing it back home.

    But many Ukraini­ans view the group’s mem­bers favor­ably, for their role in fight­ing Russia’s army and sep­a­ratist proxy forces in 2014 and play­ing a key role in keep­ing the strate­gic east­ern port city of Mar­i­upol from falling into Moscow’s hands.

    The far right are not just attract­ed to Ukraine. Russ­ian far-right para­mil­i­tary forces with neo-Nazi mem­bers have also fought in the war. And there are some clues that per­haps they are look­ing to also return to the bat­tle­field.

    The Azov move­ment, born from the war as a vol­un­teer bat­tal­ion eight years ago, is com­posed of a para­mil­i­tary wing, a polit­i­cal branch, and youth and cul­tur­al groups. The bat­tal­ion is now an offi­cial reg­i­ment in Ukraine’s Nation­al Guard. Tak­en togeth­er, Azov has thou­sands of mem­bers, includ­ing hun­dreds of heav­i­ly armed and bat­tle-hard­ened fight­ers who enjoy a cozy rela­tion­ship with Ukraine’s secu­ri­ty struc­tures.

    On Sun­day, Buz­zFeed News got an up-close look at just how cozy, when dozens of them brought weapons to a mil­i­tary train­ing ses­sion for Ukraini­ans who want to be ready to fight Russ­ian troops if they enter the cap­i­tal. Azov’s var­i­ous fac­tions pro­mot­ed the event on Telegram with the catch­phrase, “Don’t pan­ic! Pre­pare your­self!” Some 350 par­tic­i­pants turned out for it at the movement’s sprawl­ing train­ing base on the grounds of a defunct state trac­tor fac­to­ry out­side cen­tral Kyiv.

    “Will there be a full-scale Russ­ian inva­sion? Nobody knows. But what I know for sure is that we need to pre­pare for any devel­op­ment,” Maksym Zhorin, a 32-year-old for­mer Azov Bat­tal­ion com­man­der who now serves as a leader of its polit­i­cal wing, the Nation­al Corps, told a group of trainees stand­ing in for­ma­tion. “Pan­ic comes when peo­ple do not know how to react, how to use a weapon, how to defend them­selves, what to do in case of shoot­ing.”

    But in this pre­car­i­ous moment, Azov also sees an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pol­ish its image in Ukraine and abroad, grow its ranks, and earn some polit­i­cal and social cap­i­tal.

    “I believe our role is high­ly impor­tant because it’s an exam­ple of a grass­roots Ukrain­ian move­ment that’s proven itself to be a suf­fi­cient defense force,” Ole­na Semenya­ka, a pub­lic rela­tions offi­cial for Azov, told Buz­zFeed News at the train­ing event. “I think [Azov] can also play a big­ger role [in Ukraine] in the future.”

    That prospect con­cerns experts who have tracked Azov and oth­er mil­i­ta­rized far-right groups in Ukraine that use their sta­tus as war “heroes” to attack minor­i­ty groups with impuni­ty and their street mus­cle to try to influ­ence Ukrain­ian domes­tic pol­i­cy.

    “I wor­ry that a new war with Rus­sia could not only help the Azov move­ment, but basi­cal­ly be the wind in its sails that it needs to grow its ranks and influ­ence,” Michael Col­borne, author of From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Move­ment and the Glob­al Far Right and a jour­nal­ist who cov­ers extrem­ism for Belling­cat, told Buz­zFeed News.. “A new war or some new inter­ven­tion by Rus­sia could very well pro­vide them the oppor­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther solid­i­fy their pres­ence in Ukrain­ian pol­i­tics and soci­ety, a fur­ther oppor­tu­ni­ty to brand and frame them­selves as the truest defend­ers of the nation and thus fur­ther swat away accu­sa­tions that come from peo­ple like me about their far-right nature.”

    Azov is at home at war.

    In 2014, Ukraine’s under-equipped and unpre­pared mil­i­tary fal­tered as a much larg­er and more sophis­ti­cat­ed Russ­ian army seized Crimea and foment­ed a faux sep­a­ratist war in the east­ern Don­bas region. Many Ukraini­ans believe Russ­ian forces would have tak­en more ter­ri­to­ry if it weren’t for dozens of vol­un­teer bat­tal­ions like Azov and Right Sec­tor, anoth­er far-right vol­un­teer unit, who leaped into the fray and filled the void left by Ukraine’s mil­i­tary.

    The groups quick­ly became some of Russia’s favorite tar­gets, and the coun­try used them to jus­ti­fy attacks against Ukraine as fight­ing against “fas­cists” who had seized con­trol in Kyiv after the pro-Russ­ian pres­i­dent, Vik­tor Yanukovych, was oust­ed in Feb­ru­ary 2014.

    The truth is that Azov and Right Sec­tor fight­ers nev­er came to pow­er in Kyiv, although sev­er­al mem­bers did serve stints in par­lia­ment and the Inte­ri­or Min­istry, and some cur­rent­ly serve as mil­i­tary advis­ers. And Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment was then and is still today a demo­c­ra­t­ic one, if flawed.

    But Azov’s neo-Nazi links are clear. In 2010, the battalion’s founder, Andriy Bilet­sky, said that Ukraine should “lead the white races of the world in a final cru­sade … against Semi­te-led Unter­men­schen [sub­hu­mans].” (He couldn’t be reached for com­ment.) And mem­bers of Azov boast tat­toos of swastikas and oth­er Nazi sym­bols, and they have been seen mak­ing the Hitler salute.

    That rep­u­ta­tion is what attracts many Ukraini­ans, like Dany­lo Hrabovskiy, a 21-year-old who’s study­ing to be a mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cer at the Ivan Chernyakhovsky Nation­al Defense Uni­ver­si­ty of Ukraine in Kyiv. Buz­zFeed News shad­owed him as he trudged through shin-deep snow on Sun­day. Hrabovskiy’s father, Yaroslav, a retired Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cer, was there too. He said he want­ed his son to get prac­ti­cal train­ing in bat­tle­field med­i­cine and han­dling a weapon.

    Hrabovskiy, who wore fatigues adorned with the patch of his uni­ver­si­ty, said he felt like he was among “fam­i­ly” with the Azov group. “It’s like when you come to church and you feel some­thing in your heart,” he explained.

    He said he aligned with Azov ide­o­log­i­cal­ly and hopes the group will rise to pow­er from the ash­es of a war with Rus­sia to form a “nation­al­ist-social­ist” gov­ern­ment. And if he could help in his role as a mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cer when he grad­u­ates in four months, he said, all the bet­ter.

    Some­one say­ing they are in favor of “nation­al social­ism,” Col­borne said, “whether in Eng­lish or in Russ­ian or Ukrain­ian, is an unam­bigu­ous ref­er­ence to Nazism and Nazi-inspired ide­olo­gies.”

    Asked explic­it­ly if what he meant was Nazism, Hrabovskiy said with a seri­ous stare that he want­ed to con­vey “some­thing that in your coun­try you can’t say.”

    “If the far-right forces can unite, then we will go to par­lia­ment and make laws that reflect our ideas and goals,” he added.

    Not every­one at the Azov train­ing was ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned with the group. Sofia and Solomiya, twin 30-year-old mil­i­tary para­medics from the west­ern city of Lviv, said they chose to come to the Azov event as opposed to oth­er sim­i­lar ones in Kyiv because of the group’s rep­u­ta­tion for being “strong” and “skilled,” Sofia said.

    Solomiya said the pair had nev­er fired a weapon, but with the threat of renewed large-scale war with Rus­sia loom­ing, they felt it was time to learn how to do so.

    Inside an aban­doned build­ing spray-paint­ed with nation­al­ist slo­gans, the pair were giv­en wood­en cutouts of Kalash­nikov rifles and instruct­ed how to hold them. The twins’ instruc­tor was a beard­ed Azov Bat­tal­ion vet­er­an with a col­lec­tion of far-right nation­al­ist patch­es on his uni­form. A black death’s head was vis­i­ble on his bul­let­proof vest beside a “Val­hal­la tick­et” that includ­ed the num­bers 88 and 14 — numer­i­cal codes for “Heil Hitler” and the 14 words, a pop­u­lar white suprema­cist slo­gan.

    The instruc­tor showed the twins how to hold their wood­en weapon with their left hand firm­ly grasp­ing the low­er guard and their right com­fort­ably wrapped around the grip with their trig­ger fin­ger straight­ened at the side.

    As the women stood in a fir­ing posi­tion, he pushed on the bar­rels of their rifles, test­ing to see whether they were in a strong stance and couldn’t be knocked over.

    “Move your left leg back a bit,” the instruc­tor said. “And bring up the rifle more.”

    Near­by, dozens of oth­ers trained to clear rooms of “ter­ror­ists.” An instruc­tor taught a young man with a shaved head and a Nazi sym­bol on his sleeve how to effec­tive­ly swing his rifle around to check his six o’clock.

    Azov is train­ing the Ukrain­ian pop­u­la­tion because, Zhorin said, Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky, who also serves as the country’s supreme com­man­der in chief, hasn’t done enough to mil­i­ta­rize soci­ety and pre­pare it for war and has down­played the threat.

    ...

    ————–

    “Ukraine’s Far-Right Forces See An Oppor­tu­ni­ty In Russia’s Inva­sion Threat To Grow Their Vio­lent Move­ment” by Christo­pher Miller; Buz­zFeed News; 01/31/2022

    “The US State Depart­ment has called Azov a “nation­al­ist hate group,” human rights orga­ni­za­tions have accused it of abus­ing and tor­tur­ing civil­ians, and Face­book banned it for vio­lat­ing its hate speech rules. Experts who mon­i­tor transna­tion­al extrem­ism have warned that Azov has served as inspi­ra­tion for far-right groups in the US and the EU, and Buz­zFeed News has report­ed on Amer­i­can extrem­ists who went to Ukraine to train with the move­ment and learn from it in hopes of repli­cat­ing it back home.”

    It was just 2018 when the US State Depart­ment called Azov a nation­al­ist hate group. And Jan­u­ary of this year, less than a month before this con­flict, when we were get­ting these reports on the dan­ger­ous nature of these groups. And then the war broke out and now every­one has to pre­tend that the pres­i­dent of Ukraine isn’t being per­son­al­ly guard­ed by Azov Nazis known for their Totenkopf patch­es:

    ...
    The weapons were dis­played by burly men wear­ing mil­i­tary uni­forms adorned with an array of Nazi sym­bols: the SS-favored Totenkopf, per­haps bet­ter known as death’s head; the son­nen­rad, or black sun; the Wolf­san­gel; and many more. One patch with a masked skull read, “Born to kill for Ukraine.”

    As more sacks streamed in, it became appar­ent that the men had brought a small arse­nal. Where the arms came from is some­what of a mys­tery. One man said he had tak­en sev­er­al from the front line in east­ern Ukraine after fight­ing there in 2014 and 2015; anoth­er said it was a “state secret.”

    The weapons didn’t belong to any offi­cial mil­i­tary force but to mem­bers of Ukraine’s far-right Azov move­ment.
    ...

    And note how the Azov mem­ber who issues that chill­ing com­men about how their goals are “some­thing that in your coun­try you can’t say,” is him­self an aspir­ing mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cer hail­ing from a fam­i­ly of mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cers. The Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Ukraine’s mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cers: that’s about as big a red flag as you can get for the future of your coun­try:

    ...
    But Azov’s neo-Nazi links are clear. In 2010, the battalion’s founder, Andriy Bilet­sky, said that Ukraine should “lead the white races of the world in a final cru­sade … against Semi­te-led Unter­men­schen [sub­hu­mans].” (He couldn’t be reached for com­ment.) And mem­bers of Azov boast tat­toos of swastikas and oth­er Nazi sym­bols, and they have been seen mak­ing the Hitler salute.

    That rep­u­ta­tion is what attracts many Ukraini­ans, like Dany­lo Hrabovskiy, a 21-year-old who’s study­ing to be a mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cer at the Ivan Chernyakhovsky Nation­al Defense Uni­ver­si­ty of Ukraine in Kyiv. Buz­zFeed News shad­owed him as he trudged through shin-deep snow on Sun­day. Hrabovskiy’s father, Yaroslav, a retired Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cer, was there too. He said he want­ed his son to get prac­ti­cal train­ing in bat­tle­field med­i­cine and han­dling a weapon.

    Hrabovskiy, who wore fatigues adorned with the patch of his uni­ver­si­ty, said he felt like he was among “fam­i­ly” with the Azov group. “It’s like when you come to church and you feel some­thing in your heart,” he explained.

    He said he aligned with Azov ide­o­log­i­cal­ly and hopes the group will rise to pow­er from the ash­es of a war with Rus­sia to form a “nation­al­ist-social­ist” gov­ern­ment. And if he could help in his role as a mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cer when he grad­u­ates in four months, he said, all the bet­ter.

    Some­one say­ing they are in favor of “nation­al social­ism,” Col­borne said, “whether in Eng­lish or in Russ­ian or Ukrain­ian, is an unam­bigu­ous ref­er­ence to Nazism and Nazi-inspired ide­olo­gies.”

    Asked explic­it­ly if what he meant was Nazism, Hrabovskiy said with a seri­ous stare that he want­ed to con­vey “some­thing that in your coun­try you can’t say.”

    “If the far-right forces can unite, then we will go to par­lia­ment and make laws that reflect our ideas and goals,” he added.
    ...

    And note how, while not every­one asso­ci­at­ed with Azov, is them­selves an extrem­ist, they’re all being trained by extrem­ists. It’s a reminder that when you hear about non-extrem­ists mem­bers of Azov, it’s not a sign that the group has some­how mod­er­at­ed itself. Quite the con­trary, it’s a sign of the Azov move­men­t’s wild suc­cess at main­stream­ing itself. These non-extrem­ists are basi­cal­ly extrem­ists-in-train­ing. Pro­pa­gan­da works:

    ...
    Not every­one at the Azov train­ing was ide­o­log­i­cal­ly aligned with the group. Sofia and Solomiya, twin 30-year-old mil­i­tary para­medics from the west­ern city of Lviv, said they chose to come to the Azov event as opposed to oth­er sim­i­lar ones in Kyiv because of the group’s rep­u­ta­tion for being “strong” and “skilled,” Sofia said.

    Solomiya said the pair had nev­er fired a weapon, but with the threat of renewed large-scale war with Rus­sia loom­ing, they felt it was time to learn how to do so.

    Inside an aban­doned build­ing spray-paint­ed with nation­al­ist slo­gans, the pair were giv­en wood­en cutouts of Kalash­nikov rifles and instruct­ed how to hold them. The twins’ instruc­tor was a beard­ed Azov Bat­tal­ion vet­er­an with a col­lec­tion of far-right nation­al­ist patch­es on his uni­form. A black death’s head was vis­i­ble on his bul­let­proof vest beside a “Val­hal­la tick­et” that includ­ed the num­bers 88 and 14 — numer­i­cal codes for “Heil Hitler” and the 14 words, a pop­u­lar white suprema­cist slo­gan.
    ...

    Again, this was just back in Jan­u­ary of this year. How many more reg­u­lar Ukraini­ans have flood­ed into arms of Azov of sim­i­lar groups over the past eight months? How many tens of thou­sands of Ukraini­ans are there right now get­ting trained by fig­ures with a Totenkopf patch­es? How many mil­lions of Ukraini­ans are going to end up hav­ing gone through this kind of indoc­tri­na­tion by the time this con­flict is over? Grim ques­tions. Because it’s grim news. The kind of grim news that pre­sum­ably won’t be report­ed on until its too late to do any­thing about it.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 19, 2022, 3:57 pm
  2. Once is hap­pen­stance. Twice is coin­ci­dence. Three times is ene­my action. It’s an appro­pri­ate quote for the dis­turb­ing news about the appar­ent simul­ta­ne­ous­ly bomb­ing of Nord Stream 1 and 2 yes­ter­day. Three simul­ta­ne­ous explo­sions. That’s not an acci­dent. It’s clear sab­o­tage.

    Sad­ly, it’s also already clear that the West is intent on deter­min­ing Rus­sia blew up its own pipelines. Kind of like how Rus­sia appar­ent­ly attacks its nuclear pow­er plants under its con­trol. In oth­er words, we should­n’t expect a real inves­ti­ga­tion into what hap­pened.

    This is a good time to recall how the US has basi­cal­ly become Europe’s new nat­ur­al gas sup­pli­er of choice as high ener­gy prices lead to record-break­ing prof­its for the petro­le­um indus­try. Beyond that, the US is increas­ing­ly look­ing like the new des­ti­na­tion for ener­gy-inten­sive Euro­pean indus­tries look­ing to relo­cate for cheap­er, more sta­ble ener­gy sup­plies. Trends that will pre­sum­ably accel­er­ate as a result of this attack.

    And while it’s hard to know what Rus­si­a’s response will be to an attack on a major piece of infra­struc­ture, it’s also pret­ty clear that this attack has dra­mat­i­cal­ly esca­lat­ed the range of what’s ‘accept­able’ in this inter­na­tion­al New Cold War. Attacks on major infra­struc­ture are now ‘fair game’, it seems:

    The Guardian

    Fears of sab­o­tage as gas pours into Baltic from Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines

    Seis­mol­o­gists detect spikes in under­sea activ­i­ty, pos­si­bly indi­cat­ing explo­sions, amid three simul­ta­ne­ous leaks

    Philip Olter­mann in Berlin, Peter Beau­mont in Kyiv and Dan Sab­bagh
    Tue 27 Sep 2022 08.10 EDT
    Last mod­i­fied on Tue 27 Sep 2022 17.43 EDT

    Gas is pour­ing into the Baltic Sea from three sep­a­rate leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines amid claims by seis­mol­o­gists in Swe­den and Den­mark of two sharp spikes in under­sea activ­i­ty, pos­si­bly indi­cat­ing explo­sions, and spec­u­la­tion about sab­o­tage.

    A seis­mo­graph on the Dan­ish island of Born­holm, near where the leaks occurred, twice record­ed spikes on Mon­day, the day on which the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines under­went dra­mat­ic falls in pres­sure, the Ger­man geo­log­i­cal research cen­tre GFZ said.

    A Dan­ish mil­i­tary flight over the leaks brought back strik­ing images from the rup­tures, includ­ing one show­ing an area of bub­bling gas a kilo­me­tre wide on the sea’s sur­face.

    The seis­mo­graph record­ed near-silence until just after mid­night GMT (2am local time), when there was a spike rep­re­sent­ing a tremor in the earth fol­lowed by a con­tin­u­ous hiss­ing wave form. The pat­tern was repeat­ed at 5pm GMT.

    Amid the spec­u­la­tion over sab­o­tage, sus­pi­cion imme­di­ate­ly turned to poten­tial cul­prits – with fin­gers point­ed at Rus­sia, whose pipelines were hit, sug­gest­ing a fur­ther weapon­i­sa­tion of ener­gy sup­plies to Europe in the midst of the con­flict in Ukraine. Not least it was seen as a pos­si­ble mes­sage about the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of oth­er marine gas infra­struc­ture.

    “There are some indi­ca­tions that it is delib­er­ate dam­age. You have to ask: Who would prof­it?” one Euro­pean secu­ri­ty source told Reuters.

    GFZ declined to be drawn on whether the tremors record­ed could have been the result of an explo­sion but sci­en­tists at the research cen­tre ruled out the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the leaks could have been caused by earth­quakes.

    “There was a spike and then reg­u­lar noise,” a GFZ spokesper­son, Josef Zens, said. “We can­not say if that could be gas stream­ing out.”

    A seis­mol­o­gist quot­ed by Swedish tele­vi­sion sug­gest­ed the activ­i­ty may have been the result of explo­sions. Björn Lund, direc­tor of the Swedish Nation­al Seis­mic Net­work, SNSN, which mea­sures Swedish earth­quakes and explo­sions, told the SVT tele­vi­sion chan­nel that the event – one of which reg­is­tered a mag­ni­tude of 2.3 – may have been caused by under­sea det­o­na­tions.

    You can clear­ly see how the waves bounce from the bot­tom to the sur­face. There is no doubt that it was a blast. We even had a sta­tion in Gnosjö that picked this up,” said Lund, who also lec­tures in seis­mol­o­gy at Upp­sala Uni­ver­si­ty.

    Ear­li­er, the Dan­ish prime min­is­ter, Mette Fred­erik­sen, said sab­o­tage could not be exclud­ed.

    Mean­while the Krem­lin spokesper­son, Dmit­ry Peskov, called the news “very con­cern­ing” and said that “no option can be ruled out right now”, includ­ing sab­o­tage.

    ...

    The steel pipe itself has a wall of 4.1 cm (1.6 inch­es) and is coat­ed with steel-rein­forced con­crete up to 11cm thick. Each sec­tion of the pipe weighs 11 tonnes, which goes to 24–25 tonnes after the con­crete is applied.

    Among those point­ing to the war in Ukraine was the Pol­ish prime min­is­ter, Mateusz Moraw­iec­ki, who was speak­ing at the open­ing of a new gas pipeline between Nor­way and Poland. “Today we faced an act of sab­o­tage. We don’t know all the details of what hap­pened but we see clear­ly that it’s an act of sab­o­tage, relat­ed to the next step of esca­la­tion of the sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine,” Moraw­iec­ki said.

    Poland’s for­eign min­is­ter was more forth­right, sug­gest­ing that the dam­age could be an act of provo­ca­tion on behalf of the Krem­lin.

    “Sad­ly our east­ern part­ner is con­stant­ly pur­su­ing an aggres­sive polit­i­cal course,” the deputy for­eign min­is­ter, Marcin Przy­dacz, said in War­saw. “If it is capa­ble of an aggres­sive mil­i­tary course in Ukraine, then it’s appar­ent that acts of provo­ca­tions in west­ern Europe also can­not be ruled out.”

    A senior Ukrain­ian offi­cial also called it a Russ­ian attack to desta­bilise Europe, with­out giv­ing proof.

    British sources said they believed it may not be pos­si­ble to deter­mine what occurred with cer­tain­ty.

    One UK insid­er spec­u­lat­ed that any explo­sions were unlike­ly to have been caused by a sub­ma­rine or under­wa­ter vehi­cle, because their pres­ence would have been detect­ed in the rel­a­tive­ly shal­low Baltic waters. Sec­tions of the pipelines are between 80 metres and 110 metres deep.

    An alter­na­tive sce­nario could be that mines were dropped from a dis­guised com­mer­cial ves­sel days or weeks ahead of the attack, then remote­ly det­o­nat­ed to cause the explo­sions. But the lat­ter sce­nario was entire­ly hypo­thet­i­cal, they stressed.

    The day of dra­ma began when the Dan­ish ener­gy agency said it had found the leaks on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline north-east of the island of Born­holm, and a third in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in Swedish waters south-east of the island. “This is not a small crack. It’s a real­ly big hole,” the ener­gy agency said.

    Under­lin­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of the event, Javier Blas, an ener­gy and com­modi­ties com­men­ta­tor for Bloomberg, described the under­sea gas pipelines in the region as one of Europe’s most impor­tant strate­gic assets. “The sub­sea pipelines link­ing the North Sea gas fields, and then Nor­way with the rest of the con­ti­nent and the UK are among the most strate­gic assets right now for Europe. High time for max­i­mum pro­tec­tion. Cyber-attacks against ener­gy assets are, too, a key risk for Europe,” Blas tweet­ed.

    The sub­sea pipelines link­ing the North Sea gas fields, and then Nor­way with the rest of the con­ti­nent and the UK are among the most strate­gic assets right now for Europe. High time for max­i­mum pro­tec­tion. Cyber­at­tacks against ener­gy assets are, too, a key risk for Europe.— Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) Sep­tem­ber 27, 2022

    A five-mile exclu­sion zone for ship­ping has been set up around Born­holm, and flights below 1,000 metres have been banned in the area. Methane, the pri­ma­ry com­po­nent of nat­ur­al gas, par­tial­ly dis­solves in water, is not tox­ic and cre­ates no haz­ard when inhaled in lim­it­ed quan­ti­ties.

    ...

    Nord Stream AG, the pipeline oper­a­tor, had on Mon­day morn­ing report­ed an unex­pect­ed overnight drop of pres­sure from 105 to 7 bar in Nord Stream 2, which is filled with gas but was can­celled by Olaf Scholz, the Ger­man chan­cel­lor, short­ly before Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine.

    A fur­ther drop of pres­sure was report­ed on Mon­day after­noon in Nord Stream 1, which Rus­sia shut down indef­i­nite­ly at the start of Sep­tem­ber, ini­tial­ly say­ing it need­ed repairs.

    With three sep­a­rate leaks almost simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, with some dis­tance between them, it was “dif­fi­cult to imag­ine” it was a ran­dom acci­dent, Fred­erik­sen said at a short press con­fer­ence dur­ing a vis­it to Poland, where she was par­tic­i­pat­ing in the open­ing of the Baltic Pipe gas pipeline.

    Anony­mous sources in Ger­man gov­ern­ment cir­cles also said the simul­tane­ity of the three leaks made an acci­dent unlike­ly. “Our imag­i­na­tion can­not come up with a sce­nario which isn’t a delib­er­ate attack,” a per­son involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion told the Ger­man dai­ly Der Tagesspiegel.

    The news mag­a­zine Der Spiegel, quot­ing gov­ern­ment sources, said offi­cials were not rul­ing out sab­o­tage, designed to cause fur­ther uncer­tain­ty on Europe’s ener­gy mar­kets.

    Since no gas has flowed through either of the pipelines since the start of the month, Ger­man author­i­ties have been quick to reas­sure peo­ple that the leaks will not affect its plan to fill gas stor­age tanks in time for win­ter.

    Envi­ron­men­tal NGOs said the leaks were like­ly to cause large-scale dam­age to the envi­ron­ment. “As soon as methane in gas form rais­es from the sur­face of the sea into the atmos­phere, it will mas­sive­ly con­tribute to the green­house effect,” said Sascha Müller-Kraen­ner of the pres­sure group Envi­ron­men­tal Action Ger­many.

    ———-

    “Fears of sab­o­tage as gas pours into Baltic from Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines” by Philip Olter­mann, Peter Beau­mont and Dan Sab­bagh; The Guardian; 09/27/2022

    With three sep­a­rate leaks almost simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, with some dis­tance between them, it was “dif­fi­cult to imag­ine” it was a ran­dom acci­dent, Fred­erik­sen said at a short press con­fer­ence dur­ing a vis­it to Poland, where she was par­tic­i­pat­ing in the open­ing of the Baltic Pipe gas pipeline.”

    Not only is that obvi­ous­ly not an acci­dent. It’s an obvi­ous mes­sage. Who­ev­er did this want­ed the world to know it was sab­o­tage. An esca­la­tion of both ener­gy prices and inter­na­tion­al ten­sions:

    ...
    A seis­mo­graph on the Dan­ish island of Born­holm, near where the leaks occurred, twice record­ed spikes on Mon­day, the day on which the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines under­went dra­mat­ic falls in pres­sure, the Ger­man geo­log­i­cal research cen­tre GFZ said.

    A Dan­ish mil­i­tary flight over the leaks brought back strik­ing images from the rup­tures, includ­ing one show­ing an area of bub­bling gas a kilo­me­tre wide on the sea’s sur­face.

    The seis­mo­graph record­ed near-silence until just after mid­night GMT (2am local time), when there was a spike rep­re­sent­ing a tremor in the earth fol­lowed by a con­tin­u­ous hiss­ing wave form. The pat­tern was repeat­ed at 5pm GMT.

    ...

    GFZ declined to be drawn on whether the tremors record­ed could have been the result of an explo­sion but sci­en­tists at the research cen­tre ruled out the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the leaks could have been caused by earth­quakes.

    “There was a spike and then reg­u­lar noise,” a GFZ spokesper­son, Josef Zens, said. “We can­not say if that could be gas stream­ing out.”

    A seis­mol­o­gist quot­ed by Swedish tele­vi­sion sug­gest­ed the activ­i­ty may have been the result of explo­sions. Björn Lund, direc­tor of the Swedish Nation­al Seis­mic Net­work, SNSN, which mea­sures Swedish earth­quakes and explo­sions, told the SVT tele­vi­sion chan­nel that the event – one of which reg­is­tered a mag­ni­tude of 2.3 – may have been caused by under­sea det­o­na­tions.

    You can clear­ly see how the waves bounce from the bot­tom to the sur­face. There is no doubt that it was a blast. We even had a sta­tion in Gnosjö that picked this up,” said Lund, who also lec­tures in seis­mol­o­gy at Upp­sala Uni­ver­si­ty.

    ...

    One UK insid­er spec­u­lat­ed that any explo­sions were unlike­ly to have been caused by a sub­ma­rine or under­wa­ter vehi­cle, because their pres­ence would have been detect­ed in the rel­a­tive­ly shal­low Baltic waters. Sec­tions of the pipelines are between 80 metres and 110 metres deep.

    An alter­na­tive sce­nario could be that mines were dropped from a dis­guised com­mer­cial ves­sel days or weeks ahead of the attack, then remote­ly det­o­nat­ed to cause the explo­sions. But the lat­ter sce­nario was entire­ly hypo­thet­i­cal, they stressed.
    ...

    And as we should expect, fin­gers imme­di­ate­ly point­ed towards Rus­sia. What is the ratio­nal for Rus­sia attack its own major piece of infra­struc­ture? ‘Desta­bi­liz­ing Europe’. Rus­sia was, of course, already restrict­ing exports to Europe in protest of EU sanc­tions. It’s not like blow­ing up the pipelines was a nec­es­sary excuse fo cut­ting off Russ­ian gas sup­plies. The sup­plies were already cut. All this did was make them a lot more expen­sive for Rus­sia to start back up again:

    ...
    Amid the spec­u­la­tion over sab­o­tage, sus­pi­cion imme­di­ate­ly turned to poten­tial cul­prits – with fin­gers point­ed at Rus­sia, whose pipelines were hit, sug­gest­ing a fur­ther weapon­i­sa­tion of ener­gy sup­plies to Europe in the midst of the con­flict in Ukraine. Not least it was seen as a pos­si­ble mes­sage about the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of oth­er marine gas infra­struc­ture.

    “There are some indi­ca­tions that it is delib­er­ate dam­age. You have to ask: Who would prof­it?” one Euro­pean secu­ri­ty source told Reuters.

    ...

    Ear­li­er, the Dan­ish prime min­is­ter, Mette Fred­erik­sen, said sab­o­tage could not be exclud­ed.

    Mean­while the Krem­lin spokesper­son, Dmit­ry Peskov, called the news “very con­cern­ing” and said that “no option can be ruled out right now”, includ­ing sab­o­tage.

    ...

    Poland’s for­eign min­is­ter was more forth­right, sug­gest­ing that the dam­age could be an act of provo­ca­tion on behalf of the Krem­lin.

    “Sad­ly our east­ern part­ner is con­stant­ly pur­su­ing an aggres­sive polit­i­cal course,” the deputy for­eign min­is­ter, Marcin Przy­dacz, said in War­saw. “If it is capa­ble of an aggres­sive mil­i­tary course in Ukraine, then it’s appar­ent that acts of provo­ca­tions in west­ern Europe also can­not be ruled out.”

    A senior Ukrain­ian offi­cial also called it a Russ­ian attack to desta­bilise Europe, with­out giv­ing proof.

    British sources said they believed it may not be pos­si­ble to deter­mine what occurred with cer­tain­ty.
    ...

    And then we get to this intrigu­ing detail: Der Spiegel just report­ed on anony­mous Ger­man gov­ern­ment offi­cials who were also appar­ent­ly going on with the nar­ra­tive about sab­o­tage designed to cause fur­ther uncer­tain­ty in Europe’s ener­gy mar­kets. So it’s not just Poland and Ukraine push­ing the ‘Rus­sia did it’ nar­ra­tive. Ger­many is push­ing it too:

    ...
    Anony­mous sources in Ger­man gov­ern­ment cir­cles also said the simul­tane­ity of the three leaks made an acci­dent unlike­ly. “Our imag­i­na­tion can­not come up with a sce­nario which isn’t a delib­er­ate attack,” a per­son involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion told the Ger­man dai­ly Der Tagesspiegel.

    The news mag­a­zine Der Spiegel, quot­ing gov­ern­ment sources, said offi­cials were not rul­ing out sab­o­tage, designed to cause fur­ther uncer­tain­ty on Europe’s ener­gy mar­kets.
    ...

    And that brings us to the oth­er very inter­est­ing report in Der Spiegel fol­low­ing this attack: The CIA appar­ent­ly warned Ger­many three weeks ago about attacks on these pipelines:

    Reuters

    CIA warned Berlin about pos­si­ble attacks on gas pipelines in sum­mer — Spiegel

    Sep­tem­ber 27, 2022 1:00 PM CDT
    Updat­ed

    BERLIN, Sept 27 (Reuters) — The U.S. Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency (CIA) had weeks ago warned Ger­many about pos­si­ble attacks on gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, Ger­man mag­a­zine Spiegel said on Tues­day, after gas leaks in Rus­sia pipelines to Ger­many were report­ed.

    The Ger­man gov­ern­ment received the CIA tip in sum­mer, Spiegel report­ed, cit­ing unnamed sources, adding that Berlin assumes a tar­get­ed attack on Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines.

    A Ger­man gov­ern­ment spokesper­son declined to com­ment, Spiegel added.

    ———–

    “CIA warned Berlin about pos­si­ble attacks on gas pipelines in sum­mer — Spiegel”; Reuters; 09/27/2022

    That’s all we get to know at this point. The Ger­man gov­ern­ment received CIA warn­ings about exact­ly this kind of attack three weeks ago. Warn­ings that will pre­sum­ably now be used to fur­ther the nar­ra­tive about Rus­sia attack­ing its own pipelines.

    Keep in mind the tim­ing in all this: We’re told the CIA warned Ger­many three weeks ago. And it was also exact­ly three weeks when Rus­sia announced it was­n’t going to resume gas tran­sit over Nord­stream 1 until the West lifts sanc­tions against Rus­sia. So the CIA appears to have issued this warn­ing about pipeline sab­o­tage right around the same time Rus­sia made this pledge to keep the gas cut off until the sanc­tions are lift­ed

    The Guardian

    Rus­sia will not resume gas sup­plies to Europe until sanc­tions lift­ed, says Moscow

    Krem­lin blames west­ern sanc­tions for fail­ure to deliv­er gas through Nord Stream 1 pipeline

    Pjotr Sauer
    Mon 5 Sep 2022 09.37 EDT
    Last mod­i­fied on Tue 6 Sep 2022 11.17 EDT

    Rus­sia will not resume in full its gas sup­plies to Europe until the west lifts its sanc­tions against Moscow, the Krem­lin said, as con­cerns over Russ­ian gas sup­plies con­tin­ued to dri­ve up ener­gy prices.

    Speak­ing to jour­nal­ists on Mon­day, Dmit­ry Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesper­son, blamed sanc­tions “intro­duced against our coun­try by west­ern coun­tries includ­ing Ger­many and the UK” for Russia’s fail­ure to deliv­er gas through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

    “Oth­er rea­sons that would cause prob­lems with the pump­ing don’t exist,” Peskov was cit­ed by the Inter­fax news agency as say­ing.

    Peskov added that Russia’s full resump­tion of gas sup­plies via Nord Stream 1 was “undoubt­ed­ly” depen­dent on whether the west would lift its sanc­tions on Moscow. “It is these sanc­tions imposed by the west­ern states that have brought the sit­u­a­tion to what we see now.”

    Peskov’s state­ments on Mon­day are the clear­est indi­ca­tion yet that Rus­sia intends to force the EU to lift sanc­tions imposed against Moscow over its inva­sion of Ukraine in exchange for Rus­sia restart­ing its gas deliv­er­ies.

    The lead­ing Russ­ian ener­gy sup­pli­er Gazprom announced on Fri­day evening that a sus­pen­sion of gas sup­plies head­ing west­wards through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline would be extend­ed indef­i­nite­ly, cit­ing “mal­func­tions” on a tur­bine along the pipeline.

    Gazprom has sim­i­lar­ly blamed west­ern sanc­tions for dis­rupt­ing gas deliv­er­ies, say­ing the man­u­fac­tur­er Siemens could not per­form repairs on the tur­bines used in Nord Stream 1 because of sanc­tions against the Russ­ian state ener­gy com­pa­ny.

    The EU has reject­ed Gazprom’s claims, accus­ing Putin of weapon­is­ing its gas exports.

    Nord Stream 1 is the sin­gle biggest pipeline for gas from Rus­sia to Europe and has the capac­i­ty to deliv­er 55bn cubic metres (bcm) of gas a year. Con­tin­ued sup­plies through the pipeline are seen as cru­cial to pre­vent a deep­en­ing of the ener­gy cri­sis.

    The ener­gy cri­sis in Europe, trig­gered by low­er Russ­ian gas flows, is seen as a major test of the block’s sup­port for Ukraine.

    ...

    ———–

    “Rus­sia will not resume gas sup­plies to Europe until sanc­tions lift­ed, says Moscow” by Pjotr Sauer; The Guardian; 09/05/2022

    “Nord Stream 1 is the sin­gle biggest pipeline for gas from Rus­sia to Europe and has the capac­i­ty to deliv­er 55bn cubic metres (bcm) of gas a year. Con­tin­ued sup­plies through the pipeline are seen as cru­cial to pre­vent a deep­en­ing of the ener­gy cri­sis.

    The EU can’t real­ly pull itself out of its ener­gy cri­sis with­out Nord­stream 1. So the ques­tion of whether or not Europe’s resolve would hold through a cold, expen­sive win­ter has already been answered: there’s not going to be any any Russ­ian gas this win­ter. It can’t logis­ti­cal­ly hap­pen regard­less of whether sanc­tions are lift­ed or not. At least not until the repairs are made. That’s part of the con­text of this attack. Rus­sia already had the abil­i­ty to cut off gas. Implic­it­ly. It cut the gas off itself vol­un­tar­i­ly. This attack did­n’t change that. What it did change was Rus­si­a’s abil­i­ty to ‘turn the gas back on’ eas­i­ly should the EU ever decide its had enough. It’s not clear how that ben­e­fits Rus­sia. But it’s pret­ty clear there are ben­e­fi­cia­ries in this sit­u­a­tion.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 27, 2022, 3:50 pm
  3. Dave you’re very eth­i­cal with the research. Hon­est­ly its helped me under­stand what is going on today. The For The Record pro­grams are real­ly well done.

    Posted by Scipio | September 27, 2022, 10:59 pm
  4. Here’s an arti­cle about the sab­o­tage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines that takes on a cat­a­stroph­ic the­mat­ic rel­e­vance in the wake of the dev­as­ta­tion of Hur­ri­cane Ian and the high prospects of the US role in those attacks:

    The methane released from the Nord Stream bomb­ings was the largest methane release on record, on the scale of rough­ly a third of Den­mark’s annu­al green­house gas emis­sions and five times worse than the 2015 Aliso Canyon dis­as­ter, which set the US record for a ter­res­tri­al methane release. The Aliso Canyon dis­as­ter also took place over 112 days, while the release from the Nord Stream pipelines were more or less imme­di­ate. A giant plume of methane — which is 82.5 times more potent a green­house gas than CO2 — was just put into an atmos­phere already the verge of cross­ing into irre­versible run­away cli­mate change. Civ­i­liza­tion just got anoth­er big push towards the abyss. Or as Rob Jack­son, a cli­mate sci­en­tist at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, put it, “Who­ev­er ordered this should be pros­e­cut­ed for war crimes and go to jail”:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    Record methane leak flows from dam­aged Baltic Sea pipelines

    By JAN M. OLSEN and PATRICK WHITTLE
    Wednes­day Sep­tem­ber 28, 2022 16:33:06 CST

    COPENHAGEN, Den­mark (AP) — Methane leak­ing from the dam­aged Nord Stream pipelines is like­ly to be the biggest burst of the potent green­house gas on record, by far.

    The Nord Stream pipeline leaks that were pump­ing huge vol­umes of methane into the Baltic Sea and atmos­phere could dis­charge as much as five times as much of the potent green­house as was released by the Aliso Canyon dis­as­ter, the largest known ter­res­tri­al release of methane in U.S. his­to­ry. It is also the equiv­a­lent of one third of Denmark’s total annu­al green­house gas emis­sions, a Dan­ish offi­cial warned Wednes­day.

    “Who­ev­er ordered this should be pros­e­cut­ed for war crimes and go to jail,” said Rob Jack­son, a Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty cli­mate sci­en­tist. Two sci­en­tists looked at the offi­cial worst case sce­nario esti­mates pro­vid­ed by the Dan­ish gov­ern­ment — 778 mil­lion cubic meters of gas — for The Asso­ci­at­ed Press. Jack­son and David Hast­ings, a retired chem­i­cal oceanog­ra­ph­er in Gainesville, Flori­da each cal­cu­lat­ed that would be an equiv­a­lent of rough­ly half a mil­lion met­ric tons of methane. The Aliso Canyon dis­as­ter released 90–100,000 met­ric tons.

    Andrew Bax­ter, a chem­i­cal engi­neer who for­mer­ly worked in the off­shore oil and gas indus­try, and is now at the envi­ron­men­tal group EDF thought the Dan­ish esti­mate was like­ly too high. He had a more con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate. But it was still more than dou­ble the Aliso Canyon dis­as­ter.

    “That’s one thing that is con­sis­tent with these esti­mates,” he said, “It’s cat­a­stroph­ic for the cli­mate.”

    Kristof­fer Böttza­uw, head of the Dan­ish Ener­gy Agency, said emis­sions from the three leaks on the under­wa­ter Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines cor­re­spond to approx­i­mate­ly 32% of annu­al Dan­ish car­bon diox­ide emis­sions. Dan­ish emis­sions in 2020 were approx­i­mate­ly 45 mil­lion tonnes of CO2.

    Sab­o­tage was sus­pect­ed to have caused the leaks, and seis­mol­o­gists said Tues­day that explo­sions rat­tled the Baltic Sea before they were dis­cov­ered. Some Euro­pean offi­cials and ener­gy experts have said Rus­sia is like­ly to blame since it direct­ly ben­e­fits from high­er ener­gy prices and eco­nom­ic anx­i­ety across Europe. But oth­ers cau­tioned against point­ing fin­gers until inves­ti­ga­tors are able to deter­mine what hap­pened.

    Methane seen bub­bling at the ocean sur­face was an indi­ca­tion of “a strong upward flow,” accord­ing to Paul Bal­combe, a mem­ber of the engi­neer­ing fac­ul­ty at the depart­ment of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don.

    The loss of pres­sure in the pipe like­ly meant a large amount of gas was already lost, he said. The impacts of the gas leak are still com­ing into focus, Bal­combe said, but are like­ly to be sig­nif­i­cant.

    “It would have a very large envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate impact indeed, even if it released a frac­tion of this,” he said.

    Methane is a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change, respon­si­ble for a sig­nif­i­cant share of the cli­mate dis­rup­tion peo­ple are already expe­ri­enc­ing. That is because it is 82.5 times more potent than car­bon diox­ide at absorb­ing the sun’s heat and warm­ing the Earth.

    Böttza­uw, told a press con­fer­ence that the agency expects the gas to be out of the pipes, that run from Rus­sia to Ger­many, by Sun­day.

    “We believe that half the gas is out by now of one of the two pipes,” Böttza­uw said. “We are talk­ing about a huge spill of sev­er­al mil­lion cubic meters of gas.”

    ...

    The inci­dents come as the EU strug­gles to keep a lid on soar­ing gas and elec­tric­i­ty prices.

    “As long as there is gas, it dan­ger­ous to be there,” Böttza­uw said, declin­ing to say when experts would be able to go down and see the pipes, which he said was made of 12-cen­time­ter (5‑inch) thick steel coat­ed with con­crete. They lie on the seabed between 70 and 90 meters (230 feet and 295 feet) deep.

    The leaks all were in inter­na­tion­al waters. Two were with­in the Dan­ish exclu­sive eco­nom­ic zone while the third is in the Swedish equiv­a­lent.

    ————

    “Record methane leak flows from dam­aged Baltic Sea pipelines” By JAN M. OLSEN and PATRICK WHITTLE; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 09/28/2022

    “Who­ev­er ordered this should be pros­e­cut­ed for war crimes and go to jail,” said Rob Jack­son, a Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty cli­mate sci­en­tist. Two sci­en­tists looked at the offi­cial worst case sce­nario esti­mates pro­vid­ed by the Dan­ish gov­ern­ment — 778 mil­lion cubic meters of gas — for The Asso­ci­at­ed Press. Jack­son and David Hast­ings, a retired chem­i­cal oceanog­ra­ph­er in Gainesville, Flori­da each cal­cu­lat­ed that would be an equiv­a­lent of rough­ly half a mil­lion met­ric tons of methane. The Aliso Canyon dis­as­ter released 90–100,000 met­ric tons.”

    Was the sab­o­tage of those pipelines just a war crime? How about a crime against human­i­ty? It’s not like who­ev­er did this was­n’t well aware of the con­se­quences of this. Con­se­quences that cli­mate researchers describe as sim­ply cat­a­stroph­ic:

    ...
    Andrew Bax­ter, a chem­i­cal engi­neer who for­mer­ly worked in the off­shore oil and gas indus­try, and is now at the envi­ron­men­tal group EDF thought the Dan­ish esti­mate was like­ly too high. He had a more con­ser­v­a­tive esti­mate. But it was still more than dou­ble the Aliso Canyon dis­as­ter.

    “That’s one thing that is con­sis­tent with these esti­mates,” he said, “It’s cat­a­stroph­ic for the cli­mate.”

    Kristof­fer Böttza­uw, head of the Dan­ish Ener­gy Agency, said emis­sions from the three leaks on the under­wa­ter Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines cor­re­spond to approx­i­mate­ly 32% of annu­al Dan­ish car­bon diox­ide emis­sions. Dan­ish emis­sions in 2020 were approx­i­mate­ly 45 mil­lion tonnes of CO2.

    ...

    Methane seen bub­bling at the ocean sur­face was an indi­ca­tion of “a strong upward flow,” accord­ing to Paul Bal­combe, a mem­ber of the engi­neer­ing fac­ul­ty at the depart­ment of chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don.

    The loss of pres­sure in the pipe like­ly meant a large amount of gas was already lost, he said. The impacts of the gas leak are still com­ing into focus, Bal­combe said, but are like­ly to be sig­nif­i­cant.

    “It would have a very large envi­ron­men­tal and cli­mate impact indeed, even if it released a frac­tion of this,” he said.

    Methane is a major con­trib­u­tor to cli­mate change, respon­si­ble for a sig­nif­i­cant share of the cli­mate dis­rup­tion peo­ple are already expe­ri­enc­ing. That is because it is 82.5 times more potent than car­bon diox­ide at absorb­ing the sun’s heat and warm­ing the Earth.
    ...

    And then we get to the fin­ger-point­ing. Fin­ger-point­ing large­ly at Rus­sia in lieu of an actu­al inves­ti­ga­tion. But an inves­ti­ga­tion is pre­sum­ably going to hap­pen at some point. And it’s hard to imag­ine that sab­o­tage isn’t going to be the con­clu­sion. Who gets blames for that sab­o­tage is more of an open ques­tion:

    ...
    Sab­o­tage was sus­pect­ed to have caused the leaks, and seis­mol­o­gists said Tues­day that explo­sions rat­tled the Baltic Sea before they were dis­cov­ered. Some Euro­pean offi­cials and ener­gy experts have said Rus­sia is like­ly to blame since it direct­ly ben­e­fits from high­er ener­gy prices and eco­nom­ic anx­i­ety across Europe. But oth­ers cau­tioned against point­ing fin­gers until inves­ti­ga­tors are able to deter­mine what hap­pened.
    ...

    And its not hard to imag­ine that the cul­prit sim­ply won’t be iden­ti­fi­able no mat­ter how intense the inves­ti­ga­tion. Sab­o­tage will be con­clud­ed with no cul­prit named while vague sus­pi­cions like­ly cast towards Rus­sia. So giv­en the high prob­a­bil­i­ty that the per­pe­tra­tor of this act is going to get away with it, it’s worth not­ing that get­ting away with it is like­ly part of ‘the mes­sage’ in this action. A mes­sage that sug­gest future ‘acci­dents’ can be arrange too.

    Anoth­er fac­tor to keep in mind here is the obvi­ous rec­i­p­ro­cal response: Russ­ian retal­ia­to­ry attacks on West­ern pipelines and ener­gy facil­i­ties. Attacks that will obvi­ous­ly have the poten­tial for more mas­sive green­house gas releas­es. The sab­o­tage of Nord Stream was a clear esca­la­tion. And esca­la­tions have a ten­den­cy of invit­ed fur­ther esca­la­tions. Major infra­struc­ture, espe­cial­ly infra­struc­ture in inter­na­tion­al waters, is now fair game. Implic­it­ly. This was a recipe for eco-dis­as­ter tit-for-tat sce­nar­ios.

    This is also a good time to recall how a lim­it­ed region nuclear war is pro­ject­ed to induce a peri­od of glob­al cool­ing due to all the dust thrown up into the atmos­phere. So if the flir­ta­tion with run­away cli­mate change as part of an esca­lat­ing con­flict between nuclear pow­ers sounds utter­ly insane, keep in mind there could be an utter­ly insane ‘sane’ end game ratio­nale at work for why we don’t have to wor­ry about run­away glob­al warm­ing.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | September 29, 2022, 3:38 pm
  5. Are we already in a third world world? Yes, and attempts to nego­ti­ate our way out of this third world war are unwise and a capit­u­la­tion to Vladimir Putin’s bar­barism and nuclear blus­ter. Nuclear blus­ter designed to force the West into peace nego­ti­a­tions that must be avoid­ed. That’s the stun­ning ‘log­ic’ on dis­play in the fol­low­ing piece by Susan Glass­er in the New York­er. The piece is filled with morsels of ‘wis­dom’ from DC for­eign pol­i­cy fig­ures like ‘Rus­sia expert’ Fiona Hill and for­mer U.S. Ambas­sador to Moscow Alexan­der Ver­sh­bow.

    Accord­ing to Ver­sh­bow, the sab­o­tage of Rus­si­a’s own Nord Stream pipelines are all part and par­cel of a larg­er attempt to project a ‘mad man Putin’ image intend­ed to scare Europe to the bar­gain­ing table in response to Ukraine’s mil­i­tary gains on the bat­tle­field. As Glass­er describes it, any nego­ti­a­tions now would­n’t just be a “bad deal” but “would be an extra­or­di­nary con­ces­sion in and of itself to Putin’s bar­barism and will­ing­ness to threat­en nuclear con­flict.” In oth­er words, the more Putin threat­ens the use of nuclear weapons, the more the West needs to ignore those threats as fake blus­ter intend­ed to hide Rus­si­a’s weak­ness.

    Instead, if we fol­low the advice of Fiona Hill, we should just accept that the US and Rus­sia are in WWIII and drop the self-delu­sions about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Wash­ing­ton and the West con­tin­u­ing to back Ukraine while avoid­ing con­flict with Putin. So Hill appears to be say­ing the West should be active­ly plan­ning now for WWIII and direct con­flict with Rus­sia. And as Glass­er observes, Hill’s line of rea­son­ing “is one rea­son that there are increased calls from many Rus­sia watch­ers not to kow­tow to Putin’s demands at a moment when both his weak­ness­es and those of his sys­tem have been so clear­ly revealed”.

    Putin’s nuclear threats are a sign of weak­ness and sig­nal that Rus­sia is about to crack. Instead of nego­ti­a­tions we need to accept that we’re already in WWIII and ratch­et up the pres­sure. That’s the DC con­sen­sus described in this arti­cle. Wel­come to the new MAD­ness. It’s tru­ly insane this time:

    The New York­er

    What if We’re Already Fight­ing the Third World War with Rus­sia?
    Putin’s lat­est provo­ca­tions once again put Wash­ing­ton in an awful bind.

    By Susan B. Glass­er
    Sep­tem­ber 29, 2022

    Nuclear black­mail, ille­gal annex­a­tion of ter­ri­to­ry, hun­dreds of thou­sands of Russ­ian men round­ed up and sent to the front lines in Ukraine, under­sea gas pipelines to Europe mys­te­ri­ous­ly blow­ing up. After end­less spec­u­la­tion, we can now say it for sure: this is how Vladimir Putin responds when he is backed into a cor­ner.

    Through­out sev­en awful months of war in Ukraine, Pres­i­dent Joe Biden has held to a stead­fast line when it comes to the Russ­ian inva­sion: his goal is to help Ukraine win while also insur­ing that vic­to­ry does not trig­ger a Third World War. But as Russ­ian forces have expe­ri­enced U.S.-aided bat­tle­field set­backs in recent days, Putin has react­ed by ratch­et­ing up the pres­sure. It’s far from clear how Wash­ing­ton will be able to con­tin­ue to pur­sue both goals simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, giv­en that Putin is hold­ing Ukraine—and the rest of the world—hostage to his demands. On Fri­day, Putin plans to affirm the results of what the Biden Admin­is­tra­tion has stern­ly termed “sham ‘ref­er­en­da’ ” as a pre­text to declare Russ­ian-occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries in Ukraine part of the Russ­ian state. How could Biden, or the Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky, or any­one else who believes in inter­na­tion­al order agree to that?

    And yet Don­ald Trump and the grow­ing fac­tion of pro-Putin cheer­lead­ers in the con­ser­v­a­tive media—Tucker Carl­son, I’m think­ing of you—are demand­ing still more con­ces­sions to Rus­sia in response to Putin’s esca­lat­ing threats. The oth­er night, Carl­son, cit­ing no evi­dence, blamed the Unit­ed States for some­how play­ing a role in attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Char­lie Kirk, one of the most out­ra­geous of the junior Trump­ists, spec­u­lat­ed that it was “a poten­tial midterm-elec­tion oper­a­tion” and that U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies should be con­sid­ered “guilty until proven innocent”—an appalling smear glee­ful­ly par­rot­ed on Russ­ian state TV. The ex-President—who dur­ing his time in office did so much to weak­en NATO and under­mine Amer­i­can allies while also prais­ing Putin—even offered him­self up as a medi­a­tor. On Wednes­day, in a post on Truth Social, his Orwellian-named social-media plat­form, he insist­ed, “get a nego­ti­at­ed deal done NOW.”

    Which, of course, is exact­ly what Putin wants Trump to say. After a Ukrain­ian counter-offen­sive in the east­ern Kharkiv region this month pushed Russ­ian forces back to their own bor­der, Putin respond­ed with new provo­ca­tions designed to force the West to the bar­gain­ing table, since his excep­tion­al­ly bru­tal yet inept appli­ca­tion of mil­i­tary force failed to do so. That, at least, is the con­sen­sus view of many of America’s smartest Krem­lin watch­ers.

    As Alexan­der Ver­sh­bow, who served as the U.S. Ambas­sador to Moscow dur­ing my tenure there as a cor­re­spon­dent for the Wash­ing­ton Post, put it to me: “Hav­ing failed to stop the Ukraini­ans on the bat­tle­field, Putin is try­ing to snatch vic­to­ry from the jaws of defeat by polit­i­cal means.” Russia’s leader, Ver­sh­bow added, hopes that “he can weak­en the Alliance con­sen­sus and scare the West into scal­ing back its mil­i­tary sup­port for Kyiv for fear of pre­cip­i­tat­ing Russ­ian use of nuclear weapons to defend the ‘home­land.’ The sab­o­tage of the Nord Stream pipelines fur­ther rein­forces the image of Putin as mad­man, which might per­suade some allies to push for a cease­fire and nego­ti­a­tions that would inevitably mean Ukraine giv­ing up sig­nif­i­cant amounts of ter­ri­to­ry.” Talk about a bad deal.

    It seems clear that nego­ti­at­ing now would be an extra­or­di­nary con­ces­sion in and of itself to Putin’s bar­barism and will­ing­ness to threat­en nuclear con­flict. Yet it’s not just Trump­ists who have been call­ing with more urgency for a nego­ti­at­ed peace ever since Putin vowed, in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, to “make use of all weapons sys­tems avail­able to us” and warned, “This is not a bluff.”

    Or is it? Over the week­end, Biden’s nation­al-secu­ri­ty advis­er, Jake Sul­li­van, promised a “cat­a­stroph­ic” response if Putin were to deploy bat­tle­field nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Amer­i­can mil­i­tary offi­cials have no doubt pro­duced many seri­ous options for the Unit­ed States to con­sid­er in such a sce­nario, includ­ing direct­ly enter­ing the war on Ukraine’s side—just the Third World War sce­nario that Biden has been so deter­mined to avoid.

    Watch­ing all of this, it’s hard not to think of how often over the past two decades the West has col­lec­tive­ly failed to get Putin right—or to get him at all. Over the sum­mer, the Aspen Strat­e­gy Group asked me to give a pre­sen­ta­tion about Rus­sia at war, and what stood out to me in my research was the num­ber of times, and vari­ety of ways, in which the U.S. and its allies had missed the mark in under­stand­ing Putin at crit­i­cal junc­tures in his long tenure as Russia’s mod­ern tsar.

    Again and again, Putin has prof­it­ed from the appli­ca­tion of mil­i­tary force to achieve oth­er­wise unat­tain­able polit­i­cal gains. He came to pow­er by pro­mot­ing war in the sep­a­ratist Russ­ian province of Chech­nya. He sent Russ­ian troops to Geor­gia and Syr­ia and, in 2014, to Ukraine. Each time, there were end­less rounds of spec­u­la­tion in West­ern cap­i­tals about how to cre­ate an “exit ramp” that would final­ly entice Putin to end his incur­sion. Putin just kept bar­relling down the high­way.

    So, yes, I’m skep­ti­cal when I hear the lat­est round of “exit ramp” talk. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watch­ing Putin all of this time, it’s that he is not one to walk away from a fight or back down while losing—escalation is his game, and by now he is very, very prac­ticed at it. As the Moscow Times put it, in a fas­ci­nat­ing piece of report­ing from inside the Krem­lin, “Putin always choos­es esca­la­tion.”

    On Thurs­day, I spoke with the Rus­sia expert Fiona Hill. She told me she believes there’s an ele­ment of self-delu­sion to much of the cur­rent com­men­tary about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Wash­ing­ton and the West con­tin­u­ing to back Ukraine while avoid­ing con­flict with Putin—who, after all, launched his war against Ukraine not in Feb­ru­ary but eight years ago when he invad­ed the coun­try and ille­gal­ly annexed the Crimean Penin­su­la. As far as Hill is con­cerned, we are already fight­ing in the Third World War, whether we acknowl­edge it or not. “We’ve been in this for a long time, and we’ve failed to rec­og­nize it,” she said.

    Her chill­ing thought rais­es a sear­ing ques­tion about U.S. pol­i­cy: If the goal is to avoid a con­flict in which we are already fight­ing, then does the rest of Washington’s approach to Russ­ian aggres­sion need to be recon­sid­ered? Hill’s line of think­ing is one rea­son that there are increased calls from many Rus­sia watch­ers not to kow­tow to Putin’s demands at a moment when both his weak­ness­es and those of his sys­tem have been so clear­ly revealed.

    ...

    Nuclear brinkman­ship between a wound­ed, sulk­ing Russ­ian dic­ta­tor and an increas­ing­ly alarmed NATO alliance—with Ukraine trapped in the middle—is just about a worst-case sce­nario for a world that hard­ly needs anoth­er cri­sis. Will Wash­ing­ton stay the course?

    —————

    “What if We’re Already Fight­ing the Third World War with Rus­sia?” By Susan B. Glass­er; The New York­er; 09/29/2022

    “On Thurs­day, I spoke with the Rus­sia expert Fiona Hill. She told me she believes there’s an ele­ment of self-delu­sion to much of the cur­rent com­men­tary about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of Wash­ing­ton and the West con­tin­u­ing to back Ukraine while avoid­ing con­flict with Putin—who, after all, launched his war against Ukraine not in Feb­ru­ary but eight years ago when he invad­ed the coun­try and ille­gal­ly annexed the Crimean Penin­su­la. As far as Hill is con­cerned, we are already fight­ing in the Third World War, whether we acknowl­edge it or not. “We’ve been in this for a long time, and we’ve failed to rec­og­nize it,” she said.

    We’re already in WWIII so we might as well act like it. To do oth­er­wise would be self-delud­ing. That was the sage advice from ‘Rus­sia expert’ Fiona Hill. And as Glass­er hints, Hill’s line of think­ing is increas­ing­ly the Wash­ing­ton con­sen­sus:

    ...
    Her chill­ing thought rais­es a sear­ing ques­tion about U.S. pol­i­cy: If the goal is to avoid a con­flict in which we are already fight­ing, then does the rest of Washington’s approach to Russ­ian aggres­sion need to be recon­sid­ered? Hill’s line of think­ing is one rea­son that there are increased calls from many Rus­sia watch­ers not to kow­tow to Putin’s demands at a moment when both his weak­ness­es and those of his sys­tem have been so clear­ly revealed.
    ...

    And that DC con­sen­sus appears to have con­clud­ed that the Russ­ian esca­la­tion in Ukraine and threats of nuclear war are part of Putin’s attempts to force the West to the bar­gain­ing table. To force a win through polit­i­cal means that Putin can’t extract on the bat­tle­field. That’s the con­sen­sus view “of many of America’s smartest Krem­lin watch­ers.” And as Glass­er describes it, agree­ing to nego­ti­a­tions in the face of nuclear threats would be “an extra­or­di­nary con­ces­sion in and of itself to Putin’s bar­barism and will­ing­ness to threat­en nuclear con­flict.”
    This is where we are: nego­ti­a­tions in the face of nuclear threats is now deemed to be an extra­or­di­nary con­ces­sion to bru­tal­i­ty and bar­barism. It’s like the Cold War nev­er hap­pened. This is the new MAD­ness.

    Beyond that, the DC con­sen­sus view on the bomb­ing of the Nord Stream pipelines i that Putin did it as part of his ‘mad man’ pos­tur­ing. It’s a con­sen­sus view that ignores the basic real­i­ty that the bomb­ing of those pipeline under­mined Rus­si­a’s cur­rent lever­age over exact­ly the Euro­pean coun­tries that would be most inclined to call for nego­ti­a­tions in the hopes of renew­ing cheap Russ­ian gas. But, again, that’s where we are. The new MAD­ness is tru­ly utter­ly mad. Mad­ness mas­querad­ing as cold log­ic:

    ...
    And yet Don­ald Trump and the grow­ing fac­tion of pro-Putin cheer­lead­ers in the con­ser­v­a­tive media—Tucker Carl­son, I’m think­ing of you—are demand­ing still more con­ces­sions to Rus­sia in response to Putin’s esca­lat­ing threats. The oth­er night, Carl­son, cit­ing no evi­dence, blamed the Unit­ed States for some­how play­ing a role in attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Char­lie Kirk, one of the most out­ra­geous of the junior Trump­ists, spec­u­lat­ed that it was “a poten­tial midterm-elec­tion oper­a­tion” and that U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies should be con­sid­ered “guilty until proven innocent”—an appalling smear glee­ful­ly par­rot­ed on Russ­ian state TV. The ex-President—who dur­ing his time in office did so much to weak­en NATO and under­mine Amer­i­can allies while also prais­ing Putin—even offered him­self up as a medi­a­tor. On Wednes­day, in a post on Truth Social, his Orwellian-named social-media plat­form, he insist­ed, “get a nego­ti­at­ed deal done NOW.”

    Which, of course, is exact­ly what Putin wants Trump to say. After a Ukrain­ian counter-offen­sive in the east­ern Kharkiv region this month pushed Russ­ian forces back to their own bor­der, Putin respond­ed with new provo­ca­tions designed to force the West to the bar­gain­ing table, since his excep­tion­al­ly bru­tal yet inept appli­ca­tion of mil­i­tary force failed to do so. That, at least, is the con­sen­sus view of many of America’s smartest Krem­lin watch­ers.

    As Alexan­der Ver­sh­bow, who served as the U.S. Ambas­sador to Moscow dur­ing my tenure there as a cor­re­spon­dent for the Wash­ing­ton Post, put it to me: “Hav­ing failed to stop the Ukraini­ans on the bat­tle­field, Putin is try­ing to snatch vic­to­ry from the jaws of defeat by polit­i­cal means.” Russia’s leader, Ver­sh­bow added, hopes that “he can weak­en the Alliance con­sen­sus and scare the West into scal­ing back its mil­i­tary sup­port for Kyiv for fear of pre­cip­i­tat­ing Russ­ian use of nuclear weapons to defend the ‘home­land.’ The sab­o­tage of the Nord Stream pipelines fur­ther rein­forces the image of Putin as mad­man, which might per­suade some allies to push for a cease­fire and nego­ti­a­tions that would inevitably mean Ukraine giv­ing up sig­nif­i­cant amounts of ter­ri­to­ry.” Talk about a bad deal.

    It seems clear that nego­ti­at­ing now would be an extra­or­di­nary con­ces­sion in and of itself to Putin’s bar­barism and will­ing­ness to threat­en nuclear con­flict. Yet it’s not just Trump­ists who have been call­ing with more urgency for a nego­ti­at­ed peace ever since Putin vowed, in ear­ly Sep­tem­ber, to “make use of all weapons sys­tems avail­able to us” and warned, “This is not a bluff.”

    Or is it? Over the week­end, Biden’s nation­al-secu­ri­ty advis­er, Jake Sul­li­van, promised a “cat­a­stroph­ic” response if Putin were to deploy bat­tle­field nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Amer­i­can mil­i­tary offi­cials have no doubt pro­duced many seri­ous options for the Unit­ed States to con­sid­er in such a sce­nario, includ­ing direct­ly enter­ing the war on Ukraine’s side—just the Third World War sce­nario that Biden has been so deter­mined to avoid.
    ...

    Final­ly, in this piece that lays out the ‘log­ic’ for why any any nego­ti­a­tions would be an unwise capit­u­la­tion to Putin’s threats and blus­ter designed to scare the West to the bar­gain­ing table, Glass­er notes how Putin has a his­to­ry of mil­i­tar­i­ly dou­bling down to extract vic­to­ries and express­es doubt that Putin will shy from fur­ther esca­la­tions:

    ...
    Watch­ing all of this, it’s hard not to think of how often over the past two decades the West has col­lec­tive­ly failed to get Putin right—or to get him at all. Over the sum­mer, the Aspen Strat­e­gy Group asked me to give a pre­sen­ta­tion about Rus­sia at war, and what stood out to me in my research was the num­ber of times, and vari­ety of ways, in which the U.S. and its allies had missed the mark in under­stand­ing Putin at crit­i­cal junc­tures in his long tenure as Russia’s mod­ern tsar.

    Again and again, Putin has prof­it­ed from the appli­ca­tion of mil­i­tary force to achieve oth­er­wise unat­tain­able polit­i­cal gains. He came to pow­er by pro­mot­ing war in the sep­a­ratist Russ­ian province of Chech­nya. He sent Russ­ian troops to Geor­gia and Syr­ia and, in 2014, to Ukraine. Each time, there were end­less rounds of spec­u­la­tion in West­ern cap­i­tals about how to cre­ate an “exit ramp” that would final­ly entice Putin to end his incur­sion. Putin just kept bar­relling down the high­way.

    So, yes, I’m skep­ti­cal when I hear the lat­est round of “exit ramp” talk. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from watch­ing Putin all of this time, it’s that he is not one to walk away from a fight or back down while losing—escalation is his game, and by now he is very, very prac­ticed at it. As the Moscow Times put it, in a fas­ci­nat­ing piece of report­ing from inside the Krem­lin, “Putin always choos­es esca­la­tion.”
    ...

    So what should the West do when Putin dou­bles and triples down on the esca­la­tions as pre­dict­ed? Fur­ther esca­late the sit­u­a­tion. At least that’s what the West should do if we fol­low­ing the ‘log­ic’ laid out in this arti­cle.

    Stay tuned for future pieces about how lim­it­ed nuclear war will remain lim­it­ed and won’t actu­al­ly be all that bad.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 1, 2022, 3:49 pm
  6. The Russ­ian use of nukes will man­date an unprece­dent­ed response by NATO and the US. A strate­gic response of over­whelm­ing con­ven­tion­al weapons that destroy all Russ­ian forces inside Ukraine.Even if that response ends up esca­lat­ing the sit­u­a­tion. In prin­ci­ple. That appears to be the strate­gic thought at work in West­ern pol­i­cy-mak­ing cir­cles in response to the grow­ing threats from Vladimir Putin about the pos­si­ble use of nuclear weapons in the defense of Rus­si­a’s new­ly annexed ter­ri­to­ries.

    At least that’s the response sug­gest­ed by two fig­ures in a posi­tion to have a sense of how the US might response to the Russ­ian use of nukes: nation­al secu­ri­ty ana­lyst and lead­ing expert on nuclear war­fare Joseph Cir­in­cione and retired general/former direc­tor of the CIA David Petraeus. Both fig­ures gave inter­views in recent days describ­ing their rec­om­mend­ed response to the Russ­ian use of tac­ti­cal nukes and both gave strik­ing­ly sim­i­lar advice: the US and NATO would have destroy Rus­si­a’s forces in Ukraine should nukes get used. Petraeus added that Rus­sian’s entire Black Sea fleet would have to be sunk too. And while the lan­guage of ‘inside Ukraine’ rais­es the ques­tion of whether or not that includes the four new­ly annexed ter­ri­to­ries, Petraeus was explic­it that Crimea should get hit too. Petraeus also hint­ed at the pos­si­bil­i­ty that radi­a­tion mov­ing into NATO-mem­ber space could be seen as an Arti­cle 5 trig­ger.

    Petraeus and Cir­in­cione were also both can­did about how such a response could end up esca­lat­ing the sit­u­a­tion. But both insist­ed that such a response would nonethe­less be nec­es­sary on prin­ci­ple even if Arti­cle 5 was­n’t for­mal­ly trig­gered. As Petraeus put it, “You don’t want to, again, get into a nuclear esca­la­tion here. But you have to show that this can­not be accept­ed in any way.” And that more or less cap­tures the under­ly­ing per­il in this sit­u­a­tion: there are no good moves with nuclear stand­offs. It’s a mat­ter of choos­ing the least worst move, which is obvi­ous­ly a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ties. Is it the ‘least worst’ option to not esca­late the sit­u­a­tion in response to the use of tac­ti­cal nukes — set­ting the prece­dent of the use of such weapons in mod­ern com­bat — or is an over­whelm­ing con­ven­tion­al response that risks WWIII the ‘least worst’ option? That will be up to pol­i­cy­mak­ers to decide in the event of the use of nuke, and based on these arti­cles it sounds like they’ve already made that deci­sion:

    Yahoo! News

    Expert: If Putin uses nukes, U.S. could wipe out Russ­ian forces in Ukraine

    Michael Isikoff·Chief Inves­tiga­tive Cor­re­spon­dent
    Mon, Octo­ber 3, 2022 at 4:16 PM

    WASHINGTON — If Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin makes good on his threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the Unit­ed States would like­ly respond with a sweep­ing eco­nom­ic embar­go com­bined with a mas­sive con­ven­tion­al attack on Russ­ian mil­i­tary posi­tions that could quick­ly wipe out the Russ­ian president’s invad­ing mil­i­tary forces, said Joseph Cir­in­cione, a nation­al secu­ri­ty ana­lyst and lead­ing expert on nuclear war­fare.

    The U.S. and NATO “could destroy the Russ­ian forces in Ukraine in a mat­ter of days,” said Cir­in­cione, author of the book “Nuclear Night­mares: Secur­ing the World Before It Is Too Late,” in an inter­view on the Yahoo News “Skull­dug­gery” pod­cast. “That would be the end of the Russ­ian army in this.”

    But Cir­in­cione also acknowl­edged that such a direct U.S. or NATO mil­i­tary strike against the Russ­ian mil­i­tary — even in response to the Russ­ian use of tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons on the bat­tle­field — could also spi­ral out of con­trol. “There are no good respons­es once you start down the nuclear path,” he said. “It’s extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to ter­mi­nate it for the same rea­son that a pok­er play­er los­ing a hand is hes­i­tant to fold. They keep think­ing there’s one more move they could make, one more bet they could raise to try to cause the oth­er side to fold. So there’s no good respons­es.

    Cir­in­cione said that if Putin were to actu­al­ly make good on his threat to go nuclear, it would not be a large-scale ther­monu­clear bomb attack, but a more lim­it­ed deploy­ment of tac­ti­cal weapons — far more lim­it­ed in scope but still a major and unprece­dent­ed esca­la­tion. And Cir­in­cione said that the U.S. mil­i­tary response would not be lim­it­ed to the bat­tle­field. There would also like­ly be a sharp esca­la­tion in psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare such as was used to unnerve Iraqi gen­er­als on the eve of the U.S. inva­sion of that coun­try. “The U.S. was call­ing Iraqi gen­er­als in their home and telling them to stand down. And they did that for two rea­sons. One, to let them know we know where you live, right? Two, we can reach out and touch you,” said Cir­in­cione, pre­dict­ing that the U.S. might well adopt such a tac­tic in the Ukraine cri­sis.

    ...

    But even as Sul­li­van has gone pub­lic on the issue, Cir­in­cione acknowl­edged that the threats have not deterred Putin from talk­ing up a nuclear sce­nario. Last Fri­day, Putin gave a speech at the Krem­lin in which he announced the annex­a­tion of four regions of Ukraine most­ly occu­pied by Rus­sia but where it is get­ting pushed back by Kyiv’s forces. Putin said that Rus­sia would use “all means avail­able” to defend its ter­ri­to­ry. In a chill­ing pas­sage, he not­ed that the Unit­ed States was the only coun­try to use nuclear weapons in wartime — drop­ping atom­ic bombs on Hiroshi­ma and Nagasa­ki towards the end of World War II — and then added: “By the way, they cre­at­ed a prece­dent.”

    When asked about the fact that U.S. warn­ings have not in any way curbed Putin’s talk of nuclear weapons, Cir­in­cione replied: “It tells me that he’s des­per­ate and he’s con­vinced of his own pow­er and that the pres­sure on him is not enough yet. So you’re absolute­ly right. He hasn’t stopped. Would he real­ly do this? I think the answer to that is we don’t know.”

    But one rea­son to be alarmed, said Cir­in­cione, is that Russ­ian mil­i­tary doc­trine now explic­it­ly con­tem­plates the use of nuclear weapons, not just to respond to a nuclear attack on the coun­try, but also in the event of a large-scale con­ven­tion­al mil­i­tary attack that endan­gers Russia’s nation­al secu­ri­ty. “They call this strat­e­gy ‘esca­late to deesca­late,’” said Cir­in­cione. “We will use a nuclear weapon in a vari­ety of ways.” As the Rus­sians see it, if they used tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons in such a sce­nario, they would argue: “‘We won’t be start­ing a nuclear war. We’ll be end­ing a con­ven­tion­al war,’” said Cir­in­cione. “That’s how their think­ing goes. And that’s why you have to wor­ry about this more and more as Putin con­tin­ues to lose the war in Ukraine. It’s exact­ly in these kinds of cir­cum­stances that the use of nuclear weapons comes into play in doc­trine and in Putin’s think­ing.”

    “I con­sid­er Putin a fas­cist,” he added. “I think he has built a fas­cist regime in Rus­sia. We have nev­er seen a fas­cist regime with nuclear weapons before. We’ve had author­i­tar­i­ans. We’ve had some bru­tal dic­ta­tors, but noth­ing on this scale before. So this is very dan­ger­ous ter­ri­to­ry.”

    ———-

    “Expert: If Putin uses nukes, U.S. could wipe out Russ­ian forces in Ukraine” by Michael Isikoff; Yahoo! News; 10/03/2022

    The U.S. and NATO “could destroy the Russ­ian forces in Ukraine in a mat­ter of days,” said Cir­in­cione, author of the book “Nuclear Night­mares: Secur­ing the World Before It Is Too Late,” in an inter­view on the Yahoo News “Skull­dug­gery” pod­cast. “That would be the end of the Russ­ian army in this.””

    The destruc­tion of all Russ­ian forces ‘in Ukraine’ in a mat­ter of days. That’s the kind of response from the US and NATO that pol­i­cy­mak­ers are prob­a­bly con­sid­er­ing accord­ing to nuclear war­fare ana­lyst Joseph Cir­in­cione. Would this include the Russ­ian forces inside the four new­ly annexed regions? Let’s hope we don’t ever have to get clar­i­ty on that detail.

    But Cir­in­cione was­n’t pre­dict­ing that the destruc­tion of Russ­ian forces would some­how deesca­late the sit­u­a­tion. Quite the oppo­site. Cir­in­cione read­i­ly acknowl­edges that such a response to spi­ral out of con­trol, in part because large con­ven­tion­al attacks can be a trig­ger for the use of nuclear weapons under Russ­ian mil­i­tary doc­trine. There are no good options:

    ...
    But Cir­in­cione also acknowl­edged that such a direct U.S. or NATO mil­i­tary strike against the Russ­ian mil­i­tary — even in response to the Russ­ian use of tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons on the bat­tle­field — could also spi­ral out of con­trol. “There are no good respons­es once you start down the nuclear path,” he said. “It’s extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to ter­mi­nate it for the same rea­son that a pok­er play­er los­ing a hand is hes­i­tant to fold. They keep think­ing there’s one more move they could make, one more bet they could raise to try to cause the oth­er side to fold. So there’s no good respons­es.

    ...

    When asked about the fact that U.S. warn­ings have not in any way curbed Putin’s talk of nuclear weapons, Cir­in­cione replied: “It tells me that he’s des­per­ate and he’s con­vinced of his own pow­er and that the pres­sure on him is not enough yet. So you’re absolute­ly right. He hasn’t stopped. Would he real­ly do this? I think the answer to that is we don’t know.”

    But one rea­son to be alarmed, said Cir­in­cione, is that Russ­ian mil­i­tary doc­trine now explic­it­ly con­tem­plates the use of nuclear weapons, not just to respond to a nuclear attack on the coun­try, but also in the event of a large-scale con­ven­tion­al mil­i­tary attack that endan­gers Russia’s nation­al secu­ri­ty. “They call this strat­e­gy ‘esca­late to deesca­late,’” said Cir­in­cione. “We will use a nuclear weapon in a vari­ety of ways.” As the Rus­sians see it, if they used tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons in such a sce­nario, they would argue: “‘We won’t be start­ing a nuclear war. We’ll be end­ing a con­ven­tion­al war,’” said Cir­in­cione. “That’s how their think­ing goes. And that’s why you have to wor­ry about this more and more as Putin con­tin­ues to lose the war in Ukraine. It’s exact­ly in these kinds of cir­cum­stances that the use of nuclear weapons comes into play in doc­trine and in Putin’s think­ing.”
    ...

    And if it seems like this might just be the views of a sin­gle nuclear war­fare ana­lyst, here’s a recent piece about an inter­view of retired army gen­er­al and for­mer CIA direc­tor David Petraeus about how the US and NATO should respond to the use of tac­ti­cal nukes. And as we can see, Petraeus is more or less pre­dict­ing the same response as Cir­in­cione, albeit a more expand­ed ver­sion that includes sink­ing all of Rus­si­a’s Black Sea fleet. And also explic­it­ly men­tions strikes in Crimea. Petraeus did­n’t envi­sion this response as being part of a trig­gered Arti­cle 5 NATO response but instead being the response that just has to hap­pen ‘on prin­ci­ple’, although he did also hint at the pos­si­bil­i­ty that radi­a­tion from nuclear weapons mov­ing into NATO coun­tries could be seen as an Arti­cle 5 trig­ger. As Petraeus puts it, “You don’t want to, again, get into a nuclear esca­la­tion here. But you have to show that this can­not be accept­ed in any way.” And that more or less cap­tures the psy­cho­log­i­cal dynam­ic at work here: A response is required even at the risk of esca­lat­ing the sit­u­a­tion. It’s just part of the nature of nuclear war­fare and why ‘strate­gic’ nuclear arse­nals are effec­tive­ly a recipe for no one sit­u­a­tions. They can’t be used respon­si­bly, whether we’re talk­ing about irre­spon­si­ble first-strike sce­nar­ios or irre­spon­si­ble counter-strike response sce­nar­ios. It’s appar­ent­ly a les­son we’re going to have to learn the hard way.

    But the fol­low­ing arti­cle also hints at anoth­er grim sce­nario was should keep an eye out for: Sen­a­tor Mar­co Rubio is appar­ent­ly very con­cerned about Rus­sia decid­ing to strike logis­ti­cal hubs and trans­porta­tion depots on the bor­der of Ukraine in NATO coun­tries like Poland. While Rubio acknowl­edged the nuclear threat, he said he most wor­ries about “a Russ­ian attack inside Nato ter­ri­to­ry, for exam­ple, aim­ing at the air­port in Poland or some oth­er dis­tri­b­u­tion point”. He added that, “He may strike one of these logis­ti­cal points. And that logis­ti­cal point may not be inside … Ukraine. To me, that is the area that I focus on the most, because it has a tac­ti­cal aspect to it. And I think he prob­a­bly views it as less esca­la­to­ry. Nato may not.” So Rubio is putting out the idea that Putin might strike Poland or anoth­er NATO mem­ber under the assump­tion that it would­n’t be an esca­la­to­ry act. Do we have to be wor­ry about Russ­ian attacks on the NATO mem­ber bor­der­ing Ukraine? That seems like a mas­sive esca­la­tion should Putin decide to do it. But when we’re being told that Putin may not view such attacks as trig­ger­ing Arti­cle 5, we have to ask: Do we also have to wor­ry about Arti­cle 5‑triggering false flag attacks? It’s a dark sce­nario to con­tem­plate. But giv­en the rel­a­tive­ly casu­al approach we’re see­ing across the West to the risk of a nuclear exchange, such dark sce­nar­ios seem like the kinds of sce­nar­ios we have to keep in mind. Because a lot of peo­ple seem to be very open to sce­nar­ios that turn this proxy con­flict into a full blown Rus­sia vs NATO war

    The Guardian

    Petraeus: US would destroy Russia’s troops if Putin uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine

    For­mer CIA direc­tor and retired army gen­er­al says Moscow’s leader is ‘des­per­ate’ and ‘bat­tle­field real­i­ty he faces is irre­versible’

    Edward Hel­more
    Sun 2 Oct 2022 14.56 EDT
    Last mod­i­fied on Mon 3 Oct 2022 09.55 EDT

    The US and its allies would destroy Russia’s troops and equip­ment in Ukraine – as well as sink its Black Sea fleet – if the Russ­ian pres­i­dent, Vladimir Putin, uses nuclear weapons in the coun­try, for­mer CIA direc­tor and retired four-star army gen­er­al David Petraeus warned on Sun­day.

    Petraeus said that he had not spo­ken to nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er Jake Sul­li­van on the like­ly US response to nuclear esca­la­tion from Rus­sia, which admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have said has been repeat­ed­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Moscow.

    He told ABC News: “Just to give you a hypo­thet­i­cal, we would respond by lead­ing a Nato – a col­lec­tive – effort that would take out every Russ­ian con­ven­tion­al force that we can see and iden­ti­fy on the bat­tle­field in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea.”

    ...

    Asked if the use of nuclear weapons by Rus­sia in Ukraine would bring Amer­i­ca and Nato into the war, Petraeus said that it would not be a sit­u­a­tion trig­ger­ing the alliance’s Arti­cle 5, which calls for a col­lec­tive defense. That is because Ukraine is not part of Nato – nonethe­less, a “US and Nato response” would be in order, Petraeus said.

    Petraeus acknowl­edged that the like­li­hood that radi­a­tion would extend to Nato coun­tries under the Arti­cle 5 umbrel­la could per­haps be con­strued as an attack on a Nato mem­ber.

    “Per­haps you can make that case,” he said. “The oth­er case is that this is so hor­rif­ic that there has to be a response – it can­not go unan­swered.”

    Yet, Petraeus added, “You don’t want to, again, get into a nuclear esca­la­tion here. But you have to show that this can­not be accept­ed in any way.”

    Nonethe­less, with pres­sure mount­ing on Putin after Ukrain­ian gains in the east of the coun­try under last week’s annex­a­tion dec­la­ra­tion and resis­tance to mobi­liza­tion efforts with­in Rus­sia mount­ing, Petraeus said Moscow’s leader was “des­per­ate”.

    “The bat­tle­field real­i­ty he faces is, I think, irre­versible,” he said. “No amount of sham­bol­ic mobi­liza­tion, which is the only way to describe it; no amount of annex­a­tion; no amount of even veiled nuclear threats can actu­al­ly get him out of this par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion.

    “At some point there’s going to have to be recog­ni­tion of that. At some point there’s going to have to be some kind of begin­ning of nego­ti­a­tions, as [Ukrain­ian] Pres­i­dent [Volodymyr] Zelen­skiy has said, will be the ulti­mate end.”

    But, Petraeus warned, “It can still get worse for Putin and for Rus­sia. And even the use of tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons on the bat­tle­field won’t change this at all.” Still, he added, “You have to take the threat seri­ous­ly.”

    Sen­a­tor Mar­co Rubio, the rank­ing Repub­li­can mem­ber of the Sen­ate for­eign rela­tions com­mit­tee, told CNN that Putin was down to two choic­es: estab­lished defen­sive lines or with­draw and lose ter­ri­to­ry.

    Rubio said he believed it “quite pos­si­ble” that Putin could strike dis­tri­b­u­tion points where US and allied sup­plies are enter­ing Ukraine, includ­ing inside Poland. The sen­a­tor acknowl­edged the nuclear threat, but he said most wor­ries about “a Russ­ian attack inside Nato ter­ri­to­ry, for exam­ple, aim­ing at the air­port in Poland or some oth­er dis­tri­b­u­tion point”.

    “Nato will have to respond to it,” he said. “How it will respond, I think a lot of it will depend on the nature of the attack and the scale and scope of it.”

    But as a sen­a­tor privy to Pen­ta­gon brief­in­gs, Rubio resist­ed being drawn on whether he’d seen evi­dence that Rus­sia is prepar­ing to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

    “Cer­tain­ly, the risk is prob­a­bly high­er today than it was a month ago,” Rubio said, pre­dict­ing that Rus­sia would prob­a­bly take an inter­me­di­ate step.

    “He may strike one of these logis­ti­cal points. And that logis­ti­cal point may not be inside … Ukraine. To me, that is the area that I focus on the most, because it has a tac­ti­cal aspect to it. And I think he prob­a­bly views it as less esca­la­to­ry. Nato may not.”

    ———–

    “Petraeus: US would destroy Russia’s troops if Putin uses nuclear weapons in Ukraine” Edward Hel­more; The Guardian; 10/02/2022

    “He told ABC News: “Just to give you a hypo­thet­i­cal, we would respond by lead­ing a Nato – a col­lec­tive – effort that would take out every Russ­ian con­ven­tion­al force that we can see and iden­ti­fy on the bat­tle­field in Ukraine and also in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea.””

    David Petraeus sure sounds a lot like Joseph Cir­in­cione in his pre­dic­tions of a US/NATO response: tak­ing out all of Rus­si­a’s con­ven­tion­al forces in Ukraine, includ­ing in Crimea and every ship in the Black Sea. This would­n’t be part of an NATO Arti­cle 5 trig­ger. It would just be part of a response on the prin­ci­ple that the Russ­ian use of a tac­ti­cal nuke “can­not go unan­swered”. It points to a big part of what makes this sit­u­a­tion so wild­ly dan­ger­ous: the response is going to be dri­ven large­ly based on the prin­ci­ple of “this can­not go answered”, which might feel good at the moment but isn’t a great recipe for avoid­ing WWIII:

    ...
    Asked if the use of nuclear weapons by Rus­sia in Ukraine would bring Amer­i­ca and Nato into the war, Petraeus said that it would not be a sit­u­a­tion trig­ger­ing the alliance’s Arti­cle 5, which calls for a col­lec­tive defense. That is because Ukraine is not part of Nato – nonethe­less, a “US and Nato response” would be in order, Petraeus said.

    Petraeus acknowl­edged that the like­li­hood that radi­a­tion would extend to Nato coun­tries under the Arti­cle 5 umbrel­la could per­haps be con­strued as an attack on a Nato mem­ber.

    “Per­haps you can make that case,” he said. “The oth­er case is that this is so hor­rif­ic that there has to be a response – it can­not go unan­swered.”

    Yet, Petraeus added, “You don’t want to, again, get into a nuclear esca­la­tion here. But you have to show that this can­not be accept­ed in any way.”
    ...

    And then there’s the omi­nous warn­ings Sen­a­tor Mar­co Rubio seems to be fix­at­ed on: Rus­sia attack­ing a logis­ti­cal point in a NATO mem­ber like Poland. Rus­sia might view such an attack as less esca­la­to­ry, accord­ing to Rubio, despite the fact that it would pre­sum­ably trig­ger Arti­cle 5. Is Rus­sia actu­al­ly think­ing about attack­ing sites in Poland or are we being prepped for some sort of false flag? A false flag that would obvi­ous­ly trig­ger Arti­cle 5. It’s part of what makes the rel­a­tive­ly non-alarmed West­ern response to Rus­sian’s nuclear threats so dis­turb­ing: there’s prob­a­bly a lot of pol­i­cy-mak­ers who would love to see a full scale war between Rus­sia and NATO in part because they don’t see the risk of a full scale nuclear exchange as being all that seri­ous:

    ...
    Sen­a­tor Mar­co Rubio, the rank­ing Repub­li­can mem­ber of the Sen­ate for­eign rela­tions com­mit­tee, told CNN that Putin was down to two choic­es: estab­lished defen­sive lines or with­draw and lose ter­ri­to­ry.

    Rubio said he believed it “quite pos­si­ble” that Putin could strike dis­tri­b­u­tion points where US and allied sup­plies are enter­ing Ukraine, includ­ing inside Poland. The sen­a­tor acknowl­edged the nuclear threat, but he said most wor­ries about “a Russ­ian attack inside Nato ter­ri­to­ry, for exam­ple, aim­ing at the air­port in Poland or some oth­er dis­tri­b­u­tion point”.

    “Nato will have to respond to it,” he said. “How it will respond, I think a lot of it will depend on the nature of the attack and the scale and scope of it.”

    But as a sen­a­tor privy to Pen­ta­gon brief­in­gs, Rubio resist­ed being drawn on whether he’d seen evi­dence that Rus­sia is prepar­ing to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

    “Cer­tain­ly, the risk is prob­a­bly high­er today than it was a month ago,” Rubio said, pre­dict­ing that Rus­sia would prob­a­bly take an inter­me­di­ate step.

    He may strike one of these logis­ti­cal points. And that logis­ti­cal point may not be inside … Ukraine. To me, that is the area that I focus on the most, because it has a tac­ti­cal aspect to it. And I think he prob­a­bly views it as less esca­la­to­ry. Nato may not.”
    ...

    Final­ly, note the inver­sion of real­i­ty encap­su­lat­ed in Petraeus’s calls for “some kind of begin­ning of nego­ti­a­tions, as [Ukrain­ian] Pres­i­dent [Volodymyr] Zelen­skiy has said, will be the ulti­mate end.” As we’ve seen through­out this con­flict, Zelen­skiy has insist­ed that there be no nego­ti­a­tions or even cease­fires until Rus­sia with­drawals from all ter­ri­to­ries. It’s a stance Zelen­skiy has repeat­ed­ly reit­er­at­ed. But Petraeus is cor­rect: nego­ti­a­tions are the only real way of deesca­lat­ing the sit­u­a­tion. Too bad that’s nev­er going to be allowed to hap­pen:

    ...
    “At some point there’s going to have to be recog­ni­tion of that. At some point there’s going to have to be some kind of begin­ning of nego­ti­a­tions, as [Ukrain­ian] Pres­i­dent [Volodymyr] Zelen­skiy has said, will be the ulti­mate end.

    But, Petraeus warned, “It can still get worse for Putin and for Rus­sia. And even the use of tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons on the bat­tle­field won’t change this at all.” Still, he added, “You have to take the threat seri­ous­ly.”
    ...

    It’s an iron­ic grim reminder of one of the things we aren’t hear­ing about at all in this con­flict: seri­ous nego­ti­a­tions. Sure, we’ve heard call for nego­ti­a­tions. But no actu­al nego­ti­a­tions. But don’t for­get what Cir­in­cione point­ed out: Rus­sia already has an “esca­late to deesca­late” nuclear doc­trine in the face of over­whelm­ing con­ven­tion­al forces. Ukraine’s demand of no nego­ti­a­tions before Rus­sia is expelled from its ter­ri­to­ry is its own kind of “esca­late to deesca­late” doc­trine. Let’s hope we don’t have to expe­ri­ence a ‘esca­late to deesca­late’ kind of pre­lude to nego­ti­a­tions. But it’s sure look­ing like that’s the plan. Well, nego­ti­a­tions aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly part of the plan. Esca­la­tion is def­i­nite­ly a big part of plan at this point.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 5, 2022, 4:30 pm
  7. “Now, All of You Are Azov.” Those were some of the more dis­turb­ing words uttered at a ‘char­i­ty event’ in Detroit recent­ly where three Azov wolf­san­gel patch­es were auc­tioned off. Anoth­er ‘char­i­ty’ event held in Chica­go fea­tured the auc­tion­ing of an Azov bat­tle flag. Both events were orga­nized by OUN‑B affil­i­at­ed char­i­ties and part of the Azov move­men­t’s celebri­ty tour of the US. A tour that includ­ed a vis­it to DC and numer­ous vis­its with mem­bers of Con­gress. At least 50 mem­bers, accord­ing to one of the mem­bers of the del­e­ga­tion.

    And with that cel­e­bra­tion of con­gres­sion­al con­tacts came an omi­nous pre­dic­tion from one of these Azov mem­bers dur­ing the event in Detroit: the con­gres­sion­al ban on US fund­ing for the arm­ing and train­ing of the Azov bat­tal­ion is going to be lift­ed this year. Recall how Con­gress­man Ro Khan­na man­aged to get than ban pushed through con­gress in 2018, only to get slammed in the US press for being a Russ­ian dupe. That ban is set to expire in 2025, but it’s going to be lift­ed lat­er this year accord­ing to this Azov del­e­ga­tion.

    So is Azov going to see its con­gres­sion­al ban lift­ed in the com­ing months? We’ll see. But as the arti­cle makes clear, any lift­ing at this point is large­ly a for­mal­i­ty. Because when it comes to the ques­tion of whether or not Azov is viewed as a dan­ger­ous extrem­ist group or a valu­able ally, the deci­sion has already been made: Azov is a valu­able ally. So valu­able that any­thing that threat­ens that alliance needs to be elim­i­nat­ed, include knowl­edge of its Nazi nature. Because we’re all Azov now. The trans­for­ma­tion is com­plete:

    The Gray­zone

    ‘Now, All of You Are Azov’: ‘open­ly neo-Nazi’ Ukrain­ian del­e­ga­tion meets Con­gress, tours US

    MOSS ROBESON
    OCTOBER 5, 2022

    After meet­ing with at least 50 mem­bers of Con­gress, sol­diers of the neo-Nazi Azov Reg­i­ment toured the US to auc­tion off swasti­ka-inspired patch­es and lob­by for an end to restric­tions on US arms and train­ing.

    This arti­cle was orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished by Moss Robeson’s Ukes, Kooks and Spooks blog and light­ly edit­ed by The Gray­zone.

    Read part one of Robeson’s series on Azov’s US tour here.

    This Sep­tem­ber, a del­e­ga­tion of the Ukrain­ian neo-Nazi-led Azov move­ment arrived in the Unit­ed States, at a time when myth mak­ing about the far-right network’s “depoliti­ciza­tion” had reached a fever pitch. By this time, the New York Times had ceased refer­ring to Azov as “open­ly neo-Nazi,” and was refer­ring to the ultra-nation­al­ist orga­ni­za­tion as “cel­e­brat­ed.”

    ...

    The Azov del­e­ga­tion includ­ed three vet­er­ans of the reg­i­ment for­mer­ly holed up in the Azovstal steel plant in Mar­i­upol. They were led by Gior­gi Kuparashvili, the only fight­er not tak­en pris­on­er by the Rus­sians.

    Accord­ing to Kuparashvili, a cofounder and instruc­tor of the Azov Reg­i­ment, his del­e­ga­tion met over fifty mem­bers of Con­gress, far more than any­one has real­ized. Among those who showed up to greet Azov on Capi­tol Hill was Rep. Adam Schiff, the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­rat who spent the Trump era lead­ing Rus­si­a­gate the­atrics and clam­ored for ship­ments of offen­sive US weapons to Ukraine.

    Almost missed this: Adam Schiff, chair­man of the House Intel­li­gence Com­mit­tee, also met the Azov del­e­ga­tion https://t.co/lm2naH74zx— Moss Robe­son (@mossrobeson__) Sep­tem­ber 28, 2022

    The trio was accom­pa­nied by two spous­es and a moth­er of POWs cap­tured at Azovstal. This includ­ed Katery­na Prokopenko, the wife of the far-right com­man­der of the Azov Reg­i­ment, Denys Prokopenko, who was freed in a pris­on­er exchange and declared a Hero of Ukraine dur­ing her vis­it to the Unit­ed States. The delegation’s oth­er Azov wife was Yulia Fedosyuk, the leader of “Sil­ver of the Rose,” an anti-fem­i­nist, anti-gay group linked to the Azov move­ment, accord­ing to jour­nal­ist Olek­siy Kuz­menko.

    Anti-fem­i­nist grou­pus­cule “Sil­ver of the Rose” that appears in @5050oD video has been embraced by ????’s influ­en­tial anti-LGBT, “pro-fam­i­ly” “Vsi Razom” org. In a recent inter­view SOR’s leader Fedosyuk https://t.co/gBQeDz4hd7 says “fem­i­nism is ready to muti­late and sell women” pic.twitter.com/iktwqi7PPv— Olek­siy Kuz­menko (@kooleksiy) May 4, 2020

    Ear­li­er this year, Prokopenko and Fedosyuk met with Pope Fran­cis. While in the Unit­ed States, they spoke at a small ral­ly in front of the White House, appeared for an inter­view on the pro-Trump chan­nel News­max, and took meet­ings with numer­ous mem­bers of Con­gress. News­max sep­a­rate­ly inter­viewed two of the Azov vet­er­ans, includ­ing Kuparashvili.

    On Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 24, half of the del­e­ga­tion includ­ing Kuparashvili appeared before a siz­able audi­ence at a Ukrain­ian church in Detroit. The Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can Cri­sis Response Com­mit­tee of Michi­gan (UACRCM), a lob­by­ing out­fit formed ear­li­er this year, live-streamed the event, which was orga­nized by US part­ners of the Azov movement’s char­i­ty wing.

    Among the more promi­nent Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists present for the event was Borys Potapenko, a mem­ber of the UACRCM and an inter­na­tion­al coor­di­na­tor of the Stepan Ban­dera-found­ed Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN‑B), which col­lab­o­rat­ed with Nazi Ger­many through­out much of World War Two. Potapenko is also among the lead­ers of the far-right “Capit­u­la­tion Resis­tance Move­ment” in Ukraine, which allied with Azov’s Nation­al Corps against Volodymyr Zelen­sky in 2019–22. (More about this com­ing soon on the “Ban­dera Lob­by Blog”…)

    Gior­gi Kuparashvili spoke to the audi­ence in Eng­lish, focus­ing large­ly on the Azov delegation’s suc­cess in Wash­ing­ton. “We went to the Sen­a­tors, Con­gress­men, from both par­ties. Hon­est­ly, the major­i­ty we met, there were like over fifty of them, and head of their frac­tions [Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans], they all gave 100% sup­port. They start­ed to work right from their office in front of us, picked up the phone, and start­ed call­ing to dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions which can influ­ence — right now, we’re hav­ing prob­lems with the Gene­va Con­ven­tions. Gene­va Con­ven­tions is not work­ing, not for Rus­sia…”

    Lat­er, Kuparashvili indi­cat­ed that the del­e­ga­tion had more on its polit­i­cal agen­da than detail­ing Russ­ian war crimes, crit­i­ciz­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross, and secur­ing the release of Azov POWs. He pre­dict­ed that this year, Con­gress will lift its ban on the U.S. sup­ply­ing arms and train­ing to the Azov Reg­i­ment.

    In his clos­ing remarks, Gior­gi Kuparashvili appeared to take aim at his least two favorite mem­bers of Con­gress: Ro Khan­na, a lib­er­al Demo­c­rat from Sil­i­con Val­ley, thanks to whom Con­gress cur­tailed U.S. sup­port for the Azov Reg­i­ment in 2018, and Max Rose, a for­mer Con­gress­man and right-wing Demo­c­rat from Stat­en Island, who called on the State Depart­ment to label the Azov Reg­i­ment a “For­eign Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tion” in 2020.

    “From year ’14, ’15, ’16, until today,” claimed Kuparashvili, “there is a bill which, I don’t remem­ber the name, but the Con­gress­man who lob­bied, I don’t know how… He left Con­gress a cou­ple years ago, he ini­ti­at­ed to put the Azov as a restric­tion in a bill. This week, we talked to all the Con­gress­men and Sen­a­tors, every­body under­stands, because when you bring the bill to Con­gress, they have to read it. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, nobody read it, so they approved it again.”

    Now we told them, ‘are you sup­port­ing this?’ And every­body knows it’s just a mis­take in it. As the Con­gress­men and Sen­a­tors says, this bill goes until 2025. They’re not going to wait until 2025, and gonna make the cor­rec­tion on this year, to remove it from there… We’re deal­ing with the sit­u­a­tion and fix­ing it, and major­i­ty of the job is already done, and Con­gress and Sen­ate, both par­ties are sup­port­ing this.

    Before Kuparashvili’s clos­ing remarks, his hosts held an auc­tion on behalf of the Azov char­i­ty project, ulti­mate­ly rais­ing $33,416. The auc­tion end­ed with bid­ding on three Azov Reg­i­ment patch­es fea­tur­ing a wolf­san­gel, or Nazi runic sym­bol.

    Before the bid­ding com­menced, Kuparashvili insist­ed that things were not as they appear. “If you know, there is a sym­bol,” he said, tap­ping the patch on his left arm, “which I’m gonna explain now, because they call us Nazis, all this crap.” At that point he mock­ing­ly put his hand over his mouth, and said, “sor­ry my lan­guage — ha!”

    “This is actu­al­ly two let­ters, two Latin let­ters, N and I. The N stands for Nation­al; I, it’s Idea. Nation­al Idea. Nation­al Idea. For reg­i­ment, it’s our slo­gan. Nation­al Idea. Every coun­try, it doesn’t mat­ter, it’s U.S., Ukraine, what­ev­er. When the coun­try was in prob­lem, cen­ter of grav­i­ty always became the nation­al­ists. The Nation­al Idea. All the nation gath­ers around the nation­al­ists, and around the Nation­al Idea. For us, Nation­al Idea is Ukraine. If they don’t like what is Ukraine, and what it’s Nation­al Idea, hell with them…” Kuparahsvili, touch­ing on the total­i­tar­i­an Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ist con­cept of “Nati­oc­ra­cy,” all but admit­ted Azov’s affin­i­ty for white nation­al­ists in the West.

    With the myth-mak­ing about Azov’s sup­posed depoliti­ciza­tion reach­ing new heights, this cofounder of the reg­i­ment could­n’t even get the sto­ry straight whether they “got rid” of their far-right ele­ments or nev­er had them to begin with. https://t.co/As3xHlAgvV— Moss Robe­son (@mossrobeson__) Octo­ber 5, 2022

    Accord­ing to Kuparashvili, before, only Azov mem­bers could wear their wolf­san­gel patch­es, but he bestowed per­mis­sion on the audi­ence to place their bids, because “now, all of you are Azov.” There was anoth­er dis­claimer that Kuparashvili shared only after the win­ners emerged. “It’s a respon­si­bil­i­ty,” he said.

    “We’re just hand­ing over it,” Kuparashvili told the audi­ence about the Azov Reg­i­ment patch­es. “We’re giv­ing to those our respon­si­bil­i­ty. We have the sol­diers where they go through the basic train­ing, go through all the train­ings, and dif­fi­cul­ties. If they don’t deserve, you can’t grad­u­ate… But if you deserve it, with this comes a respon­si­bil­i­ty… Your Nation­al Idea is Ukraine. You got­ta fight for it. Not just put it in a room or a shelf some­where, but you got­ta fight for it. Fight for your Nation­al Idea…” The win­ners each salut­ed Kuparashvili in the Azov fash­ion.

    There was a char­i­ty auc­tion of three Azov Reg­i­ment wolf­san­gel patch­es at the recent Azov event in Detroit. Azov Reg­i­ment cofounder Gior­gi Kuparashvili then informed the win­ners, “you got­ta fight for it,” and appeared to sym­bol­i­cal­ly swear them in. pic.twitter.com/VY1vCnECTt— Moss Robe­son (@mossrobeson__) Octo­ber 5, 2022

    Two days lat­er, the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Mod­ern Art in Chica­go host­ed anoth­er Azov char­i­ty auc­tion, co-spon­sored by the Ban­derite-led Illi­nois Divi­sion of the Ukrain­ian Con­gress Com­mit­tee of Amer­i­ca. Its most influ­en­tial mem­ber, Pavlo Ban­dri­wsky, an OUN‑B leader in Chica­go known as “the Strate­gist”, took pic­tures with the Azov vet­er­ans. This event fea­tured a bat­tle flag of the Azov Reg­i­ment that was appar­ent­ly auc­tioned off with the promise that every sur­viv­ing mem­ber will sign it after the war is won. The Con­sul Gen­er­als of Ger­many and Poland also spoke at the event.

    On Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 1, after return­ing to Wash­ing­ton, the full del­e­ga­tion, except for Katery­na Prokopenko, who left to be reunit­ed with her hus­band in Turkey, made an appear­ance at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. Yulia Fedosyuk con­clud­ed her remarks, “Glo­ry to the Azov Reg­i­ment.” At one point, Stan­ford pro­fes­sor Michael McFaul, the famous­ly daft for­mer US Ambas­sador to Rus­sia (2012–14) and proud own­er of a “giant home,” stopped byto offer words of sup­port for Ukraine, if not the Azov Reg­i­ment itself.

    Ear­li­er this year, Stanford’s Cen­ter for Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty and Coop­er­a­tion (CISAC) pub­lished a detailed report on the “Azov Move­ment… a far-right nation­al­ist net­work.” Michael McFaul directs the Free­man Spogli Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies, of which the CISAC is part. He appar­ent­ly took no issue with the neo-Nazi sym­bol pro­ject­ed behind him.

    ...

    —————

    “‘Now, All of You Are Azov’: ‘open­ly neo-Nazi’ Ukrain­ian del­e­ga­tion meets Con­gress, tours US” by MOSS ROBESON; The Gray­zone; 10/05/2022

    Accord­ing to Kuparashvili, a cofounder and instruc­tor of the Azov Reg­i­ment, his del­e­ga­tion met over fifty mem­bers of Con­gress, far more than any­one has real­ized. Among those who showed up to greet Azov on Capi­tol Hill was Rep. Adam Schiff, the Cal­i­for­nia Demo­c­rat who spent the Trump era lead­ing Rus­si­a­gate the­atrics and clam­ored for ship­ments of offen­sive US weapons to Ukraine.”

    Over 50 mem­bers of Con­gress appar­ent­ly decid­ed it was a good idea to cel­e­brate the Azov move­ment. But it was­n’t just a trio of Azov vet­er­ans engaged in this pub­lic rela­tions stunt. Their wives came along too, like Yulia Fedosyuk, the “Sil­ver of the Rose” anti-fem­i­nists who stat­ed that “fem­i­nism is ready to muti­late and sell women” in recent inter­view. It’s quite a guest of hon­or for a new­ly post-Roe Amer­i­ca.

    But note who else decid­ed to meet­ing with this Azov del­e­ga­tion ear­li­er this year: Pope Fran­cis. This is a good time to recall how, when­ev­er peo­ple point out all the Nazi sym­bols used by the group, Azov mem­bers almost always dis­miss those Nazi sym­bols as mere­ly be “Nordic runes”. Which rais­es the ques­tion: how many ‘Nordic Runes’ were there on dis­play dur­ing their meet­ing with the Pope?

    ...
    The Azov del­e­ga­tion includ­ed three vet­er­ans of the reg­i­ment for­mer­ly holed up in the Azovstal steel plant in Mar­i­upol. They were led by Gior­gi Kuparashvili, the only fight­er not tak­en pris­on­er by the Rus­sians.

    ...

    The trio was accom­pa­nied by two spous­es and a moth­er of POWs cap­tured at Azovstal. This includ­ed Katery­na Prokopenko, the wife of the far-right com­man­der of the Azov Reg­i­ment, Denys Prokopenko, who was freed in a pris­on­er exchange and declared a Hero of Ukraine dur­ing her vis­it to the Unit­ed States. The delegation’s oth­er Azov wife was Yulia Fedosyuk, the leader of “Sil­ver of the Rose,” an anti-fem­i­nist, anti-gay group linked to the Azov move­ment, accord­ing to jour­nal­ist Olek­siy Kuz­menko.

    Anti-fem­i­nist grou­pus­cule “Sil­ver of the Rose” that appears in @5050oD video has been embraced by ????’s influ­en­tial anti-LGBT, “pro-fam­i­ly” “Vsi Razom” org. In a recent inter­view SOR’s leader Fedosyuk https://t.co/gBQeDz4hd7 says “fem­i­nism is ready to muti­late and sell women” pic.twitter.com/iktwqi7PPv— Olek­siy Kuz­menko (@kooleksiy) May 4, 2020

    Ear­li­er this year, Prokopenko and Fedosyuk met with Pope Fran­cis. While in the Unit­ed States, they spoke at a small ral­ly in front of the White House, appeared for an inter­view on the pro-Trump chan­nel News­max, and took meet­ings with numer­ous mem­bers of Con­gress. News­max sep­a­rate­ly inter­viewed two of the Azov vet­er­ans, includ­ing Kuparashvili.
    ...

    But the meet­ings with Con­gress were just one part of this pub­lic rela­tions effort. It appears that mul­ti­ple Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can char­i­ties also held events for the del­e­ga­tion. And as we should expect, it turns out these char­i­ties are basi­cal­ly exten­sions of the OUN‑B. Both the events in Michi­gan and Chica­go were orga­nized by char­i­ties led by OUN‑B coor­di­na­tors. And at the Chica­go event we find that the Con­sul Gen­er­als of both Ger­many and Poland spoke. It’s a chill­ing exam­ple of how the Ukrain­ian fas­cist net­works from WWII did­n’t just sur­vive in the post-war peri­od but have thrived as self-appoint­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of ‘Ukraini­ans’ at home and abroad:

    ...

    On Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 24, half of the del­e­ga­tion includ­ing Kuparashvili appeared before a siz­able audi­ence at a Ukrain­ian church in Detroit. The Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can Cri­sis Response Com­mit­tee of Michi­gan (UACRCM), a lob­by­ing out­fit formed ear­li­er this year, live-streamed the event, which was orga­nized by US part­ners of the Azov movement’s char­i­ty wing.

    Among the more promi­nent Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists present for the event was Borys Potapenko, a mem­ber of the UACRCM and an inter­na­tion­al coor­di­na­tor of the Stepan Ban­dera-found­ed Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN‑B), which col­lab­o­rat­ed with Nazi Ger­many through­out much of World War Two. Potapenko is also among the lead­ers of the far-right “Capit­u­la­tion Resis­tance Move­ment” in Ukraine, which allied with Azov’s Nation­al Corps against Volodymyr Zelen­sky in 2019–22. (More about this com­ing soon on the “Ban­dera Lob­by Blog”…)

    ...

    Two days lat­er, the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Mod­ern Art in Chica­go host­ed anoth­er Azov char­i­ty auc­tion, co-spon­sored by the Ban­derite-led Illi­nois Divi­sion of the Ukrain­ian Con­gress Com­mit­tee of Amer­i­ca. Its most influ­en­tial mem­ber, Pavlo Ban­dri­wsky, an OUN‑B leader in Chica­go known as “the Strate­gist”, took pic­tures with the Azov vet­er­ans. This event fea­tured a bat­tle flag of the Azov Reg­i­ment that was appar­ent­ly auc­tioned off with the promise that every sur­viv­ing mem­ber will sign it after the war is won. The Con­sul Gen­er­als of Ger­many and Poland also spoke at the event.
    ...

    And at the Chica­go char­i­ty event, where an Azov bat­tle flag was auc­tioned off, we get this omi­nous warn­ing from one of the Azov speak­ers: a pre­dic­tion that the con­gres­sion­al ban on direct­ly arm­ing and train­ing the Azov reg­i­ment will be lift­ed. The ban is already set to expire in 2025, but they’re pre­dict­ing it’s going to be lift­ed lat­er this year. He then went on to slam Con­gress­man Ro Khan­na and for­mer Con­gress­man Max Rose who were behind that ban. Recall how Khan­na suc­ceed­ed in get­ting that ban passed in 2018, only to expe­ri­ence a wave of neg­a­tive press cov­er­age sug­gest­ing he was duped by Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da and act­ing as “Putin’s man in Con­gress”. Flash for­ward to 2022 and we find Azov mem­bers pub­licly call­ing Khan­na out dur­ing a US celebri­ty tour. It’s the kind of behav­ior that sug­gests an immense degree of con­fi­dence on the part of Azov. Under­stand­ably so giv­en the cir­cum­stances:

    ...
    Gior­gi Kuparashvili spoke to the audi­ence in Eng­lish, focus­ing large­ly on the Azov delegation’s suc­cess in Wash­ing­ton. “We went to the Sen­a­tors, Con­gress­men, from both par­ties. Hon­est­ly, the major­i­ty we met, there were like over fifty of them, and head of their frac­tions [Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans], they all gave 100% sup­port. They start­ed to work right from their office in front of us, picked up the phone, and start­ed call­ing to dif­fer­ent orga­ni­za­tions which can influ­ence — right now, we’re hav­ing prob­lems with the Gene­va Con­ven­tions. Gene­va Con­ven­tions is not work­ing, not for Rus­sia…”

    Lat­er, Kuparashvili indi­cat­ed that the del­e­ga­tion had more on its polit­i­cal agen­da than detail­ing Russ­ian war crimes, crit­i­ciz­ing the Inter­na­tion­al Red Cross, and secur­ing the release of Azov POWs. He pre­dict­ed that this year, Con­gress will lift its ban on the U.S. sup­ply­ing arms and train­ing to the Azov Reg­i­ment.

    In his clos­ing remarks, Gior­gi Kuparashvili appeared to take aim at his least two favorite mem­bers of Con­gress: Ro Khan­na, a lib­er­al Demo­c­rat from Sil­i­con Val­ley, thanks to whom Con­gress cur­tailed U.S. sup­port for the Azov Reg­i­ment in 2018, and Max Rose, a for­mer Con­gress­man and right-wing Demo­c­rat from Stat­en Island, who called on the State Depart­ment to label the Azov Reg­i­ment a “For­eign Ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tion” in 2020.

    “From year ’14, ’15, ’16, until today,” claimed Kuparashvili, “there is a bill which, I don’t remem­ber the name, but the Con­gress­man who lob­bied, I don’t know how… He left Con­gress a cou­ple years ago, he ini­ti­at­ed to put the Azov as a restric­tion in a bill. This week, we talked to all the Con­gress­men and Sen­a­tors, every­body under­stands, because when you bring the bill to Con­gress, they have to read it. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, nobody read it, so they approved it again.”

    Now we told them, ‘are you sup­port­ing this?’ And every­body knows it’s just a mis­take in it. As the Con­gress­men and Sen­a­tors says, this bill goes until 2025. They’re not going to wait until 2025, and gonna make the cor­rec­tion on this year, to remove it from there… We’re deal­ing with the sit­u­a­tion and fix­ing it, and major­i­ty of the job is already done, and Con­gress and Sen­ate, both par­ties are sup­port­ing this.
    ...

    But the Azov bat­tle flag was­n’t the only ‘piece of his­to­ry’ being auc­tioned at this char­i­ty. Three Azov patch­es with the Nazi runic wolf­san­gel sym­bol were also auc­tioned, but not before the audi­ence got a talk about how these were Nazi sym­bols at all. No, the wolf­san­gel was actu­al­ly an “N” and “I” over­lap­ping to rep­re­sent the phrase “nation­al idea”. All of the nation­al is sim­ply ral­ly­ing around the “nation­al idea” of Ukraine. That’s all. And to hell with any­one who does­n’t agree with this idea. As the arti­cle reminds us, this is basi­cal­ly the Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ist con­cept of a Nati­oc­ra­cy. And as jour­nal­ist Leonid Ragozin has point­ed out, Azov spokesper­son Ole­na Semenya­ka — who has open­ly wel­comed Euro­pean neo-Nazis into the Azov move­ment and a track­record of soft-ped­al­ing the group’s Nazi ide­ol­o­gy — direct attrib­ut­es the con­cept of a “Nati­oc­ra­cy” to Ger­man and Aus­tri­an nation­al­ist ori­gins. Also recall how we’ve seen this far­ci­cal ‘Nation­al Idea’ meme pro­mot­ed in the West­ern media this year. For exam­ple, there was that Reuters arti­cle from back in May that not only pro­mot­ed the “Nation­al idea” meme went so far as to white­wash­ing the overt­ly Nazi ideas of Azov found Andriy Bilet­skiy. Bilet­skiy was allowed to claim in the arti­cle that he was­n’t a racist at all and mere­ly believes in val­ues-based nation­al­ism. This is the kind of word games at work here. Word games being ampli­fied by the US gov­ern­ment at this point:

    ...
    Before Kuparashvili’s clos­ing remarks, his hosts held an auc­tion on behalf of the Azov char­i­ty project, ulti­mate­ly rais­ing $33,416. The auc­tion end­ed with bid­ding on three Azov Reg­i­ment patch­es fea­tur­ing a wolf­san­gel, or Nazi runic sym­bol.

    Before the bid­ding com­menced, Kuparashvili insist­ed that things were not as they appear. “If you know, there is a sym­bol,” he said, tap­ping the patch on his left arm, “which I’m gonna explain now, because they call us Nazis, all this crap.” At that point he mock­ing­ly put his hand over his mouth, and said, “sor­ry my lan­guage — ha!”

    “This is actu­al­ly two let­ters, two Latin let­ters, N and I. The N stands for Nation­al; I, it’s Idea. Nation­al Idea. Nation­al Idea. For reg­i­ment, it’s our slo­gan. Nation­al Idea. Every coun­try, it doesn’t mat­ter, it’s U.S., Ukraine, what­ev­er. When the coun­try was in prob­lem, cen­ter of grav­i­ty always became the nation­al­ists. The Nation­al Idea. All the nation gath­ers around the nation­al­ists, and around the Nation­al Idea. For us, Nation­al Idea is Ukraine. If they don’t like what is Ukraine, and what it’s Nation­al Idea, hell with them…” Kuparahsvili, touch­ing on the total­i­tar­i­an Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ist con­cept of “Nati­oc­ra­cy,” all but admit­ted Azov’s affin­i­ty for white nation­al­ists in the West.

    With the myth-mak­ing about Azov’s sup­posed depoliti­ciza­tion reach­ing new heights, this cofounder of the reg­i­ment could­n’t even get the sto­ry straight whether they “got rid” of their far-right ele­ments or nev­er had them to begin with. https://t.co/As3xHlAgvV— Moss Robe­son (@mossrobeson__) Octo­ber 5, 2022

    Accord­ing to Kuparashvili, before, only Azov mem­bers could wear their wolf­san­gel patch­es, but he bestowed per­mis­sion on the audi­ence to place their bids, because “now, all of you are Azov.” There was anoth­er dis­claimer that Kuparashvili shared only after the win­ners emerged. “It’s a respon­si­bil­i­ty,” he said.

    “We’re just hand­ing over it,” Kuparashvili told the audi­ence about the Azov Reg­i­ment patch­es. “We’re giv­ing to those our respon­si­bil­i­ty. We have the sol­diers where they go through the basic train­ing, go through all the train­ings, and dif­fi­cul­ties. If they don’t deserve, you can’t grad­u­ate… But if you deserve it, with this comes a respon­si­bil­i­ty… Your Nation­al Idea is Ukraine. You got­ta fight for it. Not just put it in a room or a shelf some­where, but you got­ta fight for it. Fight for your Nation­al Idea…” The win­ners each salut­ed Kuparashvili in the Azov fash­ion.
    ...

    And then there was the appear­ance at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. As the arti­cle points out, it was Stan­ford’s CISAC that put out a report on Azov’s extrem­ism ear­li­er this year. That report cites info from August of 2022, sug­gest­ing it was put out in August or at least updat­ed in August. And the very next month we not only find Azov invit­ed to Stan­ford, but Michael McFaul — who directs an insti­tute that oper­ates under the CICAC — was there to wel­come the uni­ver­si­ty’s Nazi guests:

    ...
    On Sat­ur­day, Octo­ber 1, after return­ing to Wash­ing­ton, the full del­e­ga­tion, except for Katery­na Prokopenko, who left to be reunit­ed with her hus­band in Turkey, made an appear­ance at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. Yulia Fedosyuk con­clud­ed her remarks, “Glo­ry to the Azov Reg­i­ment.” At one point, Stan­ford pro­fes­sor Michael McFaul, the famous­ly daft for­mer US Ambas­sador to Rus­sia (2012–14) and proud own­er of a “giant home,” stopped byto offer words of sup­port for Ukraine, if not the Azov Reg­i­ment itself.

    Ear­li­er this year, Stanford’s Cen­ter for Inter­na­tion­al Secu­ri­ty and Coop­er­a­tion (CISAC) pub­lished a detailed report on the “Azov Move­ment… a far-right nation­al­ist net­work.Michael McFaul directs the Free­man Spogli Insti­tute for Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies, of which the CISAC is part. He appar­ent­ly took no issue with the neo-Nazi sym­bol pro­ject­ed behind him.
    ...

    It’s dou­ble­think in action. Under the best case sce­nario. Dou­ble­think at least implies some­one is unwit­ting­ly falling for some sort of intel­lec­tu­al bind. And while it’s not hard to imag­ine that a lot of peo­ple who fall for this kind of pro­pa­gan­da are doing so in an unwit­ting man­ner, that’s a much hard­er assump­tion to arrive at when it comes to mem­bers of Con­gress or the peo­ple who made that invi­ta­tion at Stan­ford. These are choic­es made wit­ting­ly. Wit­ting choic­es to pull the wool over our own eyes about our new Nazi friends. Or new for some. They’re rather old Nazi friends for oth­ers.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 7, 2022, 4:10 pm
  8. How much esca­la­tion is too much esca­la­tion? That’s the dis­turb­ing ques­tion raised by the fol­low­ing Gray­zone about the attack on the Kerch Bridge in Crimea. The piece is based on anony­mous­ly leaked doc­u­ments of an April 2022 pre­sen­ta­tion cre­at­ed by a UK mil­i­tary offi­cer, Hugh Ward, at the request of a senior British Army intel­li­gence oper­a­tive and vet­er­an high rank­ing NATO advi­sor, Chris Don­nel­ly. The pre­sen­ta­tion describes a plan to blow up the Kerch Bridge. And while the plot described in the pre­sen­ta­tion was­n’t the actu­al plot that end­ed up get­ting used to destroy the bridge, it was indeed report­ed­ly shared with the high­est lev­els of Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment.

    But this was­n’t just a plot shared between the UK and Ukraine. The for­mer Lithuan­ian Min­is­ter of Defense Audrius Butke­vi­cius also received a copy of the plot. Butke­vi­cius is report­ed­ly involved with a com­pa­ny that’s been mov­ing weapons into Ukraine through Bul­gar­ia. But he’s also a “senior fel­low” as the “Insti­tute for State­craft”, a shady ‘char­i­ty’ set up by Don­nel­ly that appears to be involved with man­ag­ing var­i­ous intel­li­gence oper­a­tions includ­ing the Integri­ty Ini­tia­tive. Recall Jacques Baud’s obser­va­tion how, in France, some of the most influ­en­tial ‘Rus­sia experts’ also work for the Integri­ty Ini­tia­tive. Also recall how the Integri­ty Ini­tia­tive has been involved with the dis­sem­i­na­tion of alle­ga­tions about Uighur geno­cide in Chi­na in coor­di­na­tion with the Aus­tralian Strate­gic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (ASPI). And don’t for­get how Face­book, Twit­ter, and Face­boook-owned Insta­gram end­ed up purg­ing thou­sands left-wing accounts in the days before last Novem­ber’s elec­tions in Nicaragua. The deci­sion was pred­i­cat­ed on the charge that these were fake accounts despite the fact that these were very real peo­ple who came for­ward to prove their exis­tence. The author of the report from Face­book’s “Threat Intel­li­gence Team” that car­ried out this purge was ex-NATO press offi­cer Ben Nim­mo, a for­mer con­sul­tant for the Integri­ty Ini­tia­tive. So this plot to blow of the Kerch Bridge appears to be a prod­uct from the same net­work being that Integri­ty Ini­tia­tive.

    As we’re also going to see, when the civ­il war first broke out in Ukraine, Don­nel­ly has a num­ber of remark­able rec­om­men­da­tions for what the West should do in response to a Russ­ian annex­a­tion of Crimea. Don­nel­ly’s advice includ­ed not just shift­ing Europe away from Russ­ian oil and gas — which final­ly hap­pened fol­low­ing the out­break of war this year — but poten­tial attacks on Rus­si­a’s space infra­struc­ture like satel­lites. Don’t for­get how SpaceX’s Star­link has been play­ing a crit­i­cal role in Ukraine’s mil­i­tary strat­e­gy, pro­vid­ing inter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the bat­tle­field and mak­ing Star­link a poten­tial mil­i­tary tar­get. The kind of mil­i­tary tar­get that could trig­ger a “Kessler’s Syn­drome” cas­cade of low orbit space junk that could end up destroy­ing much of the world’s satel­lites. So the main UK intel­li­gence fig­ure behind this Kerch Bridge attack plot that was shared withe Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment is some­one who pre­vi­ous­ly rec­om­mend­ed actions that could have trig­gered WWIII back in 2014. Because of course:

    The Gray­zone

    EXPOSED: Before Ukraine blew up Kerch Bridge, British spies plot­ted it

    Kit Klaren­berg
    Octo­ber 10, 2022

    The secret British intel­li­gence plot to blow up Crimea’s Kerch Bridge is revealed in inter­nal doc­u­ments and cor­re­spon­dence obtained exclu­sive­ly by The Gray­zone.

    The Gray­zone has obtained an April 2022 pre­sen­ta­tion drawn up for senior British intel­li­gence offi­cers hash­ing out an elab­o­rate scheme to blow up Crimea’s Kerch Bridge with the involve­ment of spe­cial­ly trained Ukrain­ian sol­diers. Almost six months after the plan was cir­cu­lat­ed, Kerch Bridge was attacked in an Octo­ber 8th sui­cide bomb­ing appar­ent­ly over­seen by Ukraine’s SBU intel­li­gence ser­vices.

    Detailed pro­pos­als for pro­vid­ing “auda­cious” sup­port to Kiev’s “mar­itime raid­ing oper­a­tions” were draft­ed at the request of Chris Don­nel­ly, a senior British Army intel­li­gence oper­a­tive and vet­er­an high rank­ing NATO advi­sor. The wide-rang­ing plan’s core com­po­nent was “destruc­tion of the bridge over the Kerch Strait.”

    Doc­u­ments and cor­re­spon­dence plot­ting the oper­a­tion were pro­vid­ed to The Gray­zone by an anony­mous source.

    The truck bomb­ing of the Kerch Bridge dif­fered oper­a­tional­ly from the plot sketched there­in. Yet, Britain’s evi­dent inter­est in plan­ning such an attack under­scores the deep involve­ment of NATO pow­ers in the Ukraine proxy war. At almost pre­cise­ly the time that Lon­don report­ed­ly sab­o­taged peace talks between Kiev and Moscow in April this year, British mil­i­tary intel­li­gence oper­a­tives were draw­ing up blue­prints to destroy a major Russ­ian bridge crossed by thou­sands of civil­ians per day.

    The roadmap was pro­duced by Hugh Ward, a British mil­i­tary vet­er­an. A num­ber of strate­gies for help­ing Ukraine “pose a threat to Russ­ian naval forces” in the Black Sea are out­lined. The over­rid­ing objec­tives are stat­ed as aim­ing to “degrade” Russia’s abil­i­ty to block­ade Kiev, “erode” Moscow’s “warfight­ing capa­bil­i­ty”, and iso­late Russ­ian land and mar­itime forces in Crimea by “deny­ing resup­ply by sea and over­land via Kerch bridge.”

    Read the com­plete blue­print: Sup­port for Mar­itime Raid­ing Oper­a­tions – Pro­pos­al

    [see image of Strate­gic Objec­tives slide of the blue­print]

    In an email, Ward asked Don­nel­ly to “please pro­tect this doc­u­ment,” and it’s easy to see why. Of these assort­ed plans, only the “Kerch Bridge Raid CONOPS [con­cept of oper­a­tion]” is sub­ject to a ded­i­cat­ed annex at the con­clu­sion of Ward’s report, under­lin­ing its sig­nif­i­cance.

    The con­tent amounts to direct, detailed advo­ca­cy for the com­mis­sion of what could con­sti­tute a grave war crime. Marked­ly, in plot­ting ways to destroy a major pas­sen­ger bridge, there is no ref­er­ence to avoid­ing civil­ian casu­al­ties.

    Across three sep­a­rate pages, along­side dia­grams, the author spells out the terms of the “mis­sion” – “[dis­abling] the Kerch Bridge in a way that is auda­cious, dis­rupts road and rail access to Crimea and mar­itime access to the Sea of Azov.”

    Ward sug­gests that destroy­ing the bridge “would require a cruise mis­sile bat­tery to hit the two con­crete pil­lars either side of the cen­tral steel arch, which will cause a com­plete struc­tur­al fail­ure,” and “pre­vent any road re-sup­ply from the Russ­ian main­land to Crimea and tem­po­ral­ly [sic] dis­rupt the ship­ping lane.”

    [see image of Kerch Bridge Raid CONOPS slide of the blue­print]

    An alter­na­tive “scheme” entails a “team of attack divers or UUVs [unmanned under­wa­ter vehi­cles] equipped with limpet mines and lin­ear cut­ting charges” tar­get­ing a “key weak­ness” and “design flaw” in the bridge’s pil­lars.

    [see image of alter­na­tive Kerch Bridge scheme slide of the blue­print]

    This “flaw” is “sev­er­al thin pylons used to sup­port the main span,” which were intend­ed to allow strong cur­rents to flow under­neath the Bridge with min­i­mal fric­tion. Ward pin­points a par­tic­u­lar area in which the depth of water around a set of pil­lars was just 10 meters, mak­ing it the “weak­est part” of the struc­ture.

    [see image of Kerch Bridge struc­tur­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties slide of the blue­print]

    In relat­ed emails obtained by The Gray­zone, Chris Don­nel­ly, the senior British army intel­li­gence oper­a­tive and for­mer NATO advi­sor, declared the pro­pos­als to be “very impres­sive indeed.

    [see image of screen­shot of an email where Chris Don­nel­ly calls the pro­pos­als “very impres­sive indeed.”]

    Reached by phone, Hugh Ward did not deny that he had pre­pared the Kerch Bridge destruc­tion blue­print for Chris Don­nel­ly.

    “I’m going to have a chat with Chris [Don­nel­ly] and con­firm with him what he’s pre­pared for me to release,” Ward told The Gray­zone, when asked direct­ly if he draft­ed the “auda­cious” plan.

    Asked again to con­firm his role in the blue­print, Ward paused, then said: “I can not con­firm that. I’ll have a chat with Chris first.”

    A sui­cide attack on a $4 bil­lion trans­porta­tion artery

    At dawn on Octo­ber 8th, an incen­di­ary attack dam­aged the Kerch Bridge. A truck explod­ed, set­ting two oil tankers ablaze, caus­ing two Crimea-bound spans of the road­way to col­lapse into the sea below, and killing three.

    ...

    The Bridge has been heav­i­ly defend­ed since Feb­ru­ary 24th, not least because it serves as a major trans­port route for mil­i­tary equip­ment to Russ­ian sol­diers in Ukraine. Rus­sia has pre­vi­ous­ly promised major reprisals in response to any strike on the struc­ture.

    Fol­low­ing the attack, wide­spread eupho­ria erupt­ed among Ukraini­ans, Ukrain­ian author­i­ties, and Ukraine sup­port­ers on social media. Olek­siy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s nation­al secu­ri­ty and defense coun­cil, post­ed a video of the burn­ing bridge along­side a black-and-white clip of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe singing Hap­py Birth­day, Mr. Pres­i­dent — a ref­er­ence to Putin turn­ing 70 the same day.

    Fur­ther­more, Ukrain­ian media has report­ed via an anony­mous source “in law enforce­ment agen­cies” that the attack was car­ried out by the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine. Yet, high-rank­ing Ukrain­ian offi­cials, includ­ing chief pres­i­den­tial advis­er Mykhai­lo Podolyak, are now back­track­ing, claim­ing instead that the inci­dent was a Russ­ian false flag.

    Such alle­ga­tions have become com­mon­place in the wake of inci­dents in which Ukrain­ian – or West­ern – cul­pa­bil­i­ty seems like­ly or indeed cer­tain, such as the Nord Stream pipeline explo­sions.

    Lay­ing the foun­da­tions of World War III

    While the attack on Kerch Bridge did not involve spe­cial­ist divers, under­wa­ter drones or cruise mis­siles, there are indi­ca­tions that Ward’s plans were shared with the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment at the high­est lev­els. In fact, Chris Don­nel­ly for­ward­ed them to for­mer Lithuan­ian Min­is­ter of Defense Audrius Butke­vi­cius, before intro­duc­ing the pair by email.

    [see image of screen­shot of an email by Chris Don­nel­ly for­ward­ed them to for­mer Lithuan­ian Min­is­ter of Defense Audrius Butke­vi­cius, before intro­duc­ing the pair by email]

    A lead­ing fig­ure in Lithuania’s anti-Com­mu­nist move­ment, Butke­vi­cius has admit­ted to delib­er­ate­ly lead­ing pro-inde­pen­dence fight­ers into Sovi­et snipers’ line of fire on Jan­u­ary 13th 1991. This inci­dent is some­times referred to to as Vil­nius’ “Bloody Sun­day,” and is offi­cial­ly observed as the Day of the Defend­ers of Free­dom. Butke­vi­cius and his con­fed­er­ates knew the maneu­ver would pro­voke mass casu­al­ties, fur­ther inflam­ing the local pop­u­la­tion against Sovi­et lead­er­ship and encour­age regime change, which is why they orches­trat­ed it.

    More recent­ly, Butke­vi­cius co-owned Bul­com­merce KS, a com­pa­ny that served as “the main inter­me­di­ary in the sup­ply of Bul­gar­i­an weapons and ammu­ni­tion to Ukraine through third coun­tries,” for use in the civ­il war in Don­bas.

    Butke­vi­cius has been cred­i­bly accused of work­ing for British intel­li­gence. Email exchanges with Don­nel­ly con­firm he is in con­tact with Guy Spindler, a long-time MI6 offi­cer who was post­ed in London’s Moscow Embassy con­cur­rent­ly with the infa­mous Trump-Rus­sia “dossier” author Christo­pher Steele.

    Reached by phone and asked if he reviewed the “Auda­cious” plan to destroy Kerch Bridge, Spindler told The Gray­zone: “I have absolute­ly no idea what you’re talk­ing about.”

    Con­tem­po­rary accounts sug­gest Spindler direct­ly coor­di­nat­ed with Boris Yeltsin at the time of a failed coup against Mikhail Gor­bachev in August 1991.

    [see image of screen­shot of an email by Chris Don­nel­ly estab­lish­ing his ties to Guy Spindler]

    Butke­vi­cius was also for many years a “senior fel­low” at the Insti­tute for State­craft, a shad­owy “char­i­ty” found­ed by Don­nel­ly that man­ages a num­ber of arm’s length mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence oper­a­tions on behalf of the British state and NATO, includ­ing the now noto­ri­ous For­eign Office black pro­pa­gan­da unit, the Integri­ty Ini­tia­tive.

    Leaked Ini­tia­tive files name Butke­vi­cius as the organization’s key con­tact in Ukraine at the time of the country’s 2019 elec­tion. Three years ear­li­er, he was one of the “escort­ing per­son­nel” for five Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence oper­a­tives whisked to Lon­don by the Insti­tute for State­craft in order to brief the British mil­i­tary on Russ­ian “hybrid war­fare” tech­niques. Along­side him was Vid­man­tas Eitutis, who at the time trained Ukraine’s army to con­duct “active coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence oper­a­tions” in Luhan­sk.

    [see image of doc­u­ment dec­scrib­ing for­mer Lithuan­ian Min­is­ter of Defense Audrius Butke­vi­cius as a “senior fel­low” for Insti­tute for State­craft, a char­i­ty set up by Chris Don­nel­ly]

    In the Kerch Bridge sab­o­tage pro­pos­al com­mis­sioned by Don­nel­ly, Ward asks whether the Russ­ian mil­i­tary knew how vul­ner­a­ble the bridge sup­pos­ed­ly was, and “what coun­ter­mea­sures could be expect­ed” in response to its destruc­tion (see image above).

    The blitz of retal­ia­to­ry mis­sile strikes on Ukraine on Octo­ber 10th pro­vides a like­ly answer. It is also prob­a­ble that if Ward’s out­line was fol­lowed, Moscow’s reprisal would have been even more dead­ly, putting the lives of count­less Ukraini­ans – and Rus­sians – at sig­nif­i­cant risk.

    Don­nel­ly was clear­ly unmoved by such con­cerns, declar­ing the plans to be “very impres­sive indeed.”

    [see image of Chris Don­nel­ly’s pass­port]

    A sim­i­lar dis­re­gard for cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences was evi­dent in a pri­vate memo authored by Don­nel­ly in March 2014, out­lin­ing “mil­i­tary mea­sures” that Ukraine should take fol­low­ing Moscow’s seizure of Crimea.

    Stat­ing that, “if I were in charge I would get the fol­low­ing imple­ment­ed,” Don­nel­ly advo­cat­ed min­ing Sev­astopol har­bor using a “car fer­ry,” destroy­ing fight­er jets on Crimean air­fields “as a ges­ture that they are seri­ous,” using a “big microwave anti-satel­lite weapon” to take down Russ­ian space instal­la­tions, and turn­ing to the West for oil and gas sup­plies.

    “I am try­ing to get this mes­sage across,” he con­clud­ed. These pre­scrip­tions have yet to be imple­ment­ed, per­haps because they risk trig­ger­ing an apoc­a­lyp­tic sit­u­a­tion. Indeed, such “ges­tures” would amount to brazen provo­ca­tions against a nuclear pow­er, from which Ukraine’s oil and gas net­work was and remains exclu­sive­ly designed to receive ener­gy.

    Yet it appears Don­nel­ly and those around him would be con­tent to see World War III erupt over Crimea. In fact, as the leaked doc­u­ments obtained by The Gray­zone will con­tin­ue to demon­strate, pro­vok­ing con­flict between the West and Rus­sia has long-been one of his ulti­mate objec­tives.

    ———-

    “EXPOSED: Before Ukraine blew up Kerch Bridge, British spies plot­ted it” by Kit Klaren­berg; The Gray­zone; 10/10/2022

    “Yet it appears Don­nel­ly and those around him would be con­tent to see World War III erupt over Crimea. In fact, as the leaked doc­u­ments obtained by The Gray­zone will con­tin­ue to demon­strate, pro­vok­ing con­flict between the West and Rus­sia has long-been one of his ulti­mate objec­tives.

    The goal is clear. It’s insane, but it’s clear: A dra­mat­ic esca­la­tion of the con­flict between Rus­sia and the West. That’s been the goal of the net­work fig­ures behind the leaked plans to attack the Kerch bridge. A plan with dis­tinct UK ori­gins, devised by UK mil­i­tary vet­er­an Hugh Ward at the request of Chris Don­nel­ly, a senior British Army intel­li­gence oper­a­tive and vet­er­an high rank­ing NATO advi­sor:

    ...
    Detailed pro­pos­als for pro­vid­ing “auda­cious” sup­port to Kiev’s “mar­itime raid­ing oper­a­tions” were draft­ed at the request of Chris Don­nel­ly, a senior British Army intel­li­gence oper­a­tive and vet­er­an high rank­ing NATO advi­sor. The wide-rang­ing plan’s core com­po­nent was “destruc­tion of the bridge over the Kerch Strait.”

    Doc­u­ments and cor­re­spon­dence plot­ting the oper­a­tion were pro­vid­ed to The Gray­zone by an anony­mous source.

    The truck bomb­ing of the Kerch Bridge dif­fered oper­a­tional­ly from the plot sketched there­in. Yet, Britain’s evi­dent inter­est in plan­ning such an attack under­scores the deep involve­ment of NATO pow­ers in the Ukraine proxy war. At almost pre­cise­ly the time that Lon­don report­ed­ly sab­o­taged peace talks between Kiev and Moscow in April this year, British mil­i­tary intel­li­gence oper­a­tives were draw­ing up blue­prints to destroy a major Russ­ian bridge crossed by thou­sands of civil­ians per day.

    The roadmap was pro­duced by Hugh Ward, a British mil­i­tary vet­er­an. A num­ber of strate­gies for help­ing Ukraine “pose a threat to Russ­ian naval forces” in the Black Sea are out­lined. The over­rid­ing objec­tives are stat­ed as aim­ing to “degrade” Russia’s abil­i­ty to block­ade Kiev, “erode” Moscow’s “warfight­ing capa­bil­i­ty”, and iso­late Russ­ian land and mar­itime forces in Crimea by “deny­ing resup­ply by sea and over­land via Kerch bridge.”

    Read the com­plete blue­print: Sup­port for Mar­itime Raid­ing Oper­a­tions – Pro­pos­al

    ...

    In relat­ed emails obtained by The Gray­zone, Chris Don­nel­ly, the senior British army intel­li­gence oper­a­tive and for­mer NATO advi­sor, declared the pro­pos­als to be “very impres­sive indeed.”

    [see image of screen­shot of an email where Chris Don­nel­ly calls the pro­pos­als “very impres­sive indeed.”]

    Reached by phone, Hugh Ward did not deny that he had pre­pared the Kerch Bridge destruc­tion blue­print for Chris Don­nel­ly.

    “I’m going to have a chat with Chris [Don­nel­ly] and con­firm with him what he’s pre­pared for me to release,” Ward told The Gray­zone, when asked direct­ly if he draft­ed the “auda­cious” plan.

    Asked again to con­firm his role in the blue­print, Ward paused, then said: “I can not con­firm that. I’ll have a chat with Chris first.”
    ...

    And while the attack ulti­mate­ly exe­cut­ed on the Kerch Bridge was­n’t the same attack described in Don­nel­ly’s pro­pos­al, the fact that this pro­pos­al was indeed shared with the high­est lev­els of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment at a min­i­mum sig­ni­fies that the attack was endorsed and desired by the UK and points towards like­ly coor­di­na­tion in plan­ning the truck bomb­ing.

    But then there’s the fact that the plans were for­ward­ed to Audrius Butke­vi­cius, the for­mer Lithuan­ian Min­is­ter of Defense. Beyond Butke­vi­cius’s appar­ent ties to MI6 offi­cer Guy Spindler — some­one with a his­to­ry of involve­ment with the 1991 failed coup against Mihail Gor­bachev — Butke­vi­cius also appears to be direct­ly involved in the fun­nel­ing of weapons into Ukraine. So while UK intel­li­gence clear­ly put its stamp of approval on the Kerch Bridge attack, when you have for­mer NATO offi­cers Don­nel­ly and for­eign offi­cials like Butke­vi­cius involved, you can’t just call this an MI6 scheme. It’s part of what makes this such a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion in terms of esca­lat­ing the con­flict:

    ...
    While the attack on Kerch Bridge did not involve spe­cial­ist divers, under­wa­ter drones or cruise mis­siles, there are indi­ca­tions that Ward’s plans were shared with the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment at the high­est lev­els. In fact, Chris Don­nel­ly for­ward­ed them to for­mer Lithuan­ian Min­is­ter of Defense Audrius Butke­vi­cius, before intro­duc­ing the pair by email.

    [see image of screen­shot of an email by Chris Don­nel­ly for­ward­ed them to for­mer Lithuan­ian Min­is­ter of Defense Audrius Butke­vi­cius, before intro­duc­ing the pair by email]

    A lead­ing fig­ure in Lithuania’s anti-Com­mu­nist move­ment, Butke­vi­cius has admit­ted to delib­er­ate­ly lead­ing pro-inde­pen­dence fight­ers into Sovi­et snipers’ line of fire on Jan­u­ary 13th 1991. This inci­dent is some­times referred to to as Vil­nius’ “Bloody Sun­day,” and is offi­cial­ly observed as the Day of the Defend­ers of Free­dom. Butke­vi­cius and his con­fed­er­ates knew the maneu­ver would pro­voke mass casu­al­ties, fur­ther inflam­ing the local pop­u­la­tion against Sovi­et lead­er­ship and encour­age regime change, which is why they orches­trat­ed it.

    More recent­ly, Butke­vi­cius co-owned Bul­com­merce KS, a com­pa­ny that served as “the main inter­me­di­ary in the sup­ply of Bul­gar­i­an weapons and ammu­ni­tion to Ukraine through third coun­tries,” for use in the civ­il war in Don­bas.

    Butke­vi­cius has been cred­i­bly accused of work­ing for British intel­li­gence. Email exchanges with Don­nel­ly con­firm he is in con­tact with Guy Spindler, a long-time MI6 offi­cer who was post­ed in London’s Moscow Embassy con­cur­rent­ly with the infa­mous Trump-Rus­sia “dossier” author Christo­pher Steele.

    Reached by phone and asked if he reviewed the “Auda­cious” plan to destroy Kerch Bridge, Spindler told The Gray­zone: “I have absolute­ly no idea what you’re talk­ing about.”

    Con­tem­po­rary accounts sug­gest Spindler direct­ly coor­di­nat­ed with Boris Yeltsin at the time of a failed coup against Mikhail Gor­bachev in August 1991.

    [see image of screen­shot of an email by Chris Don­nel­ly estab­lish­ing his ties to Guy Spindler]
    ...

    And note Butke­vi­cius’s work as a “senior fel­low” for Don­nel­ly’s “Insti­tute for State­craft” which man­ages, among oth­er things, the MI‑6 “Integri­ty Ini­tia­tive”. Recall Jacques Baud’s obser­va­tion how, in France, some of the most influ­en­tial ‘Rus­sia experts’ also work for the Integri­ty Ini­tia­tive. Also recall how the Integri­ty Ini­tia­tive has been involved with the dis­sem­i­na­tion of alle­ga­tions about Uighur geno­cide in Chi­na in coor­di­na­tion with the Aus­tralian Strate­gic Pol­i­cy Insti­tute (ASPI). And don’t for­get how Face­book, Twit­ter, and Face­boook-owned Insta­gram end­ed up purg­ing thou­sands left-wing accounts in the days before last Novem­ber’s elec­tions in Nicaragua. The deci­sion was pred­i­cat­ed on the charge that these were fake accounts despite the fact that these were very real peo­ple who came for­ward to prove their exis­tence. The author of the report from Face­book’s “Threat Intel­li­gence Team” that car­ried out this purge was Ben Nim­mo, a for­mer con­sul­tant for the Integri­ty Ini­tia­tive. So as we can see, MI-6’s Integri­ty Ini­tia­tive has had exten­sive help for for­eign assets, which is part of why we should­n’t at all be sur­prised to find Butke­vi­cius’s involve­ment with the ‘char­i­ty’ that’s man­ag­ing the ini­tia­tive. He fits the pro­file:

    ...
    Butke­vi­cius was also for many years a “senior fel­low” at the Insti­tute for State­craft, a shad­owy “char­i­ty” found­ed by Don­nel­ly that man­ages a num­ber of arm’s length mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence oper­a­tions on behalf of the British state and NATO, includ­ing the now noto­ri­ous For­eign Office black pro­pa­gan­da unit, the Integri­ty Ini­tia­tive.

    Leaked Ini­tia­tive files name Butke­vi­cius as the organization’s key con­tact in Ukraine at the time of the country’s 2019 elec­tion. Three years ear­li­er, he was one of the “escort­ing per­son­nel” for five Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence oper­a­tives whisked to Lon­don by the Insti­tute for State­craft in order to brief the British mil­i­tary on Russ­ian “hybrid war­fare” tech­niques. Along­side him was Vid­man­tas Eitutis, who at the time trained Ukraine’s army to con­duct “active coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence oper­a­tions” in Luhan­sk.

    [see image of doc­u­ment dec­scrib­ing for­mer Lithuan­ian Min­is­ter of Defense Audrius Butke­vi­cius as a “senior fel­low” for Insti­tute for State­craft, a char­i­ty set up by Chris Don­nel­ly]
    ...

    That’s all part of the what makes the attack on this bridge such a poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous esca­la­tion in this con­flict: this was­n’t just a Ukrain­ian attack on a major piece of Russ­ian infra­struc­ture. It was an attack that clear­ly took place with the bless­ing and pos­si­ble coor­di­na­tion of Ukraine’s allies and it hap­pened not long after the Nord­stream attack that was like­ly car­ried out by Ukraine and/or its allies. These are two major attacks on major pieces of Russ­ian infra­struc­ture. Both car­ried with no one accept­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty but all signs point­ing towards Ukraine and its back­ers as the cul­prits. And both car­ried out despite Rus­si­a’s promis­es of major reprisals in response to these kinds of attacks. This was­n’t just an esca­la­tion of the con­flict between Ukraine and Russ­ian. It was the kind of esca­la­tion that increas­ing­ly makes this an overt con­flict between Rus­sia and NATO, implau­si­ble denials notwith­stand­ing:

    ...
    The Bridge has been heav­i­ly defend­ed since Feb­ru­ary 24th, not least because it serves as a major trans­port route for mil­i­tary equip­ment to Russ­ian sol­diers in Ukraine. Rus­sia has pre­vi­ous­ly promised major reprisals in response to any strike on the struc­ture.

    Fol­low­ing the attack, wide­spread eupho­ria erupt­ed among Ukraini­ans, Ukrain­ian author­i­ties, and Ukraine sup­port­ers on social media. Olek­siy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s nation­al secu­ri­ty and defense coun­cil, post­ed a video of the burn­ing bridge along­side a black-and-white clip of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe singing Hap­py Birth­day, Mr. Pres­i­dent — a ref­er­ence to Putin turn­ing 70 the same day.

    Fur­ther­more, Ukrain­ian media has report­ed via an anony­mous source “in law enforce­ment agen­cies” that the attack was car­ried out by the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine. Yet, high-rank­ing Ukrain­ian offi­cials, includ­ing chief pres­i­den­tial advis­er Mykhai­lo Podolyak, are now back­track­ing, claim­ing instead that the inci­dent was a Russ­ian false flag.

    Such alle­ga­tions have become com­mon­place in the wake of inci­dents in which Ukrain­ian – or West­ern – cul­pa­bil­i­ty seems like­ly or indeed cer­tain, such as the Nord Stream pipeline explo­sions.

    ...

    In the Kerch Bridge sab­o­tage pro­pos­al com­mis­sioned by Don­nel­ly, Ward asks whether the Russ­ian mil­i­tary knew how vul­ner­a­ble the bridge sup­pos­ed­ly was, and “what coun­ter­mea­sures could be expect­ed” in response to its destruc­tion (see image above).

    The blitz of retal­ia­to­ry mis­sile strikes on Ukraine on Octo­ber 10th pro­vides a like­ly answer. It is also prob­a­ble that if Ward’s out­line was fol­lowed, Moscow’s reprisal would have been even more dead­ly, putting the lives of count­less Ukraini­ans – and Rus­sians – at sig­nif­i­cant risk.

    Don­nel­ly was clear­ly unmoved by such con­cerns, declar­ing the plans to be “very impres­sive indeed.”

    [see image of Chris Don­nel­ly’s pass­port]
    ...

    And that’s also what makes this net­work of fig­ures beyond the MI6 Kerch Bridge plot so omi­nous: esca­la­tion of the con­flict to the point where it’s an open con­flict between Rus­sia and NATO is the goal and has been the goal since 2014. That’s appar­ent when we see Don­nel­ly’s 2014 pri­vate rec­om­men­da­tions that includ­ed turn­ing to the West for oil and gas sup­plies — a direct con­se­quence of the war — and even tak­ing down Russ­ian space instal­la­tions. Don’t for­get how SpaceX’s Star­link has been play­ing a crit­i­cal role in Ukraine’s mil­i­tary strat­e­gy, pro­vid­ing inter­net con­nec­tiv­i­ty to the bat­tle­field and mak­ing Star­link a poten­tial mil­i­tary tar­get. The kind of mil­i­tary tar­get that could trig­ger a “Kessler’s Syn­drome” cas­cade of low orbit space junk that could end up destroy­ing much of the world’s satel­lites. So Chris Don­nel­ly, the high rank­ing UK intel­li­gence offi­cer and NATO advi­sor who order the cre­ation of the Kerch Bridge attack plot, appears to be of a mind­set where NATO attacks on Russ­ian satel­lites is fair game. At least that was his stance in 2014. You have to won­der if he’s mod­i­fied his ‘satel­lite attack’ rules of engage­ment now that Ukraine is reliant on a high­ly vul­ner­a­ble low orbit satel­lite clus­ter:

    ...
    A sim­i­lar dis­re­gard for cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences was evi­dent in a pri­vate memo authored by Don­nel­ly in March 2014, out­lin­ing “mil­i­tary mea­sures” that Ukraine should take fol­low­ing Moscow’s seizure of Crimea.

    Stat­ing that, “if I were in charge I would get the fol­low­ing imple­ment­ed,” Don­nel­ly advo­cat­ed min­ing Sev­astopol har­bor using a “car fer­ry,” destroy­ing fight­er jets on Crimean air­fields “as a ges­ture that they are seri­ous,” using a “big microwave anti-satel­lite weapon” to take down Russ­ian space instal­la­tions, and turn­ing to the West for oil and gas sup­plies.

    “I am try­ing to get this mes­sage across,” he con­clud­ed. These pre­scrip­tions have yet to be imple­ment­ed, per­haps because they risk trig­ger­ing an apoc­a­lyp­tic sit­u­a­tion. Indeed, such “ges­tures” would amount to brazen provo­ca­tions against a nuclear pow­er, from which Ukraine’s oil and gas net­work was and remains exclu­sive­ly designed to receive ener­gy.
    ...

    You also have to won­der if all the sto­ries and denials about Elon Musk hav­ing talked with Putin before he sent out a tweet call­ing for peace have any truth behind them. Because it’s not like Putin does­n’t have immense lever­age in any con­ver­sa­tions with Musk. All Rus­sia would poten­tial­ly need to do is cause a cou­ple of those Star­link satel­lites to lose con­trol and crash into each oth­er to poten­tial­ly get the “Kessler’s Syn­drome” cas­cade start­ed. And it’s not like you can entire­ly blame Rus­sia if we do end up with Kessler’s Syn­drome as a result. No one forced SpaceX to build Star­link and cre­ate this enor­mous orbital time bomb. And as the repeat­ed troll­ish response to both the the Kerch Bridge attack and the Nord­stream attack make clear, it’s not like the attack­er needs to claim respon­si­bil­i­ty. Anony­mous attacks are pos­si­ble. Although, as this sto­ry also reminds us, they aren’t actu­al­ly anony­mous. But that’s the game being played accord­ing to the rules of engage­ment laid out by peo­ple who clear­ly want a much greater esca­la­tion of this con­flict.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 12, 2022, 4:31 pm
  9. Yikes! What kind of night­mare sit­u­a­tion did Swe­den stum­ble into?! We don’t know and we may nev­er know. All we know at this point is that Swe­den just announced a refusal to share the results of its inves­ti­ga­tion into the Nord­stream pipeline attacks with any­one. Includ­ing Ger­many and Den­mark, who had pre­vi­ous­ly been tapped to be part­ners with Swe­den on this inves­ti­ga­tion. Swe­den is keep it all secret, cit­ing undis­closed “secu­ri­ty con­cerns”. Again, yikes:

    The Local.de

    Swe­den opts out of joint Nord Stream probe with Ger­many and Den­mark

    Swe­den has decid­ed against tak­ing part in a joint inves­ti­ga­tion of the Nord Stream gas pipeline leak­ages with Den­mark and Ger­many.

    Pub­lished: 14 Octo­ber 2022 14:37 CEST

    Swe­den will no longer take part in a joint inves­ti­ga­tion of the Nord Stream pipeline leaks, Ger­man mag­a­zine Der Spiegel report­ed on Fri­day, cit­ing Ger­man secu­ri­ty sources.

    The Nordic coun­try does not want to share results of its own inves­ti­ga­tions with oth­er coun­tries, accord­ing to the report. The exact secu­ri­ty con­cerns that have result­ed in Swe­den drop­ping out of the joint inves­ti­ga­tion are unclear.

    Ger­man police have com­plet­ed inves­ti­ga­tions of the sus­pect­ed sab­o­tage of the Nord Stream pipelines and have sub­mit­ted their con­clu­sions to the joint inves­ti­ga­tion, a spokesper­son for the Ger­man inte­ri­or min­istry said on Fri­day.

    Ear­li­er this week, Swe­den said it would not allow Rus­sia to join the ongo­ing probe of the pipeline leaks but added that Moscow could car­ry out its own inspec­tions.

    ...

    ———-

    “Swe­den opts out of joint Nord Stream probe with Ger­many and Den­mark”; The Local.de; 10/14/2022

    “The Nordic coun­try does not want to share results of its own inves­ti­ga­tions with oth­er coun­tries, accord­ing to the report. The exact secu­ri­ty con­cerns that have result­ed in Swe­den drop­ping out of the joint inves­ti­ga­tion are unclear.”

    Yes, Swe­den is refus­ing to share its probe results due to mys­te­ri­ous secu­ri­ty con­cerned. Secu­ri­ty con­cerns that are appar­ent­ly so con­cern­ing that they can’t even be shared with any­one. Even allies. It’s more than a lit­tle sus­pi­cious. Because of course it is. Every­thing about this sto­ry is more than a lit­tle sus­pi­cious. Includ­ing all the omi­nous state­ments made by Joe Biden back in Feb­ru­ary about how the US was going to “bring an end to” Nord Stream in the event of an inva­sion and Antony Blinken’s crow­ing about how the attacks cre­at­ed a great “oppor­tu­ni­ty” for the EU to tran­si­tion away from Russ­ian gas. Or the NATO exer­cis­es back in June involv­ing UUVs and a ‘dem­i­ning’ exer­cise in the imme­di­ate vicin­i­ty of the attacks. Or the US Naval heli­copters capa­ble of oper­at­ing UUVs spot­ted in that same area in Sep­tem­ber. This kind of cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence point­ing towards some sort of NATO-backed act is just irrefutably sit­ting out there, whether its ignored or not.

    And while ignor­ing all this cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence has worked for the West so far, you have to won­der how long that’s going to be a viable strat­e­gy now that Swe­den has adopt­ed the high­ly sus­pi­cious pos­ture of refus­ing to share its results with any­one. What did Swe­den find? We don’t know, but it obvi­ous­ly did­n’t find evi­dence of a Russ­ian attack because that would have been released imme­di­ate­ly. It’s obvi­ous that some­thing scan­dalous was dis­cov­ered and its pret­ty obvi­ous as to the nature of this scan­dal.

    And that’s why we also need to start ask­ing what kind of dam­age all these bla­tant­ly fake denials are going to end up doing to the col­lec­tive rep­u­ta­tion of ‘the West’ in the eyes of the broad­er glob­al pub­lic. Because this isn’t just the US or a hand­ful of coun­tries engaged in a coverup. This is a bla­tant open coverup being car­ried out on the world stage under the ban­ner of ‘democ­ra­cy’ as part of what is being framed to the world as a ‘democ­ra­cy vs author­i­tar­i­an­ism’ exis­ten­tial con­flict. Which does­n’t bode well for the fate of ‘democ­ra­cy’ when this is all over:

    Con­sor­tium News

    SCOTT RITTER: Pipelines v. USA

    Intent, motive and means: Peo­ple serv­ing life sen­tences in U.S. pris­ons have been con­vict­ed on weak­er grounds than the cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence against Wash­ing­ton for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines.

    By Scott Rit­ter
    Octo­ber 12, 2022

    Spe­cial to Con­sor­tium News

    Cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence, just like direct proof, can be used to prove the ele­ments of a crime, the exis­tence or com­ple­tion of cer­tain acts and the intent or men­tal state of a defen­dant. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, a pros­e­cu­tor, to obtain a con­vic­tion, needs to show beyond a rea­son­able doubt that a defen­dant com­mit­ted a cer­tain act and that the defen­dant act­ed with spe­cif­ic intent.

    Nord Stream 1 is a mul­ti-nation­al project oper­at­ed by Swiss-based Nord Stream AG intend­ed to sup­ply some 55 bil­lion cubic meters (bcm) of Russ­ian nat­ur­al gas annu­al­ly to Europe by direct­ly trans­port­ing it from Rus­sia, through twin 1,224 kilo­me­ter-long pipelines laid beneath the Baltic Sea, to a Ger­man hub, from which the gas would be dis­trib­uted to oth­er Euro­pean con­sumers.

    The first of the twin pipelines was com­plet­ed in June 2011 and began sup­ply­ing gas in Novem­ber 2011. The sec­ond was com­plet­ed in April 2012 and began sup­ply­ing gas in Octo­ber 2012. Gazprom, the Russ­ian gas giant, owns 51 per­cent inter­est in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline project.

    Nord Stream 2 is a near clone of the Nord Stream 1 project, con­sist­ing of twin 1,220-kilometer pipelines laid beneath the Baltic Sea con­nect­ing Rus­sia to Ger­many. Start­ed in 2018, it was com­plet­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2021. Like Nord Stream 1, the Nord Stream 2 is designed to deliv­er approx­i­mate­ly 55 bcm of nat­ur­al gas from Rus­sia to Europe through Ger­many. Nord Stream 2, like Nord Stream 1, is oper­at­ed by a multi­na­tion­al com­pa­ny in which Gazprom has 51 per­cent own­er­ship.

    Unlike Nord Stream 1, Nord Stream 2 was nev­er allowed to begin sup­ply­ing gas.

    The Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines are anath­e­ma to U.S. nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy, which for decades has been sour on the degree to which Russ­ian nat­ur­al gas dom­i­nates the Euro­pean ener­gy mar­ket. This ani­mus was per­haps best cap­tured by a col­umn pub­lished in the Ger­man news­pa­per DieWelt in July 2019.

    The piece, co-authored by Richard Grenell, Car­la Sands, Gor­don Sond­land (respec­tive­ly, the U.S. ambas­sadors to Ger­many, Den­mark and the Euro­pean Union), was enti­tled “Europe must retain con­trol of its ener­gy secu­ri­ty” and made the argu­ment that the “Nord Stream 2 pipeline will dras­ti­cal­ly increase Russia’s ener­gy lever­age over the EU,” not­ing that “[s]uch a sce­nario is dan­ger­ous for the bloc and the West as a whole.”

    Observ­ing that “a dozen Euro­pean coun­tries rely on Rus­sia for more than 75 per­cent of their nat­ur­al gas needs,” the ambas­sadors con­clud­ed “This makes Unit­ed States allies and part­ners vul­ner­a­ble to hav­ing their gas shut off at Moscow’s whim.”

    More­over, the ambas­sadors claimed,

    “Euro­pean Union reliance on Russ­ian gas presents risks for Europe and the West as a whole and makes U.S. allies less secure. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline will height­en Europe’s sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to Russia’s ener­gy black­mail tac­tics. Europe must retain con­trol of its ener­gy secu­ri­ty.”

    The ambas­sadors also wove in some crit­i­cal geopo­lit­i­cal con­text as well, declar­ing

    “Make no mis­take: Nord Stream 2 will bring more than just Russ­ian gas. Russ­ian lever­age and influ­ence will also flow under the Baltic Sea and into Europe, and the pipeline will enable Moscow to fur­ther under­mine Ukrain­ian sov­er­eign­ty and sta­bil­i­ty.”

    Russia’s “weaponiza­tion” of ener­gy against Europe was the top­ic of a “debate” that Gary Peach and I car­ried out in Decem­ber 2018 on the pages of Ener­gy Intel­li­gence, which mon­i­tors issues per­tain­ing to glob­al ener­gy secu­ri­ty. Gary, one of EI’s senior writ­ers, cov­ers Russ­ian ener­gy.

    I argued that “Rus­sia has nev­er sought to use its sta­tus as a major sup­pli­er of ener­gy to Europe as a vehi­cle of pol­i­cy influ­ence,” not­ing that:

    “[t]he weaponiza­tion of Russ­ian ener­gy comes in the form of sanc­tions imposed against Moscow and the pur­suit of poli­cies designed to cur­tail devel­op­ment of Russia’s ener­gy sec­tor. It is far eas­i­er to make a case that the U.S. and Europe pose a threat to Russ­ian ener­gy secu­ri­ty rather than vice ver­sa.”

    Gary, on the oth­er hand, not­ed that

    “Gazprom’s sup­ply con­tracts exhib­it the under­ly­ing eco­nom­ic threat from Moscow: The pric­ing for­mu­la is rough­ly the same for all coun­tries, but those coun­tries in Russia’s good graces receive an arbi­trary ‘dis­count.’” He con­clud­ed that “when Gazprom is the only con­ceiv­able gas sup­pli­er, it has shame­less­ly abused the monop­oly.”

    In Decem­ber 2019 the admin­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump imposed sanc­tions in a des­per­ate last-sec­ond bid to pre­vent the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from being com­plet­ed.

    These sanc­tions were waived by the admin­is­tra­tion of Pres­i­dent Joe Biden in May 2021 in an effort to be seen as repair­ing rela­tions with Ger­many that had been severe­ly frayed dur­ing the Trump admin­is­tra­tion. How­ev­er, upon com­ple­tion, Nord Stream 2 was pre­vent­ed from oper­at­ing by objec­tions raised by Ger­man reg­u­la­tors regard­ing licens­ing issues, which were not expect­ed to be resolved until mid-2022.

    In the lead up to the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion devised a plan to pun­ish Rus­sia by impos­ing severe eco­nom­ic sanc­tions which would tar­get the Russ­ian ener­gy sec­tor, includ­ing mea­sures designed to halt the deliv­ery of gas from Rus­sia to Ger­many via the Nord Stream pipelines.

    One of the issues con­fronting U.S. pol­i­cy mak­ers was find­ing the right mix of sanc­tions that would suc­ceed in harm­ing Rus­sia with­out destroy­ing the Euro­pean econ­o­my in the process. Pol­i­cy mak­ers on both sides of the Atlantic, how­ev­er, rec­og­nized that mean­ing­ful sanc­tions which tar­get­ed Russ­ian ener­gy con­tained col­lat­er­al risk to the Euro­pean econ­o­my which could not be avoid­ed.

    One of the mech­a­nisms that U.S. and E.U. pol­i­cy mak­ers were hop­ing would alle­vi­ate the eco­nom­ic con­se­quences of sanc­tion­ing Russ­ian ener­gy was to increase the sup­ply of U.S. liqui­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) to Europe. Since 2016 the amount of LNG sup­plied by the U.S. to Europe has increased, with more than 21 bcm deliv­ered in 2021.

    But 21 bcm couldn’t begin to off­set the quan­ti­ty of nat­ur­al gas being shipped by Rus­sia to Europe in case of any large-scale dis­rup­tion of Russ­ian ener­gy sup­plies brought on by the impo­si­tion of eco­nom­ic sanc­tions that tar­get­ed the Russ­ian ener­gy sec­tor.

    After the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine — and the real­iza­tion that the ener­gy dis­rup­tion to Europe was going to be far greater than had been antic­i­pat­ed — Biden made good on his promise to increase the sup­ply of U.S. LNG to Europe. But the quan­ti­ties still fell far short of demand, and at prices that were, lit­er­al­ly, bank­rupt­ing all of Europe.

    The Vic­tims

    With Ger­many block­ing the oper­a­tion of Nord Stream 2 and sanc­tions pre­clud­ing the repair of the Nord Stream 1, the Ger­man pop­u­la­tion began bear­ing the brunt of the sanc­tions on Russ­ian ener­gy.

    Despite their government’s insis­tence that it would remain res­olute in con­fronting what it per­ceived as Russ­ian aggres­sion against Ukraine, the Ger­man peo­ple had oth­er plans. By Sept. 26 they began tak­ing to the streets in large num­bers to demand that their gov­ern­ment open the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and pro­vide the Ger­man peo­ple and econ­o­my with the ener­gy need­ed to sur­vive.

    Ger­many’s largest protests of this fallThe footage shows Berlin and Hannover.The par­tic­i­pants are demand­ing the lift­ing of anti-Russ­ian sanc­tions and access to ener­gy. One of the posters reads “I want Russ­ian gas and oil.” pic.twitter.com/Rl7UJQ6dSb— ????Jacob????Charite???? (@jaccocharite) Octo­ber 8, 2022

    The Crime

    On Sept. 26, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline report­ed a mas­sive drop in pres­sure. The next day, the Nord Stream 1 pipeline report­ed the same. A Dan­ish fight­er jet, fly­ing over the pipeline route, report­ed see­ing a one-kilo­me­ter diam­e­ter dis­tur­bance in the water off the island of Born­holm, direct­ly over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, cre­at­ed by the mas­sive release of nat­ur­al gas under­wa­ter. (Dan­ish author­i­ties have esti­mat­ed that between the two pipelines the total amount of methane released into the atmos­phere was around 500,000 met­ric tons.)

    The inci­dent took place in the exclu­sive eco­nom­ic zone of Swe­den, and the Swedish Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice took the lead in inves­ti­gat­ing what had hap­pened. (Curi­ous­ly, Rus­sia was not invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate, despite hav­ing a vest­ed eco­nom­ic and secu­ri­ty inter­est in the mat­ter.)

    “After com­plet­ing the crime scene inves­ti­ga­tion,” the Swedes report­ed, “the Swedish Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice can con­clude that there have been det­o­na­tions at Nord Stream 1 and 2 in the Swedish eco­nom­ic zone,” not­ing that the blasts had caused “exten­sive dam­age” to the lines.

    The Swedes also declared that they had retrieved some mate­ri­als from the inci­dent site, which were being ana­lyzed to deter­mine who was respon­si­ble. This evi­dence, the Swedes stat­ed, “strength­ened the sus­pi­cions of gross sab­o­tage.”

    While all par­ties involved with the Nord Stream pipeline “sab­o­tage” con­cur that the cause was man­made, no nation out­side Rus­sia has named a sus­pect. (Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin has attrib­uted the attack, which Rus­sia has labeled an act of “inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism,” on the “Anglo-Sax­ons” — the British and Amer­i­cans.)

    Biden dis­missed the Russ­ian claims. The pipeline attack “was a delib­er­ate act of sab­o­tage and the Rus­sians are pump­ing out dis­in­for­ma­tion and lies,” the U.S. pres­i­dent said. “At the appro­pri­ate moment, when things calm down, we’re going to be send­ing divers down to find out exact­ly what hap­pened. We don’t know that yet exact­ly.”

    But we do know. Biden told us him­self. So did Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken. So did the U.S. Navy. Between the three, we have incon­tro­vert­ible evi­dence of intent, motive and means — more than enough need­ed to prove guilt beyond any rea­son­able doubt in a court of law.

    Intent

    Speak­ing to reporters on Feb. 7, Biden declared “If Rus­sia invades, that means tanks or troops cross­ing the bor­der of Ukraine again, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

    Pres. Biden: “If Rus­sia invades...then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.“Reporter: “But how will you do that, exact­ly, since...the project is in Ger­many’s control?“Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.” https://t.co/uruQ4F4zM9 pic.twitter.com/4ksDaaU0YC— ABC News (@ABC) Feb­ru­ary 7, 2022

    When a jour­nal­ist asked how Biden could do such a thing, giv­en that Ger­many was in con­trol of the project, Biden retort­ed: “I promise you: We will be able to do it.”

    No pros­e­cu­tor has ever had a more con­cise state­ment of intent — a ver­i­ta­ble con­fes­sion before the event — than this. Joe Biden should be tak­en at his word.

    Motive

    When asked by reporters on Oct. 3 to com­ment on the Nord Stream pipeline attacks, Blinken respond­ed in part by not­ing that the attack was “a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty to once and for all remove the depen­dence on Russ­ian ener­gy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponiza­tion of ener­gy as a means of advanc­ing his impe­r­i­al designs.”

    Blinken fur­ther declared that the U.S. would work to alle­vi­ate the “con­se­quences” of the pipeline attack on Europe, allud­ing to the pro­vi­sion of U.S. LNG at exor­bi­tant prof­it mar­gins for U.S. sup­pli­ers — anoth­er “oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

    Pros­e­cu­tors often speak of cui bono, a Latin phrase that means “who ben­e­fits,” when seek­ing to import motive for a crime com­mit­ted, under the pre­sump­tion that there is a high prob­a­bil­i­ty that those respon­si­ble for a spe­cif­ic crime are the ones who stand to gain from it.

    Blinken. Tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty.

    Cui Bono.

    Means

    In ear­ly June, in sup­port of a major NATO exer­cise known as BALTOPS (Baltic Oper­a­tions) 2022, the U.S. Navy employed the lat­est advance­ments in unmanned under­wa­ter vehi­cle, or UUV, mine hunt­ing tech­nol­o­gy to be test­ed in oper­a­tional sce­nar­ios.

    Accord­ing to the U.S. Navy, it was able to eval­u­ate “emerg­ing mine hunt­ing UUV tech­nol­o­gy,” focus­ing on “UUV nav­i­ga­tion, team­ing oper­a­tions, and improve­ments in acoustic com­mu­ni­ca­tions all while col­lect­ing crit­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal data sets to advance the auto­mat­ic tar­get recog­ni­tion algo­rithms for mine detec­tion.”

    One of the UUV’s used by the U.S. Navy is the Seafox.

    In Sep­tem­ber, spe­cial­ized U.S. Navy heli­copters — the MH-60R, capa­ble of employ­ing the Seafox UUV — were tracked fly­ing off the Dan­ish island of Born­holm, direct­ly over the seg­ments of the Nord­stream 1 and 2 pipelines that were lat­er dam­aged in the sab­o­tage inci­dents.

    To quote TASS,

    “On Novem­ber 6, 2015, the NATO Seafox mine dis­pos­al unmanned under­wa­ter vehi­cle was found dur­ing the sched­uled visu­al inspec­tion of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline. It lay in space between gas pipelines, clear­ly near one of strings. NATO said the under­wa­ter mine dis­pos­al vehi­cle was lost dur­ing exer­cis­es. Such NATO exer­cis­es when the com­bat explo­sive device turned out to be exact­ly under our gas pipeline. The explo­sive device was deac­ti­vat­ed by Swedish Armed Forces at that time.”

    Guilty Beyond Rea­son­able Doubt

    The bur­den that exists to prove guilt beyond a rea­son­able doubt “is ful­ly sat­is­fied and entire­ly con­vinced to a moral cer­tain­ty that the evi­dence pre­sent­ed proves the guilt of the defen­dant.” In the mat­ter of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 attacks, this bur­den has been met when it comes to assign­ing blame to the Unit­ed States.

    Biden all but con­fessed the crime before­hand, and his sec­re­tary of state, Blinken, crowed about the “tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty” that was cre­at­ed by the attack. Not only did the U.S. Navy active­ly rehearse the crime in June 2022, using the same weapon that had been pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cov­ered next to the pipeline, but employed the very means need­ed to use this weapon on the day of the attack, at the loca­tion of the attack.

    Guilty as Charged

    The prob­lem is, out­side of Rus­sia, no one is charg­ing the Unit­ed States. Jour­nal­ists run away from the evi­dence, cit­ing “uncer­tain­ty.” Europe, afraid to wake up to the real­i­ty that its most impor­tant “ally” has com­mit­ted an act of war against its crit­i­cal ener­gy infra­struc­ture, con­demn­ing mil­lions of Euro­peans to suf­fer the depra­va­tions of cold, hunger and unem­ploy­ment —all the while goug­ing Europe with prof­it mar­gins from the sale of LNG that rede­fine the notion of “wind­fall” — remains silent.

    There is no doubt in any think­ing person’s brain as to who is respon­si­ble for the attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. The cir­cum­stan­tial case is over­whelm­ing and ful­ly capa­ble of win­ning a con­vic­tion in any U.S. court of law.

    But no one will bring the case, at least not at this moment.

    ...

    ————

    “SCOTT RITTER: Pipelines v. USA” By Scott Rit­ter; Con­sor­tium News; 10/12/2022

    “There is no doubt in any think­ing person’s brain as to who is respon­si­ble for the attacks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. The cir­cum­stan­tial case is over­whelm­ing and ful­ly capa­ble of win­ning a con­vic­tion in any U.S. court of law.”

    Now, in fair­ness, there should a rea­son­able doubt in terms of who actu­al­ly exe­cut­ed the attacks on these pipelines. Sure, the US or UK are obvi­ous sus­pects giv­en the cir­cum­stances, but so is Ukraine and Poland. What is obvi­ous beyond a rea­son­able doubt is that this attack was not in Rus­si­a’s inter­ests but very much in the inter­ests of all of those obvi­ous sus­pects. That’s why they’re the obvi­ous sus­pects. That and all the high­ly incrim­i­nat­ing state­ments made before and the attacks. State­ments like Joe Biden’s omi­nous threat that “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it” made on Feb 7. It sound­ed omi­nous at the time. Now it just sounds incrim­i­nat­ing. Even more incrim­i­nat­ing after Antony Blinken’s Octo­ber 3 com­ments about what a great oppor­tu­ni­ty the attacks cre­at­ed. It just looks guilty:

    ...
    Speak­ing to reporters on Feb. 7, Biden declared “If Rus­sia invades, that means tanks or troops cross­ing the bor­der of Ukraine again, there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

    Pres. Biden: “If Rus­sia invades...then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.“Reporter: “But how will you do that, exact­ly, since...the project is in Ger­many’s control?“Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.” https://t.co/uruQ4F4zM9 pic.twitter.com/4ksDaaU0YC— ABC News (@ABC) Feb­ru­ary 7, 2022

    When a jour­nal­ist asked how Biden could do such a thing, giv­en that Ger­many was in con­trol of the project, Biden retort­ed: “I promise you: We will be able to do it.”

    No pros­e­cu­tor has ever had a more con­cise state­ment of intent — a ver­i­ta­ble con­fes­sion before the event — than this. Joe Biden should be tak­en at his word.

    Motive

    When asked by reporters on Oct. 3 to com­ment on the Nord Stream pipeline attacks, Blinken respond­ed in part by not­ing that the attack was “a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty to once and for all remove the depen­dence on Russ­ian ener­gy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponiza­tion of ener­gy as a means of advanc­ing his impe­r­i­al designs.”

    Blinken fur­ther declared that the U.S. would work to alle­vi­ate the “con­se­quences” of the pipeline attack on Europe, allud­ing to the pro­vi­sion of U.S. LNG at exor­bi­tant prof­it mar­gins for U.S. sup­pli­ers — anoth­er “oppor­tu­ni­ty.”

    Pros­e­cu­tors often speak of cui bono, a Latin phrase that means “who ben­e­fits,” when seek­ing to import motive for a crime com­mit­ted, under the pre­sump­tion that there is a high prob­a­bil­i­ty that those respon­si­ble for a spe­cif­ic crime are the ones who stand to gain from it.

    Blinken. Tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty.

    Cui Bono.
    ...

    And then there’s the mys­te­ri­ous Sep­tem­ber oper­a­tion involv­ing spe­cial­ized US Navy Heli­copters capa­ble of deploy UUV’s observed hov­er­ing direct­ly over one of the sites of the attack weeks lat­er. That Sep­tem­ber oper­a­tion fol­lowed an ear­ly June NATO exer­cise in the area as part of UUV mine-hunt­ing oper­a­tion. These are irrefutable facts. And while they aren’t direct evi­dence of a US or NATO plot to sab­o­tage the pipelines, there’s also no deny­ing now sus­pi­cious these details are in light of what hap­pened. Any real inves­ti­ga­tion would hone in on these events:

    ...
    In ear­ly June, in sup­port of a major NATO exer­cise known as BALTOPS (Baltic Oper­a­tions) 2022, the U.S. Navy employed the lat­est advance­ments in unmanned under­wa­ter vehi­cle, or UUV, mine hunt­ing tech­nol­o­gy to be test­ed in oper­a­tional sce­nar­ios.

    Accord­ing to the U.S. Navy, it was able to eval­u­ate “emerg­ing mine hunt­ing UUV tech­nol­o­gy,” focus­ing on “UUV nav­i­ga­tion, team­ing oper­a­tions, and improve­ments in acoustic com­mu­ni­ca­tions all while col­lect­ing crit­i­cal envi­ron­men­tal data sets to advance the auto­mat­ic tar­get recog­ni­tion algo­rithms for mine detec­tion.”

    One of the UUV’s used by the U.S. Navy is the Seafox.

    In Sep­tem­ber, spe­cial­ized U.S. Navy heli­copters — the MH-60R, capa­ble of employ­ing the Seafox UUV — were tracked fly­ing off the Dan­ish island of Born­holm, direct­ly over the seg­ments of the Nord­stream 1 and 2 pipelines that were lat­er dam­aged in the sab­o­tage inci­dents.

    To quote TASS,

    “On Novem­ber 6, 2015, the NATO Seafox mine dis­pos­al unmanned under­wa­ter vehi­cle was found dur­ing the sched­uled visu­al inspec­tion of the Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline. It lay in space between gas pipelines, clear­ly near one of strings. NATO said the under­wa­ter mine dis­pos­al vehi­cle was lost dur­ing exer­cis­es. Such NATO exer­cis­es when the com­bat explo­sive device turned out to be exact­ly under our gas pipeline. The explo­sive device was deac­ti­vat­ed by Swedish Armed Forces at that time.”

    ...

    On top of all it all is the tim­ing: this hap­pened right as a cold expen­sive win­ter was approach­ing and Ger­mans were set­tling into a mood to protest the ongo­ing sanc­tions. Protests that became utter­ly futile with those sab­o­tage attacks:

    ...
    With Ger­many block­ing the oper­a­tion of Nord Stream 2 and sanc­tions pre­clud­ing the repair of the Nord Stream 1, the Ger­man pop­u­la­tion began bear­ing the brunt of the sanc­tions on Russ­ian ener­gy.

    Despite their government’s insis­tence that it would remain res­olute in con­fronting what it per­ceived as Russ­ian aggres­sion against Ukraine, the Ger­man peo­ple had oth­er plans. By Sept. 26 they began tak­ing to the streets in large num­bers to demand that their gov­ern­ment open the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and pro­vide the Ger­man peo­ple and econ­o­my with the ener­gy need­ed to sur­vive.

    Ger­many’s largest protests of this fallThe footage shows Berlin and Hannover.The par­tic­i­pants are demand­ing the lift­ing of anti-Russ­ian sanc­tions and access to ener­gy. One of the posters reads “I want Russ­ian gas and oil.” pic.twitter.com/Rl7UJQ6dSb— ????Jacob????Charite???? (@jaccocharite) Octo­ber 8, 2022

    The Crime

    On Sept. 26, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline report­ed a mas­sive drop in pres­sure. The next day, the Nord Stream 1 pipeline report­ed the same. A Dan­ish fight­er jet, fly­ing over the pipeline route, report­ed see­ing a one-kilo­me­ter diam­e­ter dis­tur­bance in the water off the island of Born­holm, direct­ly over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, cre­at­ed by the mas­sive release of nat­ur­al gas under­wa­ter. (Dan­ish author­i­ties have esti­mat­ed that between the two pipelines the total amount of methane released into the atmos­phere was around 500,000 met­ric tons.)
    ...

    And yet, despite this damn­ing cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that, at min­i­mum, should have neu­tral observers strong­ly sus­pect­ing some sort of West­ern-sanc­tioned attack, we’ve seen a vir­tu­al Iron Cur­tain of bad takes across the West­ern press. Either every­one played dumb or, more like, Rus­sia got the blame. It’s like The Onion goes main­stream:

    ...
    The bur­den that exists to prove guilt beyond a rea­son­able doubt “is ful­ly sat­is­fied and entire­ly con­vinced to a moral cer­tain­ty that the evi­dence pre­sent­ed proves the guilt of the defen­dant.” In the mat­ter of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 attacks, this bur­den has been met when it comes to assign­ing blame to the Unit­ed States.

    Biden all but con­fessed the crime before­hand, and his sec­re­tary of state, Blinken, crowed about the “tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty” that was cre­at­ed by the attack. Not only did the U.S. Navy active­ly rehearse the crime in June 2022, using the same weapon that had been pre­vi­ous­ly dis­cov­ered next to the pipeline, but employed the very means need­ed to use this weapon on the day of the attack, at the loca­tion of the attack.

    ...

    The prob­lem is, out­side of Rus­sia, no one is charg­ing the Unit­ed States. Jour­nal­ists run away from the evi­dence, cit­ing “uncer­tain­ty.” Europe, afraid to wake up to the real­i­ty that its most impor­tant “ally” has com­mit­ted an act of war against its crit­i­cal ener­gy infra­struc­ture, con­demn­ing mil­lions of Euro­peans to suf­fer the depra­va­tions of cold, hunger and unem­ploy­ment —all the while goug­ing Europe with prof­it mar­gins from the sale of LNG that rede­fine the notion of “wind­fall” — remains silent.

    ...

    But no one will bring the case, at least not at this moment.
    ...

    It’s not like Rus­sia and ‘the West’ were the only par­ties involved with this attack. The whole world got to wit­ness it. Just as the whole world is get­ting to wit­ness this farce of a coverup. What kind of dam­age does this do to the cred­i­bil­i­ty of ‘the West’ and democ­ra­cy in gen­er­al? Because that’s how this con­flict is being pre­sent­ed to the world: as an exis­ten­tial con­flict between a total­i­tar­i­an Rus­sia and a demo­c­ra­t­ic West. That’s the fram­ing at work here. ‘Democ­ra­cy’ vs Rus­sia. And ‘Democ­ra­cy’ just pulled some sort of gang­ster stunt with a troll­ish coverup.

    So what kind of dam­age is being done to the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the democ­ra­cy with dan­ger­ous stunts like this? One mem­ber of this coali­tion of democ­ra­cies after anoth­er has embraced this big obvi­ous lie, with vir­tu­al­ly all of the media duti­ful­ly uphold­ing that big obvi­ous lie. This is can­cer­ous stuff. The world is watch­ing. Open obvi­ous lies like this don’t just get swept under the rug. They linger and fes­ter. This is the kind of stuff that fuels fig­ures like Alex Jones and Tuck­er Carl­son. Bla­tant lies are free pow­er­ful pro­pa­gan­da avail­able to any­one who does­n’t go along with the obvi­ous lies that only the high­ly moti­vat­ed or high­ly gullible would buy.

    And how many more ‘Rus­sia did it to itself!’ events like this are we going to expe­ri­ence before this con­flict is over? It’s hard to imag­ine this was a one-off. Who­ev­er did this must be feel­ing embold­ened. So we’ll see when the next ‘Rus­sia sab­o­taged itself’ act takes place. But try not to be super shocked if the nar­ra­tive in the West for how WWIII start­ed goes some­thing like, “First Rus­sia blew up a bunch of its own stuff. Then, after many such attacks against itself, Rus­sia decid­ed to launched pre­emp­tive strikes against the West for no rea­son. It’s all such a mys­tery.” That’s assum­ing the inves­ti­ga­tions into the cause of WWIII don’t get clas­si­fied due to unspec­i­fied secu­ri­ty con­cerns.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 15, 2022, 3:30 pm
  10. That’s not good: the Zapor­izhzhia nuclear pow­er plant in the recent­ly annexed Zapor­izhzhia ter­ri­to­ry was forced to oper­ate off of emer­gency back­up pow­er for the past cou­ple of days. Exter­nal pow­er sup­plies have now been restored, accord­ing to the IAEA, but it was a legit­i­mate scare. One more bad event and the largest nuclear plant in Europe could have expe­ri­enced a melt­down.

    Both sides are accus­ing each oth­er of caus­ing the pow­er cut. The actu­al dam­age to pow­er lines and an elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tion that caused the pow­er loss took place in Ukrain­ian-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry. Ukraine is blam­ing it on Russ­ian shelling. So was it actu­al­ly Russ­ian shelling? Or did Ukraine stage some sort of provo­ca­tion? That’s the ques­tion cov­ered in the fol­low­ing arti­cle excerpts. Because as we’re going to see, this mys­te­ri­ous pow­er cut­off to the Zapor­izhzhia nuclear pow­er plant is made all the more mys­te­ri­ous by its tim­ing. Specif­i­cal­ly, this hap­pened two weeks into a flur­ry of mutu­al accu­sa­tions between Rus­sia and Ukraine of ‘dirty-bomb’ plots in the works. As we’re going to see, the accu­sa­tions start­ed in the last week of Octo­ber with Russ­ian alarms over intel­li­gence it received about a Ukrain­ian dirty-bomb being pos­si­bly con­struct­ed at nuclear sites in Ukraine. Rus­si­a’s defense min­is­ter report­ed­ly made a flur­ry of calls to his coun­ter­parts in the US, UK, France, and Turkey, fol­lowed up with the call­ing of a UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing where Rus­si­a’s ambas­sador lev­eled the charges — includ­ing charges that Ukraine had the back­ing of its West­ern part­ners in this plot — and called for IAEA inves­ti­ga­tions of three nuclear sites.

    Ukraine respond­ed to the accu­sa­tions with counter-accu­sa­tions of its own: that Rus­si­a’s dirty-bomb claims were just a cov­er for its own dirty-bomb plot. Accord­ing to Ukraine, Rus­sia is plan­ning on flow­ing up a large num­ber of spent fuel rods at the Zapor­izhzhia nuclear plant, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing hun­dreds of kilo­me­ters of the sur­round­ing area. That’s part of the con­text of the cut­off of the Zapor­izhzhia pow­er sup­ply.

    But then there’s the response from West­ern gov­ern­ments: a nar­ra­tive is emerg­ing about Russ­ian plans for using tac­ti­cal nukes, based on reports sourc­ing US gov­ern­ment offi­cials. That tac­ti­cal nuke sto­ry is now get­ting effec­tive­ly merged with the ‘dirty-bomb’ accu­sa­tions into a nar­ra­tive about Rus­sia plan­ning a dirty-bomb false flag event in order to jus­ti­fy the use of tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons.

    That’s the hor­rif­ic con­text of this Zapor­izhzhia nuclear scare that just tran­spired. Mutu­al accu­sa­tions of nuclear dirty-bomb false flags and loose talk of tac­ti­cal nukes. Fol­lowed up with mys­te­ri­ous attacks on the Zapor­izhzhia pow­er sup­ply. A nuclear false flag esca­la­tion has been play­ing out over the last two week and it appears to have already result­ed in a very real nuclear scare. How does this esca­late from here?

    Oh, and Rus­sia is con­tin­u­ing to press for a UN inves­ti­ga­tion of Ukrain­ian bio­labs. It sounds like only Chi­na sup­port­ed its pro­pos­al at the most recent UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing where this nuclear scare was being dis­cussed.

    Ok, first, here’s a VOA piece on the pow­er loss at the Zapor­izhzhia nuclear plant due to phys­i­cal dam­age in Ukrain­ian-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry in two dif­fer­ent loca­tions:

    Voice of Amer­i­ca

    IAEA: Nuclear Plant in Ukraine Lost Pow­er After Shelling

    Mar­garet Besheer
    Novem­ber 03, 2022 1:41 PM

    The Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency says the Zapor­izhzhia nuclear pow­er plant in south­ern Ukraine lost all access to exter­nal elec­tric­i­ty fol­low­ing overnight shelling and is cur­rent­ly receiv­ing back­up pow­er from its emer­gency diesel gen­er­a­tors.

    Nuclear oper­a­tor Ener­goatom blamed Rus­sia for shelling in the area that dam­aged pow­er lines and elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions. Rus­sia put the blame on Ukraine.

    The IAEA said in a state­ment that senior Ukrain­ian oper­at­ing staff informed their experts of indi­ca­tions that the pow­er lines were phys­i­cal­ly dam­aged “at two dif­fer­ent loca­tions about 50–60 kilo­me­ters from the plant itself, in Ukrain­ian-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry.” Repair work was under way at one of the loca­tions.

    IAEA Direc­tor Gen­er­al Rafael Grossi said in a state­ment that the devel­op­ment is “extreme­ly con­cern­ing” and “again demon­strates the plan­t’s frag­ile and vul­ner­a­ble sit­u­a­tion.” He has been work­ing with both sides to estab­lish a demil­i­ta­rized pro­tec­tion zone around the nuclear plant.

    “Mea­sures are need­ed to pre­vent a nuclear acci­dent at the site. The estab­lish­ment of a nuclear safe­ty and secu­ri­ty pro­tec­tion zone is urgent­ly need­ed,” he said.

    ...

    Mean­while, Rus­sia failed to gain trac­tion in the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Wednes­day for its pro­pos­al to send a for­mal com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate its alle­ga­tion that the Unit­ed States and Ukraine have a secret bio­log­i­cal weapons pro­grams in Ukraine. A res­o­lu­tion it put for­ward call­ing for the com­mis­sion was sup­port­ed only by Chi­na.

    U.N. dis­ar­ma­ment offi­cials have long said they are not aware of any bio­log­i­cal weapons pro­grams in Ukraine, while Kyiv and Wash­ing­ton deny the accu­sa­tion.

    ...

    ———–

    “IAEA: Nuclear Plant in Ukraine Lost Pow­er After Shelling” by Mar­garet Besheer; Voice of Amer­i­ca; 11/03/2022

    Nuclear oper­a­tor Ener­goatom blamed Rus­sia for shelling in the area that dam­aged pow­er lines and elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions. Rus­sia put the blame on Ukraine.”

    Rus­sia is at it again. When it’s not blow­ing up its own strate­gic nat­ur­al gas pipelines it’s risk­ing a nuclear melt­down at the largest nuclear plant in Europe now in new­ly annexed Russ­ian ter­ri­to­ry. That’s the now-pre­dictable nar­ra­tive we got from Ukraine nuclear oper­a­tor Ener­goatom.

    Now, giv­en that the cause for the pow­er loss was phys­i­cal dam­age to pow­er lines and sub­sta­tions in Ukrain­ian-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry, it’s pos­si­ble that Russ­ian shelling did inad­ver­tent­ly cause that dam­age. But that’s assum­ing some extreme­ly care­less shelling. If there’s one thing Rus­si­a’s pre­ci­sion-strikes on Ukrain­ian infra­struc­ture over the last month have demon­strat­ed it’s that Rus­sia has the capac­i­ty to avoid hit­ting key infra­struc­ture when it desires. That’s why the recent strikes on Ukraine’s elec­tri­cal infra­struc­ture in response to the bomb­ing of the Kerch Bridge was so impact­ful. Rus­sia had­n’t real­ly been hit­ting Ukraine’s elec­tri­cal infra­struc­ture until that point. So if Russ­ian shelling into Ukrain­ian-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry was indeed the cause of dam­aged elec­tri­cal infra­struc­ture it prob­a­bly was­n’t an acci­dent. Which is why Russ­ian prob­a­bly was­n’t actu­al­ly the cul­prit unless it active­ly want­ed to force the Zapor­izhzhia plant onto emer­gency back­up pow­er, putting the whole area at risk for a nuclear acci­dent. Don’t for­get that a melt-down at that plant would be one hell of a ‘dirty-bomb’. And one direct­ly impact­ing ter­ri­to­ry Rus­sia now claims:

    ...
    The IAEA said in a state­ment that senior Ukrain­ian oper­at­ing staff informed their experts of indi­ca­tions that the pow­er lines were phys­i­cal­ly dam­aged “at two dif­fer­ent loca­tions about 50–60 kilo­me­ters from the plant itself, in Ukrain­ian-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry.” Repair work was under way at one of the loca­tions.

    IAEA Direc­tor Gen­er­al Rafael Grossi said in a state­ment that the devel­op­ment is “extreme­ly con­cern­ing” and “again demon­strates the plan­t’s frag­ile and vul­ner­a­ble sit­u­a­tion.” He has been work­ing with both sides to estab­lish a demil­i­ta­rized pro­tec­tion zone around the nuclear plant.

    Mea­sures are need­ed to pre­vent a nuclear acci­dent at the site. The estab­lish­ment of a nuclear safe­ty and secu­ri­ty pro­tec­tion zone is urgent­ly need­ed,” he said.
    ...

    Also note how a UN inves­ti­ga­tion of the US-backed Ukrain­ian bio­labs is also being pur­sued by Rus­sia at the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing but only Chi­na is sup­port it so far:

    ...
    Mean­while, Rus­sia failed to gain trac­tion in the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Wednes­day for its pro­pos­al to send a for­mal com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate its alle­ga­tion that the Unit­ed States and Ukraine have a secret bio­log­i­cal weapons pro­grams in Ukraine. A res­o­lu­tion it put for­ward call­ing for the com­mis­sion was sup­port­ed only by Chi­na.

    U.N. dis­ar­ma­ment offi­cials have long said they are not aware of any bio­log­i­cal weapons pro­grams in Ukraine, while Kyiv and Wash­ing­ton deny the accu­sa­tion.
    ...

    And as the fol­low­ing NY Times arti­cle also from Thurs­day describes, the cut­ting off of pow­er at the Zapor­izhzhia plant came on the same day the IAEA gave its ‘all clear’ on three Ukrain­ian nuclear sites Russ­ian alleged might be the loca­tions of secret work by Ukraine on a dirty-bomb plot. A plot to stage a false flag dirty bomb attack that will be used to fur­ther iso­late Rus­sia. Rus­si­a’s alle­ga­tions did­n’t start as pub­lic alle­ga­tions. Instead, it sounds like Rus­si­a’s Defense Min­is­ter Sergei Shoigu called his coun­ter­parts in the US, UK, France, and Turkey. Rus­sia then took this up at the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil and called for IAEA inspec­tions at the three sites, cit­ing intel­li­gence about the plot. Those are the three sites just giv­en the ‘all clear’ by the IAEA. On the same day of the ‘Russ­ian shelling’ of the pow­er to the Russ­ian-con­trolled Zapor­izhzhia plant. This is what a nuclear esca­la­tion looks like:

    The New York Times

    The U.N.’s nuclear watch­dog finds no evi­dence for Russia’s claim that Ukraine is ready­ing a ‘dirty bomb.’

    The Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency said its inspec­tions had found no evi­dence of ille­gal nuclear activ­i­ty at three sites that fig­ured in Russia’s claims.

    By Matthew Mpoke Bigg
    Pub­lished Nov. 3, 2022 Updat­ed Nov. 4, 2022, 8:14 a.m. ET

    The Unit­ed Nations’ nuclear watch­dog said on Thurs­day that it had inspect­ed three Ukrain­ian facil­i­ties and found no evi­dence of ille­gal nuclear activ­i­ty, debunk­ing claims Russ­ian offi­cials made last week that Ukraine was using the sites to pre­pare a “dirty bomb.”

    Dirty bombs are impro­vised bombs that use con­ven­tion­al high explo­sives to spread radioac­tive mate­r­i­al into the sur­round­ing area. Pres­i­dent Vladimir V. Putin of Rus­sia joined his senior mil­i­tary lead­ers in mak­ing the asser­tion that Ukraine planned to use one.

    But the top diplo­mats of the Unit­ed States, Britain and France have firm­ly reject­ed the Russ­ian claims, which were unac­com­pa­nied by any evi­dence. Last week, the diplo­mats issued a rare joint state­ment say­ing that the Krem­lin could be using the false claim as a pre­text to esca­late its war on Ukraine.

    Ukraine also reject­ed Russia’s claim and, in a bid to show that it was not pro­duc­ing such a weapon, invit­ed the U.N. watch­dog, the Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency, to inspect the three facil­i­ties fea­tured in Russia’s accu­sa­tion. The sites are a mine in the cen­ter of the coun­try, a machine build­ing plant in Dnipro Province and a nuclear research insti­tute in the cap­i­tal, Kyiv.

    “Our tech­ni­cal and sci­en­tif­ic eval­u­a­tion of the results we have so far did not show any sign of unde­clared nuclear activ­i­ties and mate­ri­als at these three loca­tions,” the agency’s direc­tor gen­er­al, Rafael Mar­i­ano Grossi, said in a state­ment on Thurs­day, after the agency’s inspec­tion.

    ...

    Ukraine has been keen to show that it is coop­er­at­ing with inter­na­tion­al author­i­ties like the I.A.E.A., which has warned about the per­ils of dirty bombs. Such bombs, though they lack the explo­sive pow­er of a nuclear weapon, can con­t­a­m­i­nate local­ized areas — a few city blocks or a vil­lage — and make them unin­hab­it­able.

    Russia’s claim came amid height­ened fears in the West that Moscow could be seek­ing a pre­text to esca­late the war fol­low­ing a recent series of bat­tle­field loss­es in Ukraine’s north­east and a Ukrain­ian coun­terof­fen­sive in the south­ern, strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant Kher­son region.

    A day before Mr. Putin made his unsub­stan­ti­at­ed accu­sa­tions, Pres­i­dent Biden warned him that it would be “an incred­i­bly seri­ous mis­take” to use a tac­ti­cal nuclear weapon in the con­flict.

    ———-

    “The U.N.’s nuclear watch­dog finds no evi­dence for Russia’s claim that Ukraine is ready­ing a ‘dirty bomb.’” By Matthew Mpoke Bigg; The New York Times; 11/03/2022

    “Russia’s claim came amid height­ened fears in the West that Moscow could be seek­ing a pre­text to esca­late the war fol­low­ing a recent series of bat­tle­field loss­es in Ukraine’s north­east and a Ukrain­ian coun­terof­fen­sive in the south­ern, strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant Kher­son region.”

    The cut­ting off of pow­er to the Zapor­izhzhia nuclear plant was far from the only nuclear scare over the last week. Mutu­al accu­sa­tions of “dirty bomb” plans have been lev­eled over the past week. It start­ed with the Krem­lin’s claims last week that it received intel­li­gence Ukraine was work­ing on a “dirty bomb” false flag inci­dent at one of its nuclear site, result­ing in a rare joint diplo­mat­ic state­ment by the US, France, and the UK reject­ing the alle­ga­tions. But note how that rejec­tion did­n’t just dis­miss Moscow’s con­cern as Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion. It warned that Moscow might be plan­ning on using the claim as a Russ­ian excuse to esca­late the sit­u­a­tion. As we’re going to see, the par­tic­u­lar esca­lat­ing the US has been sug­ges­tion Rus­sia has in mind is the use of tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons. In oth­er words, Russ­ian claims of a Ukrain­ian nuclear false flag plot is, itself, as false plot intend­ed to jus­ti­fy the use of tac­ti­cal nukes. That dra­mat­ic esca­la­tion of nuclear ten­sions — mutu­al accu­sa­tions of false-flag nuclear plots — is part of the chill­ing con­text of the cut­off of pow­er to Zapor­izhzhia nuclear plant:

    ...
    But the top diplo­mats of the Unit­ed States, Britain and France have firm­ly reject­ed the Russ­ian claims, which were unac­com­pa­nied by any evi­dence. Last week, the diplo­mats issued a rare joint state­ment say­ing that the Krem­lin could be using the false claim as a pre­text to esca­late its war on Ukraine.
    ...

    But there’s anoth­er impor­tant con­text in all of this: Ukraine’s own counter-alle­ga­tions that it’s Rus­sia who is in fact plan­ning a dirty bomb false flag at the Zapor­izhzhia Nuclear Pow­er Plant. Yes, this attack on the Zapor­izhzhia Nuclear Pow­er Plan­t’s pow­er sup­ply was a week after Ukraine made its dirty bomb claims and the US, UK, and France start­ed sug­gest­ing that Rus­sian’s dirty bomb plot claims are part of its own false flag plot to car­ry out its own nuclear esca­la­tion. A plot that involves blow­ing up spent fuel rods at the Zapor­izhzhia plant itself in an attempt to con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed the adja­cent ter­ri­to­ry:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    Ukraine alleges Russ­ian dirty bomb decep­tion at nuke plant

    Octo­ber 25, 2022

    KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s nuclear ener­gy oper­a­tor said Tues­day that Russ­ian forces were per­form­ing secret work at Europe’s largest nuclear pow­er plant, activ­i­ty that could shed light on Russia’s claims that the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary is prepar­ing a “provo­ca­tion” involv­ing a radioac­tive device.

    Russ­ian Defense Min­is­ter Sergei Shoigu made an unsub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tion that Ukraine was prepar­ing to launch a so-called dirty bomb. Shoigu lev­eled the charge over the week­end in calls to his British, French, Turk­ish and U.S. coun­ter­parts. Britain, France and the Unit­ed States reject­ed it out of hand as “trans­par­ent­ly false.”

    Ukraine also dis­missed Moscow’s claim as an attempt to dis­tract atten­tion from the Kremlin’s own alleged plans to det­o­nate a dirty bomb, which uses explo­sives to scat­ter radioac­tive waste in an effort to sow ter­ror.

    Ener­goatom, the Ukrain­ian state enter­prise that oper­ates the country’s four nuclear pow­er plants, said Russ­ian forces have car­ried out secret con­struc­tion work over the last week at the occu­pied Zapor­izhzhia Nuclear Pow­er Plant in Ukraine.

    Russ­ian offi­cers con­trol­ling the area won’t give access to Ukrain­ian staff run­ning the plant or mon­i­tors from the U.N.’s atom­ic ener­gy watch­dog that would allow them to see what the Rus­sians are doing, Ener­goatom said Tues­day in a state­ment.

    Ener­goatom said it “assumes” the Rus­sians “are prepar­ing a ter­ror­ist act using nuclear mate­ri­als and radioac­tive waste stored at” the plant. It said there were 174 con­tain­ers at the plant’s dry spent fuel stor­age facil­i­ty, each of them con­tain­ing 24 assem­blies of spent nuclear fuel.

    “Destruc­tion of these con­tain­ers as a result of explo­sion will lead to a radi­a­tion acci­dent and radi­a­tion con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of sev­er­al hun­dred square kilo­me­ters (miles) of the adja­cent ter­ri­to­ry,” the com­pa­ny said.

    It called on the Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency to assess what was going on.

    The U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil held closed-door con­sul­ta­tions Tues­day about the dirty-bomb alle­ga­tions at Russia’s request.

    Russia’s U.N. Ambas­sador Vass­i­ly Neben­zia sent a five-page let­ter to coun­cil mem­bers before the meet­ing claim­ing that accord­ing to the Russ­ian Min­istry of Defense, Ukraine’s Insti­tute for Nuclear Research of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in Kyiv and Vos­tochniy Min­ing and Pro­cess­ing Plant “have received direct orders from (Pres­i­dent Volodymyr) Zelenskyy’s regime to devel­op such a dirty bomb” and “the works are at their con­clud­ing stage.”

    Neben­zia said the min­istry also received word that this work “may be car­ried out with the sup­port of the West­ern coun­tries.” And he warned that the author­i­ties in Kyiv and their West­ern back­ers “will bear full respon­si­bil­i­ty for all the con­se­quences” of using a “dirty bomb,” which Rus­sia will regard as “an act of nuclear ter­ror­ism.”

    Russia’s deputy U.N. ambas­sador Dmit­ry Polyan­sky was asked by reporters after the coun­cil meet­ing what evi­dence Rus­sia has that Zelen­skyy gave orders to devel­op a “dirty bomb.” He replied, “it is intel­li­gence infor­ma­tion.”

    “We shared it in our tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion with coun­ter­parts who have the nec­es­sary lev­el of clear­ance,” he said. “Those who want­ed to under­stand that the threat is seri­ous, they had all the pos­si­bil­i­ties to under­stand that. Those who want to reject it as Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da, they will do it any­way.”

    Polyan­sky said the IAEA can send inspec­tors to inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions of a “dirty bomb.”

    Britain’s deputy U.N. ambas­sador James Kar­iu­ki told reporters after the meet­ing that “we’ve seen and heard no new evi­dence” and the U.K., France and the U.S. made clear “this is a trans­par­ent­ly false alle­ga­tion” and “pure Russ­ian mis­in­for­ma­tion.” He said, “Ukraine has been clear it’s got noth­ing to hide” and “IAEA inspec­tors are on the way.”

    In a relat­ed mat­ter, Rus­sia asked the Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil to estab­lish a com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate its claims that the Unit­ed States and Ukraine are vio­lat­ing the con­ven­tion pro­hibit­ing the use of bio­log­i­cal weapons at lab­o­ra­to­ries in Ukraine.

    Soon after Russia’s Feb. 24 inva­sion of Ukraine, its U.N. ambas­sador, Vass­i­ly Neben­zia, claimed that secret Amer­i­can labs in Ukraine were engaged in bio­log­i­cal war­fare — a charge denied by the U.S. and Ukraine.

    Rus­sia has called a Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing Thurs­day on Ukraine’s bio­log­i­cal lab­o­ra­to­ries and its alle­ga­tions.

    ...

    At the White House, U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden was asked Tues­day if Rus­sia is prepar­ing to deploy a tac­ti­cal nuclear weapon after mak­ing its claims that Ukraine will use a dirty bomb.

    “I spent a lot of time today talk­ing about that,” Biden told reporters.

    The pres­i­dent was also asked whether the claims about a Ukrain­ian dirty bomb amount­ed to a false-flag oper­a­tion.

    “Let me just say, Rus­sia would be mak­ing an incred­i­bly seri­ous mis­take if it were to use a tac­ti­cal nuclear weapon,” Biden said. “I’m not guar­an­tee­ing you that it’s a false-flag oper­a­tion yet ... but it would be a seri­ous, seri­ous mis­take.”

    Dirty bombs don’t have the dev­as­tat­ing destruc­tion of a nuclear explo­sion but could expose broad areas to radioac­tive con­t­a­m­i­na­tion.

    ————

    “Ukraine alleges Russ­ian dirty bomb decep­tion at nuke plant”; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 10/25/2022

    “Ukraine also dis­missed Moscow’s claim as an attempt to dis­tract atten­tion from the Kremlin’s own alleged plans to det­o­nate a dirty bomb, which uses explo­sives to scat­ter radioac­tive waste in an effort to sow ter­ror.”

    “I know you are but what am?” That was more or less Ukraine’s response to the Russ­ian dirty bomb alle­ga­tions. Ukraine’s nuclear ener­gy oper­a­tor, Ener­goatom, “assumes” that Rus­sia is “are prepar­ing a ter­ror­ist act using nuclear mate­ri­als and radioac­tive waste stored at” the plant. Prepa­ra­tions that involved secret con­struc­tion work at the plant. And it’s not like Ukraine was accus­ing Rus­sia of build­ing a dirty-bomb that will be explod­ed in Ukrain­ian-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry. On the con­trary, Ukraine appears to be pre­dict­ing that Rus­sia is going to build a dirty-bomb out of the spent-fuel rods at the plot and blow them up in a man­ner that “lead to a radi­a­tion acci­dent and radi­a­tion con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of sev­er­al hun­dred square kilo­me­ters (miles) of the adja­cent ter­ri­to­ry.” So Ukraine is pre­dict­ing that Rus­sia is going to dirty-bomb itself. Those were the alle­ga­tions we were get­ting from Ukraine one week before the alle­ga­tions that Rus­sia shelled the pow­er sup­ply to the plant:

    ...
    Ener­goatom, the Ukrain­ian state enter­prise that oper­ates the country’s four nuclear pow­er plants, said Russ­ian forces have car­ried out secret con­struc­tion work over the last week at the occu­pied Zapor­izhzhia Nuclear Pow­er Plant in Ukraine.

    Russ­ian offi­cers con­trol­ling the area won’t give access to Ukrain­ian staff run­ning the plant or mon­i­tors from the U.N.’s atom­ic ener­gy watch­dog that would allow them to see what the Rus­sians are doing, Ener­goatom said Tues­day in a state­ment.

    Ener­goatom said it “assumes” the Rus­sians “are prepar­ing a ter­ror­ist act using nuclear mate­ri­als and radioac­tive waste stored at” the plant. It said there were 174 con­tain­ers at the plant’s dry spent fuel stor­age facil­i­ty, each of them con­tain­ing 24 assem­blies of spent nuclear fuel.

    “Destruc­tion of these con­tain­ers as a result of explo­sion will lead to a radi­a­tion acci­dent and radi­a­tion con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of sev­er­al hun­dred square kilo­me­ters (miles) of the adja­cent ter­ri­to­ry,” the com­pa­ny said.

    It called on the Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency to assess what was going on.
    ...

    It’s worth not­ing the kind of diplo­mat­ic mea­sures that were report­ed­ly tak­en by Moscow in issu­ing its warn­ings about the plot: Russ­ian Defense Min­is­ter Sergei Shoigu called his coun­ter­parts in the UK, US, France, and Turkey and then Moscow held U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil held closed-door con­sul­ta­tions at Rus­si­a’s request. If that’s just the­ater on Rus­si­a’s part that’s the­ater that goes well above and beyond what typ­i­cal­ly pass­es for pro­pa­gan­da designed for pub­lic con­sump­tion.

    But also note the addi­tion­al alle­ga­tions Rus­si­a’s UN ambas­sador made beyond the Ukrain­ian plot: that it “may be car­ried out with the sup­port of the West­ern coun­tries” and the author­i­ties in Kyiv and their West­ern back­ers “will bear full respon­si­bil­i­ty for all the con­se­quences”. Keep in mind that Gray­zone report from last month show­ing how UK spies were active­ly devel­op­ing plans to blow up the Kerch Bridge. An act that was undoubt­ed­ly an esca­la­tion, whether it was an esca­la­tion con­duct­ed pri­mar­i­ly by Ukraine alone or with NATO help. It’s more of the grim con­text of this sit­u­a­tion. Both sides are accus­ing each oth­er of esca­la­to­ry acts amidst a series of major esca­la­to­ry acts. And now each side is accus­ing the oth­er side of cre­at­ing a pre­text for the use of nuclear weapons. It’s hard to imag­ine how this con­tin­ues esca­lat­ing at this rate with­out lead­ing to actu­al nukes:

    ...
    Russ­ian Defense Min­is­ter Sergei Shoigu made an unsub­stan­ti­at­ed alle­ga­tion that Ukraine was prepar­ing to launch a so-called dirty bomb. Shoigu lev­eled the charge over the week­end in calls to his British, French, Turk­ish and U.S. coun­ter­parts. Britain, France and the Unit­ed States reject­ed it out of hand as “trans­par­ent­ly false.”

    ...

    The U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil held closed-door con­sul­ta­tions Tues­day about the dirty-bomb alle­ga­tions at Russia’s request.

    Russia’s U.N. Ambas­sador Vass­i­ly Neben­zia sent a five-page let­ter to coun­cil mem­bers before the meet­ing claim­ing that accord­ing to the Russ­ian Min­istry of Defense, Ukraine’s Insti­tute for Nuclear Research of the Nation­al Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in Kyiv and Vos­tochniy Min­ing and Pro­cess­ing Plant “have received direct orders from (Pres­i­dent Volodymyr) Zelenskyy’s regime to devel­op such a dirty bomb” and “the works are at their con­clud­ing stage.”

    Neben­zia said the min­istry also received word that this work “may be car­ried out with the sup­port of the West­ern coun­tries.” And he warned that the author­i­ties in Kyiv and their West­ern back­ers “will bear full respon­si­bil­i­ty for all the con­se­quences” of using a “dirty bomb,” which Rus­sia will regard as “an act of nuclear ter­ror­ism.”
    ...

    Also note how Rus­si­a’s ambas­sador to the UN is the one who called for the IAEA inspec­tors to inves­ti­ga­tion the three Ukrain­ian nuclear sites. Now, as we now know, the IAEA is say­ing it did­n’t find any­thing any any of the three sites. But Rus­sia sure seemed spooked. Why would Rus­sia make up base­less alle­ga­tions and then go to the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil and call for IAEA inves­ti­ga­tions when those inves­ti­ga­tions were obvi­ous­ly going to hap­pen and reveal no plot? In oth­er words, the way this played out sug­gests Rus­sia thought it had real intel­li­gence on a bomb plot, whether that was cor­rect or not:

    ...
    Polyan­sky said the IAEA can send inspec­tors to inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions of a “dirty bomb.”

    Britain’s deputy U.N. ambas­sador James Kar­iu­ki told reporters after the meet­ing that “we’ve seen and heard no new evi­dence” and the U.K., France and the U.S. made clear “this is a trans­par­ent­ly false alle­ga­tion” and “pure Russ­ian mis­in­for­ma­tion.” He said, “Ukraine has been clear it’s got noth­ing to hide” and “IAEA inspec­tors are on the way.”
    ...

    And, again, note how the US isn’t just dis­miss­ing Rus­si­a’s alle­ga­tions about a dirty-bomb plot. The dis­missal of those alle­ga­tions are inter­twined with a nar­ra­tive about how Rus­sia is devel­op­ing a pre­text for the use of tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons, with threats of a grave response should Rus­sia do so. The rhetoric at an offi­cial lev­el is about as esca­la­to­ry as it gets right now:

    ...
    At the White House, U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden was asked Tues­day if Rus­sia is prepar­ing to deploy a tac­ti­cal nuclear weapon after mak­ing its claims that Ukraine will use a dirty bomb.

    “I spent a lot of time today talk­ing about that,” Biden told reporters.

    The pres­i­dent was also asked whether the claims about a Ukrain­ian dirty bomb amount­ed to a false-flag oper­a­tion.

    “Let me just say, Rus­sia would be mak­ing an incred­i­bly seri­ous mis­take if it were to use a tac­ti­cal nuclear weapon,” Biden said. “I’m not guar­an­tee­ing you that it’s a false-flag oper­a­tion yet ... but it would be a seri­ous, seri­ous mis­take.”
    ...

    When asked if Rus­si­a’s alle­ga­tions amount­ed to a false-flag oper­a­tion, Biden warned about the Russ­ian use of tac­ti­cal nukes. And as the fol­low­ing Moon of Alaba­ma blog post points out, the ‘dirty-bomb false-flag for tac­ti­cal nukes’ nar­ra­tive Biden is echo­ing is com­ing at the same time there’s reports based on anony­mous US offi­cial sources that Russ­ian gen­er­als were talk­ing about using tac­ti­cal nukes. There’s a full court press com­ing from the US gov­ern­ment about a Russ­ian tac­ti­cal nuke plot in response to Rus­sians alle­ga­tions. It’s been high­ly escla­to­ry so far. And as the blog post asks at the end, what kind of esca­la­tion can we expect should the pre­dic­tions of a Rus­sia win­ter cam­paign after the mobi­lized reserves arrive comes to fruition and Ukraine starts look­ing like a coun­try out of options? It’s one of the many very grim ‘what’s next?’ ques­tions raised by this nuclear hall-of-mir­rors false-flag sit­u­a­tion:

    Moon of Alaba­ma

    Biden Admin­is­tra­tion Again Plants False Nuclear Scare Sto­ries

    Post­ed by b on Novem­ber 2, 2022 at 16:16 UTC

    Last month I dis­sect­ed the fear mon­ger­ing the Biden admin­is­tra­tion released over alleged Russ­ian nuclear threads:

    [The report] quotes Biden as say­ing: “[Putin] is not jok­ing when he talks about poten­tial use of tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons or bio­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal weapons because his mil­i­tary is you might say is sig­nif­i­cant­ly under­per­form­ing.”

    Fact is that Putin has not talked about the “poten­tial use of tac­ti­cal nuclear weapons or bio­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal weapons.” Not. At. All.
    ...
    All the war mon­ger­ing talk and reports about Rus­si­a’s alleged threat of nuclear weapon use in Ukraine is total­ly unfound­ed. That ‘west­ern’ media sud­den­ly engage in it shows that it is part of a well direct­ed pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign.
    ff

    I spec­u­lat­ed that the intent of the cam­paign was to pre­pare for some false flag inci­dent in Ukraine.

    Two weeks lat­er the Russ­ian secret ser­vices found out that Ukraine was prepar­ing a ‘dirty bomb’ which would spread radioac­tive sub­stances with the help of chem­i­cal explo­sives. Such bombs are not a mean­ing­ful mil­i­tary threat but have a high ‘scare’ val­ue. If it would use one of those the Ukraine would sure­ly blame Rus­sia for launch­ing such a bomb.

    When the Krem­lin found out what Ukraine had planned it order Rus­si­a’s Min­is­ter of Defense Sergei Shoigu and Chief of its Gen­er­al Staff Valery Gerasi­mov to call their peers in the U.S., Turkey, Britain and France. Shoigu called U.S. Defense Sec­re­tary Lloyd Austin even twice:

    Russ­ian Defence Min­is­ter Sergei Shoigu spoke with U.S. Defense Sec­re­tary Lloyd Austin on Sun­day for the sec­ond time in three days and held a flur­ry of calls with three oth­er coun­ter­parts from NATO coun­tries.
    Moscow pro­vid­ed no details on the con­ver­sa­tion with Austin, which came after the two men spoke on Fri­day for the first time since May. Its read­outs on the oth­er calls said Shoigu had said the sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine was wors­en­ing.
    ...
    Shoigu spoke sep­a­rate­ly to Turkey’s defence min­is­ter, Hulusi Akar, and Britain’s Ben Wal­lace.

    Shoigu’s min­istry said he had told his French, Turk­ish and British coun­ter­parts of Moscow’s con­cern that Ukraine could det­o­nate a “dirty bomb” — a device laced with radioac­tive mate­r­i­al. Rus­sia has pro­vid­ed no evi­dence to sub­stan­ti­ate such a claim.

    Calls on such high lev­els are only done for seri­ous busi­ness. They are not done for pro­pa­gan­da val­ue or to warn of non-exist­ing threats. The fact that these calls hap­pened means that the threat from Ukraine was real.

    The calls seemed to have had the desired effect. For a few days the talk of a ‘dirty bomb’ calmed down. It has now been revived.

    Today the Wash­ing­ton Post as well as the New York Times are back fear mon­ger­ing about alleged threats which Rus­sia has nev­er made. Both sto­ries are based on ‘admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials’ mean­ing that the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has plant­ed these sto­ries.

    Russia’s ‘dirty bomb’ threats chal­lenge the nuclear cal­cu­lusWaPo
    U.S. offi­cials still main­tain that Moscow is unlike­ly to go nuclear in Ukraine. But Wash­ing­ton doesn’t have many good options to pre­vent Putin’s worst inten­tions.

    The dirty bomb spec­u­la­tion is tied to com­ments made by Russ­ian Defense Min­is­ter Sergei Shoigu, and repeat­ed last week by Putin, sug­gest­ing Ukraine planned to det­o­nate a device loaded with fis­sile mate­r­i­al on its own ter­ri­to­ry. U.S. offi­cials believe it is more like­ly that Russia’s warn­ings were in fact the open­ing steps of a false flag oper­a­tion, sig­nal­ing the Kremlin’s inten­tions to use such a weapon and blame Ukraini­ans for the fall­out, lit­er­al­ly.

    Russ­ian Mil­i­tary Lead­ers Dis­cussed Use of Nuclear Weapons, U.S. Offi­cials SayNYT
    The con­ver­sa­tions alarmed the Biden admin­is­tra­tion because they showed how frus­trat­ed Moscow had become over its bat­tle­field set­backs in Ukraine.

    Senior Russ­ian mil­i­tary lead­ers recent­ly had con­ver­sa­tions to dis­cuss when and how Moscow might use a tac­ti­cal nuclear weapon in Ukraine, con­tribut­ing to height­ened con­cern in Wash­ing­ton and allied cap­i­tals, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple senior Amer­i­can offi­cials.
    ...
    Pres­i­dent Vladimir V. Putin was not a part of the con­ver­sa­tions, which were held against the back­drop of Russia’s inten­si­fy­ing nuclear rhetoric and bat­tle­field set­backs.

    Rus­sia has not inten­si­fied its nuclear rhetoric and, since the Ukraine’s push into the emp­ty east Kharkov region came to a halt in late Sep­tem­ber, has not seen any recent bat­tle­field set­backs. All attempts by Ukraine to break through the front lines have since been defeat­ed at high cost for the attack­ing Ukrain­ian units.

    Rus­sia is in fact strength­en­ing its front lines as more and more of the 300,000 mobi­lized reservists join its forces. It has degrad­ed the Ukraine’s trans­port and com­mu­ni­ca­tion infra­struc­ture by destroy­ing some 40% of the coun­tries 330 kilo­volt elec­tric sub­sta­tions. The destroyed trans­form­ers are Sovi­et era equip­ment with­out a ‘west­ern’ sub­sti­tute and there is no time­ly way for Ukraine to replace them. Rus­sia has done this on the cheap by using Iran­ian sui­cide drones. In exchange Iran will receive SU-35 fight­er jets. The finan­cial dam­age of these strikes to Ukraine is much high­er than the costs are for Rus­sia.

    ...

    The core ques­tion in all this remains the same as a month ago. Why is the Biden admin­is­tra­tion doing this? Why is plant­i­ng sto­ries about non-exist­ing ‘Russ­ian threats’?

    Dur­ing a recent talk Rus­si­a’s pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin gave at the Val­dai Club he was asked the same ques­tion. He answered it:

    Ivan Safranchuk: Ivan Safranchuk, MGIMO Uni­ver­si­ty.
    ...
    Nuclear rhetoric has inten­si­fied great­ly as of late. Ukraine has moved from irre­spon­si­ble state­ments to the prac­ti­cal prepa­ra­tion of a nuclear provo­ca­tion; rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Unit­ed States and the Unit­ed King­dom are mak­ing state­ments with sug­ges­tions of the pos­si­ble use of nuclear weapons.
    Biden, let’s say, speaks about nuclear Armaged­don, and straight away there are com­ments in the US that there is noth­ing to fear. At the same time, the Unit­ed States is hur­ry­ing to deploy mod­ernised tac­ti­cal nuclear bombs in Europe. It looks like they are rat­tling the sabre while refus­ing to acknowl­edge the lessons of the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis.

    Mr Pres­i­dent, could you please com­ment, is it true that the world is on the verge of the pos­si­ble use of nuclear weapons? How will Rus­sia act in these cir­cum­stances, giv­en that it is a respon­si­ble nuclear state?

    Thank you.

    Vladimir Putin: Look, as long as nuclear weapons exist, there will always be a dan­ger that they could be used. This is the first thing.

    Sec­ond, the goal of the cur­rent fuss around such threats and the poten­tial use of nuclear weapons is very prim­i­tive, and I would prob­a­bly be not mis­tak­en when I explain what this is about.

    I already said that the dic­tate of the West­ern coun­tries and their attempts to apply pres­sure on all the par­tic­i­pants of inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, includ­ing coun­tries that are neu­tral or friend­ly to us, are achiev­ing noth­ing, and they are look­ing for addi­tion­al argu­ments to con­vince our friends or neu­tral states that they all need to con­front Rus­sia col­lec­tive­ly.

    Nuclear provo­ca­tion and the inflam­ing of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Rus­sia might the­o­ret­i­cal­ly use nuclear weapons are being used to reach these goals: to influ­ence our friends, our allies, and neu­tral states by telling them, look at whom you sup­port; Rus­sia is such a scary coun­try, do not sup­port it, do not coop­er­ate with it, do not trade with it. This is, in fact, a prim­i­tive goal.

    What is hap­pen­ing in real­i­ty? After all, we have nev­er said any­thing proac­tive­ly about Rus­sia poten­tial­ly using nuclear weapons. All we did was hint in response to state­ments made by West­ern lead­ers.
    ...
    As for Russia…We have the Mil­i­tary Doc­trine, and they should read it. One of its arti­cles explains the cas­es when, why, in rela­tion to what and how Rus­sia con­sid­ers it pos­si­ble to use weapons of mass destruc­tion in the form of nuclear weapons to pro­tect its sov­er­eign­ty, ter­ri­to­r­i­al integri­ty and to ensure the safe­ty of the Russ­ian peo­ple.

    The answer Putin gave seems plau­si­ble to me. I still have to find a bet­ter one.

    To me this looks all very low-brow, dement­ed and indeed prim­i­tive. When one reads these plant­ed sto­ries and checks their verac­i­ty one ends up shak­ing ones head. No seri­ous per­son or for­eign coun­try will be influ­enced by such non­sense.

    What the sto­ries real­ly show is that the neo­cons in the Biden admin­is­tra­tion have no real instru­ments left and no abil­i­ties to influ­ence the exe­cu­tion of fur­ther Russ­ian plans in Ukraine. In a month or two, when Russ­ian troops will throw the Ukrain­ian army out of Donet­sk and oth­er regions, there will be noth­ing left for them to say.

    ———-

    “Biden Admin­is­tra­tion Again Plants False Nuclear Scare Sto­ries” by b; Moon of Alaba­ma; 11/02/2022

    “What the sto­ries real­ly show is that the neo­cons in the Biden admin­is­tra­tion have no real instru­ments left and no abil­i­ties to influ­ence the exe­cu­tion of fur­ther Russ­ian plans in Ukraine. In a month or two, when Russ­ian troops will throw the Ukrain­ian army out of Donet­sk and oth­er regions, there will be noth­ing left for them to say.”

    What kind of esca­la­to­ry provo­ca­tion can we expect months from now should the pre­dic­tions of a Russ­ian win­ter offen­sive prove cor­rect? How much more esca­la­to­ry can the sit­u­a­tion get with­out actu­al­ly be pushed to the nuclear brink? Or some sort of gen­uine nuclear acci­dent? That plant is on emer­gency back­up pow­er as a result of this brinks­man­ship. How many gam­bles that risk a nuclear melt­down can we expect over the com­ing months? And if Putin’s answer at a recent Val­dai Club appear­ance was cor­rect, the alarm­ing answer to the ques­tion of “how many more gam­bles” appears to be “as many as it takes to com­plete­ly eco­nom­i­cal­ly iso­late Rus­sia.” Some sort of event that is so awful that no coun­try, bar­ring maybe North Korea, is will­ing to do busi­ness with Rus­sia. That’s the sce­nario that has Moscow oper­at­ing like its hair is on fire over the past cou­ple of weeks:

    ...
    The core ques­tion in all this remains the same as a month ago. Why is the Biden admin­is­tra­tion doing this? Why is plant­i­ng sto­ries about non-exist­ing ‘Russ­ian threats’?

    Dur­ing a recent talk Rus­si­a’s pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin gave at the Val­dai Club he was asked the same ques­tion. He answered it:

    Ivan Safranchuk: Ivan Safranchuk, MGIMO Uni­ver­si­ty.
    ...
    Nuclear rhetoric has inten­si­fied great­ly as of late. Ukraine has moved from irre­spon­si­ble state­ments to the prac­ti­cal prepa­ra­tion of a nuclear provo­ca­tion; rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Unit­ed States and the Unit­ed King­dom are mak­ing state­ments with sug­ges­tions of the pos­si­ble use of nuclear weapons.
    Biden, let’s say, speaks about nuclear Armaged­don, and straight away there are com­ments in the US that there is noth­ing to fear. At the same time, the Unit­ed States is hur­ry­ing to deploy mod­ernised tac­ti­cal nuclear bombs in Europe. It looks like they are rat­tling the sabre while refus­ing to acknowl­edge the lessons of the Cuban Mis­sile Cri­sis.

    Mr Pres­i­dent, could you please com­ment, is it true that the world is on the verge of the pos­si­ble use of nuclear weapons? How will Rus­sia act in these cir­cum­stances, giv­en that it is a respon­si­ble nuclear state?

    Thank you.

    Vladimir Putin: Look, as long as nuclear weapons exist, there will always be a dan­ger that they could be used. This is the first thing.

    Sec­ond, the goal of the cur­rent fuss around such threats and the poten­tial use of nuclear weapons is very prim­i­tive, and I would prob­a­bly be not mis­tak­en when I explain what this is about.

    I already said that the dic­tate of the West­ern coun­tries and their attempts to apply pres­sure on all the par­tic­i­pants of inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, includ­ing coun­tries that are neu­tral or friend­ly to us, are achiev­ing noth­ing, and they are look­ing for addi­tion­al argu­ments to con­vince our friends or neu­tral states that they all need to con­front Rus­sia col­lec­tive­ly.

    Nuclear provo­ca­tion and the inflam­ing of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Rus­sia might the­o­ret­i­cal­ly use nuclear weapons are being used to reach these goals: to influ­ence our friends, our allies, and neu­tral states by telling them, look at whom you sup­port; Rus­sia is such a scary coun­try, do not sup­port it, do not coop­er­ate with it, do not trade with it. This is, in fact, a prim­i­tive goal.

    What is hap­pen­ing in real­i­ty? After all, we have nev­er said any­thing proac­tive­ly about Rus­sia poten­tial­ly using nuclear weapons. All we did was hint in response to state­ments made by West­ern lead­ers.
    ...
    As for Russia…We have the Mil­i­tary Doc­trine, and they should read it. One of its arti­cles explains the cas­es when, why, in rela­tion to what and how Rus­sia con­sid­ers it pos­si­ble to use weapons of mass destruc­tion in the form of nuclear weapons to pro­tect its sov­er­eign­ty, ter­ri­to­r­i­al integri­ty and to ensure the safe­ty of the Russ­ian peo­ple.

    The answer Putin gave seems plau­si­ble to me. I still have to find a bet­ter one.
    ...

    Rus­sia is mak­ing its fears clear to the world: “It’s a nuclear set up and we are the tar­get”. That’s been Rus­si­a’s mes­sage to the world. A mes­sage first deliv­ered between defense min­is­ters and at the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil. Some sort of nuclear event was being pre­dict­ed weeks before a mys­te­ri­ous inter­rup­tion to the Zapor­izhzhia nuclear plant. That was fol­lowed by Ukraine pre­dict­ing Rus­sia is going to dirty-bomb itself at the Zapor­izhzhia plant. And now here we are hop­ing there isn’t an inter­rup­tion to that back­up emer­gency pow­er.

    Let’s also not for­get about some of the obvi­ous con­se­quences should such a plot suc­ceed: for starters, if you think glob­al infla­tion is bad now just wait until after the West actu­al­ly suc­ceeds in block­ing Russ­ian com­modi­ties from the glob­al econ­o­my. West­ern oil pro­duc­ers will be gen­er­at­ing fur­ther record prof­its, no doubt, but how about the rest of the world? We could eas­i­ly be look­ing at a glob­al depres­sion from a shock like that. And then there’s the fact that, while the sto­ry of what hap­pened in the ‘nuclear event’ might ulti­mate­ly be fake, the radi­a­tion will be very real.

    Where will the pre­dict­ed ‘nuclear event’ tran­spire? Will there be some sort or appar­ent Russ­ian radi­o­log­i­cal attack on Ukrain­ian-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry? That’s what Russ­ian was pre­dict­ing. But then we got Ukraine’s counter-accu­sa­tions of Russ­ian plans to dirty-bomb the Zapor­izhzhia plant. We’ll see, but don’t be sur­prised if there’s reports about some sort of radi­o­log­i­cal event in com­ing weeks. Fol­lowed up with reports of a dra­mat­ic break­down in diplo­mat­ic rela­tions and a dooms­day esca­la­tion of nuclear ten­sions. And, even­tu­al­ly, no more reports. There won’t be a lot of reports after dooms­day.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 5, 2022, 3:53 pm
  11. With the US mid-term elec­tions cur­rent­ly under­way, poised to deliv­er the US with a renewed form of sociopo­lit­i­cal melt­down, here’s a reminder that the very real melt­down risk at the Zapor­izhzhia Nuclear Pow­er Plant in Ukraine con­tin­ues to grow. And if the lat­est accu­sa­tions from the Krem­lin are true, Ukraine is using US-pro­vid­ed HIMARs to trig­ger that melt­down. Recall how the past two weeks have involved a series of back-and-forth accu­sa­tions between Ukraine and Rus­sia about ‘false-flag’ dirty-bomb plots, with Ukraine accus­ing Russ­ian or build­ing a dirty-bomb at the Zapor­izhzhia Nuclear Pow­er Plant near Kher­son. Those accu­sa­tions formed the rhetor­i­cal back­drop for the very real threat to the Zapor­izhzhia Nuclear Pow­er Plant over the week­end when the plant was forced to fall back to emer­gency back­up pow­er fol­low­ing the loss of exter­nal pow­er sup­plies caused by phys­i­cal dam­age to elec­tri­cal sub­sta­tions and pow­er­lines at two dif­fer­ent loca­tions inside Ukrain­ian-con­trolled ter­ri­to­ry.

    And that brings us to the new scare: Rus­sia is accus­ing Ukraine of using US-pro­vid­ed HIMARs to attack the Kakhov­ka dam. Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Zelen­skiy has of course already accused Rus­sia of plan­ning to blow up the dam and blame it one Rus­sia. It’s the new mutu­al false-flag accu­sa­tion.

    As we’re going to see, that dam is “inex­tri­ca­bly tied” to the prop­er func­tion­ing of the nuclear pow­er plant. It’s not a sur­prise. Pow­er plants require lit­er­al tons of water. And that’s where this sto­ry con­nects to the ‘dirty-bomb’ false-flag accu­sa­tions already made by Ukraine about the Zapor­izhzhia Nuclear Pow­er Plant. Because those Ukrain­ian claims appeared to be claims that Rus­sia was going to stage some sort of radi­o­log­i­cal “dirty-bomb” event at the plant as a pre­text for using tac­ti­cal nukes. Well, induc­ing a melt­down via cut­ting the plan­t’s water sup­ply by blow­ing up the dam sounds like anoth­er way cre­ate a radi­o­log­i­cal event at the plant. And sure enough, that’s the sce­nario Ukraine appears to be warn­ing against.

    Beyond the direct risk to the nuclear plan, the destruc­tion of the dam threat­ens to flood a vast region of Ukraine cur­rent­ly under both Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian con­trol. That’s the appar­ent direct mil­i­tary ben­e­fit to Rus­sia in blow­ing up the dam: it will bog down Ukrain­ian troops and buy Rus­sia a few weeks to retreat from Kher­son. That’s one of the nar­ra­tives we’re hear­ing. At the same time, we’re also hear a nar­ra­tive about how Rus­si­a’s appar­ent with­draw­al from Kher­son might be a trick intend­ed to lure Ukraini­ans into dead­ly urban com­bat. Yep, Rus­sia is plan­ning to blow up the dam to slow Ukraine’s advances at the same time Rus­sia is plan­ning on lur­ing Ukrain­ian troops into Kher­son where they will face bru­tal urban com­bat. At least that’s the nar­ra­tive that has now emerged.

    Ok, first, here’s a look at the new mutu­al false-flag accu­sa­tions about attacks on the dam. Attacks that, accord­ing to Rus­sia, were car­ried out using US-pro­vid­ed HIMARs:

    The Hill

    Rus­sia claims Ukraine hit dam near Kher­son with US mis­siles

    by Zach Schon­feld — 11/06/22 4:56 PM ET

    Russ­ian state media on Sun­day claimed Ukraine struck a dam near the strate­gic city of Kher­son with U.S.-made mis­siles, cit­ing offi­cials in the region.

    Ukraine has not yet com­ment­ed on the reports, but Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent pre­vi­ous­ly accused Moscow of plant­i­ng mines at the dam for a poten­tial “false flag” attack that Moscow would blame on Ukraine.

    RIA Novosti and oth­er state media said Ukrain­ian troops in the pur­port­ed attack used six high-mobil­i­ty artillery rock­et sys­tems, a key sys­tem the U.S. has sup­plied to Kyiv as they fight against Russia’s inva­sion, includ­ing one rock­et that dam­aged the dam lock.

    “The Armed Forces of Ukraine are not aban­don­ing their attempts to destroy the dam of the Kakhovskaya hydro­elec­tric pow­er sta­tion and cre­ate the pre­req­ui­sites for a human­i­tar­i­an cat­a­stro­phe,” region­al author­i­ties told RIA Novosti.

    ...

    “The dam of this hydro­elec­tric pow­er plant holds about 18 mil­lion cubic meters of water,” Zelen­sky said last month. “If Russ­ian ter­ror­ists blow up this dam, more than 80 set­tle­ments, includ­ing Kher­son, will be in the zone of rapid flood­ing. Hun­dreds, hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple may be affect­ed.”

    ...

    Ukrain­ian forces have been mak­ing piece­meal gains in the region as part of a sweep­ing autumn coun­terof­fen­sive that includ­ed major ter­ri­to­r­i­al advances in the north­east.

    Russ­ian forces in recent days have moved some troops and equip­ment across the Dnieper Riv­er and out of Kher­son, but Ukrain­ian offi­cials sus­pect Rus­sia may be set­ting a trap, cre­at­ing the illu­sion of sur­ren­der while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly ramp­ing up rein­force­ments for a major bat­tle to come.

    Ukraine’s defense min­istry over the week­end accused Rus­sia of destroy­ing “en masse” pri­vate boats locat­ed on the banks of the Dnieper Riv­er in the region.

    ————-

    “Rus­sia claims Ukraine hit dam near Kher­son with US mis­siles” by Zach Schon­feld; The Hill; 11/06/2022

    RIA Novosti and oth­er state media said Ukrain­ian troops in the pur­port­ed attack used six high-mobil­i­ty artillery rock­et sys­tems, a key sys­tem the U.S. has sup­plied to Kyiv as they fight against Russia’s inva­sion, includ­ing one rock­et that dam­aged the dam lock.”

    Were US-pro­vid­ed HIMARs used to attack the Kakhovskaya hydro­elec­tric pow­er sta­tion, risk­ing a human­i­tar­i­an and envi­ron­men­tal cat­a­stro­phe? That’s what Rus­sia is alleg­ing in the lat­est round of ‘false-flag’ fin­ger-point­ing, com­ing after Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent Zelen­sky claimed that it was the Krem­lin that was plan­ning on blow­ing up the dam and then blam­ing it on Ukraine:

    ...
    Ukraine has not yet com­ment­ed on the reports, but Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent pre­vi­ous­ly accused Moscow of plant­i­ng mines at the dam for a poten­tial “false flag” attack that Moscow would blame on Ukraine.
    ...

    But also note the par­al­lel claims we’re get­ting from the Ukrain­ian side: that Rus­sia might be set­ting a trap in Kher­son by cre­at­ing the illu­sion of retreat in the hopes of draw­ing Ukraine into a cost­ly urban bat­tle:

    ...
    Russ­ian forces in recent days have moved some troops and equip­ment across the Dnieper Riv­er and out of Kher­son, but Ukrain­ian offi­cials sus­pect Rus­sia may be set­ting a trap, cre­at­ing the illu­sion of sur­ren­der while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly ramp­ing up rein­force­ments for a major bat­tle to come.
    ...

    So which is it? Is Rus­sia plan­ning on blow­ing up the dam and flood­ing Kher­son? Or is Rus­sia plan­ning a fake retreat designed to draw Ukraini­ans into Kher­son? Because we’re hear­ing pre­dic­tions of both sce­nar­ios.

    But also note how all of these accu­sa­tions direct­ly tie into the mutu­al ‘dirty-bomb false-flag’ accu­sa­tions: as Major Gen­er­al Kyry­lo Budanov, the Ukrain­ian chief of defense intel­li­gence, points out in the fol­low­ing inter­view, you can’t sep­a­rate the prop­er func­tion­ing of the Zapor­izhzhia nuclear plant to that dam. In oth­er words, blow­ing up that dam is ask­ing for a nuclear melt­down

    Meduza

    Zapor­izhzhia nuclear plant is ‘inex­tri­ca­bly con­nect­ed’ to the Kakhov­ka dam Kyry­lo Budanov, Ukraine’s chief of defense intel­li­gence, explains what may hap­pen in the bat­tle for Kher­son.

    Adapt­ed for Meduza in Eng­lish by Anna Razum­naya
    10:36 am, Octo­ber 24, 2022

    In the face of the advanc­ing Ukrain­ian army, the Russ­ian mil­i­tary are get­ting ready to defend their foothold in Kher­son. At the same time, they’re evac­u­at­ing the area and prepar­ing for their own “very rapid” retreat, in case it becomes nec­es­sary. In an inter­view to Ukrain­s­ka Prav­da, Major Gen­er­al Kyry­lo Budanov, the Ukrain­ian chief of defense intel­li­gence, explained Russia’s cur­rent strat­e­gy in Kher­son, and whether there’s any rea­son to think that the Russ­ian troops might destroy the Kakhov­ka dam as part of their retreat.

    ******************

    “In many ways,” Budanov said about the Russ­ian-orga­nized evac­u­a­tion of Kher­son,

    this is a manip­u­la­tive info-oper­a­tion. We have cer­tain facts. For instance, Promsvyazbank and some oth­er finan­cial insti­tu­tions are leav­ing. The seri­ous­ly wound­ed are being moved out. Hos­pi­tals are speed­i­ly dis­charg­ing patients who can walk. And then there’s this insane pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign, “we care for the peo­ple” and so on.

    They’re cre­at­ing this illu­sion that all is lost. At the same time, they’re bring­ing in new mil­i­tary units, and get­ting the streets com­bat-ready. They real­ize that if we take con­trol of the Kakhov­ka dam, they’ll have to act fast. Either they’ll have to leave the city very quick­ly, or they will risk find­ing them­selves in the same sit­u­a­tion as our Mar­i­upol defend­ers’.

    Because of this, Budanov said, the Russ­ian side is prepar­ing at once to fight — and to retreat “very rapid­ly,” if nec­es­sary.

    Budanov also com­ment­ed on the spec­u­la­tions that the Russ­ian troops might try to explode the Kakhov­ka hydro­elec­tric dam to cov­er their retreat. The dam, he said, has been par­tial­ly mined since last spring, but there isn’t enough explo­sives to destroy it com­plete­ly. Besides, the dam’s total destruc­tion would not be an advan­tage to Rus­sia:

    What they’d get would be flood­ing across the entire left-bank Kher­son. They’d lose, then, even the hypo­thet­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ty of water sup­ply to the North Crimean Canal and Crimea. Rebuild­ing the dam would take a long time.

    “And the most inter­est­ing thing,” Budanov said of the prospect of the Russ­ian mil­i­tary explod­ing the Kakhov­ka dam, “is that they would destroy the very pos­si­bil­i­ty of the Zapor­izhzhia Nuclear Pow­er Plant’s exis­tence, since it’s inex­tri­ca­bly con­nect­ed with that dam.” “Of course, they’re com­pli­cat­ing our advance­ment for a cer­tain peri­od of time,” Budanov acknowl­edged, “but they will have to retreat all the way to the Crimea.”

    ...

    ————

    “Zapor­izhzhia nuclear plant is ‘inex­tri­ca­bly con­nect­ed’ to the Kakhov­ka dam Kyry­lo Budanov, Ukraine’s chief of defense intel­li­gence, explains what may hap­pen in the bat­tle for Kher­son” by Anna Razum­naya; Meduza; 10/24/2022

    “And the most inter­est­ing thing,” Budanov said of the prospect of the Russ­ian mil­i­tary explod­ing the Kakhov­ka dam, “is that they would destroy the very pos­si­bil­i­ty of the Zapor­izhzhia Nuclear Pow­er Plant’s exis­tence, since it’s inex­tri­ca­bly con­nect­ed with that dam.” “Of course, they’re com­pli­cat­ing our advance­ment for a cer­tain peri­od of time,” Budanov acknowl­edged, “but they will have to retreat all the way to the Crimea.””

    You can’t run the Zapor­izhzhia Nuclear Pow­er Plant with­out that dam. They are inex­tri­ca­bly con­nect­ed. Blow up that damn and you’re ask­ing for a melt­down. That’s the sit­u­a­tion. And in case it’s not clear just how dire a threat that dam break would be to the plan, here’s a Union of Con­cerned Sci­en­tists piece from back in August look­ing at the risks fac­ing that plant. Major risks like a total black­out that force the plant to rely sole­ly on its diesel back­up gen­er­a­tors, which is of course exact­ly what hap­pened over the week­end. And as the arti­cle notes, it’s this peri­od when the plant is depen­dent on diesel back­up gen­er­a­tors that a dam break could turn into a melt­down. A one-two punch:

    The Union of Con­cerned Sci­en­tists

    Can the Zapor­izhzhia Nuclear Plant Avoid a Major Dis­as­ter?

    Ed Lyman
    Direc­tor, Nuclear Pow­er Safe­ty
    August 26, 2022 | 1:14 pm

    As the pos­si­bil­i­ty of an all-out mil­i­tary con­flict engulf­ing the Zapor­izhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine becomes even more like­ly, the sit­u­a­tion there is grow­ing increas­ing­ly dire. It has been report­ed that on August 25, the plant tem­porar­i­ly lost all of its off-site elec­tri­cal pow­er from the grid, which is essen­tial for its safe oper­a­tion, forc­ing it to rely on on-site back­up pow­er. Despite con­tin­ued shelling, it does not appear that its safe­ty sys­tems have suf­fered sig­nif­i­cant dam­age. But that could change quick­ly if the con­flict escalates—and that could spell dis­as­ter if emer­gency mea­sures fail. Depend­ing on the nature and extent of the dam­age, the plant could expe­ri­ence one or more core melt­downs or spent nuclear fuel pool fires, which could trig­ger a radi­o­log­i­cal release rival­ing that of the 2011 Fukushi­ma Dai­ichi acci­dent or even the larg­er release from the 1986 Cher­nobyl acci­dent.

    For­tu­nate­ly, a long-over­due Inter­na­tion­al Atom­ic Ener­gy Agency (IAEA) mis­sion to Zapor­izhzhia may soon become pos­si­ble. While the IAEA has lim­it­ed author­i­ty over nuclear safe­ty even in peace­time, there are prac­ti­cal steps it could take to help the plant cope with any dam­age that would dis­rupt the sys­tems that keep its high­ly radioac­tive reac­tor cores and spent nuclear fuel cool.

    To iden­ti­fy the actions that would be most help­ful to reduce the risk of a large radi­o­log­i­cal release, it’s impor­tant to under­stand the main vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of the six Sovi­et-era 950-megawatt-elec­tric VVER-1000/V‑320 (V‑320) Zapor­izhzhia reac­tors. As many news reports have not­ed, the V‑320 is a light-water reac­tor with more in com­mon with West­ern-designed pres­sur­ized-water reac­tors (PWRs) than Chernobyl’s RBMK. A major dif­fer­ence is that unlike the Cher­nobyl reac­tor, the V‑320 has a pres­sure-resist­ing, low-leak­age, rein­forced con­crete con­tain­ment struc­ture. Nev­er­the­less, the V‑320 lacks cer­tain safe­ty fea­tures that are stan­dard in West­ern-designed light-water reac­tors, and there have long been con­cerns that the V‑320 con­tain­ment could be breached or bypassed in a severe acci­dent more eas­i­ly than the con­tain­ments at most West­ern-designed PWRs.

    One con­cern is the rel­a­tive­ly high like­li­hood that a dam­aged core could quick­ly melt through the ele­vat­ed con­tain­ment floor into a com­part­ment below that is not leak-tight. While this would not nec­es­sar­i­ly lead to a large, rapid release of radioac­tiv­i­ty into the envi­ron­ment, it could result in a sit­u­a­tion sim­i­lar to that of Fukushi­ma today, where dam­aged cores in the base­ments of the con­tain­ment build­ings con­tin­ue to release radi­a­tion into the ground­wa­ter. More­over, although the con­tain­ment pro­vides some pro­tec­tion against exter­nal impacts, such as an air­plane crash, such an impact could cause “heavy con­crete frag­ments … and oth­er debris [to] impinge upon the oper­at­ing floor above the pri­ma­ry coolant sys­tem,” accord­ing to the US Depart­ment of Ener­gy.

    A sta­tion black­out, where all alter­nat­ing-cur­rent (AC) elec­tri­cal pow­er is lost, is one of the most severe events that could affect a light-water reac­tor. Such an event could be trig­gered by wide­spread fires and explo­sions result­ing from a sus­tained mil­i­tary engage­ment at Zapor­izhzhia that dam­ages the plant’s switch­yard and oth­er elec­tri­cal equip­ment. If the plant lost all off-site pow­er, the reac­tors will shut down, and the site would be depen­dent sole­ly on back­up sources.

    The first line of defense is the set of 20 emer­gency diesel gen­er­a­tors at the site—three at each reac­tor unit and two com­mon units in a sep­a­rate build­ing sup­port­ing reac­tors 5 and 6. Sce­nar­ios in which all diesel gen­er­a­tors fail are improb­a­ble, but they do exist. For exam­ple, the tsuna­mi at Fukushi­ma Dai­ichi flood­ed and dis­abled all but one of the plant’s emer­gency diesel gen­er­a­tors, as well as the elec­tri­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion systems—what is called a com­mon-cause fail­ure. Oth­er com­mon-cause fail­ures could affect Zaporizhzhia’s diesel gen­er­a­tors, such as the fail­ure of the dam at a near­by hydro­elec­tric plant. That could lead to loss of the cool­ing ponds, which are need­ed to cool the plant’s diesel gen­er­a­tors, enabling them to func­tion.

    Oth­er back­up pow­er sources may be avail­able at Zapor­izhzhia in the event of a com­mon-cause diesel gen­er­a­tor fail­ure, such as a fos­sil fuel plant near the site. But if they are unavail­able, the site’s only recourse would be to imple­ment the emer­gency mea­sures that Ukraine estab­lished in response to the Fukushi­ma acci­dent. These mea­sures involve the use of portable diesel gen­er­a­tors and diesel-pow­ered pumps to pro­vide emer­gency cool­ing when all else fails. How­ev­er, the like­li­hood of suc­cess is uncer­tain, giv­en that both the equip­ment and the per­son­nel need­ed to car­ry out these tasks are high­ly vul­ner­a­ble giv­en the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. And the reli­a­bil­i­ty of such equip­ment depends on how well it has been test­ed and main­tained since the Russ­ian occu­pa­tion in March—a big ques­tion mark. At US nuclear plants, such equip­ment has occa­sion­al­ly been found to be non-func­tion­al because of lax main­te­nance require­ments.

    ...

    ———–

    “Can the Zapor­izhzhia Nuclear Plant Avoid a Major Dis­as­ter?” by Ed Lyman; The Union of Con­cerned Sci­en­tists; 08/26/2022

    The first line of defense is the set of 20 emer­gency diesel gen­er­a­tors at the site—three at each reac­tor unit and two com­mon units in a sep­a­rate build­ing sup­port­ing reac­tors 5 and 6. Sce­nar­ios in which all diesel gen­er­a­tors fail are improb­a­ble, but they do exist. For exam­ple, the tsuna­mi at Fukushi­ma Dai­ichi flood­ed and dis­abled all but one of the plant’s emer­gency diesel gen­er­a­tors, as well as the elec­tri­cal dis­tri­b­u­tion systems—what is called a com­mon-cause fail­ure. Oth­er com­mon-cause fail­ures could affect Zaporizhzhia’s diesel gen­er­a­tors, such as the fail­ure of the dam at a near­by hydro­elec­tric plant. That could lead to loss of the cool­ing ponds, which are need­ed to cool the plant’s diesel gen­er­a­tors, enabling them to func­tion.

    Those 20 diesel gen­er­a­tors that had to get switched on over the week­end are the first line of defense against a black­out-induced melt­down. A line of defense that can get flood­ed out of com­mis­sion by a dam break. How close did we get to that exact sce­nario? First we had the mys­te­ri­ous black­out, and then an appar­ent attack on that dam. It’s one melt­down risk after anoth­er involv­ing events each side is blam­ing on the oth­er.

    So did Ukraine real­ly use US-pro­vid­ed HIMARs to attack that dam, risk­ing a down­stream melt­down? It will be inter­est­ing to see what addi­tion­al evi­dence Rus­sia pro­duces. At the same time, it’s not at all clear why Rus­sia would want to ‘Fukushi­ma’ its new­ly annexed ter­ri­to­ry. Or blow up its own dam. But that’s the accu­sa­tions that are being lev­eled by the Ukraini­ans and it’s pret­ty clear that the West is more than hap­py to go along with that nar­ra­tive. Which is basi­cal­ly a green light for Ukraine to induce that melt­down. It’s an incred­i­bly ter­ri­fy­ing new devel­op­ment in this war. Some­one appears to real­ly, real­ly, real­ly want a melt­down at that plant, and they have all the ingre­di­ents to make that hap­pen, includ­ing a cov­er sto­ry.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 8, 2022, 3:02 pm
  12. @Pterrafractyl–

    ” . . . . it’s not at all clear why Rus­sia would want to ‘Fukushi­ma’ its new­ly annexed ter­ri­to­ry. Or blow up its own dam. . . .”

    Actu­al­ly, it could­n’t be clear­er: U.S./Ukraine/West is set­ting up a major provo­ca­tion and dis­as­ter to inter­dict not only an immi­nent Rus­sia vic­to­ry but to pol­lute the new­ly-annexed ter­ri­to­ries, there­by negat­ing their pro­found eco­nom­ic val­ue.

    The sit­u­a­tion is as crys­tal clear as it is omi­nous.

    More lies, and with increas­ing sever­i­ty.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | November 8, 2022, 5:44 pm
  13. @Dave: It’s worth not­ing one of the oth­er nar­ra­tives get­ting pushed right now that appears to be part of the over­ar­ch­ing goal of get­ting glob­al sanc­tions imposed on Rus­sia and not just West­ern sanc­tions: The US has been accus­ing Rus­sia of buy­ing weapons from North Korea. Specif­i­cal­ly, the US alleged that Rus­sia and North Korea were car­ry­ing out clan­des­tine arms trans­ac­tions in the Mid­dle East and North Africa. Now, as the fol­low­ing Moon of Alaba­ma post reminds us, Rus­sia and North Korea share a bor­der that is con­nect­ed via rail­way. So if Rus­sia want­ed to buy a bunch of North Kore­an arms, it seems like a pret­ty straight­for­ward trans­ac­tion. The kind of trans­ac­tion that should­n’t require secret trans­fers in parts of the world where nei­ther North Korea or Rus­sia have oper­a­tional con­trol.

    Now, accord­ing to West­ern intel­li­gence, Rus­sia and North Korea took these steps because they did­n’t want to get caught. And as we’re remind­ed of in the sec­ond arti­cle excerpt below, North Korea is under UN sanc­tions. So there is a hypo­thet­i­cal rea­son for Russ­ian and North Korea to keep and such trans­ac­tions a secret. But that still does­n’t explain why secret trans­ac­tions in the Mid­dle East or North Africa are a bet­ter way to car­ry­ing out this trade in secret, as opposed to just doing it via rail­way.

    Now, as we’re also going to see, there was a twist to this sto­ry days after the reports on those US intel­li­gence claims: The DC-based 38 North Project think-tank issued a report of its own cit­ing satel­lite images show­ing a train trav­el­ing from Rus­sia to North Korea. This was the first such observed train trav­el between the two coun­tries since North Korea shut that bor­der in Feb­ru­ary 2020 in response to the pan­dem­ic. So that sto­ry about secret Mid­dle East and North African weapons trades hap­pened days before the post-pan­dem­ic reopen­ing of the Russian/North Kore­an bor­der. It’s the kind of coin­ci­dence in tim­ing that rais­es the ques­tion: did US intel­li­gence of pri­or knowl­edge of this bor­der reopen­ing? In oth­er words, was the reopen­ing of that bor­der done in response to Wash­ing­ton’s alle­ga­tions? Or were those alle­ga­tions made in antic­i­pa­tion of the reopen­ing of that bor­der? Either way, a major wrin­kle in the ‘secret Mid­dle East and North African weapons trans­fers’ nar­ra­tive just tran­spired.

    So what was actu­al­ly trans­fer in those rail­cars? We don’t know because the satel­lite images could­n’t deter­mine that. Russ­ian claims it was thor­ough­bred hors­es, which the North Kore­an lead­er­ship does have a his­to­ry of pur­chas­ing from Rus­sia. But it’s the fact that no one can real­ly deter­mine what was on those trains that under­score the absur­di­ty of the ‘secret Mid­dle East and North African weapons trans­fers’ nar­ra­tive. It was a nar­ra­tive that only poten­tial­ly made sense if we assume no trade was pos­si­ble between Rus­sia and North Kore­a’s shared bor­der. Which demon­stra­bly was­n’t the case.

    Final­ly, as the last arti­cle excerpt below points out, when it comes to the full impacts of the exist­ing West­ern sanc­tions on Russ­ian gas, it’s not actu­al­ly Europe that’s pay­ing the biggest price. It’s the devel­op­ing world that is find­ing itself frozen out of the liq­uid nat­ur­al gas (LNG) mar­kets. That’s because Europe has respond­ed to its own gas cri­sis by turn­ing to the glob­al spot mar­kets to buy vir­tu­al­ly all of the short-term sup­plies on the globe, pric­ing out devel­op­ing coun­tries that are reliant on these short-term sup­plies. Beyond that, LNG exporters have become so enticed by the surg­ing prices on the spot mar­kets that they are mak­ing the deci­sion to break long-term sup­ply con­tracts with devel­op­ing coun­tries and just pay the fines for break­ing those con­tracts. That’s why it’s not actu­al­ly Europe pay­ing the high­est price. Yes, Europe is pay­ing high prices. But it’s the coun­tries that are lit­er­al­ly being priced out of the mar­kets that are ulti­mate­ly going to pay the high­est prices in the forms of fac­to­ry shut­downs and social insta­bil­i­ty.

    And let’s not for­get that it’s the devel­op­ing world that large­ly still has yet to sign on to the West­’s sanc­tions against Rus­sia. It points toward the omi­nous chal­lenge West­ern gov­ern­ments have in cre­at­ing events that effec­tive­ly force a glob­al sanc­tions regime against Rus­sia: the parts of the world that have yet to sign onto those sanc­tions are the parts of the world that will be most dev­as­tat­ed should a glob­al sanc­tions regime actu­al­ly come to fruition. Which means Rus­sia is going to have to have to ulti­mate­ly take the blame for some­thing so hor­rif­ic that the the poor­est coun­tries in the world are will­ing to com­mit eco­nom­ic sui­cide in response to that hor­rif­ic act:

    Moon of Alaba­ma

    Anoth­er Day, Anoth­er False Scare Sto­ry

    Post­ed by b on Novem­ber 3, 2022 at 11:23 UTC
    Novem­ber 03, 2022

    The Biden admin­is­tra­tion believes that every­one is stu­pid enough to eat the bull­shit it pro­duces.

    Con­sid­er this lat­est non­sense:

    North Korea has secret­ly shipped muni­tions to Rus­sia through the Mid­dle East and North Africa, the U.S. says. — NYT

    The Unit­ed States on Wednes­day accused North Korea of covert­ly ship­ping a “sig­nif­i­cant num­ber” of artillery shells to Rus­sia to aid its war effort in Ukraine, a sign that Moscow is increas­ing­ly turn­ing to pari­ah states for mil­i­tary sup­plies as the grind­ing con­flict per­sists.

    The White House’s nation­al secu­ri­ty spokesman, John Kir­by, said that it was unclear if the artillery muni­tions, which are being trans­ferred through the Mid­dle East and North Africa, had reached Rus­sia. The Unit­ed States does not believe that the addi­tion­al weapons will alter the tra­jec­to­ry of the war.

    “Our indi­ca­tions are the DPRK is covert­ly sup­ply­ing and we’re going to mon­i­tor to see whether ship­ments are received,” Mr. Kir­by told reporters on Wednes­day, refer­ring to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic People’s Repub­lic of Korea. “Our infor­ma­tion indi­cates that they’re try­ing to obscure the method of sup­ply by fun­nel­ing them through oth­er coun­tries in the Mid­dle East and North Africa.”

    Rus­sia and North Korea have a com­mon bor­der. Artillery ammu­ni­tion is heavy and one needs lots of it. That is why it is prefer­able to trans­port it in bulk — by ship or rail­way.

    Rus­si­a’s and North Kore­a’s rail­ways are con­nect­ed.

    In 2019 Kim Jong Un vis­it­ed Rus­sia by train. While the pas­sen­ger traf­fic had been closed down due to Covid quar­an­tine mea­sures it has recent­ly been reopened. The U.S. has no means to know what prod­ucts are in the box­cars and con­tain­ers that trav­el across that bor­der.

    There are also ships. In 2017 the U.S. accused North Korea of export­ing coal via Rus­sia to third par­ties:

    [T]he secre­tive Com­mu­nist state has at least three times since then shipped coal to the Russ­ian ports of Nakhod­ka and Kholm­sk, where it was unloaded at docks and reloaded onto ships that took it to South Korea or Japan, the sources said.

    Now tell me: Why would North Korea or Rus­sia put any deliv­er­ies between them in jeop­ardy by trans­fer­ring them via a third par­ty far away from their areas of influ­ence and oper­a­tion?

    They won’t.

    My hunch is that Rus­sia does not buy ammu­ni­tion from North Korea. But it could do so. North Korea has, in con­stant prepa­ra­tion for war, over decades accu­mu­lat­ed lots of ammu­ni­tion that is get­ting old and should be replaced by new­er one. To sell off the old stuff for cheap would be a ratio­nal move. Rus­sia is unlike­ly to need it but, if the price is right and the qual­i­ty still accept­able, there is no rea­son to reject any such offer.

    Most like­ly though the Biden admin­is­tra­tion is just mak­ing this up to some­how put Rus­sia as well as North Korea into a bad light.

    As the Russ­ian pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin explained:

    I already said that the dic­tate of the West­ern coun­tries and their attempts to apply pres­sure on all the par­tic­i­pants of inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, includ­ing coun­tries that are neu­tral or friend­ly to us, are achiev­ing noth­ing, and they are look­ing for addi­tion­al argu­ments to con­vince our friends or neu­tral states that they all need to con­front Rus­sia col­lec­tive­ly.

    The U.S. pub­lic and some dull inhab­i­tants of U.S. colonies in Europe may well fall for such non­sense. But no one out­side of that closed club will believe such claims with­out being shown some rea­son­able evi­dence.

    There is of course none.

    ———–

    “Anoth­er Day, Anoth­er False Scare Sto­ry” by b; Moon of Alaba­ma; 11/3/2022

    “Now tell me: Why would North Korea or Rus­sia put any deliv­er­ies between them in jeop­ardy by trans­fer­ring them via a third par­ty far away from their areas of influ­ence and oper­a­tion?”

    Rus­sia isn’t just buy­ing North Kore­an arms, but doing so in risk­ing clan­des­tine swaps in the Mid­dle East, instead of just trans­port­ing what­ev­er they want via direct rail­ways. That’s the non­sense charge com­ing from the US:

    ...
    As the Russ­ian pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin explained:

    I already said that the dic­tate of the West­ern coun­tries and their attempts to apply pres­sure on all the par­tic­i­pants of inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ca­tion, includ­ing coun­tries that are neu­tral or friend­ly to us, are achiev­ing noth­ing, and they are look­ing for addi­tion­al argu­ments to con­vince our friends or neu­tral states that they all need to con­front Rus­sia col­lec­tive­ly.

    The U.S. pub­lic and some dull inhab­i­tants of U.S. colonies in Europe may well fall for such non­sense. But no one out­side of that closed club will believe such claims with­out being shown some rea­son­able evi­dence.

    There is of course none.
    ...

    Nor was this the first time we’ve heard this charge from the US. Pyongyang was deny­ing charges of clan­des­tine weapons sales to Rus­sia back in Sep­tem­ber. And as the fol­low­ing WaPo piece reminds us, a big part of the pro­pa­gan­da val­ue of these claims comes from the fact that North Korea is cur­rent­ly under UN-imposed sanc­tions over its nuclear weapons pro­gram. That’s part of the con­text of the non­sense claims of Mid­dle East­ern weapons sales:

    Wash­ing­ton Post

    North Korea denies U.S. claims it sup­plies arms to Rus­sia

    By Min Joo Kim
    Sep­tem­ber 22, 2022 at 4:21 a.m. EDT

    SEOUL — North Korea has denied U.S. intel­li­gence reports that it sup­plied weapons to Rus­sia, accus­ing Wash­ing­ton of spread­ing rumors aimed at tar­nish­ing Pyongyang’s image.

    “We have nev­er export­ed weapons or ammu­ni­tion to Rus­sia before and we will not plan to export them,” a senior North Kore­an defense offi­cial was quot­ed as say­ing in state media on Thurs­day. The offi­cial accused “the U.S. and oth­er hos­tile forces” of spread­ing “a rumor of arms deal­ings between the DPRK and Rus­sia,” refer­ring to North Korea by its offi­cial name.

    Thursday’s state­ment, car­ried by North Korea’s Cen­tral News Agency, fol­lows a new­ly declas­si­fied intel­li­gence assess­ment from Wash­ing­ton that Rus­sia was seek­ing to buy North Kore­an weapons for its war in Ukraine. Ear­li­er this month, State Depart­ment deputy spokesman Vedant Patel said “the Russ­ian Min­istry of Defense is in the process of pur­chas­ing mil­lions of rock­ets and artillery shells from North Korea for use in Ukraine.”

    ...

    While deny­ing any arms sales to Rus­sia, the offi­cial defend­ed North Korea’s right to make such mil­i­tary deals. “Not only the devel­op­ment, pro­duc­tion, pos­ses­sion of mil­i­tary equip­ment, but also their export and import are the law­ful right pecu­liar to a sov­er­eign state, and nobody is enti­tled to crit­i­cize it.”

    Biden admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials said the weapons trans­fer plan indi­cates that sanc­tions-strapped Rus­sia was forced to approach the regime of Kim Jong Un to help source weapon­ry for its inva­sion of Ukraine. Moscow respond­ed to the U.S. intel­li­gence reports by call­ing them “fake.”

    Even amid wide­spread inter­na­tion­al con­dem­na­tion of the war, North Korea has open­ly sup­port­ed its Cold War ally Rus­sia. Ear­li­er this year, Kim exchanged mes­sages with his Russ­ian coun­ter­part, Vladimir Putin, promis­ing to expand rela­tions to “new strate­gic heights.” North Korea is one of a hand­ful of coun­tries that offi­cial­ly rec­og­nized the inde­pen­dence of the Moscow-backed break­away regions in east­ern Ukraine. North Korea and Rus­sia share land and mar­itime bor­ders, which served as trade routes before coro­n­avirus bor­der lock­downs.

    Any weapons trade with North Korea would be in vio­la­tion of U.N. sanc­tions imposed on the regime to curb its nuclear and mis­sile activ­i­ties. In defi­ance of the sanc­tions, the Kim regime has con­tin­ued its mil­i­tary pur­suits, includ­ing an unprece­dent­ed flur­ry of bal­lis­tic mis­sile tests this year. Offi­cials in Seoul and Wash­ing­ton said ear­li­er this year that North Korea was prepar­ing for its first nuclear test in five years.

    ———–

    “North Korea denies U.S. claims it sup­plies arms to Rus­sia” by Min Joo Kim; Wash­ing­ton Post; 09/22/2022

    Any weapons trade with North Korea would be in vio­la­tion of U.N. sanc­tions imposed on the regime to curb its nuclear and mis­sile activ­i­ties. In defi­ance of the sanc­tions, the Kim regime has con­tin­ued its mil­i­tary pur­suits, includ­ing an unprece­dent­ed flur­ry of bal­lis­tic mis­sile tests this year. Offi­cials in Seoul and Wash­ing­ton said ear­li­er this year that North Korea was prepar­ing for its first nuclear test in five years.”

    It was­n’t just an alle­ga­tion of Russ­ian buy North Kore­an arms. It was a charge of Rus­sia vio­lat­ing UN-imposed sanc­tions on North Korea. Which, of course, makes the accu­sa­tions of clan­des­tine trans­fers in the Mid­dle East all the more absurd. Why not just stick the arms in a train and roll it across the Russ­ian-North Korea bor­der with no one the wis­er?

    And that brings us to the fol­low­ing report that came just days after the US released its claims about secret weapons trans­fers in the Mid­dle East and North Africa: satel­lite images show a train crossed the bor­der from Rus­sia into North Korea. That was the report from the DC-based 38 North Project think-tank.

    So what was that train car­ry­ing? Well, accord­ing to Rus­sia and North Korea, it was car­ry­ing hors­es. As the arti­cle notes, North Kore­a’s lead­er­ship has a his­to­ry of pur­chas­ing Russ­ian thor­ough­breds. But, notably, this was the first train trav­el between Russ­ian and North Korea since that bor­der was closed in Feb­ru­ary 2020 with the out­break of the pan­dem­ic.

    But as the arti­cle also notes, the think-tank can’t actu­al­ly deter­mine what the train was car­ry­ing based on the satel­lite images. So while that think-tank can make all the alle­ga­tions about weapons ship­ments that it wants, this sto­ry just under­scores the luna­cy of sug­gest­ing Russ­ian and North Korea need­ed to use the Mid­dle East and North Africa to car­ry out weapons ship­ments. It was a nar­ra­tive that only poten­tial­ly made sense if, for some rea­son, Rus­sia and North Korea could­n’t open back up that rail­way bor­der cross­ing or just use trucks instead. Which obvi­ous­ly was­n’t the case:

    Reuters

    Train cross­es North Korea bor­der into Rus­sia after arms report, think tank says

    Reuters
    Novem­ber 5, 2022 11:03 AM UTC
    Updat­ed

    WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (Reuters) — A train crossed from North Korea into Rus­sia on Fri­day, two days after the Unit­ed States said it had infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing Pyongyang is covert­ly sup­ply­ing Rus­sia with artillery shells for its war in Ukraine, a Wash­ing­ton think tank said, cit­ing com­mer­cial satel­lite imagery.

    The 38 North project, which mon­i­tors North Kore­an devel­op­ments, said it was the first time such a train move­ment had been observed on the route in sev­er­al years, although Rus­si­a’s vet­eri­nary ser­vice report­ed on Wednes­day that a train had crossed the bor­der into North Korea car­ry­ing hors­es.

    It is impos­si­ble to deter­mine the pur­pose of the train from the imagery, but the cross­ing comes amid reports of arms sales from North Korea to Rus­sia and a gen­er­al expec­ta­tion of the resump­tion of trade between the two coun­tries,” 38 North said.

    It said North Korea closed the 800-meter (yard) Tuman­gang Friend­ship Bridge (Korea-Rus­sia Friend­ship Bridge), the only land link between the coun­tries, in Feb­ru­ary 2020 dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

    ...

    “Whether a trans­fer of mate­r­i­al was in progress could not be deter­mined, and the parked loca­tions of these train sets may have been unre­lat­ed,” the report said.

    The White House said on Wednes­day that Wash­ing­ton had infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing North Korea was covert­ly sup­ply­ing Rus­sia with a “sig­nif­i­cant” num­ber of artillery shells for its war in Ukraine and was attempt­ing to obscure the ship­ments by fun­nel­ing them through coun­tries in the Mid­dle East and North Africa.

    North Korea said in Sep­tem­ber it had nev­er sup­plied weapons or ammu­ni­tion to Rus­sia and has no plans to do so. read more

    Accord­ing to a state­ment from Rus­si­a’s state vet­eri­nary ser­vice on Wednes­day, Rus­sia and North Korea restart­ed train trav­el for the first time since the pan­dem­ic with a car­go of 30 grey thor­ough­bred “Orlov Trot­ter” hors­es into North Korea.

    North Kore­an leader Kim Jong Un is known as a keen horse­man. He was shown in 2019 by North Kore­an media trekking through moun­tain snows astride a white stal­lion. Russ­ian cus­toms data shows North Korea has spent thou­sands of dol­lars on thor­ough­bred hors­es from Rus­sia in pre­vi­ous years.

    ———-

    “Train cross­es North Korea bor­der into Rus­sia after arms report, think tank says”; Reuters; 11/05/2022

    “The 38 North project, which mon­i­tors North Kore­an devel­op­ments, said it was the first time such a train move­ment had been observed on the route in sev­er­al years, although Rus­si­a’s vet­eri­nary ser­vice report­ed on Wednes­day that a train had crossed the bor­der into North Korea car­ry­ing hors­es.”

    Yes, just a day or so after the White House accus­es Rus­sia and North Korea of engag­ing in clan­des­tine arms trans­fers in the Mid­dle East and North Africa, we get reports of a train trav­el­ing from direct­ly from Rus­sia into North Korea. And sure enough, there was no way to assess the con­tents of the car­go. Easy peasy:

    ...
    It is impos­si­ble to deter­mine the pur­pose of the train from the imagery, but the cross­ing comes amid reports of arms sales from North Korea to Rus­sia and a gen­er­al expec­ta­tion of the resump­tion of trade between the two coun­tries,” 38 North said.

    ...

    “Whether a trans­fer of mate­r­i­al was in progress could not be deter­mined, and the parked loca­tions of these train sets may have been unre­lat­ed,” the report said.
    ...

    And if the tim­ing of the first train trav­el in years between the two coun­tries sounds some­how sus­pi­cious, note the rea­son for the lack of trav­el: COVID. So with COVID look­ing increas­ing­ly like a virus that no long threat­ens the North Kore­an regimes sta­bil­i­ty, we had to expect those COVID-era restric­tions to be lift­ed at some point. It rais­es the intrigu­ing ques­tion: giv­en that we got that bizarre sto­ry about clan­des­tine arms ship­ments between Rus­sia and North Korea in the Mid­dle East and North Africa just days before the first train trav­el between North Korea and Rus­sia since the pan­dem­ic, did West­ern intel­li­gence know that train trip was planned? If so, that might explain the strange ‘clan­des­tine arms trans­fers’ nar­ra­tive as a sto­ry intend­ed to frame the upcom­ing train trip as evi­dence of secret weapons deals:

    ...
    It said North Korea closed the 800-meter (yard) Tuman­gang Friend­ship Bridge (Korea-Rus­sia Friend­ship Bridge), the only land link between the coun­tries, in Feb­ru­ary 2020 dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

    ...

    The White House said on Wednes­day that Wash­ing­ton had infor­ma­tion indi­cat­ing North Korea was covert­ly sup­ply­ing Rus­sia with a “sig­nif­i­cant” num­ber of artillery shells for its war in Ukraine and was attempt­ing to obscure the ship­ments by fun­nel­ing them through coun­tries in the Mid­dle East and North Africa.

    North Korea said in Sep­tem­ber it had nev­er sup­plied weapons or ammu­ni­tion to Rus­sia and has no plans to do so. read more

    Accord­ing to a state­ment from Rus­si­a’s state vet­eri­nary ser­vice on Wednes­day, Rus­sia and North Korea restart­ed train trav­el for the first time since the pan­dem­ic with a car­go of 30 grey thor­ough­bred “Orlov Trot­ter” hors­es into North Korea.

    North Kore­an leader Kim Jong Un is known as a keen horse­man. He was shown in 2019 by North Kore­an media trekking through moun­tain snows astride a white stal­lion. Russ­ian cus­toms data shows North Korea has spent thou­sands of dol­lars on thor­ough­bred hors­es from Rus­sia in pre­vi­ous years.
    ...

    Are we in store for a series of alle­ga­tions about weapons trans­fers with every­one instance of train trav­el between the coun­tries? Time will tell.

    But as the fol­low­ing Bloomberg piece describes, if the under­ly­ing goal of eco­nom­i­cal­ly iso­lat­ing Rus­sia glob­al­ly, and not just from the West, should even­tu­al­ly come to fruition, the con­se­quences are going to be felt for years. At least that what glob­al oil and nat­ur­al gas mar­kets are sig­nal­ing. And as the arti­cle describes, we should­n’t assume that means years of socioe­co­nom­ic tur­moil for just Europe. Wealthy Europe will be rel­a­tive­ly fine. It’s the devel­op­ing world that’s going to be supreme­ly harmed by a mul­ti-year round of glob­al sanc­tions on Russ­ian:

    Bloomberg News via BNNBloomberg.ca

    Europe’s Ener­gy Crunch Will Trig­ger Years of Short­ages and Black­outs

    Stephen Stapczyn­s­ki, Anna Shiryaevskaya and Faseeh Man­gi,
    Nov 7, 2022

    (Bloomberg) — Bills will be high, but Europe will sur­vive the win­ter: It’s bought enough oil and gas to get through the heat­ing sea­sons.

    Much deep­er costs will be borne by the world’s poor­est coun­tries, which have been shut out of the nat­ur­al gas mar­ket by Europe’s sud­den­ly rav­en­ous demand. It’s left emerg­ing mar­ket coun­tries unable to meet today’s needs or tomorrow’s, and the most like­ly con­se­quences — fac­to­ry shut­downs, more fre­quent and longer-last­ing pow­er short­ages, the foment of social unrest — could stretch into the next decade.

    “Ener­gy secu­ri­ty con­cerns in Europe are dri­ving ener­gy pover­ty in the emerg­ing world,” said Saul Kavon­ic, an ener­gy ana­lyst at Cred­it Suisse Group AG. “Europe is suck­ing gas away from oth­er coun­tries what­ev­er the cost.”

    After a sum­mer of rolling black­outs and polit­i­cal tur­moil, cool­er weath­er and heavy rains have alle­vi­at­ed the imme­di­ate ener­gy cri­sis in Pak­istan, India, Bangladesh and the Philip­pines. But any relief promis­es to be tem­po­rary. Cold­er tem­per­a­tures are on the way — parts of South Asia can be more bit­ter than Lon­don — and the chances of secur­ing long-term sup­plies are slim. The strong US dol­lar has only com­pli­cat­ed the sit­u­a­tion, forc­ing nations to choose between buy­ing fuel and mak­ing debt pay­ments. Under the cir­cum­stances, glob­al fuel sup­pli­ers are increas­ing­ly wary of sell­ing to coun­tries that could be head­ing for default.

    The cen­ter of the issue is Europe’s response to tight­en­ing fuel sup­plies and the war in Ukraine. Cut off from Russ­ian gas, Euro­pean coun­tries have turned to the spot mar­ket, where ener­gy that isn’t com­mit­ted to buy­ers is made avail­able for short-notice deliv­ery. With prices soar­ing, some sup­pli­ers to South Asia have sim­ply can­celed long-sched­uled deliv­er­ies in favor of bet­ter yields else­where, traders say.

    “Sup­pli­ers don’t need to focus on secur­ing their LNG to low afford­abil­i­ty mar­kets,” Raghav Math­ur, an ana­lyst at Wood Macken­zie Ltd. said. The high­er prices they can get on the spot mar­ket more than make up for what­ev­er penal­ties they might pay for shirk­ing planned ship­ments. And that dynam­ic is like­ly to hold for years, Math­ur says.

    Dam­age caused by glob­al warm­ing, such as the dev­as­tat­ing floods in Pak­istan, is also wreak­ing eco­nom­ic hav­oc on emerg­ing nations, prompt­ing lead­ers at UN cli­mate talks in Egypt this month to dis­cuss how rich­er coun­tries can help pro­vide more sup­port.

    At the same time, Europe is speed­ing up con­struc­tion of float­ing import ter­mi­nals to bring in more fuel in the future. Ger­many, Italy and Fin­land have secured the plants. The Nether­lands start­ed import­ing LNG from new float­ing ter­mi­nals in Sep­tem­ber. Euro­pean demand for nat­ur­al gas is expect­ed to surge by near­ly 60% through 2026, accord­ing to BloombergNEF.

    Exporters in Qatar and the Unit­ed States are now enter­tain­ing bids from Euro­pean importers look­ing to buy fuel to fill the new capac­i­ty. For the first time, emerg­ing nations like Pak­istan, Bangladesh and Thai­land are forced to com­pete on price with Ger­many and oth­er economies sev­er­al times their size.

    “We are bor­row­ing oth­er people’s ener­gy sup­plies,” said Vitol Group Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Rus­sell Hardy. “It’s not a great thing.”

    Usu­al­ly when there’s a short-term short­age, nations can sign long-term sup­ply con­tracts, pay­ing a fixed rate for the assur­ance of reli­able deliv­er­ies for years. That hasn’t worked this time. Even bids for deliv­er­ies start­ing years into the future are being reject­ed.

    India failed in its lat­est attempt to lock in ship­ments start­ing in 2025. Bangladesh and Thai­land essen­tial­ly aban­doned efforts to get con­tracts that start before 2026, when mas­sive new export plants in Qatar and the US plan to start ship­ping fuel. Pak­istan last month was unable to close an six-year deal that would have start­ed next year, after sev­er­al attempts at short-term pur­chas­es also failed.

    “We’d thought the cri­sis would be over by the end of the year, but it isn’t,” said Kulit Som­bat­siri, per­ma­nent sec­re­tary of Thailand’s ener­gy min­istry, at a brief­ing on Mon­day. If LNG prices con­tin­ue to rise, he added, the gov­ern­ment would have to con­sid­er mea­sures such as clos­ing down con­ve­nience stores and oth­er high-ener­gy busi­ness­es.

    LNG sup­pli­ers fear that these nations won’t be able to pay for promised deliv­er­ies. Fuel is priced in US dol­lars, and a sin­gle ship­ment cur­rent­ly costs near­ly $100 mil­lion. For com­par­i­son, LNG ship­ments aver­aged $33 mil­lion dur­ing the 2010s. And costs are high­er still in domes­tic cur­ren­cies because the dol­lar has been rapid­ly appre­ci­at­ing, adding to pres­sure on the coun­tries’ belea­guered finances.

    Pakistan’s for­eign exchange reserves dropped to the low­est lev­el in three years last month, push­ing the nation’s cred­it rat­ing by Moody’s Investors Ser­vice deep­er into junk. Reserves for Bangladesh, India and the Philip­pines are at two-year lows. In Thai­land, where infla­tion is already at a 14-year high and reserves at a five-year low, the cen­tral bank warned that the sit­u­a­tion will wors­en if the baht doesn’t sta­bi­lize soon.

    With­out Russ­ian gas flow­ing into Europe, the glob­al gas mar­kets will stay tight. Spot prices will remain high, and with­out the abil­i­ty to secure long-term sup­plies, devel­op­ing coun­tries may look to dirt­i­er fuels or oth­er part­ners.

    Momen­tum behind nat­ur­al gas growth in devel­op­ing economies has slowed, notably in South and South­east Asia, putting a dent in the cre­den­tials of gas as a tran­si­tion fuel, the Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency said in its World Ener­gy Out­look 2022. Nat­ur­al gas is the clean­est burn­ing fos­sil fuel, and emits less CO2 than coal when com­bust­ed.

    The ener­gy short­age has already brought the emerg­ing world and Rus­sia clos­er togeth­er. Russia’s been more than hap­py to offer fuel to Pak­istan, India and oth­ers who’ve been shut out of the spot mar­ket.

    “We have estab­lished con­tact with the Russ­ian side. We are, of course, very much inter­est­ed in pro­cure­ment of LNG,” Shafqat Ali Khan, Pakistan’s ambas­sador to Rus­sia, told the state-run Tass news agency. “If the rich coun­tries take away all the LNG, what is going to hap­pen to us?”

    While China’s LNG imports have dropped over­all in part because of high spot prices, the nation has increased pur­chas­es of Russ­ian LNG at a deep dis­count. Deliv­er­ies from Rus­sia to Chi­na are up about 25% so far this year, accord­ing to ship-track­ing data com­piled by Bloomberg.

    Poor­er coun­tries may also turn to cheap­er fuels like coal and oil. Or they’ll look to devel­op their own domes­tic resources. The Inter­na­tion­al Cham­ber of Com­merce-Bangladesh urged the gov­ern­ment to move faster with nat­ur­al gas explo­ration both on-shore and off-shore to replace expen­sive LNG. Crit­ics of Pakistan’s gov­ern­ment are ask­ing why they haven’t tapped gas reserves in parts of the coun­try.

    “The only sav­ing grace will be if it doesn’t get too cold,” said Shaiq Jawed, man­ag­ing direc­tor at JK Group, a Pak­istan-based sup­pli­er of tex­tiles to glob­al hotel chains. This sum­mer, for the first time in 25 years, the com­pa­ny only received half of the gas it need­ed, he said. If it needs to, it can rely on elec­tric­i­ty and coal-gen­er­at­ed pow­er. “This is the last resort, but clos­ing down is not an option.”

    For peo­ple wor­ried about cli­mate change and the envi­ron­ment, none of those are good options. Coal and oil are much dirt­i­er than gas. The process of extract­ing new fos­sil fuels is ener­gy-inten­sive and linked to increased pol­lu­tion and earth­quake activ­i­ty.

    ...

    Renew­ables, like solar, could pro­vide relief even­tu­al­ly. Until then, high prices will do some of the work. Emerg­ing Asia’s gas demand growth slowed “marked­ly” between Jan­u­ary and July as sky-high prices dragged down con­sump­tion, accord­ing to the IEA. Thai­land, the region’s top gas user, saw a 12% drop in demand over that peri­od as high prices squeezed pow­er sec­tor use and falling domes­tic pro­duc­tion reduced sup­ply.

    Gov­ern­ments will have to do the rest, rationing fuel and sched­ul­ing black­outs when there isn’t enough ener­gy to go around.

    It will take up to four years for the mar­ket to bal­ance, said WoodMac’s Math­ur. Until then, volatile prices will be the norm and, he said, “LNG will belong first to the ‘devel­oped,’ with the left­overs for the ‘devel­op­ing.’”

    Coun­tries in South Amer­i­ca, like Brazil and Argenti­na, may be slight­ly more insu­lat­ed, giv­en invest­ments in hydropow­er. Even so, Brazil’s import bill more than dou­bled dur­ing the first sev­en months of this year to $3.7 bil­lion, the result of surg­ing over­seas prices and delays on a domes­tic pipeline project. If the rainy sea­son is late this year, Brazil may need to buy time with still more LNG imports.

    ...

    Mean­while, the Philip­pines and Viet­nam are rethink­ing plans to start import­ing LNG. The Philip­pines con­tin­ues to delay the start of their first import ter­mi­nal, while the gov­ern­ment in Viet­nam is con­sid­er­ing cut­ting capac­i­ty for planned gas-fired pow­er plants. Those projects were designed to meet surg­ing domes­tic demand. Pol­i­cy­mak­ers have yet to put for­ward an alter­na­tive.

    –With assis­tance from Ann Koh and Pat­picha Tanakasem­pi­pat.

    ————

    “Europe’s Ener­gy Crunch Will Trig­ger Years of Short­ages and Black­outs” by Stephen Stapczyn­s­ki, Anna Shiryaevskaya and Faseeh Man­gi; Bloomberg News via BNNBloomberg.ca; 11/07/2022

    “Much deep­er costs will be borne by the world’s poor­est coun­tries, which have been shut out of the nat­ur­al gas mar­ket by Europe’s sud­den­ly rav­en­ous demand. It’s left emerg­ing mar­ket coun­tries unable to meet today’s needs or tomorrow’s, and the most like­ly con­se­quences — fac­to­ry shut­downs, more fre­quent and longer-last­ing pow­er short­ages, the foment of social unrest — could stretch into the next decade.”

    Fac­to­ry shut­downs, longer-last­ing pow­er short­ages and moments of social unrest are expect­ed into the next decade across the devel­op­ing world as a result of these sanc­tions on Russ­ian gas. Recall how EU com­pa­nies are report­ed­ly con­sid­er­ing relo­cat­ing fac­to­ries to the US in antic­i­pa­tion that these sanc­tions are going to be in place for years to come. Sanc­tions that are still large­ly lim­it­ed to the West. What kind of glob­al tur­moil can we expect should some sort of cat­a­stroph­ic event tran­spire that effec­tive­ly forces the rest of the world to join in on those sanc­tions? Europe is already “suck­ing gas away from oth­er coun­tries what­ev­er the cost.” And LNG sup­pli­ers are already mak­ing the deci­sion to sim­ply pay the fines of break­ing their long-term sup­ply con­tracts with devel­op­ing nations. How much worse can this get?

    ...
    “Ener­gy secu­ri­ty con­cerns in Europe are dri­ving ener­gy pover­ty in the emerg­ing world,” said Saul Kavon­ic, an ener­gy ana­lyst at Cred­it Suisse Group AG. “Europe is suck­ing gas away from oth­er coun­tries what­ev­er the cost.”

    ...

    The cen­ter of the issue is Europe’s response to tight­en­ing fuel sup­plies and the war in Ukraine. Cut off from Russ­ian gas, Euro­pean coun­tries have turned to the spot mar­ket, where ener­gy that isn’t com­mit­ted to buy­ers is made avail­able for short-notice deliv­ery. With prices soar­ing, some sup­pli­ers to South Asia have sim­ply can­celed long-sched­uled deliv­er­ies in favor of bet­ter yields else­where, traders say.

    “Sup­pli­ers don’t need to focus on secur­ing their LNG to low afford­abil­i­ty mar­kets,” Raghav Math­ur, an ana­lyst at Wood Macken­zie Ltd. said. The high­er prices they can get on the spot mar­ket more than make up for what­ev­er penal­ties they might pay for shirk­ing planned ship­ments. And that dynam­ic is like­ly to hold for years, Math­ur says.

    ...

    Exporters in Qatar and the Unit­ed States are now enter­tain­ing bids from Euro­pean importers look­ing to buy fuel to fill the new capac­i­ty. For the first time, emerg­ing nations like Pak­istan, Bangladesh and Thai­land are forced to com­pete on price with Ger­many and oth­er economies sev­er­al times their size.

    “We are bor­row­ing oth­er people’s ener­gy sup­plies,” said Vitol Group Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Rus­sell Hardy. “It’s not a great thing.”

    Usu­al­ly when there’s a short-term short­age, nations can sign long-term sup­ply con­tracts, pay­ing a fixed rate for the assur­ance of reli­able deliv­er­ies for years. That hasn’t worked this time. Even bids for deliv­er­ies start­ing years into the future are being reject­ed.

    ...

    It will take up to four years for the mar­ket to bal­ance, said WoodMac’s Math­ur. Until then, volatile prices will be the norm and, he said, “LNG will belong first to the ‘devel­oped,’ with the left­overs for the ‘devel­op­ing.’”
    ...

    And at the same time Europe is suck­ing up what­ev­er gas it can on the spot mar­kets, it’s con­tin­u­ing to make new invest­ments in LNG ter­mi­nals to ensure that this can all con­tin­ue at an even faster pace in com­ing years:

    ...
    Dam­age caused by glob­al warm­ing, such as the dev­as­tat­ing floods in Pak­istan, is also wreak­ing eco­nom­ic hav­oc on emerg­ing nations, prompt­ing lead­ers at UN cli­mate talks in Egypt this month to dis­cuss how rich­er coun­tries can help pro­vide more sup­port.

    At the same time, Europe is speed­ing up con­struc­tion of float­ing import ter­mi­nals to bring in more fuel in the future. Ger­many, Italy and Fin­land have secured the plants. The Nether­lands start­ed import­ing LNG from new float­ing ter­mi­nals in Sep­tem­ber. Euro­pean demand for nat­ur­al gas is expect­ed to surge by near­ly 60% through 2026, accord­ing to BloombergNEF.
    ...

    Then there’s the role of the ris­ing US dol­lar in all this. Devel­op­ing coun­tries with vul­ner­a­ble cur­ren­cies are active­ly being shunned by LNG sup­pli­ers over fears over the abil­i­ty of poor­er clients to actu­al­ly meet their con­tract oblig­a­tions years into the future when the dol­lar might have appre­ci­at­ed even more. It’s the kind of dynam­ic that only fuels the ten­den­cy of LNG sup­pli­ers to just break their long-term con­tracts in the pur­suit of high prof­its on the short-term spot mar­kets:

    ...
    After a sum­mer of rolling black­outs and polit­i­cal tur­moil, cool­er weath­er and heavy rains have alle­vi­at­ed the imme­di­ate ener­gy cri­sis in Pak­istan, India, Bangladesh and the Philip­pines. But any relief promis­es to be tem­po­rary. Cold­er tem­per­a­tures are on the way — parts of South Asia can be more bit­ter than Lon­don — and the chances of secur­ing long-term sup­plies are slim. The strong US dol­lar has only com­pli­cat­ed the sit­u­a­tion, forc­ing nations to choose between buy­ing fuel and mak­ing debt pay­ments. Under the cir­cum­stances, glob­al fuel sup­pli­ers are increas­ing­ly wary of sell­ing to coun­tries that could be head­ing for default.

    ...

    LNG sup­pli­ers fear that these nations won’t be able to pay for promised deliv­er­ies. Fuel is priced in US dol­lars, and a sin­gle ship­ment cur­rent­ly costs near­ly $100 mil­lion. For com­par­i­son, LNG ship­ments aver­aged $33 mil­lion dur­ing the 2010s. And costs are high­er still in domes­tic cur­ren­cies because the dol­lar has been rapid­ly appre­ci­at­ing, adding to pres­sure on the coun­tries’ belea­guered finances.
    ...

    Final­ly, let’s not for­get that this whole devel­op­ment is a giant dis­as­ter for the envi­ron­ment. Civ­i­liza­tion isn’t sim­ply going to respond to the sud­den dis­rup­tion of Russ­ian gas sup­plies by invest­ing in renew­ables or con­serv­ing. The poor­est coun­tries of the world are going to be forced to fall back in the dirt­i­est sources of ener­gy. It will be that or let their economies grind to a halt:

    ...
    With­out Russ­ian gas flow­ing into Europe, the glob­al gas mar­kets will stay tight. Spot prices will remain high, and with­out the abil­i­ty to secure long-term sup­plies, devel­op­ing coun­tries may look to dirt­i­er fuels or oth­er part­ners.

    Momen­tum behind nat­ur­al gas growth in devel­op­ing economies has slowed, notably in South and South­east Asia, putting a dent in the cre­den­tials of gas as a tran­si­tion fuel, the Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency said in its World Ener­gy Out­look 2022. Nat­ur­al gas is the clean­est burn­ing fos­sil fuel, and emits less CO2 than coal when com­bust­ed.

    ...

    Poor­er coun­tries may also turn to cheap­er fuels like coal and oil. Or they’ll look to devel­op their own domes­tic resources. The Inter­na­tion­al Cham­ber of Com­merce-Bangladesh urged the gov­ern­ment to move faster with nat­ur­al gas explo­ration both on-shore and off-shore to replace expen­sive LNG. Crit­ics of Pakistan’s gov­ern­ment are ask­ing why they haven’t tapped gas reserves in parts of the coun­try.
    ...

    Time to fire up those coal plants. And not only is this going to remain ‘coal time’ for years to come if cur­rent trends con­tin­ue as expect­ed, but this whole process could get kicked into over­drive should the glob­al sanc­tions on Rus­sia end up get­ting imposed.

    And as this arti­cle makes clear, it’s the devel­op­ing world — the part of the world that large­ly has yet to get on board with the West­’s desired Russ­ian sanc­tions — that is going to be bear­ing the brunt of the sanc­tions’ impact. In oth­er words, if the West is going to con­vince the devel­op­ing world to join those Russ­ian sanc­tions, some­thing unspeak­ably hor­rif­ic is going to have to be blamed on Rus­sia. Some­thing so awful that even coun­tries fac­ing fac­to­ry shut­downs and social unrest refuse to buy Russ­ian exports. Exports that go beyond fos­sil fuels. Rus­sia is the largest exporter of grain, after all. What will the impact on the devel­op­ing world’s food sup­plies be when all that grain is banned from the mar­kets? More social unrest, pre­sum­ably. But what else? What’s the plan for the years of glob­al social unrest that these sanc­tions are going to pro­duce hit­ting the poor­est and most vul­ner­a­ble coun­tries in the world? It’s omi­nous. On the one hand, it’s ter­ri­fy­ing to imag­ine there’s no plan. On the oth­er hand, hav­ing a plan to send the devel­op­ing world into years of socioe­co­nom­ic tur­moil is arguably a lot more ter­ri­fy­ing.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 10, 2022, 4:02 pm
  14. Oh look, the Pen­ta­gon just failed anoth­er audit. This time, the audi­tors were unable to account for 61 per­cent of the Pen­tagon’s $3.5 tril­lion in assets. It’s not great, but more or less what to expect.

    It’s those appalling­ly low expec­ta­tions that are part of the con­text of the fol­low­ing sto­ry about the grow­ing inter­est in audit­ing the Pen­tagon’s flood of aid to Ukraine. As the arti­cle describes, account­abil­i­ty for that aid is expect­ed to be a focus of the House GOP after the Repub­li­cans take con­trol in Jan­u­ary. And while bet­ter over­sight of that aid is expect­ed, we’re also get­ting warn­ings that there’s a lim­it to the kind of inspec­tions the US can con­duct. Specif­i­cal­ly, there’s a deep hes­i­tan­cy over send­ing inspec­tors any­where close to the front lines where they might be expose to hos­tile forces. As a result of those lim­its, the inspec­tions that are even hap­pen­ing are only tak­ing place at the point where the weapons are being hand­ed over to the Ukraini­ans. Only the Ukraini­ans know what hap­pens to the weapons at that point. A total of two in-per­son inspec­tions have tak­en place at all between the start of the con­flict in Feb­ru­ary and ear­ly Novem­ber. And in what is prob­a­bly the most dis­turb­ing detail in this sto­ry, we are also being assured that there isn’t any­thing to wor­ry about because the Ukraini­ans have been read­i­ly report­ing back to the US how the weapons have been used and are fac­ing such an exis­ten­tial threat that they can’t afford to allow weapons to be siphoned off to the black mar­ket.

    But also keep in mind some of the oth­er rel­e­vant con­text here: Ukraine is increas­ing­ly becom­ing a bat­tle­field for beta-test­ing next-gen­er­a­tion NATO weapons sys­tems, includ­ing a grow­ing num­ber of weaponized drones. What’s being done to keep those tech­nolo­gies out of the black mar­ket? Not much, appar­ent­ly.

    And then there’s the sto­ry about the Ital­ian “Order of Hagal” alleged ter­ror cell with close ties to Ukrain­ian fas­cist groups like Azov and Right Sec­tor. How much of the deliv­ered aid is end­ed up in the hands of groups like that? We don’t know and haven’t real­ly checked it seems.

    So to sum­ma­rize, we’re being told that the US has lim­it­ed options for track­ing how the mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine — a coun­try flood­ed with both cut­ting-edge weapons and Nazi fel­low trav­el­ers — but not to wor­ry any­way because they’re pret­ty sure Ukraine is being hon­est. Which seems like a very big rea­son to wor­ry:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Pres­sure builds to step up weapons track­ing in Ukraine

    Leg­is­la­tion would require greater scruti­ny of the $20 bil­lion in mil­i­tary aid Pres­i­dent Biden has sent Ukraine, and it has bipar­ti­san sup­port

    By Karoun Demir­jian
    Novem­ber 27, 2022 at 2:00 a.m. EST

    Embold­ened by their suc­cess in the midterm elec­tions, House Repub­li­cans, who will hold a slim major­i­ty in the next Con­gress, have warned the Biden admin­is­tra­tion to expect far tougher over­sight of the exten­sive mil­i­tary assis­tance it has pro­vid­ed Ukraine.

    The admin­is­tra­tion, antic­i­pat­ing such demands as the com­mit­ment of mil­i­tary aid under Pres­i­dent Biden fast approach­es $20 bil­lion, has worked in recent weeks to pub­li­cize its efforts to track weapons ship­ments. Both the State Depart­ment and the Pen­ta­gon have out­lined plans, includ­ing more inspec­tions and train­ing for the Ukraini­ans, meant to pre­vent U.S. arms from falling into the wrong hands — ini­tia­tives that have failed thus far to quell Repub­li­can skep­tics call­ing for audits and oth­er account­abil­i­ty mea­sures.

    Most in Wash­ing­ton are in agree­ment that, gen­er­al­ly, the push for more over­sight is a good thing. But experts cau­tion there are cred­i­ble lim­i­ta­tions to ensur­ing an air­tight account of all weapons giv­en to Ukraine that are like­ly to leave Biden’s harsh­est crit­ics unsat­is­fied.

    “There are short­com­ings of end-use mon­i­tor­ing in the best of cir­cum­stances, and of course Ukraine isn’t in the best of cir­cum­stances,” said Elias Yousif, a researcher on the glob­al arms trade with the Stim­son Cen­ter. “There has to be some will­ing­ness to be prac­ti­cal about what we can achieve.”

    To date, the mega­phone for demand­ing change has been con­trolled pri­mar­i­ly by the GOP. Con­gress “will hold our gov­ern­ment account­able for all of the fund­ing for Ukraine,” Rep. Mar­jorie Tay­lor Greene (R‑Ga.) said this month in announc­ing a mea­sure to audit the aid pro­gram after Biden request­ed anoth­er $37 bil­lion for the gov­ern­ment in Kyiv. “There has to be account­abil­i­ty going for­ward,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Calif.), House Repub­li­cans’ cur­rent leader, told CNN in the inter­view in which he warned against giv­ing Ukraine a “blank check” to fight off Russia’s inva­sion.

    Yet the reck­on­ing could begin before the Repub­li­can takeover. A series of pro­vi­sions on offer in the House-passed ver­sion of this year’s annu­al defense autho­riza­tion bill would require a web of over­lap­ping reports from the Pen­ta­gon and the inspec­tors gen­er­al who police trans­fers of arti­cles of war, plus the estab­lish­ment of a task force to design and imple­ment enhanced track­ing mea­sures.

    And unlike the ris­ing GOP cho­rus of Ukraine skep­ti­cism, such line items — while yet to be rec­on­ciled with the Senate’s ver­sion of the bill, which is still pend­ing in that cham­ber — large­ly enjoy bipar­ti­san sup­port.

    “The tax­pay­ers deserve to know that invest­ment is going where its intend­ed to go,” Rep. Jason Crow (D‑Colo.), a vet­er­an-turned-law­mak­er, said in an inter­view.

    Crow led an effort in the House Armed Ser­vices Com­mit­tee to include in the defense bill instruc­tions to the Defense Depart­ment Inspec­tor Gen­er­al to review, audit, inves­ti­gate and oth­er­wise inspect the Pentagon’s efforts to sup­port Ukraine. He called the direc­tive “nec­es­sary,” even if he does not count him­self among the crit­ics insin­u­at­ing the Defense Depart­ment and the Ukraini­ans have failed to take the mat­ter seri­ous­ly enough.

    “In any war, there can be mis­steps and mis­al­lo­ca­tion of sup­plies,” he explained. But Crow also acknowl­edged that there were like­ly to be lim­i­ta­tions to the scope of account­ing that the Unit­ed States can pro­vide.

    ...

    Law­mak­ers, Pen­ta­gon offi­cials and experts all note that, thus far, there are few tan­gi­ble rea­sons for con­cern. Ukraine, they said, has been a proac­tive stew­ard of the assis­tance it has received, read­i­ly report­ing back about how U.S. mil­i­tary aid has been put to use — a ges­ture offi­cials believe is in no small part a func­tion of Kyiv’s effort to secure more of it. There also is a sense the Ukraini­ans have too much exis­ten­tial nation­al pride at stake to risk com­pro­mis­ing their effort to dri­ve out the Rus­sians by siphon­ing off weapons to the black mar­ket.

    But even the specter of dead­ly materiel falling through the cracks has many alarmed — espe­cial­ly with the West pour­ing small­er, less-trace­able arms into the coun­try as Ukrain­ian civil­ians face des­per­ate chal­lenges to their basic sur­vival.

    Part of the con­cern is due to prac­ti­cal lim­i­ta­tions. Accord­ing to Pen­ta­gon press sec­re­tary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Unit­ed States con­ducts weapons inspec­tions in Ukraine “when and where secu­ri­ty con­di­tions per­mit,” at loca­tions that “are not near the front line of Russia’s war against Ukraine.” Ryder declined to offer fur­ther details about the inspec­tions pro­gram, cit­ing con­cerns about oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty and force pro­tec­tion.

    Yet the State Depart­ment has a lim­it­ed bud­get for weapons inspec­tors posi­tioned in Ukraine, and thus can­not exam­ine every incom­ing ship­ment, accord­ing to offi­cials. As of ear­ly Novem­ber, U.S. mon­i­tors had per­formed just two in-per­son inspec­tions since the war began in Feb­ru­ary — account­ing for about 10 per­cent of the 22,000 U.S.-provided weapons, includ­ing Stinger sur­face-to-air mis­siles and Javelin anti­tank mis­siles, that require enhanced over­sight.

    Crow and oth­ers want to see the State Depart­ment expand its ros­ter of spe­cial­ists to con­duct more reg­u­lar checks at in-coun­try depots and trans­fer points.

    Anoth­er rea­son is the law. “End-use mon­i­tor­ing” is gov­erned by the Arms Export Con­trol Act, which requires the pres­i­den­tial admin­is­tra­tion to pro­vide “rea­son­able assur­ance” that recip­i­ents of mil­i­tary assis­tance are using the weapons for the pur­pose they were intend­ed, and com­ply­ing with any con­di­tions set by the Unit­ed States.

    In most cas­es, that check­up hap­pens sole­ly at the point where weapons are trans­ferred to Ukrain­ian cus­tody. Only in spe­cial cas­es, usu­al­ly when the weapons in ques­tion con­tain sen­si­tive tech­nol­o­gy, is “enhanced” mon­i­tor­ing required of the recip­i­ent nation. That entails track­ing ser­i­al num­bers and sub­mit­ting reports from the field. In Ukraine, such items include Stingers, Javelins, Avenger air defens­es and night-vision devices.

    The exist­ing sys­tem is not good enough, some law­mak­ers argue, not­ing that before the war, Ukraine ranked fair­ly low on glob­al cor­rup­tion index­es.

    “With the vol­umes of goods that we’re push­ing, it’s our respon­si­bil­i­ty to have third-par­ty over­sight. We do it all over the world,” Rep. Mike Waltz (R‑Fla.) said in an inter­view. He point­ed out that such prac­tices are used every­where from India to Israel and in coun­tries “that are much high­er on the cor­rup­tion and trans­paren­cy index” than Ukraine.

    Waltz, who worked with Crow and oth­ers to push sev­er­al of the defense bill’s bipar­ti­san mea­sures call­ing for increased over­sight, sup­ports keep­ing Ukrain­ian fight­ers well armed. But he believes the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has been too skit­tish about using Amer­i­cans to get a clear­er view of how U.S. weapons are being han­dled.

    “There are vet­er­ans’ groups run­ning all over the coun­try right now,” Waltz said, sug­gest­ing that they could be sub­con­tract­ed to report back to the Pen­ta­gon and State Depart­ment on how weapons are being used clos­er to the front. Short of that, Waltz argues it ought to be pos­si­ble to send U.S. inspec­tors not just to Ukraine’s cen­tral weapons depots, but “down to the brigade or even the bat­tal­ion head­quar­ters lev­el,” with­out undue risk.

    Thus far, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has resist­ed pres­sure to send inspec­tors or oth­er mil­i­tary per­son­nel too deeply into Ukraine, for fear of foment­ing a wider con­flict. Accord­ing to U.S. offi­cials, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss oper­a­tional mat­ters, Amer­i­can spe­cial­ists cur­rent­ly con­duct weapons inspec­tions unarmed — a con­di­tion that would like­ly be unsus­tain­able if they were sent clos­er to the front lines.

    The Biden admin­is­tra­tion has been adamant, offi­cials and law­mak­ers who have been briefed by them say, that it will not tip­toe into a sit­u­a­tion that risks being inter­pret­ed by the Krem­lin as direct Amer­i­can involve­ment in the war.

    But Waltz not­ed that Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin is wag­ing a pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign accus­ing the Unit­ed States and NATO of clan­des­tine­ly oper­at­ing in Ukraine to turn the pop­u­la­tion against Moscow. “That’s a self-lim­i­ta­tion on the administration’s part,” he argued. “There is an accept­able risk to hav­ing peo­ple behind the front lines check­ing on where all this aid is going and help­ing the Ukraini­ans use it more effec­tive­ly.”

    ————-

    “Pres­sure builds to step up weapons track­ing in Ukraine” By Karoun Demir­jian; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 11/27/2022

    The admin­is­tra­tion, antic­i­pat­ing such demands as the com­mit­ment of mil­i­tary aid under Pres­i­dent Biden fast approach­es $20 bil­lion, has worked in recent weeks to pub­li­cize its efforts to track weapons ship­ments. Both the State Depart­ment and the Pen­ta­gon have out­lined plans, includ­ing more inspec­tions and train­ing for the Ukraini­ans, meant to pre­vent U.S. arms from falling into the wrong hands — ini­tia­tives that have failed thus far to quell Repub­li­can skep­tics call­ing for audits and oth­er account­abil­i­ty mea­sures.”

    Some sort of account­ing for the bil­lions of dol­lars in lethal aid is inevitable with the GOP tak­ing con­trol of the House, hence the pre­emp­tive steps we’re see­ing to pub­li­cize the exist­ing efforts to track weapons ship­ments:

    ...
    Most in Wash­ing­ton are in agree­ment that, gen­er­al­ly, the push for more over­sight is a good thing. But experts cau­tion there are cred­i­ble lim­i­ta­tions to ensur­ing an air­tight account of all weapons giv­en to Ukraine that are like­ly to leave Biden’s harsh­est crit­ics unsat­is­fied.

    “There are short­com­ings of end-use mon­i­tor­ing in the best of cir­cum­stances, and of course Ukraine isn’t in the best of cir­cum­stances,” said Elias Yousif, a researcher on the glob­al arms trade with the Stim­son Cen­ter. “There has to be some will­ing­ness to be prac­ti­cal about what we can achieve.”

    ...

    Yet the reck­on­ing could begin before the Repub­li­can takeover. A series of pro­vi­sions on offer in the House-passed ver­sion of this year’s annu­al defense autho­riza­tion bill would require a web of over­lap­ping reports from the Pen­ta­gon and the inspec­tors gen­er­al who police trans­fers of arti­cles of war, plus the estab­lish­ment of a task force to design and imple­ment enhanced track­ing mea­sures.
    ...

    At the same time, we’re hear­ing all these warn­ings about the lim­its to what the US can do to actu­al­ly track where and how weapons are used. Lim­i­ta­tions that include a resis­tance against send­ing inspec­tors any­where close to the front lines. As a result, it sounds like the only inspec­tions are hap­pen­ing sole­ly at the point where weapons are trans­ferred to Ukrain­ian cus­tody. And it does­n’t sound like many of those inspec­tions are even hap­pen­ing. As of ear­ly Novem­ber, just two in-per­son inspec­tions had tak­en place since the start of the con­flict in Feb­ru­ary:

    ...
    Part of the con­cern is due to prac­ti­cal lim­i­ta­tions. Accord­ing to Pen­ta­gon press sec­re­tary Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Unit­ed States con­ducts weapons inspec­tions in Ukraine “when and where secu­ri­ty con­di­tions per­mit,” at loca­tions that “are not near the front line of Russia’s war against Ukraine.” Ryder declined to offer fur­ther details about the inspec­tions pro­gram, cit­ing con­cerns about oper­a­tional secu­ri­ty and force pro­tec­tion.

    Yet the State Depart­ment has a lim­it­ed bud­get for weapons inspec­tors posi­tioned in Ukraine, and thus can­not exam­ine every incom­ing ship­ment, accord­ing to offi­cials. As of ear­ly Novem­ber, U.S. mon­i­tors had per­formed just two in-per­son inspec­tions since the war began in Feb­ru­ary — account­ing for about 10 per­cent of the 22,000 U.S.-provided weapons, includ­ing Stinger sur­face-to-air mis­siles and Javelin anti­tank mis­siles, that require enhanced over­sight.
    ...

    In most cas­es, that check­up hap­pens sole­ly at the point where weapons are trans­ferred to Ukrain­ian cus­tody. Only in spe­cial cas­es, usu­al­ly when the weapons in ques­tion con­tain sen­si­tive tech­nol­o­gy, is “enhanced” mon­i­tor­ing required of the recip­i­ent nation. That entails track­ing ser­i­al num­bers and sub­mit­ting reports from the field. In Ukraine, such items include Stingers, Javelins, Avenger air defens­es and night-vision devices.

    The exist­ing sys­tem is not good enough, some law­mak­ers argue, not­ing that before the war, Ukraine ranked fair­ly low on glob­al cor­rup­tion index­es.

    ...

    Thus far, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion has resist­ed pres­sure to send inspec­tors or oth­er mil­i­tary per­son­nel too deeply into Ukraine, for fear of foment­ing a wider con­flict. Accord­ing to U.S. offi­cials, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss oper­a­tional mat­ters, Amer­i­can spe­cial­ists cur­rent­ly con­duct weapons inspec­tions unarmed — a con­di­tion that would like­ly be unsus­tain­able if they were sent clos­er to the front lines.

    The Biden admin­is­tra­tion has been adamant, offi­cials and law­mak­ers who have been briefed by them say, that it will not tip­toe into a sit­u­a­tion that risks being inter­pret­ed by the Krem­lin as direct Amer­i­can involve­ment in the war.
    ...

    And here we get to what is per­haps the most alarm­ing detail in this sto­ry: the assur­ances that we should­n’t real­ly be too con­cerned about how these weapons are being used or whose hands they are falling into because the Ukraini­ans are being very proac­tive about report­ing how the weapons are used. It’s the kind of assur­ance that should­n’t actu­al­ly be all that assur­ing if you take a moment to think about it:

    ...
    Law­mak­ers, Pen­ta­gon offi­cials and experts all note that, thus far, there are few tan­gi­ble rea­sons for con­cern. Ukraine, they said, has been a proac­tive stew­ard of the assis­tance it has received, read­i­ly report­ing back about how U.S. mil­i­tary aid has been put to use — a ges­ture offi­cials believe is in no small part a func­tion of Kyiv’s effort to secure more of it. There also is a sense the Ukraini­ans have too much exis­ten­tial nation­al pride at stake to risk com­pro­mis­ing their effort to dri­ve out the Rus­sians by siphon­ing off weapons to the black mar­ket.

    But even the specter of dead­ly materiel falling through the cracks has many alarmed — espe­cial­ly with the West pour­ing small­er, less-trace­able arms into the coun­try as Ukrain­ian civil­ians face des­per­ate chal­lenges to their basic sur­vival.
    ...

    We are told that “Law­mak­ers, Pen­ta­gon offi­cials and experts all note” how there are few tan­gi­ble rea­sons for con­cern. That appears to be a wide­ly shared atti­tude. The kind of ‘out of sight, out of mind’ atti­tude that’s pre­sum­ably going to ensure Ukraine remains a place where Nazi fel­low trav­el­ers can get their hands on next-gen­er­a­tion NATO weapons sys­tems for years to come.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | November 29, 2022, 2:28 pm
  15. Move over Azov and Right Sec­tor. There’s a new Ukrain­ian Nazi bat­tal­ion to lion­ize. Well, not new. We’ve been hear­ing about the Brat­st­vo (“Broth­er­hood”) Bat­tal­ion and its affil­i­ates for years. For starters, there was the “Saint Mary Bat­tal­ion” was fea­tured in a Reuters report back in 2015 high­light­ing the grow­ing con­cern inside Ukraine about the secu­ri­ty threat these groups posed to the sta­bil­i­ty of the coun­try. The bat­tal­ion was up front about how it viewed itself as a kind of “Chris­t­ian Tal­iban”. The Saint Mary Bat­tal­ion was found­ed by Dmytro Korchyn­sky, who also found­ed Brat­st­vo as a par­ty in 2004. As the fol­low­ing arti­cle notes, Korchyn­sky pre­vi­ous­ly led the far-right Ukrain­ian Nation­al Assembly–Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO). Recall the key role the UNA-UNSO played in con­nect­ing the WWII-era Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tionist net­works with the post-Cold War Ukrain­ian fas­cist groups like Azov and Right Sec­tor today. Also recall the decades of his­to­ry of coop­er­a­tion with the CIA. And then there’s the reports about the role Brat­st­vo mem­bers played in the sniper attacks dur­ing the 2014 Maid­an rev­o­lu­tion. The Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion isn’t new, nor is its ide­ol­o­gy and back­ground a mys­tery. But you could be for­giv­en for assum­ing that was the case after read­ing a recent NY Times piece hail­ing the unit as brave and pious free­dom fight­ers and makes no men­tion of the unit’s far right ide­ol­o­gy or self-declared “Chris­t­ian Tal­iban” aspi­ra­tions.

    But there is one hint at the group’s true nature found in the pho­tos in the piece. It turns out the Totenkopfver­bande SS skull patch can be spot­ted in two of the arti­cle’s pho­tos, albeit with no men­tion of the sym­bols or their sig­nif­i­cance. Recall how Azov sol­diers with the same patch­es were pho­tographed pro­tect­ing Pres­i­dent Zelen­skiy in a pho­to post­ed on social media by Zelen­skiy’s own office, before it was tak­en down. SS patch­es are sim­ply nor­mal in Ukraine these days. So nor­mal the pres­i­den­t’s body­guards have them.

    And as the NY Times once again demon­strat­ed, that main­stream­ing of Ukraine’s Nazis has tak­en the para­dox­i­cal approach of show­cas­ing these Nazis while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly deny­ing they exist. As a result, groups like Brat­st­vo in keep get­ting intro­duced and rein­tro­duced to West­ern audi­ences as just nor­mal Ukrain­ian patri­ots. Extreme­ly pious patri­ots, in this case. Just don’t call them the “Chris­t­ian Tal­iban”, even though that’s what they call them­selves:

    FAIR

    ACTION ALERT: NYT Has Found New Neo-Nazi Troops to Lion­ize in Ukraine

    ERIC HOROWITZ
    NOVEMBER 30, 2022

    The New York Times has found anoth­er neo-Nazi mili­tia to fawn over in Ukraine. The Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion “gave access to the New York Times to report on two recent river­ine oper­a­tions,” which cul­mi­nat­ed in a piece (11/21/22) head­lined “On the Riv­er at Night, Ambush­ing Rus­sians.”

    Since the US-backed Maid­an coup in 2014, estab­lish­ment media have either min­i­mized the far-right ide­ol­o­gy that guides many Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist detach­ments or ignored it com­plete­ly.

    Anti-war out­lets, includ­ing FAIR (1/28/22, 3/22/22), have repeat­ed­ly high­light­ed this dynam­ic—par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing cor­po­rate media’s lion­iza­tion of the Azov bat­tal­ion, once wide­ly rec­og­nized by West­ern media as a fas­cist mili­tia, now sold to the pub­lic as a reformed far-right group that gal­lant­ly defends the sov­er­eign­ty of a demo­c­ra­t­ic Ukraine (New York Times, 10/4/22; FAIR.org, 10/6/22).

    That is when Azov’s polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion is dis­cussed at all, which has become less and less com­mon since Rus­sia launched its inva­sion in Feb­ru­ary.

    ‘Chris­t­ian Tal­iban’

    The less­er-known Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion, with­in which the Times embed­ded its reporters, is dri­ven by sev­er­al far-right cur­rents—none of which are men­tioned in the arti­cle.

    Brat­st­vo was found­ed as a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion in 2004 by Dmytro Korchyn­sky, who pre­vi­ous­ly led the far-right Ukrain­ian Nation­al Assembly–Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO).

    Korchyn­sky, who now fights in Bratstvo’s para­mil­i­tary wing, is a Holo­caust denier who false­ly blamed Jews for the 1932–33 famine in Ukraine, and ped­dled the lie that “120,000 Jews fought in the Wehrma­cht.” He has stat­ed that he sees Brat­st­vo as a “Chris­t­ian Tal­iban” (Inter­cept, 3/18/15).

    In the 1980s, the Times por­trayed the reli­gious extrem­ists of the Afghan mujahideen—who were receiv­ing US train­ing and arms—as a hero­ic bul­wark against Sovi­et expan­sion­ism. We all know how that worked out.

    In an echo of that pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign, the Times neglect­ed to tell its read­ers about the neo-Nazi and theo­crat­ic pol­i­tics of the Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion. Why should any­one care who else Brat­st­vo mem­bers would like to see dead, so long as they’re oper­at­ing in fur­ther­ance of US pol­i­cy­mak­ers’ stat­ed aim of weak­en­ing Rus­sia?

    Mod­ern-day cru­sade

    The article’s author, Car­lot­ta Gall, recount­ed Bratstvo’s Russ­ian-fight­ing exploits in qua­si-reli­gious terms. Indeed, the only instances in which the Times even hint­ed at the unit’s guid­ing ide­ol­o­gy came in the form of mythol­o­giz­ing the unit’s Chris­t­ian devo­tion.

    Of Brat­st­vo fight­ers embark­ing on a mis­sion, Gall wrote, “They recit­ed a prayer togeth­er, then loaded up the nar­row rub­ber dinghies and set out, hunched silent fig­ures in the dark.” Refer­ring to bat­tal­ion com­man­der Olek­siy Serediuk’s wife, who also fights with the unit, Gall extolled, “She has gained an almost myth­i­cal renown for sur­viv­ing close com­bat with Russ­ian troops.”

    The piece even fea­tured a pho­to­graph show­ing mili­tia mem­bers gath­ered in prayer. Evok­ing the notion of pious sol­diers rather than that of a “Chris­t­ian Tal­iban,” the cap­tion read, “Mem­bers of the Brat­st­vo battalion’s spe­cial forces unit prayed togeth­er before going on a night oper­a­tion.”

    The Times also gave voice to some of the lofti­er aims of Bratstvo’s cru­sade, quot­ing Serediuk’s mus­ing that, “We all dream about going to Chech­nya, and the Krem­lin, and as far as the Ural Moun­tains.” Nazi racial ide­o­logues have long been enam­ored by the prospect of reach­ing the Urals, which they view as the nat­ur­al bar­ri­er sep­a­rat­ing Euro­pean cul­ture from the Asi­at­ic hordes.

    While plot­ting Oper­a­tion Bar­barossa, Hitler iden­ti­fied the Urals as the east­ern extent of the Wehrmacht’s planned advance. In 1943, refer­ring to the Nazi scheme that aimed to rid Euro­pean Rus­sia of Asi­at­ic “unter­men­schen” so the land could be set­tled by hun­dreds of mil­lions of white Euro­peans, Himm­ler declared, “We will charge ahead and push our way for­ward lit­tle by lit­tle to the Urals.”

    ‘Mind­set of the 13th cen­tu­ry’

    The only two Brat­st­vo mem­bers named in the piece, mean­while, are Serediuk and Vitaliy Chorny. While Chorny—who the Times iden­ti­fied as the battalion’s head of intel­li­gence gathering—is quot­ed, his state­ments are lim­it­ed to descrip­tions of the unit’s fight­ing strat­e­gy. Serediuk’s record­ed utter­ances are sim­i­lar­ly lack­ing in sub­stance.

    Far more illu­mi­nat­ing is an Al Jazeera arti­cle (4/15/15) titled “‘Chris­t­ian Taliban’s’ Cru­sade on Ukraine’s Front Lines,” which quotes both Serediuk and Chorny exten­sive­ly. Serediuk, Al Jazeera report­ed, “rev­els in the Chris­t­ian Tal­iban label.”: In ref­er­ence to his deci­sion to leave the Azov bat­tal­ion, the piece went on to say

    Serediuk didn’t leave the Azov because of the neo-Nazi con­nec­tions, however—extreme-right ide­ol­o­gy doesn’t both­er him. What does irk him, how­ev­er, is being around fight­ers who are not zeal­ous in their reli­gious con­vic­tions.

    In the same piece, Chorny invoked the vio­lent­ly anti­se­mit­ic Cru­sades of the Mid­dle Ages to describe Bratstvo’s ide­o­log­i­cal foun­da­tion:

    The enemy—the forces of darkness—they have all the weapons, they have greater num­bers, they have mon­ey. But our sol­diers are the bringers of Euro­pean tra­di­tions and the Chris­t­ian mind­set of the 13th cen­tu­ry.

    To cir­cum­vent the Times’ exul­tant nar­ra­tive, one has to do a cer­tain amount of sup­ple­men­tary research and analy­sis. But even the most basic inquiry—searching “Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion” on Google—reveals the far-right under­pin­nings of the unit with which the Times embed­ded its reporters.

    The sev­enth search result is a June 2022 study from the Com­bat­ing Ter­ror­ism Cen­ter at West Point, which report­ed, “Anoth­er such far-right enti­ty is the so-called Broth­er­hood (Brat­st­vo) ‘bat­tal­ion,’ which includes Belaru­sian, Dan­ish, Irish and Cana­di­an mem­bers.”

    The ninth result is an arti­cle from the Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con (4/6/22), which quot­ed a far-right Cana­di­an vol­un­teer as say­ing on Telegram that he was “fight­ing in the neo-Nazi ‘Brat­st­vo’ Bat­tal­ion in Kyiv.”

    SS mem­o­ra­bil­ia

    In a world where jour­nal­ists actu­al­ly prac­ticed what they preached, some­one at the paper of record sure­ly would have noticed the Nazi insignia appear­ing in two pho­tos in the piece. In this world, how­ev­er, the Times either for­got how to use the zoom function—though the paper made exten­sive use of this capa­bil­i­ty when report­ing on China’s Com­mu­nist Par­ty Con­gress the month before (FAIR.org, 11/11/22)—or they sim­ply did not want to report on this ugly and incon­ve­nient dis­cov­ery.

    One sol­dier is seen wear­ing an emblem known as a “Totenkopf” in a pho­to of Bratstvo’s prayer cir­cle. The Totenkopf, which means “death’s head” in Ger­man, was used as an insignia by the Totenkopfver­bande—an SS unit that par­tic­i­pat­ed in Hitler’s war of anni­hi­la­tion against the Sovi­et Union, and guard­ed the con­cen­tra­tion camps where Nazi Ger­many con­demned mil­lions of Jew­ish men, women and chil­dren to death.

    Indi­vid­u­als don­ning the Totenkopf also took part in the mur­der of mil­lions of oth­ers in these camps, includ­ing Sovi­et pris­on­ers of war, polit­i­cal dis­si­dents, trade union­ists, per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, homo­sex­u­als and Romani peo­ple.

    In Sep­tem­ber, Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy posted—and then qui­et­ly delet­ed—a pic­ture on social media of him­self with a num­ber of sol­diers, one of whom was wear­ing a Totenkopf patch sim­i­lar to that seen in the Times’ pho­to of Bratstvo’s prayer meet­ing. One can eas­i­ly find this par­tic­u­lar iter­a­tion on Ama­zon or eBay.

    Lat­er in the Times arti­cle, anoth­er pho­to­graph of a sol­dier wear­ing a slight­ly dif­fer­ent ver­sion of the insignia appeared. Here, bathed in the light of an inte­ri­or room and star­ing out from the very cen­ter of the image, the Totenkopf is even hard­er to miss. Amazon’s prod­uct descrip­tion for this spe­cif­ic vari­ant reads, “This gor­geous repli­ca piece takes you back to World War II.”

    ...

    ————-

    “ACTION ALERT: NYT Has Found New Neo-Nazi Troops to Lion­ize in Ukraine” by ERIC HOROWITZ; FAIR; 11/30/2022

    “Anti-war out­lets, includ­ing FAIR (1/28/22, 3/22/22), have repeat­ed­ly high­light­ed this dynam­ic—par­tic­u­lar­ly regard­ing cor­po­rate media’s lion­iza­tion of the Azov bat­tal­ion, once wide­ly rec­og­nized by West­ern media as a fas­cist mili­tia, now sold to the pub­lic as a reformed far-right group that gal­lant­ly defends the sov­er­eign­ty of a demo­c­ra­t­ic Ukraine (New York Times, 10/4/22; FAIR.org, 10/6/22).

    We’ve heard this sto­ry before. It’s the same white­washed sto­ry we’ve been hear­ing about Ukraine’s more promi­nent Nazi bat­tal­ions like Azov, but this time it’s one of the less­er-known Nazi bat­tal­ions get­ting the kid-glove jour­nal­is­tic treat­ment. No men­tion of the group’s Holo­caust denial­ism or its self-pro­claimed “Chris­t­ian Tal­iban” aspi­ra­tion. Noth­ing about that appeared in the arti­cle. Instead, we get depic­tions of the sol­diers pious­ly pray­ing:

    ...
    The less­er-known Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion, with­in which the Times embed­ded its reporters, is dri­ven by sev­er­al far-right cur­rents—none of which are men­tioned in the arti­cle.

    Brat­st­vo was found­ed as a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion in 2004 by Dmytro Korchyn­sky, who pre­vi­ous­ly led the far-right Ukrain­ian Nation­al Assembly–Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO).

    Korchyn­sky, who now fights in Bratstvo’s para­mil­i­tary wing, is a Holo­caust denier who false­ly blamed Jews for the 1932–33 famine in Ukraine, and ped­dled the lie that “120,000 Jews fought in the Wehrma­cht.” He has stat­ed that he sees Brat­st­vo as a “Chris­t­ian Tal­iban” (Inter­cept, 3/18/15).

    In the 1980s, the Times por­trayed the reli­gious extrem­ists of the Afghan mujahideen—who were receiv­ing US train­ing and arms—as a hero­ic bul­wark against Sovi­et expan­sion­ism. We all know how that worked out.

    In an echo of that pro­pa­gan­da cam­paign, the Times neglect­ed to tell its read­ers about the neo-Nazi and theo­crat­ic pol­i­tics of the Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion. Why should any­one care who else Brat­st­vo mem­bers would like to see dead, so long as they’re oper­at­ing in fur­ther­ance of US pol­i­cy­mak­ers’ stat­ed aim of weak­en­ing Rus­sia?

    ...

    The article’s author, Car­lot­ta Gall, recount­ed Bratstvo’s Russ­ian-fight­ing exploits in qua­si-reli­gious terms. Indeed, the only instances in which the Times even hint­ed at the unit’s guid­ing ide­ol­o­gy came in the form of mythol­o­giz­ing the unit’s Chris­t­ian devo­tion.

    Of Brat­st­vo fight­ers embark­ing on a mis­sion, Gall wrote, “They recit­ed a prayer togeth­er, then loaded up the nar­row rub­ber dinghies and set out, hunched silent fig­ures in the dark.” Refer­ring to bat­tal­ion com­man­der Olek­siy Serediuk’s wife, who also fights with the unit, Gall extolled, “She has gained an almost myth­i­cal renown for sur­viv­ing close com­bat with Russ­ian troops.”

    The piece even fea­tured a pho­to­graph show­ing mili­tia mem­bers gath­ered in prayer. Evok­ing the notion of pious sol­diers rather than that of a “Chris­t­ian Tal­iban,” the cap­tion read, “Mem­bers of the Brat­st­vo battalion’s spe­cial forces unit prayed togeth­er before going on a night oper­a­tion.”
    ...

    But the white wash­ing goes beyond just neglect­ing to inform read­ers about the real nature of this group. The clas­sic Nazi Totenkopf sym­bol actu­al­ly shows up twice in pho­tos in the piece on the patch­es on their uni­forms. The sig­nif­i­cance is nev­er men­tioned, of course. But there they are, get­ting main­streamed by the ‘paper of record’. Just these kinds of patch­es were get­ting main­streamed by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment when Pres­i­dent Zelen­skiy tweet­ed out a pho­to show­ing him sur­round­ed by body guards sport­ing the same Nazi sym­bols back in Sep­tem­ber. It’s a reminder that the pas­sive main­stream­ing of Ukraine’s Nazi bat­tal­ions by the West­ern press is large­ly fol­low­ing the aggres­sive open main­stream­ing of these groups by the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment:

    ...
    In a world where jour­nal­ists actu­al­ly prac­ticed what they preached, some­one at the paper of record sure­ly would have noticed the Nazi insignia appear­ing in two pho­tos in the piece. In this world, how­ev­er, the Times either for­got how to use the zoom function—though the paper made exten­sive use of this capa­bil­i­ty when report­ing on China’s Com­mu­nist Par­ty Con­gress the month before (FAIR.org, 11/11/22)—or they sim­ply did not want to report on this ugly and incon­ve­nient dis­cov­ery.

    One sol­dier is seen wear­ing an emblem known as a “Totenkopf” in a pho­to of Bratstvo’s prayer cir­cle. The Totenkopf, which means “death’s head” in Ger­man, was used as an insignia by the Totenkopfver­bande—an SS unit that par­tic­i­pat­ed in Hitler’s war of anni­hi­la­tion against the Sovi­et Union, and guard­ed the con­cen­tra­tion camps where Nazi Ger­many con­demned mil­lions of Jew­ish men, women and chil­dren to death.

    ...

    In Sep­tem­ber, Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy posted—and then qui­et­ly delet­ed—a pic­ture on social media of him­self with a num­ber of sol­diers, one of whom was wear­ing a Totenkopf patch sim­i­lar to that seen in the Times’ pho­to of Bratstvo’s prayer meet­ing. One can eas­i­ly find this par­tic­u­lar iter­a­tion on Ama­zon or eBay.

    Lat­er in the Times arti­cle, anoth­er pho­to­graph of a sol­dier wear­ing a slight­ly dif­fer­ent ver­sion of the insignia appeared. Here, bathed in the light of an inte­ri­or room and star­ing out from the very cen­ter of the image, the Totenkopf is even hard­er to miss. Amazon’s prod­uct descrip­tion for this spe­cif­ic vari­ant reads, “This gor­geous repli­ca piece takes you back to World War II.”
    ...

    Read­ers also got anoth­er white­washed glimpse at the group’s extrem­ist nature via the quote from Serediuk mus­ing about how “We all dream about going to Chech­nya, and the Krem­lin, and as far as the Ural Moun­tains.” As Reuters report­ed back in 2015 in a piece describ­ing the grow­ing threat these Nazi bat­tal­ions posed to the sta­bil­i­ty of Ukraine, the founder of Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion, Dmytro Korchyn­sky, expressed his desire for Ukraine to “lead the cru­sades” and make Moscow burn in revenge. So it’s worth keep­ing in mind that it’s these kinds of ambi­tions that the Krem­lin can read­i­ly cite as exam­ples of how the very real Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Ukraine posed a grow­ing long-term threat to Rus­si­a’s secu­ri­ty, which was the pre­text for Rus­sian’s ‘spe­cial mil­i­tary oper­a­tion’ launched this year:

    ...
    The Times also gave voice to some of the lofti­er aims of Bratstvo’s cru­sade, quot­ing Serediuk’s mus­ing that, “We all dream about going to Chech­nya, and the Krem­lin, and as far as the Ural Moun­tains.” Nazi racial ide­o­logues have long been enam­ored by the prospect of reach­ing the Urals, which they view as the nat­ur­al bar­ri­er sep­a­rat­ing Euro­pean cul­ture from the Asi­at­ic hordes.

    While plot­ting Oper­a­tion Bar­barossa, Hitler iden­ti­fied the Urals as the east­ern extent of the Wehrmacht’s planned advance. In 1943, refer­ring to the Nazi scheme that aimed to rid Euro­pean Rus­sia of Asi­at­ic “unter­men­schen” so the land could be set­tled by hun­dreds of mil­lions of white Euro­peans, Himm­ler declared, “We will charge ahead and push our way for­ward lit­tle by lit­tle to the Urals.”
    ...

    In a san­er world, the cul­ti­va­tion of Ukrain­ian Nazi move­ments that open­ly dream of burn­ing down Moscow would be seen as an obvi­ous provo­ca­tion and a recipe for a larg­er, longer con­flict between Rus­sia and the West. But we don’t live in that san­er world. We live in the world where the ‘paper of record’ runs cov­er for self-described “Chris­t­ian Tal­iban” Nazis and almost no one blinks. It’s hard to get much more main­stream than that. Hard, but we’ll find a way to do, one white­wash­ing at a time.f

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 3, 2022, 5:29 pm
  16. It’s a trag­i­cal­ly great time to be a Nazi. Has been for a while now. One of the best times in decades, arguably. Espe­cial­ly if you’re a Ukrain­ian Nazi. As we’ve seen, while the white­wash­ing of Ukrain­ian Nazis is noth­ing new, 2022 real­ly has been the year of the great Nazi White­wash. For exam­ple:

    * There was the NY Times’s recent white­wash­ing of the “Chris­t­ian Tal­iban” Brat­st­vo bat­tal­ion.

    * This year’s War­rior Games — tak­ing place at the ESPN Wide Word of Sports Com­plex at Walt Dis­ney World Resort — includ­ed a Ukrain­ian team for the first time ever. And as we should expect at this point, that Ukrain­ian team had mul­ti­ple Nazi mem­bers, includ­ing Azov mem­ber Ihor Halush­ka, who not only has a large Nazi Son­nen­rad tat­too but end­ed up win­ning the “Heart of the Team” award.

    * Face­book relaxed its rules against call­ing for vio­lence to allow for calls for vio­lence against Russ­ian sol­diers, but also relaxed the pre­vi­ous bans on prais­ing the Azov bat­tal­ion.

    And that’s just a sam­pling of the con­cert­ed inter­na­tion­al efforts to ele­vate Ukraine’s Nazis to inter­na­tion­al celebri­ties. And as the fol­low­ing Naked Cap­i­tal­ism post describes, those nor­mal­iza­tion efforts appear to have been large­ly suc­cess­ful at this point. At least in the US. That’s the con­clu­sion that’s hard to avoid when look­ing at the remark­able celebri­ty tour under­tak­en by Azov bat­tal­ion pho­tog­ra­ph­er Dmytro Kozatsky, whose pho­tos of the siege of the Azovstal steel plant in Mar­i­oupol are now being show­cased at var­i­ous exhibits as part of Ukraine’s ongo­ing inter­na­tion­al pub­lic rela­tions efforts. In oth­er words, Kozatsky is effec­tive­ly oper­at­ing as a pub­lic rela­tions ambas­sador for Ukraine. Anoth­er Ukrain­ian Nazi ambas­sador.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, as we’re going to see, one com­pli­ca­tion for Kozatsky’s celebri­ty tour has been the fact that he’s got an exten­sive his­to­ry of mak­ing pro-Nazi social media post­ings, some­thing that’s been point­ed out by Ukrain­ian dis­si­dent Ana­toly Shariy. Recall how Shariy formed banned Par­ty of Shariy, which was one of the polit­i­cal par­ties banned in Ukraine this year. Shariy was also placed on the Myrotvorets black­list and claims to have been the tar­get of an SBU assas­si­na­tion attempt. Back in May, Ukraine attempt­ed to get Spain to extra­dite Shariy back Ukraine on trea­son charges on the basis that, “SBU inves­ti­ga­tors con­sid­er that Shariy car­ried out unlaw­ful activ­i­ty detri­men­tal to Ukraine’s nation­al secu­ri­ty in the infor­ma­tion sphere.” Spain even­tu­al­ly refused Ukraine’s request in Octo­ber after mul­ti­ple dead­lines were missed with­out Ukraine fil­ing the nec­es­sary paper­work. It was last month when Shariy post­ed a series of Koza­sky’s pro-Nazi social media post­ings. Lat­er that day, the Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty of Cat­alo­nia (UPC) — which had been show­cas­ing his pho­tos since mid-Octo­ber — announced it was pre­ma­ture­ly end­ing the show, claim­ing that it “wasn’t aware of the artist’s ide­ol­o­gy.” Kozatsky was sched­uled to be a guest speak­er lat­er that day at NYC’s pre­miere of the film Free­dom on Fire (2022) at the School of Visu­al Arts (SVA) The­ater in Man­hat­tan. The SVA then qui­et­ly removed any men­tion of Kozatsky’s planned appear­ance from its web­site that morn­ing. But he still appeared as a guest speak­er. Audi­ence mem­bers who raised con­cerned about his Nazi ide­ol­o­gy were forcibly removed from the event.

    But beyond this con­cert­ed effort to ignore Kozatsky’s Nazism is the appar­ent effort to ignore some remark­able claims Kozatsky made while he was a Russ­ian POW after the fall of the Azovstal plant: In an inter­view post­ed on Tel­gram, Kozatsky alleged to have heard about orders from Zelen­s­ki advi­sor Olek­sii Arestovich for the killing of Russ­ian sol­diers who had been tak­en pris­on­ers and the cre­ation of shock videos show­ing that POW mis­treat­ment. The inter­view of Kozatsky mak­ing these claims were post­ed on Telegram. It does­n’t appear that those claims were ever seri­ous­ly inves­ti­gat­ed, but it’s still fas­ci­nat­ing that a high-pro­file mem­ber of Azov can make these kinds of wide­ly pub­li­cized claims about war crimes and go on to do an inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty tour. That’s all part of the griz­zly con­text of the ongo­ing inter­na­tion­al white­wash­ing of Ukraine’s Nazis. The longer this con­flict goes, the more atroc­i­ties and war crimes we learn about which requires even more white­wash­ing:

    Naked Cap­i­tal­ism

    Nor­mal­iz­ing Nazis at Vogue, MSNBC, and “America’s Largest Doc­u­men­tary Fes­ti­val” (but not Cat­alo­nia)

    By Lam­bert Strether of Cor­rente.
    Post­ed on Decem­ber 5, 2022

    Dmytro Kozatsky was the press offi­cer of Ukraine’s Azov Bat­tal­ion, which makes him a fas­cist (Colonel Dou­glas Mac­Gre­gor: “[T]hese so-called Azov Nazis and their sup­port­ers are not only mur­der­ing Rus­sians, they’re mur­der­ing their own peo­ple, and as we saw recent­ly, they actu­al­ly set out to kill Pol­ish troops that were serv­ing in Ukrain­ian uni­form in Ukraine.” For more on the Azovs, see Appen­dix A. For more on Kozatsky, see Appen­dix B).[1] Kozatsky is also a pho­tog­ra­ph­er. His most recent project was pho­tograph­ing from inside the Azovstal iron and steel works at Mar­i­upol, with the Azovs, until his cap­ture by Russ­ian forces and ulti­mate release in a pris­on­er exchange. He is now tour­ing the Unit­ed States, appar­ent­ly to sup­port a movie in which he stars (as him­self), and his Azovstal pho­to­book. The main pur­pose of this post is to show a Nazi insin­u­at­ing him­self — and rather eas­i­ly — into the upper reach­es of our cul­ture indus­try (fash­ion, film, books) through such exam­ples as I can glean from Google in its cur­rrent state. The cul­ture indus­try being pri­mar­i­ly PMC and Demo­c­rat, the same peo­ple defend­ing and applaud­ing Kozatsky are also the ones with “In This House” signs on their lawns, who decry “hate” wher­ev­er they feel they encounter it. It’s a fun­ny old world. But let’s look first at Kozatsky’s war.

    The seige of Azovstal made Kozatsky’s career as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er (and he is a good pho­tog­ra­ph­er, much as Leni Riefen­stahl was a bril­liant cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er). Let’s look at three images:
    [see image]
    (From the VOA.) Note the cap­tion: “Azov reg­i­ment.”
    [see image]
    (From WaPo.) The cap­tion: “Azov spe­cial forces reg­i­ment” (what­ev­er that means).
    [see image]

    (From Ukrain­ian Week­ly.) The cap­tion sources the pho­to to “the Min­istry of Cul­ture and Infor­ma­tion Pol­i­cy of Ukraine,” sug­gest­ing an offi­cial con­nec­tion. This one seems to be of Kozatsky, rather than by him. (The first two pho­tos, not being open­ly manip­u­la­tive, are more appeal­ing to me than this one. I mean, a shaft of light strik­ing a per­for­ma­tive Jesus? Real­ly? At least it’s an ethos.)

    When Russ­ian forces took Azovstal, Kozatsky was cap­tured (along with, accord­ing to Russ­ian esti­mates, 2,439 oth­er pris­on­ers of war). Moon of Alaba­ma dis­cov­ered this curi­ous inci­dent which took place while Kozatsky was in cap­tiv­i­ty:

    On July 28 the Rus­sians pub­lished a video of an inter­view with Azov nazi sol­dier Dmytro Kozatsky, call sign Orest, who direct­ly accused Zelen­s­ki advi­sor [Olek­sii ] Arestovich of order­ing the killing of Russ­ian sol­diers who had been tak­en pris­on­ers.

    Kozatsky was run­ning the pub­lic rela­tion side for his Azov unit. Even before the war start­ed, Kozatsky says, Arestovich was prepar­ing an infor­ma­tion cam­paign with shock videos that were sup­posed to show the tor­ture and killing of Russ­ian sol­diers tak­en pris­on­ers. Kozatsky received such an order and passed it on. He lat­er not­ed that such shock videos were indeed made and pub­lished on social media sides.

    Nego­ti­a­tions took place between Rus­sia and Ukraine, and of the 2,439 Ukrain­ian POWs, Rus­sia released 200, one of whom was Kozatsky. From Ukrain­s­ka Prav­da:

    “It is very dif­fi­cult to nego­ti­ate about peo­ple who are well known in the media. The few­er peo­ple know you, the eas­i­er it is to release you [from cap­tiv­i­ty]. When you are famous, your val­ue increas­es many times over. The most dif­fi­cult thing was to talk about the com­man­ders, about Ptash­ka [renowned female army para­medic – ed.], or about the pho­tog­ra­ph­er known as Orest,” anoth­er inter­locu­tor in Pres­i­dent Zelenskyy’s cir­cle explained.

    Clear­ly, for what­ev­er rea­son, Kozatsky was a high-val­ue pris­on­er (and not least because throw­ing Zeken­sky advi­sor Arestovich under the bus — if that’s what real­ly hap­pened — didn’t affect his release in any way). Kozatsky describes his war to EuroNews:

    “That’s it. I am thank­ful to Azovstal for shel­ter – the place of my death and my life,” Dmytro ‘Orest’ Kozatsky said in his Insta­gram post, pub­lished on Fri­day.

    The Azov reg­i­ment fighter[2] made his pho­tog­ra­phy from the sieged Azovstal steel plant avail­able for free, ask­ing for it to be shared as much as pos­si­ble. Some of these pho­tographs have already gone viral reveal­ing the sit­u­a­tion of Azov reg­i­ment fight­ers, notably the injured per­son­nel.

    “By the way, while I will be in cap­tiv­i­ty, I leave you my pho­tos, apply to all the jour­nal­ist awards and pho­tog­ra­phy com­pe­ti­tions for me. If I get some­thing, I will be real­ly pleased to learn about it after I am released. Thank you all for your sup­port. See you”, he wrote.

    And now Kozatsky is on tour! First, I’ll look at what hap­pened to Kozatsky in Spain (where they know what fas­cism is all about, hav­ing been ruled by Fran­co). After that, I’ll work though cas­es in the Unit­ed States: Vogue mag­a­zine, Ukrain­ian Nation­al Wom­ens League Of Amer­i­ca (Philadel­phia), the School Of Visu­al Arts (New York), and (drum­roll) MSNBC[3].

    Cat­alo­nia. Here’s what hap­pened at the Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty of Cat­alo­nia. From Hyper­al­ler­gic:

    Sev­er­al of [Kozatsky’s Azovstal] pho­tos were on dis­play at the Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty of Cat­alo­nia (UPC) since mid-Octo­ber, but on Novem­ber 13, the insti­tu­tion announced it was pre­ma­ture­ly end­ing the show, claim­ing that it “wasn’t aware of the artist’s ide­ol­o­gy.”

    “The UPC rad­i­cal­ly rejects Nazism and regrets the sit­u­a­tion cre­at­ed,” the UPC said in a state­ment.

    Ear­li­er that day, pro-Russ­ian Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ist Ana­toly Shariy had shared mul­ti­ple screen­shots of Kozatsky’s social media posts on Telegram, all of which con­tained far-right and neo-Nazi hate sym­bols. A swasti­ka tat­too appears on Kozatsky’s leg, with anoth­er drawn in ketchup on a home­made piz­za. Mean­while, a self­ie of Kozatsky shows his sweat­shirt embla­zoned with the num­bers 14/88, a com­bi­na­tion of two white suprema­cist sym­bols, and a Ukrain­ian coat of arms.

    (To be fair, Kozatsky issued a non-apol­o­gy apol­o­gy. For more, see Appen­dix B.)

    Vogue Mag­a­zine

    From Dmytro Kozatsky’s list­ing as a Vogue pho­tog­ra­ph­er:

    The Azov reg­i­ment fight­er made his pho­tog­ra­phy from the sieged Azovstal steel plant avail­able for free, ask­ing for it to be shared as much as pos­si­ble. Some of these pho­tographs have already gone viral reveal­ing the sit­u­a­tion of Azov reg­i­ment fight­ers, notably the injured per­son­nel.

    Dmytro and oth­er fight­ers of Azovstal in Mar­i­upol were defend­ing the city for 82 days with lim­it­ed sup­plies of food and water, they also saved more than 1000 civil­ians (most­ly women and chil­dren) that found shel­ter, food and water at the plant and lat­er were evac­u­at­ed.

    “Fight­ers,” again. Have we learned noth­ing from Coco Chanel? Appar­ent­ly ***cough*** Balen­ci­a­ga ***cough*** not.

    Ukrain­ian Nation­al Wom­ens League Of Amer­i­ca (Philadel­phia)

    From the events list­ing:

    UNWLA, Branch 10, is host­ing a pho­to exhi­bi­tion dis­play­ing the real­i­ty of war in Ukraine through the eyes of four amaz­ing pho­tog­ra­phers. Free admis­sion and refresh­ments. Prints avail­able for pur­chase.

    The exhib­it will fea­ture some of the most beau­ti­ful and heart­felt works of:

    1. Dmytro Kozatsky – the pho­tog­ra­ph­er who took the most famous pho­tos from Azov

    Entire­ly unex­cep­tion­al. Which is the prob­lem. (I also won­der how many oth­er branch­es of the UNWLA Kozatsky will vis­it, and whether he will vis­it Cana­da as well.

    School Of Visu­al Arts (New York)

    Again from Hyper­Al­ler­gic:

    Protests erupt­ed at DOC NYC’s pre­miere of the film Free­dom on Fire (2022) at the School of Visu­al Arts (SVA) The­atre in Man­hat­tan, which host­ed Kozatsky as a guest speak­er. Audi­ence mem­bers who raised the accu­sa­tions dur­ing a Q&A were forcibly removed from the event. One attendee, stu­dent and orga­niz­er Kay­la Pop­uchet, said she was attacked by fel­low audi­ence mem­bers, some of whom called her a ‘bitch’ and ‘Krem­lin shill.’

    “Krem­lin shill.” Car­ry­ing a “Vote Blue No Mat­ter Who” tote-bag, no doubt. From Pop­uchet:

    So I was just kicked out by @DOCNYCfest for point­ing out their “spe­cial guest speak­er” Dymtro Kozatsky is a Neo-Nazi in the open­ly Nazi Azov Reg­i­ment who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the attacks on Don­bass civil­ians. Doc­NYC tried to hide his affil­i­a­tions, why? pic.twitter.com/INgzFaLUMa — Kay­la (@kaylapop_) Novem­ber 14, 2022

    “I even heard some­one call me Russ­ian, which is fun­ny because I am an Afro-Latin Amer­i­can with zero rela­tion to Rus­sia,” Pop­uchet told Hyper­al­ler­gic.

    Obvi­ous­ly, Pop­uchet was from an out-group, so any­thing goes:

    As jour­nal­ist Moss Robe­son not­ed on Twit­ter, the SVA The­atre removed all men­tion of Kozatsky’s name from its event descrip­tion after Shariy’s Telegram mes­sages sur­faced ear­li­er that morn­ing. SVA declined Hyperallergic’s mul­ti­ple requests for com­ment, and DOC NYC has not yet respond­ed.

    Does make you won­der where DSA — and heck, AOC! — was on this, doesn’t it?

    MSNBC

    From MSNBC itself:

    Ukrain­ian Ambas­sador to the Unit­ed States Oksana Markaro­va, Pulitzer Prize-win­ning pho­to­jour­nal­ist Car­ol Guzy, and Dmytro Kozatsky, a Ukrain­ian sol­dier and pho­tog­ra­ph­er who was held in the Mar­i­upol steel plant, join Andrea Mitchell to dis­cuss “Relent­less Courage: Ukraine and the World at War,” a new book fea­tur­ing a col­lec­tion of images cap­tur­ing Ukraini­ans’ endur­ing fight. Ambas­sador Markaro­va, who writes in the book about a jour­nal­ist lost to the war, tells Mitchell: “He was a very beau­ti­ful human being, full of light,” and Russia’s tar­get­ing of civil­ians “shows how inhu­mane this aggres­sive regime is, and how this war is about the val­ues, democ­ra­cy.” She adds, “We will not stop until there is account­abil­i­ty.”

    * * *

    I’m afraid I don’t have an earth-quake of a con­clu­sion here; what stuns me is the ease with which Kozatsky is pen­e­trat­ing our cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions. Book­ing agents, facil­i­ties man­agers, press agents, board mem­bers who orga­nize such things, fash­ion edi­tors, net­work anchors: All com­bin­ing their efforts to ser­vice a Nazi pro­fes­sion­al­ly, as if it were the most nor­mal thing in the world, which at this point per­haps it is. It would also be nice to know if how many oth­er Ukrain­ian efforts like this are going on, and if they are… facil­i­tat­ed by any­one “in gov­ern­ment.”

    ...

    APPENDIX A: The Azovs are Fas­cists

    Before Feb­ru­ary 2022:
    [see mon­tage of images of arti­cles describ­ing the far right nature of Ukraine’s Nazi bat­tal­ions]

    Atlantic Coun­cil (2018):

    Since the begin­ning of 2018, C14 and oth­er far-right groups such as the Azov-affil­i­at­ed Nation­al Mili­tia, Right Sec­tor, Karpats­ka Sich, and oth­ers have attacked Roma groups sev­er­al times, as well as anti-fas­cist demon­stra­tions, city coun­cil meet­ings, an event host­ed by Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, art exhi­bi­tions, LGBT events, and envi­ron­men­tal activists. On March 8, vio­lent groups launched attacks against Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day marchers in cities across Ukraine. In only a few of these cas­es did police do any­thing to pre­vent the attacks, and in some they even arrest­ed peace­ful demon­stra­tors rather than the actu­al per­pe­tra­tors…

    To be clear, far-right par­ties like Svo­bo­da per­form poor­ly in Ukraine’s polls and elec­tions, and Ukraini­ans evince no desire to be ruled by them. But this argu­ment is a bit of “red her­ring.” It’s not extrem­ists’ elec­toral prospects that should con­cern Ukraine’s friends, but rather the state’s unwill­ing­ness or inabil­i­ty to con­front vio­lent groups and end their impuni­ty. Whether this is due to a con­tin­u­ing sense of indebt­ed­ness to some of these groups for fight­ing the Rus­sians or fear they might turn on the state itself, it’s a real prob­lem and we do no ser­vice to Ukraine by sweep­ing it under the rug.

    Of course, it’s not a prob­lem any more!

    Al Jazeera (2022):

    The far-right neo-Nazi group has expand­ed to become part of Ukraine’s armed forces, a street mili­tia and a polit­i­cal par­ty….

    The unit was ini­tial­ly formed as a vol­un­teer group in May 2014 out of the ultra-nation­al­ist Patri­ot of Ukraine gang, and the neo-Nazi Social Nation­al Assem­bly (SNA) group. Both groups engaged in xeno­pho­bic and neo-Nazi ideals and phys­i­cal­ly assault­ed migrants, the Roma com­mu­ni­ty and peo­ple oppos­ing their views.A few months after recap­tur­ing the strate­gic port city of Mar­i­upol from the Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratists, the unit was offi­cial­ly inte­grat­ed into the Nation­al Guard of Ukraine on Novem­ber 12, 2014, and exact­ed high praise from then-Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko.

    “These are our best war­riors,” he said at an awards cer­e­mo­ny in 2014. “Our best vol­un­teers.”

    Cato (2022):

    An espe­cial­ly egre­gious per­for­mance has occurred with respect to the role of the Azov bat­tal­ion (now the Azov reg­i­ment) in Ukraine’s defense effort. The Azov bat­tal­ion was noto­ri­ous for years before the Russ­ian inva­sion as a bas­tion of extreme nation­al­ists and out­right Nazis. That aspect proved to be more than just a source of embar­rass­ment for Ukraine’s sup­port­ers when the unit became a cru­cial play­er in the bat­tle for the city of Mar­i­upol. The West­ern (espe­cial­ly US) press sought to por­tray Ukraine’s resis­tance to the Russ­ian siege as a hero­ic effort sim­i­lar to bat­tle of Stal­in­grad in World War II.

    The promi­nence of the Azov reg­i­ment among the defend­ers cer­tain­ly should have com­pli­cat­ed that media por­tray­al. Yet most accounts sim­ply focused on the suf­fer­ing of Mariupol’s pop­u­la­tion, the heart­less vil­lainy of the Russ­ian aggres­sors, and the tenac­i­ty of the city’s brave defend­ers. Such accounts typ­i­cal­ly ignored the pres­ence of Azov fight­ers among the defend­ers or failed to dis­close their ide­o­log­i­cal pedi­gree. A Wash­ing­ton Post sto­ry, for exam­ple, mere­ly described the Azov reg­i­ment as “a nation­al­ist out­fit.” Oth­er news accounts referred to the Azov forces in a sim­i­lar vague man­ner, occa­sion­al­ly with a per­func­to­ry acknowl­edg­ment that the reg­i­ment was con­tro­ver­sial.

    ….How­ev­er, the cov­er­age of the Ukraine war threat­ens to achieve a new low in media integri­ty and cred­i­bil­i­ty. When the estab­lish­ment press white­wash­es the behav­ior of out­right neo-?Nazis, some­thing is ter­ri­bly amiss.

    CNN (2022):

    Azov’s mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal wings for­mal­ly sep­a­rat­ed in 2016, when the far-right Nation­al Corps par­ty was found­ed. The Azov bat­tal­ion had by then been inte­grat­ed into the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard.

    An effec­tive fight­ing force that’s very much involved in the cur­rent con­flict, the bat­tal­ion has a his­to­ry of neo-Nazi lean­ings, which have not been entire­ly extin­guished by its inte­gra­tion into the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary. ?

    In its hey­day as an autonomous mili­tia, the Azov Bat­tal­ion was asso­ci­at­ed with White suprema­cists and neo-Nazi ide­ol­o­gy and insignia. It was espe­cial­ly active in and around Mar­i­upol in 2014 and 2015. CNN teams in the area at the time report­ed Azov’s embrace of neo-Nazi emblems and para­pher­na­lia.

    After its inte­gra­tion into the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard, amid dis­cus­sions in the US Con­gress about des­ig­nat­ing the Azov Move­ment a for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, Ukraine’s then min­is­ter of inter­nal affairs, Arsen Avakov, defend­ed the unit. “The shame­ful infor­ma­tion cam­paign about the alleged spread of Nazi ide­ol­o­gy (among Azov mem­bers) is a delib­er­ate attempt to dis­cred­it the ‘Azov’ unit and the Nation­al Guard of Ukraine,” he told the online news­pa­per Ukrayin­s­ka Prav­da in 2019.

    The bat­tal­ion still oper­ates as a rel­a­tive­ly autonomous enti­ty. It has been promi­nent in defend­ing Mar­i­upol in recent weeks, and its resis­tance has been wide­ly praised by mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment.

    Fair (2022):

    The out­sized influ­ence of neo-Nazi groups in Ukrain­ian soci­ety (Human Rights Watch, 6/14/18)—includ­ing the the Azov Reg­i­ment, the explic­it­ly neo-Nazi branch of Ukraine’s Nation­al Guard—is anoth­er fact that has been dis­missed as dis­in­for­ma­tion. West­ern out­lets once under­stood far-right extrem­ism as a fes­ter­ing issue (Haaretz, 12/27/18) that Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment “under­played” (BBC, 12/13/14).

    The Finan­cial Times (3/29/22) and Lon­don Times (3/30/22) attempt­ed to reha­bil­i­tate the Azov regiment’s rep­u­ta­tion, using the dis­in­for­ma­tion label to down­play the influ­ence of extrem­ism in the nation­al guard unit. Quot­ing Azov’s founder Andriy Bilet­sky as well as an unnamed Azov com­man­der, the Finan­cial Times cast Azov’s mem­bers as “patri­ots” who “shrug off the neo-Nazi label as ‘Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da.’” Alex Kovzhun, a “con­sul­tant” who helped draft the polit­i­cal pro­gram of the Nation­al Corps, Azov’s polit­i­cal wing, added a light­heart­ed human inter­est per­spec­tive, say­ing Azov was “made up of his­to­ri­ans, foot­ball hooli­gans and men with mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence.”

    That the Finan­cial Times would take Bilet­sky at his word on the issue of Azov’s Nazi-free char­ac­ter, a man who once declared that the Nation­al Corps would “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semi­te-led Unter­men­schen [sub­hu­mans]” (Guardian, 3/13/18), is a prime exam­ple of how West­ern media have engaged in infor­ma­tion war at the expense of their most basic jour­nal­is­tic duties and ethics.

    APPENDIX B: Kozatsky is a Fas­cist

    In addi­tion to the Nazi para­pher­na­lia described by Shariy above, we have Twit­ter likes:

    On Twit­ter, the Azov press spokesper­son [Kozatsky] has “liked” many hor­ren­dous posts, includ­ing an image of a sym­bol asso­ci­at­ed with the Nazi SS which large­ly admin­is­tered the Holo­caust. The Totenkopf was cap­tioned: “Your face when you read news about gyp­sies.” That year, in 2018, the U.S. Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion warned, “attacks on Roma in Ukraine have esca­lat­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly.” Ear­li­er that spring, Kozatsky liked an image of the KKK and anoth­er tweet that said “Heil Hitler!” on the Nazi dictator’s birth­day. In Jan­u­ary 2019, Kozatsky liked an image of Amon Göth, an Aus­tri­an Nazi who com­mand­ed the Plas­zow con­cen­tra­tion camp and was por­trayed in Schindler’s List as the main antag­o­nist of the film. In March 2020, not long after the first con­firmed case of Covid-19 in his coun­try, Kozatsky liked an image of Ukrain­ian graf­fi­ti that said “Death to Yids” with an SS sym­bol. Two days before he sur­ren­dered in Mar­i­upol, some­one on Twit­ter mocked Kozatsky for his ankle tat­toos: “I’m not a nazi.” He respond­ed, “I want to dis­ap­point you and tell you that the swasti­ka is not only Nazi. Here is your home­work, young inves­ti­ga­tor…” There are plen­ty of more exam­ples of him being a Nazi on the inter­net.

    As seen above, Dmytro Kozatsky obvi­ous­ly gets a big kick out of the neo-Nazi code 1488, and he appears to be fond of the white suprema­cist Ukrain­ian brands Sva­S­tone and “White Print.” Accord­ing to Report­ing Rad­i­cal­ism, a web­site cre­at­ed by the US-fund­ed Free­dom House in Ukraine, “The brand name Sva­S­tone alludes to the swasti­ka. Its logo is a styl­ized swasti­ka… The logo and name are exclu­sive­ly used as a brand that tar­gets far-right con­sumers.” White Print is more obscure and overt­ly neo-Nazi. This Azov-asso­ci­at­ed brand, which appar­ent­ly oper­ates exclu­sive­ly on the Russ­ian social media net­work VK, made Kozatsky’s 1488 tshirt, and per­haps anoth­er fea­tur­ing a sun cross swasti­ka. Kozatsky expressed inter­est in anoth­er one of their shirts glo­ri­fy­ing the “Gali­cia Divi­sion” — the Ukrain­ian Waf­fen-SS unit — in addi­tion to the shirt he already has embla­zoned with the Nazi formation’s Ukrain­ian emblem.

    Not a nice per­son at all.

    —————

    “Nor­mal­iz­ing Nazis at Vogue, MSNBC, and “America’s Largest Doc­u­men­tary Fes­ti­val” (but not Cat­alo­nia)” By Lam­bert Strether; Naked Cap­i­tal­ism; 12/05/2022

    “I’m afraid I don’t have an earth-quake of a con­clu­sion here; what stuns me is the ease with which Kozatsky is pen­e­trat­ing our cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions. Book­ing agents, facil­i­ties man­agers, press agents, board mem­bers who orga­nize such things, fash­ion edi­tors, net­work anchors: All com­bin­ing their efforts to ser­vice a Nazi pro­fes­sion­al­ly, as if it were the most nor­mal thing in the world, which at this point per­haps it is. It would also be nice to know if how many oth­er Ukrain­ian efforts like this are going on, and if they are… facil­i­tat­ed by any­one “in gov­ern­ment.””

    Yep, it’s the main­stream­ing of an Azov inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty. Anoth­er Azov inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty. In this case, it’s Azov’s pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Dmytro Kozatsky, who has been going from one media appear­ance after anoth­er in the US to talk about his expe­ri­ences defend­ing the Azovstal indus­tri­al plant in Mar­i­oupol before get­ting cap­tures and even­tu­al­ly released. On one lev­el, it’s not hard to see why Kozatsky’s sto­ry was cho­sen for this kind of work of main­tain­ing inter­na­tion­al sup­port for Ukraine in the war. At least, it’s not hard to see why Kozatsky was cho­sen for this kind of PR work giv­en the inter­na­tion­al embrace of Ukraine’s Nazis.

    But as the piece notes, part of what makes the celebri­ty tour of Dmytro Kozatsky so curi­ous is the fact that he appar­ent­ly made stun­ning alle­ga­tions while detained about Zelen­s­ki advi­sor Olek­sii Arestovich order­ing the killing of Russ­ian sol­diers who had been tak­en pris­on­ers and the cre­ation of shock videos. The inter­view of Kozatsky mak­ing these claims were post­ed on Telegram. It does­n’t appear that those claims were ever seri­ous­ly inves­ti­gat­ed, but it’s still fas­ci­nat­ing that a high-pro­file mem­ber of Azov can make these kinds of wide­ly pub­li­cized claims about war crimes and go on to do an inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty tour:

    ...
    When Russ­ian forces took Azovstal, Kozatsky was cap­tured (along with, accord­ing to Russ­ian esti­mates, 2,439 oth­er pris­on­ers of war). Moon of Alaba­ma dis­cov­ered this curi­ous inci­dent which took place while Kozatsky was in cap­tiv­i­ty:

    On July 28 the Rus­sians pub­lished a video of an inter­view with Azov nazi sol­dier Dmytro Kozatsky, call sign Orest, who direct­ly accused Zelen­s­ki advi­sor [Olek­sii ] Arestovich of order­ing the killing of Russ­ian sol­diers who had been tak­en pris­on­ers.

    Kozatsky was run­ning the pub­lic rela­tion side for his Azov unit. Even before the war start­ed, Kozatsky says, Arestovich was prepar­ing an infor­ma­tion cam­paign with shock videos that were sup­posed to show the tor­ture and killing of Russ­ian sol­diers tak­en pris­on­ers. Kozatsky received such an order and passed it on. He lat­er not­ed that such shock videos were indeed made and pub­lished on social media sides.

    Nego­ti­a­tions took place between Rus­sia and Ukraine, and of the 2,439 Ukrain­ian POWs, Rus­sia released 200, one of whom was Kozatsky. From Ukrain­s­ka Prav­da:

    “It is very dif­fi­cult to nego­ti­ate about peo­ple who are well known in the media. The few­er peo­ple know you, the eas­i­er it is to release you [from cap­tiv­i­ty]. When you are famous, your val­ue increas­es many times over. The most dif­fi­cult thing was to talk about the com­man­ders, about Ptash­ka [renowned female army para­medic – ed.], or about the pho­tog­ra­ph­er known as Orest,” anoth­er inter­locu­tor in Pres­i­dent Zelenskyy’s cir­cle explained.

    Clear­ly, for what­ev­er rea­son, Kozatsky was a high-val­ue pris­on­er (and not least because throw­ing Zeken­sky advi­sor Arestovich under the bus — if that’s what real­ly hap­pened — didn’t affect his release in any way).
    ...

    Kozatsky’s inter­na­tion­al celebri­ty tour was­n’t just in the US. It was in Cat­alo­nia, Spain, where sev­er­al of his pho­tos was on dis­play at the Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty of Cat­alo­nia (UPC) since mid-Octo­ber, until Ukrain­ian-dis­si­dent-in-exile Ana­toly Shariy — who is resid­ing in Spain — pub­lished evi­dence of Kozatsky’s numer­ous instances of pro­mot­ing Nazi sym­bols on social media. Recall how Ana­toly Shariy start­ed a Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal par­ty that was one of the par­ties recent­ly banned by Zelen­skiy. Shariy claims he was the tar­get of a recent SBU assas­si­na­tion attempt and has also placed on the Myrotvorets black­list. Back in May, Ukraine attempt­ed to get Spain to extra­dite Shariy back Ukraine on trea­son charges on the basis that, “SBU inves­ti­ga­tors con­sid­er that Shariy car­ried out unlaw­ful activ­i­ty detri­men­tal to Ukraine’s nation­al secu­ri­ty in the infor­ma­tion sphere.” Spain even­tu­al­ly refused Ukraine’s request in Octo­ber after mul­ti­ple dead­lines were missed with­out Ukraine fil­ing the nec­es­sary paper­work. So it was a Ukrain­ian dis­si­dent-in-exile from a now-banned polit­i­cal par­ty, and who the SBU is still try­ing to silence, who was ulti­mate­ly able to draw enough atten­tion to Kozatsky’s Nazi ide­ol­o­gy to tem­porar­i­ly dis­rupt this PR exer­cise:

    ...
    Cat­alo­nia. Here’s what hap­pened at the Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty of Cat­alo­nia. From Hyper­al­ler­gic:

    Sev­er­al of [Kozatsky’s Azovstal] pho­tos were on dis­play at the Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­si­ty of Cat­alo­nia (UPC) since mid-Octo­ber, but on Novem­ber 13, the insti­tu­tion announced it was pre­ma­ture­ly end­ing the show, claim­ing that it “wasn’t aware of the artist’s ide­ol­o­gy.”

    “The UPC rad­i­cal­ly rejects Nazism and regrets the sit­u­a­tion cre­at­ed,” the UPC said in a state­ment.

    Ear­li­er that day, pro-Russ­ian Ukrain­ian jour­nal­ist Ana­toly Shariy had shared mul­ti­ple screen­shots of Kozatsky’s social media posts on Telegram, all of which con­tained far-right and neo-Nazi hate sym­bols. A swasti­ka tat­too appears on Kozatsky’s leg, with anoth­er drawn in ketchup on a home­made piz­za. Mean­while, a self­ie of Kozatsky shows his sweat­shirt embla­zoned with the num­bers 14/88, a com­bi­na­tion of two white suprema­cist sym­bols, and a Ukrain­ian coat of arms.

    (To be fair, Kozatsky issued a non-apol­o­gy apol­o­gy. For more, see Appen­dix B.)
    ...

    And note the very dif­fer­ent treat­ment giv­en to pro­tes­tors at the School Of Visu­al Arts in New York City, which host­ed Kozatsky as a guest speak­er sched­uled on the same day Shariy made those damn­ing Telegram posts. The the­ater forcibly removed audi­ence mem­bers who brought up Kozatsky’s Nazi ide­ol­o­gy, while at the same time it removed all men­tion of Kozatsky’s name from its event descrip­tion after Shariy’s Telegram mes­sages post­ed ear­li­er that morn­ing. In oth­er words, the peo­ple run­ning that event were active­ly try­ing to hide the fact that they were host­ing a Nazi guest speak­er and when they forcibly removed those audi­ence mem­bers:

    ...
    School Of Visu­al Arts (New York)

    Again from Hyper­Al­ler­gic:

    Protests erupt­ed at DOC NYC’s pre­miere of the film Free­dom on Fire (2022) at the School of Visu­al Arts (SVA) The­atre in Man­hat­tan, which host­ed Kozatsky as a guest speak­er. Audi­ence mem­bers who raised the accu­sa­tions dur­ing a Q&A were forcibly removed from the event. One attendee, stu­dent and orga­niz­er Kay­la Pop­uchet, said she was attacked by fel­low audi­ence mem­bers, some of whom called her a ‘bitch’ and ‘Krem­lin shill.’

    “Krem­lin shill.” Car­ry­ing a “Vote Blue No Mat­ter Who” tote-bag, no doubt. From Pop­uchet:

    So I was just kicked out by @DOCNYCfest for point­ing out their “spe­cial guest speak­er” Dymtro Kozatsky is a Neo-Nazi in the open­ly Nazi Azov Reg­i­ment who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the attacks on Don­bass civil­ians. Doc­NYC tried to hide his affil­i­a­tions, why? pic.twitter.com/INgzFaLUMa — Kay­la (@kaylapop_) Novem­ber 14, 2022

    “I even heard some­one call me Russ­ian, which is fun­ny because I am an Afro-Latin Amer­i­can with zero rela­tion to Rus­sia,” Pop­uchet told Hyper­al­ler­gic.

    Obvi­ous­ly, Pop­uchet was from an out-group, so any­thing goes:

    As jour­nal­ist Moss Robe­son not­ed on Twit­ter, the SVA The­atre removed all men­tion of Kozatsky’s name from its event descrip­tion after Shariy’s Telegram mes­sages sur­faced ear­li­er that morn­ing. SVA declined Hyperallergic’s mul­ti­ple requests for com­ment, and DOC NYC has not yet respond­ed.

    ...

    Also note the remark­able source for the impor­tant 2018 obser­va­tion about the “red her­ring” nature of point­ing to the rel­a­tive­ly poor elec­toral show­ing for Ukraine’s Nazis as a rea­son to dis­miss the threat these move­ments pose to Ukraine’s future: none oth­er than the Atlantic Coun­cil. Although note it was Josh Cohen, a for­mer USAID project offi­cer for the for­mer Sovi­et Union, who wrote that piece. Cohen has long been a voice of rel­a­tive san­i­ty when it comes to Ukraine’s Nazis. So while it was sur­pris­ing to see that kind of acknowl­edge­ment show­ing up in an Atlantic Coun­cil blog, it’s not sur­pris­ing that it was Cohen who actu­al­ly wrote it:

    ...
    Before Feb­ru­ary 2022:
    [see mon­tage of images of arti­cles describ­ing the far right nature of Ukraine’s Nazi bat­tal­ions]

    Atlantic Coun­cil (2018):

    Since the begin­ning of 2018, C14 and oth­er far-right groups such as the Azov-affil­i­at­ed Nation­al Mili­tia, Right Sec­tor, Karpats­ka Sich, and oth­ers have attacked Roma groups sev­er­al times, as well as anti-fas­cist demon­stra­tions, city coun­cil meet­ings, an event host­ed by Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al, art exhi­bi­tions, LGBT events, and envi­ron­men­tal activists. On March 8, vio­lent groups launched attacks against Inter­na­tion­al Women’s Day marchers in cities across Ukraine. In only a few of these cas­es did police do any­thing to pre­vent the attacks, and in some they even arrest­ed peace­ful demon­stra­tors rather than the actu­al per­pe­tra­tors…

    To be clear, far-right par­ties like Svo­bo­da per­form poor­ly in Ukraine’s polls and elec­tions, and Ukraini­ans evince no desire to be ruled by them. But this argu­ment is a bit of “red her­ring.” It’s not extrem­ists’ elec­toral prospects that should con­cern Ukraine’s friends, but rather the state’s unwill­ing­ness or inabil­i­ty to con­front vio­lent groups and end their impuni­ty. Whether this is due to a con­tin­u­ing sense of indebt­ed­ness to some of these groups for fight­ing the Rus­sians or fear they might turn on the state itself, it’s a real prob­lem and we do no ser­vice to Ukraine by sweep­ing it under the rug.

    Of course, it’s not a prob­lem any more!
    ...

    Now, regard­ing the CNN piece from back in March where Ukraine’s then-min­is­ter of inter­nal affairs, Arsen Avakov, pro­claimed that claims about Azov’s Nazi ide­ol­o­gy were part of a “delib­er­ate attempt to dis­cred­it the ‘Azov’ unit and the Nation­al Guard of Ukraine,” recall how Azov itself attempt­ed to dis­tance itself from the overt Nazi ide­ol­o­gy of its founder, Andriy Bilet­sky while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly down­play­ing Bilet­sky’s open Nazi sta­tus. First, the group told CNN it “appre­ci­ates and respects Andriy Bilet­sky as the regiment’s founder and first com­man­der, but we have noth­ing to do with his polit­i­cal activ­i­ties and the Nation­al Corps par­ty”, and then added that Bilet­sky nev­er actu­al­ly stat­ed that his goal was to “lead the White races of the world in a final cru­sade.” It was emblem­at­ic of the lay­ers of sys­tem­at­ic decep­tion at work in this Nazi rep­u­ta­tion reha­bil­i­ta­tion project:

    ...
    CNN (2022):

    Azov’s mil­i­tary and polit­i­cal wings for­mal­ly sep­a­rat­ed in 2016, when the far-right Nation­al Corps par­ty was found­ed. The Azov bat­tal­ion had by then been inte­grat­ed into the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard.

    An effec­tive fight­ing force that’s very much involved in the cur­rent con­flict, the bat­tal­ion has a his­to­ry of neo-Nazi lean­ings, which have not been entire­ly extin­guished by its inte­gra­tion into the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary. ?

    In its hey­day as an autonomous mili­tia, the Azov Bat­tal­ion was asso­ci­at­ed with White suprema­cists and neo-Nazi ide­ol­o­gy and insignia. It was espe­cial­ly active in and around Mar­i­upol in 2014 and 2015. CNN teams in the area at the time report­ed Azov’s embrace of neo-Nazi emblems and para­pher­na­lia.

    After its inte­gra­tion into the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard, amid dis­cus­sions in the US Con­gress about des­ig­nat­ing the Azov Move­ment a for­eign ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion, Ukraine’s then min­is­ter of inter­nal affairs, Arsen Avakov, defend­ed the unit. “The shame­ful infor­ma­tion cam­paign about the alleged spread of Nazi ide­ol­o­gy (among Azov mem­bers) is a delib­er­ate attempt to dis­cred­it the ‘Azov’ unit and the Nation­al Guard of Ukraine,” he told the online news­pa­per Ukrayin­s­ka Prav­da in 2019.

    The bat­tal­ion still oper­ates as a rel­a­tive­ly autonomous enti­ty. It has been promi­nent in defend­ing Mar­i­upol in recent weeks, and its resis­tance has been wide­ly praised by mem­bers of the gov­ern­ment.

    ...

    Final­ly, recall the reports from back in Sep­tem­ber about how Pres­i­dent Zelen­skiy removed from social media pho­tos show­ing him sur­round­ed by body­guards wear­ing Totenkopf patch­es. That Kozatsky is also sport­ing these kinds of sym­bols is to be expect­ed at this point. This is now nor­mal­ized and appar­ent­ly unre­mark­able:

    ...
    In addi­tion to the Nazi para­pher­na­lia described by Shariy above, we have Twit­ter likes:

    On Twit­ter, the Azov press spokesper­son [Kozatsky] has “liked” many hor­ren­dous posts, includ­ing an image of a sym­bol asso­ci­at­ed with the Nazi SS which large­ly admin­is­tered the Holo­caust. The Totenkopf was cap­tioned: “Your face when you read news about gyp­sies.” That year, in 2018, the U.S. Helsin­ki Com­mis­sion warned, “attacks on Roma in Ukraine have esca­lat­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly.” Ear­li­er that spring, Kozatsky liked an image of the KKK and anoth­er tweet that said “Heil Hitler!” on the Nazi dictator’s birth­day. In Jan­u­ary 2019, Kozatsky liked an image of Amon Göth, an Aus­tri­an Nazi who com­mand­ed the Plas­zow con­cen­tra­tion camp and was por­trayed in Schindler’s List as the main antag­o­nist of the film. In March 2020, not long after the first con­firmed case of Covid-19 in his coun­try, Kozatsky liked an image of Ukrain­ian graf­fi­ti that said “Death to Yids” with an SS sym­bol. Two days before he sur­ren­dered in Mar­i­upol, some­one on Twit­ter mocked Kozatsky for his ankle tat­toos: “I’m not a nazi.” He respond­ed, “I want to dis­ap­point you and tell you that the swasti­ka is not only Nazi. Here is your home­work, young inves­ti­ga­tor…” There are plen­ty of more exam­ples of him being a Nazi on the inter­net.

    As seen above, Dmytro Kozatsky obvi­ous­ly gets a big kick out of the neo-Nazi code 1488, and he appears to be fond of the white suprema­cist Ukrain­ian brands Sva­S­tone and “White Print.” Accord­ing to Report­ing Rad­i­cal­ism, a web­site cre­at­ed by the US-fund­ed Free­dom House in Ukraine, “The brand name Sva­S­tone alludes to the swasti­ka. Its logo is a styl­ized swasti­ka… The logo and name are exclu­sive­ly used as a brand that tar­gets far-right con­sumers.” White Print is more obscure and overt­ly neo-Nazi. This Azov-asso­ci­at­ed brand, which appar­ent­ly oper­ates exclu­sive­ly on the Russ­ian social media net­work VK, made Kozatsky’s 1488 tshirt, and per­haps anoth­er fea­tur­ing a sun cross swasti­ka. Kozatsky expressed inter­est in anoth­er one of their shirts glo­ri­fy­ing the “Gali­cia Divi­sion” — the Ukrain­ian Waf­fen-SS unit — in addi­tion to the shirt he already has embla­zoned with the Nazi formation’s Ukrain­ian emblem.

    ...

    Where will we see Kozatsky pop up next in his celebri­ty tour? We’ll find out, pre­sum­ably in the form of anoth­er white­washed puff piece designed to mis­in­formed read­ers about the fas­cist under­cur­rents dri­ving this con­flict.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 7, 2022, 5:15 pm
  17. It’s one thing to deny that a Nazi is a Nazi. That’s awful enough. But it’s anoth­er lev­el of white­wash­ing to lit­er­al­ly deny your own pri­or denounce­ments against Nazis and pre­tend like you nev­er said that. It’s like white­wash­ing dou­ble­think. So, of course, that’s exact­ly what we’ve seen in the lat­est round of high pro­file Nazi white­wash­ing by West­ern insti­tu­tions. And this time that white­washed dou­ble­think was brought to us by none oth­er than the ADL, an orga­ni­za­tion that osten­si­bly exists for the pur­pose of con­demn­ing Nazism.

    Yes, it was just back in March of this year that the ADL was warn­ing about how white nation­al­ists viewed the Azov Bat­tal­ion as a path to bring­ing Nation­al Social­ism to Ukraine fol­low­ing the out­break of full scale war. Flash for­ward eight months and all of sud­den the ADL see Azov as a post-Nazi enti­ty that was divorced from its Nazi past all the way back in 2014. Yep. The ADL was par­rot­ing Azov’s own laugh­able claims about its divorced itself from its Nazi roots. That was the direct response the ADL gave to the Gray Zone in response to a “hate inci­dent” filed by the Gray Zone to the ADL fol­low­ing the to the Pen­tagon’s deci­sion to invite an Azov-led team of Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary ath­letes to the War­rior Games held at Dis­ney World. An event where the Azov mem­ber of the team with a large Nazi tat­too on his elbow won the “spir­it of the team” award. It was when the ADL was asked for a response to that event that the ADL sud­den­ly decid­ed to for­get its own reports on the very real dan­gers posed by the Azov Bat­tal­ion and white­washed away not just Azov’s Nazi roots but the ADL’s own his­to­ry of crit­i­ciz­ing those Nazi roots. Pro-Nazi white­washed dou­ble­think from an orga­nized ded­i­cat­ed to expos­ing Nazism. This is how far gone the West­’s embrace of Ukraine’s Nazis has got­ten, just months into a war with no end in sight:

    The Gray Zone

    The ADL issues state­ment declar­ing Ukraine’s Azov Bat­tal­ion no longer ‘far-right’

    Alexan­der Rubin­stein
    Decem­ber 8, 2022

    The Anti-Defama­tion League (ADL) has emailed The Gray­zone a defense of the Azov Bat­tal­ion and refused to con­demn the Pen­ta­gon for hon­or­ing a vet­er­an of the group who sports Nazi-inspired tat­toos.

    A Novem­ber 9 email from the Anti-Defama­tion League to The Gray­zone pro­vid­ed a twist­ed defense of Ukraine’s Azov Bat­tal­ion. Despite its self-pro­claimed “anti-hate” mis­sion, the ADL insist­ed in the email it “does not” con­sid­er Azov as the “far right group it once was.”

    The Azov Bat­tal­ion is a neo-Nazi unit for­mal­ly inte­grat­ed into the US gov­ern­ment-backed Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary. Found­ed by Andriy Bilet­sky, who has infa­mous­ly vowed to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semi­te-led unter­men­schen,” Azov was once wide­ly con­demned by West­ern cor­po­rate media and the human rights indus­try for its asso­ci­a­tion with Nazism. Then came the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022.

    In the months that imme­di­ate­ly fol­lowed, Azov led the Ukrain­ian military’s defense of Mar­i­upol, the group’s long­time strong­hold. As the mili­tia assumed a front­line role in the war against Rus­sia, West­ern media led a cam­paign to rebrand Azov as mis­un­der­stood free­dom fight­ers while accus­ing its crit­ics of echo­ing Krem­lin talk­ing points. The New York Times has even referred to the unit as the “cel­e­brat­ed Azov Bat­tal­ion.”

    ...

    Back in March 2022, just a month before the bat­tle of Mar­i­upol, the ADL itself issued a report acknowl­edg­ing that white nation­al­ists see Azov “as a path­way to the cre­ation of a Nation­al Social­ist state in Ukraine.” 

    Eight months lat­er, how­ev­er, the ADL has changed its tune, assert­ing to this out­let that Azov has root­ed the fas­cists from its ranks. So did Azov change its Nazi ways, or did the ADL sim­ply shift its mes­sag­ing to con­form to the imper­a­tives of a Biden admin­is­tra­tion still intent on send­ing bil­lions in mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine?

    The ADL responds to Gray­zone report with defense of Azov

    The ADL’s defense of the Azov Bat­tal­ion was trig­gered by an inci­dent this Sep­tem­ber, when this jour­nal­ist filed a “hate inci­dent” report through the ADL’s web­site which detailed the con­tents of a Gray­zone exposé on a Pen­ta­gon-spon­sored sports com­pe­ti­tion. Held at Dis­ney World, the week­long com­pe­ti­tion host­ed and hon­ored Ihor Halush­ka, a Ukrain­ian Azov vet­er­an brand­ed with a Nazi Son­nen­rad tat­too — a hate sym­bol, accord­ing to none oth­er than the ADL. 

    The Gray­zone pro­vid­ed a brief sum­ma­ry of these facts and events to the ADL, fur­nished sup­port­ing pho­tographs, and includ­ed a link to the entire report. Asked what the ADL could do to help, this reporter request­ed they con­demn the Pen­ta­gon for host­ing a neo-Nazi. Upon fil­ing the report, I was imme­di­ate­ly giv­en an auto­mat­ed case num­ber and put on the organization’s mass mail­ing list.

    Some 60 days lat­er, the ADL respond­ed, apol­o­giz­ing for the delay yet refrain­ing from acknowl­edg­ing any of The Grayzone’s report­ing. Instead, the ADL offered a two para­graph defense of the Azov Bat­tal­ion. There was, of course, no con­dem­na­tion of the War­rior Games’ host­ing of Halush­ka, and the event has not been includ­ed in the ADL’s pub­lic direc­to­ry of hate inci­dents.

    “When it was cre­at­ed in 2014, the Azov Brigade was a pri­vate mil­i­tary group fight­ing the then annex­a­tion of Crimea,” the ADL wrote to The Gray­zone. “Dur­ing this peri­od, it was a group that had a clear far-right influ­ence. In late 2014, the group was brought in as a part of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard and renamed the Azov Reg­i­ment. When this hap­pened, the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment inves­ti­gat­ed the group and claims to have expelled it of these far-right mem­bers. It was also dur­ing this time that its founder Andriy Bilet­sky left AZOV and has since worked in the greater Azov move­ment, includ­ing found­ing a far-right polit­i­cal par­ty, the Nation­al Corps. In essence, there was a split between the mil­i­tary unit AZOV and the polit­i­cal goals of its found­ing mem­bers. Of course, this is not to say that they have suc­cess­ful­ly removed all far-right ele­ments from their ranks, but our Cen­ter on Extrem­ism also does not see Azov Regime as the far-right group it once was.”

    ...

    The ADL harsh­ly con­demned Azov before it legit­imized it

    In 2019, the orga­ni­za­tion pub­lished a report on “The Inter­nal­iza­tion of White Suprema­cy,” which name-dropped Azov 18 times and brand­ed it “a far-right group and mili­tia,” “the far-right orga­ni­za­tion and mili­tia,” and “a Ukrain­ian extrem­ist group and mili­tia.”

    This Ukrain­ian extrem­ist group, called The Azov Bat­tal­ion, has ties to neo-Nazis and white suprema­cists. Our lat­est report on inter­na­tion­al white suprema­cy details how they try to con­nect with like-mind­ed extrem­ists from the US: https://t.co/GtvssxwzbN https://t.co/gGHMM8L46k— ADL (@ADL) Sep­tem­ber 23, 2019

    The report also stat­ed that Azov “has ties to neo-Nazis in Ukraine,” “has reached out to like-mind­ed Amer­i­can extrem­ists,” and “report­ed­ly has con­nec­tions to Atom­waf­fen (AWD), an Amer­i­can neo-Nazi group alleged­ly tied to five mur­ders.”

    Lat­er that year, the ADL not­ed that an neo-Nazi US Army Spe­cial­ist that pled guilty to unlaw­ful­ly dis­trib­ut­ing bomb-mak­ing instruc­tions had “expressed desire to find more ‘rad­i­cals’ and trav­el to Ukraine to fight with para­mil­i­tary group the Azov Bat­tal­ion.” 

    A more recent ADL report paints Azov in a sim­i­lar­ly unflat­ter­ing light. This March, sev­en days after Rus­sia launched its mil­i­tary oper­a­tion in Ukraine, the ADL ran a blog post enti­tled, “White Suprema­cists, Oth­er Extrem­ists Respond to Russ­ian Inva­sion of Ukraine.” The arti­cle referred to Azov as “the Ukrain­ian nation­al guard unit with explic­it neo-Nazi ties,” and not­ed that white suprema­cists “see Azov as a path­way to the cre­ation of a Nation­al Social­ist state in Ukraine.”

    In Novem­ber, how­ev­er, the ADL declared that it “does not see Azov Reg­i­ment as the far-right group it once was.” To jus­ti­fy its sud­den turn­about, the sup­posed anti-extrem­ism orga­ni­za­tion point­ed to a sup­posed split between the rad­i­cal right­ist Andriy Bilet­sky and the Azov rank-and-file.

    Bilet­sky and Azov’s “split” amounts to a lit­er­al office divider

    In its email to The Gray­zone, the ADL claimed that “the mil­i­tary unit AZOV and the polit­i­cal goals of its found­ing mem­bers” were “split” in 2014, insist­ing that Bilet­sky “left Azov and has since worked in the great Azov move­ment, includ­ing found­ing a far-right polit­i­cal par­ty, the Nation­al Corps.” 

    The ADL not­ed no such “split” in 2019 when they char­ac­ter­ized the Nation­al Corps sim­ply as the “polit­i­cal wing of Azov.” 

    In fact, the close asso­ci­a­tion of Azov with the Nation­al Corps was wide­ly acknowl­edged in both media out­lets and think tanks fund­ed by the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment.

    “Azov’s Kyiv recruit­ment cen­ter and mil­i­tary acad­e­my share a loca­tion with the offices of the Nation­al Corps,” a researcher for the US gov­ern­ment-spon­sored Belling­cat out­let explained in the NATO-affil­i­at­ed Atlantic Coun­cil in 2020. The researcher added that Azov “rou­tine­ly hosts Bilet­sky (and oth­er for­mer com­man­ders) at its bases and wel­comes his par­tic­i­pa­tion in cer­e­monies, greet­ing him as a leader.”

    In fact, on Octo­ber 26, 2022 – a mere two weeks before the ADL assert­ed a “split” between the Azov Bat­tal­ion and the “polit­i­cal goals” of its founder – Bilet­sky deliv­ered a speech at a cer­e­mo­ny in Kiev cel­e­brat­ing the renam­ing of a street after Azov in com­mem­o­ra­tion of their fight in Mar­i­upol this April.

    “There is a ton of lib­er­al white wash­ing when it comes to fas­cists in Ukraine”

    While the ADL claimed to The Gray­zone that Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment presided over a purge of neo-Nazis from Azov’s ranks, the media appear­ances of Azov mem­bers this year tell a decid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry. 

    As The Gray­zone report­ed, Ital­ian author­i­ties issued a war­rant this Novem­ber for the arrest of Anton Radom­sky, an Azov fight­er, for plan­ning to attack a shop­ping mall near Naples.

    Also in Novem­ber, an Azov photographer’s pub­lic rela­tions tour of the East­ern Unit­ed States was inter­rupt­ed by protests after his his­to­ry of post­ing Nazi imagery on social media came to light.

    May­hem at @SVA_News The­atre tonight after their “spe­cial guest” Dmytro Kozatsky gets called out for being a neo-Nazi by at least two peo­ple. Antic­i­pat­ing trou­ble, @DocNYCfest scrubbed Kozatsky’s name from its web­site and appar­ent­ly pre­pared to shut down any dis­sent dur­ing the Q&A pic.twitter.com/iqolebfj3f— Moss Robe­son (@mossrobeson__) Novem­ber 14, 2022

    And con­trary to the ADL’s spin, inter­views with for­eign fight­ers embed­ded with Azov paint a pic­ture of a fight­ing group that is still hon­ey­combed with hard­core neo-Nazis.

    “Azov Bat­tal­ion still has a lot of its neo-Nazi pres­ence,” an Amer­i­can named Justin, who fought with Azov in Mar­i­upol, claimed in an inter­view pub­lished on Octo­ber 8. Accord­ing to the for­mer vol­un­teer, his bat­tal­ion com­man­der was a “fuc king Nazi” who kept a pho­to­graph of Adolf Hitler as his desk­top back­ground on his com­put­er. The Amer­i­can explained that he and his fel­low sol­diers would greet each oth­er with sieg heil salutes.

    An equal­ly reveal­ing inter­view which appeared on Novem­ber 12 fea­tured com­ments from an Amer­i­can vol­un­teer for the Azov Bat­tal­ion named Kent “Bone­face” McLel­lan.

    “Bone­face” boasts a lengthy arrest record in the US, includ­ing an inci­dent in which he was filmed by an under­cov­er gov­ern­ment infor­mant par­tic­i­pat­ing in para­mil­i­tary train­ing with the Amer­i­can Front neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tion. Accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors, the group was plan­ning “to kill Jews, immi­grants and oth­er minori­ties.” 

    In the Novem­ber inter­view, Bone­face admit­ted to tak­ing pho­tographs of Ukrain­ian fight­ers “pos­ing with the corpses of a lynched preg­nant woman and a man they said was her hus­band” for a video enti­tled “Kikes get the rope.” He also claimed to have appeared in a video depict­ing a botched cru­ci­fix­ion. 

    But Boneface’s com­ments on the preva­lence of neo-Nazis with­in the ranks of Azov offer the clear­est refu­ta­tion of the ADL’s asser­tion that the bat­tal­ion is “no longer the far-right group it once was.”

    “There is a ton of lib­er­al white wash­ing when it comes to Fas­cists in Ukraine,” McLel­lan said, rat­tling off pop­u­lar talk­ing points: “Nazis don’t exist”; “Azov bat­tal­ion and Azov reg­i­ment are dif­fer­ent”; “They took all the Nazis out of Azov.”

    “I speak out against the white wash­ing of Nation­al­ists by the media,” he added. “I use Twit­ter to main­ly troll the (west­ern) left, as they believe Ukraine[‘s] mil­i­tary isn’t full of nation­al­ist ideals.”

    Is the ADL as cred­u­lous as the rest of Ukraine flag-wav­ing lib­er­al Amer­i­ca when it asserts that Azov has been de-rad­i­cal­ized? Or are they just trolling us too?

    ———–

    “The ADL issues state­ment declar­ing Ukraine’s Azov Bat­tal­ion no longer ‘far-right’” by Alexan­der Rubin­stein; The Gray Zone; 12/08/2022

    “The Azov Bat­tal­ion is a neo-Nazi unit for­mal­ly inte­grat­ed into the US gov­ern­ment-backed Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary. Found­ed by Andriy Bilet­sky, who has infa­mous­ly vowed to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semi­te-led unter­men­schen,” Azov was once wide­ly con­demned by West­ern cor­po­rate media and the human rights indus­try for its asso­ci­a­tion with Nazism. Then came the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022.

    The Azov Bat­tal­ion’s open Nazi sta­tus was a secret. Until the con­flict broke in Feb­ru­ary, at which point Azov sud­den­ly became a post-Nazi orga­ni­za­tion wor­thy of inter­na­tion­al cel­e­bra­tion and acco­lades. Every­one appar­ent­ly got the memo. Includ­ing orga­ni­za­tions like the ADL osten­si­bly ded­i­cat­ed to shin­ing a pub­lic light on Nazis and oth­er anti-Semit­ic extrem­ists. All of a sud­den, the ADL’s 2019 report high­light­ing Azov’s ongo­ing sta­tus as a Nazi orga­ni­za­tion was for­got­ten and replaced with the same white­washed nar­ra­tive adopt­ed across the West. The ADL even con­ve­nient­ly for­got its report from March of this year high­light­ing how white nation­al­ists see Azov “as a path­way to the cre­ation of a Nation­al Social­ist state in Ukraine.”  Poof. All for­got­ten:

    ...
    A Novem­ber 9 email from the Anti-Defama­tion League to The Gray­zone pro­vid­ed a twist­ed defense of Ukraine’s Azov Bat­tal­ion. Despite its self-pro­claimed “anti-hate” mis­sion, the ADL insist­ed in the email it “does not” con­sid­er Azov as the “far right group it once was.”

    ...

    Back in March 2022, just a month before the bat­tle of Mar­i­upol, the ADL itself issued a report acknowl­edg­ing that white nation­al­ists see Azov “as a path­way to the cre­ation of a Nation­al Social­ist state in Ukraine.” 

    Eight months lat­er, how­ev­er, the ADL has changed its tune, assert­ing to this out­let that Azov has root­ed the fas­cists from its ranks. So did Azov change its Nazi ways, or did the ADL sim­ply shift its mes­sag­ing to con­form to the imper­a­tives of a Biden admin­is­tra­tion still intent on send­ing bil­lions in mil­i­tary aid to Ukraine?

    ...

    In 2019, the orga­ni­za­tion pub­lished a report on “The Inter­nal­iza­tion of White Suprema­cy,” which name-dropped Azov 18 times and brand­ed it “a far-right group and mili­tia,” “the far-right orga­ni­za­tion and mili­tia,” and “a Ukrain­ian extrem­ist group and mili­tia.”

    This Ukrain­ian extrem­ist group, called The Azov Bat­tal­ion, has ties to neo-Nazis and white suprema­cists. Our lat­est report on inter­na­tion­al white suprema­cy details how they try to con­nect with like-mind­ed extrem­ists from the US: https://t.co/GtvssxwzbN https://t.co/gGHMM8L46k— ADL (@ADL) Sep­tem­ber 23, 2019

    The report also stat­ed that Azov “has ties to neo-Nazis in Ukraine,” “has reached out to like-mind­ed Amer­i­can extrem­ists,” and “report­ed­ly has con­nec­tions to Atom­waf­fen (AWD), an Amer­i­can neo-Nazi group alleged­ly tied to five mur­ders.”

    Lat­er that year, the ADL not­ed that an neo-Nazi US Army Spe­cial­ist that pled guilty to unlaw­ful­ly dis­trib­ut­ing bomb-mak­ing instruc­tions had “expressed desire to find more ‘rad­i­cals’ and trav­el to Ukraine to fight with para­mil­i­tary group the Azov Bat­tal­ion.” 

    A more recent ADL report paints Azov in a sim­i­lar­ly unflat­ter­ing light. This March, sev­en days after Rus­sia launched its mil­i­tary oper­a­tion in Ukraine, the ADL ran a blog post enti­tled, “White Suprema­cists, Oth­er Extrem­ists Respond to Russ­ian Inva­sion of Ukraine.” The arti­cle referred to Azov as “the Ukrain­ian nation­al guard unit with explic­it neo-Nazi ties,” and not­ed that white suprema­cists “see Azov as a path­way to the cre­ation of a Nation­al Social­ist state in Ukraine.”

    In Novem­ber, how­ev­er, the ADL declared that it “does not see Azov Reg­i­ment as the far-right group it once was.” To jus­ti­fy its sud­den turn­about, the sup­posed anti-extrem­ism orga­ni­za­tion point­ed to a sup­posed split between the rad­i­cal right­ist Andriy Bilet­sky and the Azov rank-and-file.
    ...

    Fit­ting­ly, the event that trig­gered the ADL’s embrace of Azov was get­ting asked for a response to the Pen­tagon’s deci­sion to invite an Azov-led team of Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary ath­letes to the War­rior Games held at Dis­ney World. An event where the Azov mem­ber of the team with a large Nazi tat­too on his elbow won the “spir­it of the team” award. It’s a reminder that we aren’t see­ing the ADL uni­lat­er­al­ly run cov­er for Nazis. Instead, this is part of a much larg­er group effort. Which is arguably actu­al­ly worse. It would be one thing if the ADL was the only enti­ty out there engaged in this white­wash­ing. But this is an across-the-board behav­ior. That’s what the ADL is endors­ing here: that across-the-board large scale Nazi white­wash­ing that’s tak­ing place across the West. A white­wash­ing that will pre­sum­ably con­tin­ue indef­i­nite­ly into the future:

    ...
    The ADL’s defense of the Azov Bat­tal­ion was trig­gered by an inci­dent this Sep­tem­ber, when this jour­nal­ist filed a “hate inci­dent” report through the ADL’s web­site which detailed the con­tents of a Gray­zone exposé on a Pen­ta­gon-spon­sored sports com­pe­ti­tion. Held at Dis­ney World, the week­long com­pe­ti­tion host­ed and hon­ored Ihor Halush­ka, a Ukrain­ian Azov vet­er­an brand­ed with a Nazi Son­nen­rad tat­too — a hate sym­bol, accord­ing to none oth­er than the ADL. 

    The Gray­zone pro­vid­ed a brief sum­ma­ry of these facts and events to the ADL, fur­nished sup­port­ing pho­tographs, and includ­ed a link to the entire report. Asked what the ADL could do to help, this reporter request­ed they con­demn the Pen­ta­gon for host­ing a neo-Nazi. Upon fil­ing the report, I was imme­di­ate­ly giv­en an auto­mat­ed case num­ber and put on the organization’s mass mail­ing list.

    Some 60 days lat­er, the ADL respond­ed, apol­o­giz­ing for the delay yet refrain­ing from acknowl­edg­ing any of The Grayzone’s report­ing. Instead, the ADL offered a two para­graph defense of the Azov Bat­tal­ion. There was, of course, no con­dem­na­tion of the War­rior Games’ host­ing of Halush­ka, and the event has not been includ­ed in the ADL’s pub­lic direc­to­ry of hate inci­dents.

    “When it was cre­at­ed in 2014, the Azov Brigade was a pri­vate mil­i­tary group fight­ing the then annex­a­tion of Crimea,” the ADL wrote to The Gray­zone. “Dur­ing this peri­od, it was a group that had a clear far-right influ­ence. In late 2014, the group was brought in as a part of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Guard and renamed the Azov Reg­i­ment. When this hap­pened, the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment inves­ti­gat­ed the group and claims to have expelled it of these far-right mem­bers. It was also dur­ing this time that its founder Andriy Bilet­sky left AZOV and has since worked in the greater Azov move­ment, includ­ing found­ing a far-right polit­i­cal par­ty, the Nation­al Corps. In essence, there was a split between the mil­i­tary unit AZOV and the polit­i­cal goals of its found­ing mem­bers. Of course, this is not to say that they have suc­cess­ful­ly removed all far-right ele­ments from their ranks, but our Cen­ter on Extrem­ism also does not see Azov Regime as the far-right group it once was.”
    ...

    It’s also worth not­ing some of the Azov/­Nazi-relat­ed sto­ries that have bro­ken since the ADL’s Novem­ber 9 white­wash­ing email to the Gray Zone: First, there was the reports on the Ital­ian arrests of the “Order of Hagal” ter­ror cell that had close ties to Azov a week lat­er. Then there was last week’s sto­ry about the Azov pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Dmytro Kozatsky, who was giv­en a hero’s wel­come across the US despite the abun­dant evi­dence of his Nazi ide­ol­o­gy post­ed on his own social media accounts. These kinds of sto­ries just keep pil­ing up:

    ...
    While the ADL claimed to The Gray­zone that Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment presided over a purge of neo-Nazis from Azov’s ranks, the media appear­ances of Azov mem­bers this year tell a decid­ed­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry. 

    As The Gray­zone report­ed, Ital­ian author­i­ties issued a war­rant this Novem­ber for the arrest of Anton Radom­sky, an Azov fight­er, for plan­ning to attack a shop­ping mall near Naples.

    Also in Novem­ber, an Azov photographer’s pub­lic rela­tions tour of the East­ern Unit­ed States was inter­rupt­ed by protests after his his­to­ry of post­ing Nazi imagery on social media came to light.

    May­hem at @SVA_News The­atre tonight after their “spe­cial guest” Dmytro Kozatsky gets called out for being a neo-Nazi by at least two peo­ple. Antic­i­pat­ing trou­ble, @DocNYCfest scrubbed Kozatsky’s name from its web­site and appar­ent­ly pre­pared to shut down any dis­sent dur­ing the Q&A pic.twitter.com/iqolebfj3f— Moss Robe­son (@mossrobeson__) Novem­ber 14, 2022

    And con­trary to the ADL’s spin, inter­views with for­eign fight­ers embed­ded with Azov paint a pic­ture of a fight­ing group that is still hon­ey­combed with hard­core neo-Nazis.

    “Azov Bat­tal­ion still has a lot of its neo-Nazi pres­ence,” an Amer­i­can named Justin, who fought with Azov in Mar­i­upol, claimed in an inter­view pub­lished on Octo­ber 8. Accord­ing to the for­mer vol­un­teer, his bat­tal­ion com­man­der was a “fuc king Nazi” who kept a pho­to­graph of Adolf Hitler as his desk­top back­ground on his com­put­er. The Amer­i­can explained that he and his fel­low sol­diers would greet each oth­er with sieg heil salutes.
    ...

    Final­ly, there was the Novem­ber 12 inter­view of Azov Nazi Kent “Bone­face” McLel­lan where he open­ly came out mock­ing the peo­ple across the West who claim there are no Nazis in Azov. This is how bro­ken the sit­u­a­tion is: the Bone­face Nazi gets to valid­ly mock peo­ple for claim­ing there are no Nazis:

    ...
    An equal­ly reveal­ing inter­view which appeared on Novem­ber 12 fea­tured com­ments from an Amer­i­can vol­un­teer for the Azov Bat­tal­ion named Kent “Bone­face” McLel­lan.

    “Bone­face” boasts a lengthy arrest record in the US, includ­ing an inci­dent in which he was filmed by an under­cov­er gov­ern­ment infor­mant par­tic­i­pat­ing in para­mil­i­tary train­ing with the Amer­i­can Front neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tion. Accord­ing to pros­e­cu­tors, the group was plan­ning “to kill Jews, immi­grants and oth­er minori­ties.” 

    In the Novem­ber inter­view, Bone­face admit­ted to tak­ing pho­tographs of Ukrain­ian fight­ers “pos­ing with the corpses of a lynched preg­nant woman and a man they said was her hus­band” for a video enti­tled “Kikes get the rope.” He also claimed to have appeared in a video depict­ing a botched cru­ci­fix­ion. 

    But Boneface’s com­ments on the preva­lence of neo-Nazis with­in the ranks of Azov offer the clear­est refu­ta­tion of the ADL’s asser­tion that the bat­tal­ion is “no longer the far-right group it once was.”

    “There is a ton of lib­er­al white wash­ing when it comes to Fas­cists in Ukraine,” McLel­lan said, rat­tling off pop­u­lar talk­ing points: “Nazis don’t exist”; “Azov bat­tal­ion and Azov reg­i­ment are dif­fer­ent”; “They took all the Nazis out of Azov.”

    “I speak out against the white wash­ing of Nation­al­ists by the media,” he added. “I use Twit­ter to main­ly troll the (west­ern) left, as they believe Ukraine[‘s] mil­i­tary isn’t full of nation­al­ist ideals.”

    Is the ADL as cred­u­lous as the rest of Ukraine flag-wav­ing lib­er­al Amer­i­ca when it asserts that Azov has been de-rad­i­cal­ized? Or are they just trolling us too?
    ...

    Yep, the “Bone­face” Nazi has a valid point to make in his mock­ery. This is where we are. It points towards what is so per­verse about this sit­u­a­tion: It’s not just that groups like the ADL are doing per­ma­nent dam­age to their own rep­u­ta­tions and cred­i­bil­i­ty with this sys­tem­at­ic Nazi white­wash­ing, but they’re ele­vat­ing peo­ple like “Bone­face” McLel­lan into truth tellers. Which is also a reminder that we’re prob­a­bly going to need some new groups with the cred­i­bil­i­ty to call out Nazis going for­ward. And soon. Because there’s pre­sum­ably going to be a much larg­er Nazi prob­lem by the time the West is done with its Ukrain­ian Nazi his­tor­i­cal reha­bil­i­ta­tion agen­da. Assum­ing that Nazi reha­bil­i­ta­tion agen­da actu­al­ly has an end.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 12, 2022, 4:48 pm
  18. Fol­low­ing up on that dis­turb­ing report about the ADL’s white­wash­ing of the Azov Bat­tal­ion, here’s an arti­cle about anoth­er threat fac­ing Ukraine’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in the recent­ly recap­tured city of Kher­son. As the NY Times piece below describes, the hunt for col­lab­o­ra­tors began in earnest after Ukrain­ian forces retook con­trol of the city, with one of the lead­ing mem­bers of Kher­son­’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty fac­ing such accu­sa­tions. And as we’ll see, those accu­sa­tion of col­lab­o­ra­tion are not only absurd but appear to be a vio­la­tion of the Gene­va Con­ven­tion. Beyond that, it appears that the fig­ure fac­ing these charges, Illia Kara­ma­likov, was him­self arrest­ed, drugged and tor­tured by Ukraine’s intel­li­gence ser­vices as part their inves­ti­ga­tion. It’s a chill­ing snap­shot of the kind of jus­tice sys­tem oper­at­ing dur­ing this con­flict.

    So what exact­ly was Kara­ma­likov accused of? Well, as a respect­ed mem­ber of Kher­son­’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, Kara­ma­likov took the ini­tia­tive in orga­niz­ing civil­ian street patrols to main­tain order and a cur­few fol­low­ing Rus­sia tak­ing con­trol of the city after it became clear that the Russ­ian forces had on inter­est in engag­ing in street patrols. So when a lost Russ­ian pilot flee­ing an attacked air­base end­ed up wan­der­ing into the city and stum­bled across a group of these civil­ian patrols — mis­tak­ing them for fel­low Russ­ian sol­diers — it was up to Kara­ma­likov to decide how of han­dle the sit­u­a­tion. With no Ukrain­ian forces with­in miles there was no way to hand the sol­dier over to Ukraine. The only options were to hand him over to the Rus­sians or kill him. So that they chose to hand the sol­dier over. Kara­ma­likov con­tact­ed “Alpha”, the Russ­ian com­man­der in the area, and arranged for a hand­off the next day. The only prob­lem is that Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence was wire­tap­ping Alpha’s phone and over­head the con­ver­sa­tion.

    Flash for­ward to mid-April, and Kara­ma­likov decid­ed it was time to flee the city with his fam­i­ly. But upon reach­ing Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry, his car was stopped by intel­li­gence agents. He was then tak­en to an inter­ro­ga­tion cen­ter where he was drugged and tor­tured, accord­ing to his fam­i­ly. Offi­cials in Kher­son declined to com­ment on the tor­ture claims, but acknowl­edged that at least two of the agents involved in the treat­ment of Kara­ma­likov have been placed under inves­ti­ga­tion. So that’s basi­cal­ly an admis­sion that, yeah, he was drugged and tor­tured.

    And yet Kara­ma­likov is still fac­ing a pos­si­ble life sen­tence for sim­ply hand­ing over a cap­ture Russ­ian sol­dier at a time when the only oth­er option was to kill him. As his lawyer put it, “to this day we have asked a ques­tion that no one can answer: What else, in those cir­cum­stances, in that city, at that time, was he sup­posed to do?” The Kher­son prosecutor’s office declined to respond to that ques­tion. And there we have it: cit­i­zens are get­ting arrest­ed and tor­tured for not engag­ing in war crimes. And this is so obvi­ous­ly wrong that even the pros­e­cu­tors are refus­ing to talk about what they’re doing. But they’re still doing it:

    The New York Times

    He Returned a Dazed Sol­dier to the Rus­sians. Ukraine Calls It Trea­son.

    No one knew what to do with a lost Russ­ian pilot who sud­den­ly appeared in the occu­pied city of Kher­son. The case has revealed the blurred line between prag­ma­tism in a war zone and col­lab­o­ra­tion with the ene­my.

    By Jef­frey Get­tle­man
    Dec. 3, 2022

    KHERSON, Ukraine — On the night of March 15, Illia Kara­ma­likov received an unex­pect­ed phone call.

    As a night­club own­er and mem­ber of Kherson’s city coun­cil, he had been run­ning a vol­un­teer neigh­bor­hood watch in this south­ern Ukrain­ian city that had just been invad­ed by thou­sands of Russ­ian troops. The sol­diers had tak­en Kher­son with lit­tle resis­tance ­but then large­ly kept going, rac­ing toward oth­er ter­ri­to­ry and show­ing no inter­est in admin­is­ter­ing the city.

    Loot­ing and chaos fol­lowed until Mr. Kara­ma­likov and oth­ers orga­nized neigh­bor­hood patrols of local men. They weren’t work­ing with the Rus­sians but had their per­mis­sion.

    On the phone that night, one of Mr. Karamalikov’s watch lead­ers report­ed that a team of guards had encoun­tered some­one stum­bling toward a check­point in a strange green uni­form, slathered in mud, look­ing shell­shocked. He wasn’t a loot­er. He was a lost Russ­ian pilot, and they had dis­armed him and were keep­ing him in a school class­room.

    It was a high­ly unusu­al pris­on­er of war sit­u­a­tion — a band of civil­ians cap­tur­ing an ene­my offi­cer in a city that the ene­my con­trols. “Nobody knew what to do,” said Mr. Karamalikov’s lawyer, Mykhai­lo Vely­chko. “They couldn’t hand him over to Ukrain­ian forces — there were no Ukrain­ian forces in the city at that time. And there was no Red Cross. And the Rus­sians were every­where.”

    What fol­lowed over the next few hours and con­tin­ues to play out in court months lat­er reveals the blurred line between com­plic­i­ty and sur­vival that many Ukraini­ans had to nav­i­gate after the Rus­sians invad­ed their coun­try — and that pos­es vex­ing prob­lems for the author­i­ties now as they decide whom to pun­ish.

    Mr. Kara­ma­likov brought the cap­tured pilot back to his house and locked him in a util­i­ty room. Lat­er that night he arranged to return the sol­dier to the Rus­sians. He saw no oth­er option.

    The Ukrain­ian author­i­ties saw things dif­fer­ent­ly. They lat­er arrest­ed Mr. Kara­ma­likov as a col­lab­o­ra­tor and charged him with trea­son. He is await­ing tri­al and faces life in prison.

    In the areas of Ukraine that Rus­sia has seized — more than a fifth of the coun­try — mil­lions of civil­ians have had to coex­ist with an occu­py­ing army that wields all the pow­er. The Ukraini­ans have recent­ly clawed back chunks of their ter­ri­to­ry, like Kher­son, which was lib­er­at­ed in mid-Novem­ber, and almost imme­di­ate­ly the hunt was on for col­lab­o­ra­tors. Peo­ple are now being judged by the choic­es they made dur­ing very stress­ful occu­pied times.

    A 12-page indict­ment accus­es Mr. Kara­ma­likov of help­ing an ene­my sol­dier escape and resume aggres­sion against Ukraine. But in inter­views with more than a dozen peo­ple in Kher­son, includ­ing those who expressed reser­va­tions about Mr. Karamalikov’s rep­u­ta­tion as a dom­i­neer­ing busi­ness­man, all of them said he had done the right thing.

    As head of the neigh­bor­hood patrols, his sup­port­ers said, he had to make a deci­sion that would car­ry grave con­se­quences for him and his com­mu­ni­ty. Hand­ing the sol­dier back to the Rus­sians seemed to go against the basic prin­ci­ples of war. If he had told his peo­ple to keep the sol­dier in cap­tiv­i­ty, in a city con­trolled by Russ­ian troops, it could have put every­one involved in dan­ger.

    As for a third option, Mr. Kara­ma­likov would not con­tem­plate that, his rab­bi said.

    “With a life in his hands, I can’t imag­ine Illia ever killing any­one,” said Rab­bi Yossef Itzhak Wolff. “What he did was the most humane deci­sion he could make.”

    Rab­bi Wolff was speak­ing by phone from Berlin and sound­ed pained. He said he was not sure when or even if he’ll return to Ukraine. Like Mr. Kara­ma­likov, he said that some peo­ple in town sus­pect him of col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Rus­sians for what he views as a benign act: allow­ing a few Jew­ish Russ­ian offi­cers from the occu­py­ing force to join prayers at his tem­ple.

    The rab­bi said that the Russ­ian offi­cers, whom he described as “the men who ran the city,” had showed up at the syn­a­gogue with armed guards and that there had been no way to refuse them. He said that he and his fam­i­ly could have left Kher­son at the begin­ning of the war and avoid­ed all this, as so many police offi­cers and politi­cians did, but that they had stayed and the walls of their house shook from shelling.

    ...

    ‘It Was Insane’

    The Rus­sians stormed into Kher­son on Feb. 24, the first day of the war, thun­der­ing up from the Crimean Penin­su­la with an ease that raised sus­pi­cions of local com­plic­i­ty. The Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment is now inves­ti­gat­ing sev­er­al intel­li­gence offi­cers sus­pect­ed of leak­ing crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion on Kherson’s defens­es to the Rus­sians.

    The secu­ri­ty ser­vices fled. The army dis­ap­peared. Police offi­cers van­ished from the streets.

    ...

    Many res­i­dents said they were in a state of shock. They felt aban­doned by Ukrain­ian forces and won­dered why they didn’t put up more of a fight.

    “Right now we sup­port Zelen­sky, but after the war we will come back to him and ask him about this,” said Valen­tyn Yer­molenko, a retired fish­er­men who lived through the occu­pa­tion and pro­vid­ed snacks and hot cof­fee to the neigh­bor­hood watch­men.

    Life in Kher­son got hard­er and hard­er. Sup­plies couldn’t get across the front lines, and the city, with a pre­war pop­u­la­tion of about 300,000, began to run out of food. The loot­ing became so bad, res­i­dents said, that thieves rolled freez­ers stocked with the last frozen chick­ens in town out of the super­mar­kets and down the main roads.

    “It was insane,” said Olek­san­dr Samoylenko, a politi­cian and head of Kherson’s region­al coun­cil, who left when the Rus­sians invad­ed. “Kher­son was under Russ­ian occu­pa­tion but the Rus­sians weren’t inter­est­ed in tak­ing over the admin­is­tra­tion — the water, the sales things, the mar­kets. They didn’t want the headache.”

    Mr. Kara­ma­likov, 51, stepped in. Along with some oth­er city lead­ers, he orga­nized the Cit­i­zen Patrol: 1,200 men, most­ly unarmed, some with sticks, who prowled Kherson’s streets after dark. They arrest­ed cur­few vio­la­tors and pet­ty crim­i­nals, some­times mak­ing them pick up garbage or per­form oth­er com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. It was a short-lived, grass-roots crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

    Mr. Kara­ma­likov had some­thing of a god­fa­ther rep­u­ta­tion in his city. At near­ly six feet tall, stocky and well con­nect­ed across busi­ness and pol­i­tics, he owned two pop­u­lar night­clubs, Ami­go and Shade, and sev­er­al gro­cery stores. He was known as a man who would engage any­one in the inter­ests of doing busi­ness and he rubbed some peo­ple the wrong way.

    “I don’t think he’s hon­est or altru­is­tic and I’ll say it to his face,” said Mr. Samoylenko.

    But in Kherson’s small Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, the rem­nant of what was once a major strand in this city’s fab­ric, Mr. Kara­ma­likov was wide­ly respect­ed. Before the Holo­caust, Rab­bi Wolff said, Kher­son had 26 tem­ples. Now there is only one left, Kherson’s Chabad Syn­a­gogue, and Mr. Kara­ma­likov reg­u­lar­ly allowed it to use his night­club space for free.

    “He nev­er said no,” Rab­bi Wolff said.

    A Ren­dezvous With ‘Alpha’

    Mr. Kara­ma­likov was busy dur­ing those first chaot­ic weeks of the war, his lawyer said — rush­ing around Kher­son in his white Audi, check­ing on neigh­bor­hood patrols, stop­ping by the syn­a­gogue and turn­ing his busi­ness­es into de fac­to aid depots where he hand­ed out car­tons of sup­plies.

    This brought him face to face with Russ­ian offi­cers, in par­tic­u­lar a colonel who dressed in all black and went by the code name Alpha. Mr. Kara­ma­likov had lit­tle choice, his lawyer said. Jumpy Russ­ian troops were spread across the city and Mr. Kara­ma­likov need­ed to talk to Russ­ian com­man­ders like Alpha “to make sure they didn’t shoot any of the vol­un­teers.”

    Around 10 p.m. on March 15, a plumber, a car­pen­ter and the carpenter’s son were stand­ing at a check­point when they saw the sil­hou­ette of some­one flit­ting in and out of the shad­ows. A voice then yelled out: “I’m one of you!” and out stepped the Russ­ian sol­dier, who had mis­tak­en the neigh­bor­hood watch­men for fel­low Rus­sians.

    Andriy Skvortsov, the carpenter’s son, said the sol­dier was bewil­dered and bare­ly able to string a sen­tence togeth­er. When he real­ized the men in front of him were Ukraini­ans, he looked extreme­ly fright­ened, Mr. Skvortsov said. “He was child­like and help­less,” Mr. Skvortsov said. And he was heav­i­ly armed.

    When they pat­ted him down they found one short-bar­reled AK-47, one Makarov officer’s pis­tol and five ammu­ni­tion mag­a­zines. They also found his mil­i­tary iden­ti­fi­ca­tion card show­ing he was Lieu­tenant Dmitrii Pavlovich Savchenko, 32, a com­bat heli­copter pilot. From his dis­com­bob­u­lat­ed speech, they pieced togeth­er that he had walked near­ly 10 miles from Kherson’s air­port, which the Ukraini­ans had just shelled, killing many Rus­sians.

    The watch­men took the sol­dier to a school and called Mr. Kara­ma­likov. There was no easy solu­tion. The Red Cross, which han­dles pris­on­er issues, was not oper­at­ing in Kher­son at the time, and there was no way to get the cap­tured pilot to Ukrain­ian forces, who were miles away.

    Despite all the anti-Russ­ian feel­ing cours­ing through Kher­son, the civil­ian guards did not mis­treat the sol­dier. A small crowd, curi­ous, gath­ered around him and some took self­ies. Mr. Karamalikov’s lawyer said that his client was deter­mined to treat the sol­dier humane­ly and what he ulti­mate­ly did was in accord with the Gene­va Con­ven­tions.

    Mr. Kara­ma­likov called Alpha and they arranged to meet in the morn­ing. Until then, the sol­dier would stay at his house. At day­break, Mr. Kara­ma­likov met Alpha and hand­ed over the Russ­ian sol­dier.

    What Mr. Kara­ma­likov didn’t know, his lawyer said, was that Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence agents had tapped Alpha’s phone and heard the whole dis­cus­sion.

    ‘Should We Have Killed the Sol­dier?’

    By mid-April, the Rus­sians had import­ed hun­dreds of intel­li­gence agents and oth­er secu­ri­ty offi­cers into Kher­son who arrest­ed many civil­ians and tor­tured some of them. At the same time, Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vices had their own net­work of infor­mants in the city and were keep­ing tabs on any­one sus­pect­ed of col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Rus­sians.

    Mr. Kara­ma­likov decid­ed it was time to go. On April 14, he packed his wife, his moth­er-in-law and three of his five chil­dren into two cars to dri­ve 150 miles to Ode­sa, a Ukrain­ian-con­trolled city.

    As soon as they crossed into Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry, they were stopped. Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence agents pulled Mr. Kara­ma­likov out of his car and took him away. His fam­i­ly and lawyer said he was brought to an inter­ro­ga­tion cen­ter in Kryvyi Rih, beat­en all over his body, cut with sharp objects on his legs and inject­ed with drugs and forced to talk.

    Offi­cials in Kher­son declined to com­ment on the alle­ga­tions of tor­ture, but acknowl­edged that at least two of the agents involved in the treat­ment of Mr. Kara­ma­likov have been placed under inves­ti­ga­tion.

    “It’s hard to believe that our own coun­try, which is com­mit­ted to democ­ra­cy and has its own laws, would do this,” his son Artem, 19, said in a phone inter­view.

    In the indict­ment, pros­e­cu­tors said that by releas­ing the sol­dier, Mr. Kara­ma­likov “orga­nized the fur­ther par­tic­i­pa­tion of a Russ­ian ser­vice­man in aggres­sion against Ukraine.” They also charged him with leak­ing per­son­nel data on mil­i­tary vet­er­ans and pro-Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal fig­ures. His lawyer said he didn’t do that and that the infor­ma­tion was already pub­licly avail­able.

    Pros­e­cu­tors also accused him of “pro­duc­ing a pos­i­tive image” of Rus­sia by dis­trib­ut­ing Russ­ian human­i­tar­i­an aid and help­ing make Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da videos, which his lawyer denied.

    But the crux of the case, his lawyer said, was the cap­tured sol­dier and “to this day we have asked a ques­tion that no one can answer: What else, in those cir­cum­stances, in that city, at that time, was he sup­posed to do?”

    The Kher­son prosecutor’s office declined to respond to that.

    Shane Dar­cy, an inter­na­tion­al law pro­fes­sor at the Irish Cen­ter for Human Rights of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Gal­way, has been fol­low­ing media reports on col­lab­o­ra­tor inves­ti­ga­tions in Ukraine, includ­ing the Kara­ma­likov case. “It sounds like as col­lab­o­ra­tion, this was a par­tic­u­lar­ly innocu­ous exam­ple, hand­ing over a dazed and con­fused sol­dier,” Mr. Dar­cy said. But, he added, “it’s not for me to define for the Ukraini­ans what they con­sid­er col­lab­o­ra­tion.”

    Mr. Samoylenko, the local politi­cian, said that despite his mis­giv­ings about Mr. Karamalikov’s integri­ty, the deci­sion to hand over the pilot was “absolute­ly right.”

    “There was noth­ing else you could do,” he said, adding that it would have been dan­ger­ous for every­one involved to keep him as a pris­on­er.

    Even after all that has unfold­ed in Kher­son in the past nine months, Mr. Skvortsov, the watch­man, seems deeply moved by what hap­pened that night.

    “We won­dered lat­er: Should we have killed the sol­dier and kept it secret?” he said. “But I’ve decid­ed no, that wouldn’t have been good.”

    “I remem­ber see­ing the bod­ies and the body parts at the begin­ning of the war, ours and theirs,” he said. “We did the right thing.”

    ———–

    “He Returned a Dazed Sol­dier to the Rus­sians. Ukraine Calls It Trea­son.” By Jef­frey Get­tle­man; The New York Times; 12/03/2022

    “In the areas of Ukraine that Rus­sia has seized — more than a fifth of the coun­try — mil­lions of civil­ians have had to coex­ist with an occu­py­ing army that wields all the pow­er. The Ukraini­ans have recent­ly clawed back chunks of their ter­ri­to­ry, like Kher­son, which was lib­er­at­ed in mid-Novem­ber, and almost imme­di­ate­ly the hunt was on for col­lab­o­ra­tors. Peo­ple are now being judged by the choic­es they made dur­ing very stress­ful occu­pied times.”

    The hunt for col­lab­o­ra­tors was almost imme­di­ate after recap­tur­ing Kher­son. And as this report describes, those sus­pi­cions end­ed up falling on Illia Kara­ma­likov, one of the lead­ing fig­ures in the city’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty and the per­son who end­ed up orga­niz­ing the cit­i­zen patrols to main­tain some sem­blance of order dur­ing the Russ­ian occu­pa­tion fol­low­ing the sud­den with­draw­al of the Ukrain­ian forces. Even local lead­ers who aren’t fans of Kara­ma­likov say he was only doing the right thing and oper­at­ing in the pub­lic’s inter­est:

    ...
    The Rus­sians stormed into Kher­son on Feb. 24, the first day of the war, thun­der­ing up from the Crimean Penin­su­la with an ease that raised sus­pi­cions of local com­plic­i­ty. The Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment is now inves­ti­gat­ing sev­er­al intel­li­gence offi­cers sus­pect­ed of leak­ing crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion on Kherson’s defens­es to the Rus­sians.

    The secu­ri­ty ser­vices fled. The army dis­ap­peared. Police offi­cers van­ished from the streets.

    ...

    “It was insane,” said Olek­san­dr Samoylenko, a politi­cian and head of Kherson’s region­al coun­cil, who left when the Rus­sians invad­ed. “Kher­son was under Russ­ian occu­pa­tion but the Rus­sians weren’t inter­est­ed in tak­ing over the admin­is­tra­tion — the water, the sales things, the mar­kets. They didn’t want the headache.”

    Mr. Kara­ma­likov, 51, stepped in. Along with some oth­er city lead­ers, he orga­nized the Cit­i­zen Patrol: 1,200 men, most­ly unarmed, some with sticks, who prowled Kherson’s streets after dark. They arrest­ed cur­few vio­la­tors and pet­ty crim­i­nals, some­times mak­ing them pick up garbage or per­form oth­er com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice. It was a short-lived, grass-roots crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem.

    Mr. Kara­ma­likov had some­thing of a god­fa­ther rep­u­ta­tion in his city. At near­ly six feet tall, stocky and well con­nect­ed across busi­ness and pol­i­tics, he owned two pop­u­lar night­clubs, Ami­go and Shade, and sev­er­al gro­cery stores. He was known as a man who would engage any­one in the inter­ests of doing busi­ness and he rubbed some peo­ple the wrong way.

    “I don’t think he’s hon­est or altru­is­tic and I’ll say it to his face,” said Mr. Samoylenko.

    But in Kherson’s small Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, the rem­nant of what was once a major strand in this city’s fab­ric, Mr. Kara­ma­likov was wide­ly respect­ed. Before the Holo­caust, Rab­bi Wolff said, Kher­son had 26 tem­ples. Now there is only one left, Kherson’s Chabad Syn­a­gogue, and Mr. Kara­ma­likov reg­u­lar­ly allowed it to use his night­club space for free.

    ...

    Mr. Samoylenko, the local politi­cian, said that despite his mis­giv­ings about Mr. Karamalikov’s integri­ty, the deci­sion to hand over the pilot was “absolute­ly right.”

    “There was noth­ing else you could do,” he said, adding that it would have been dan­ger­ous for every­one involved to keep him as a pris­on­er.
    ...

    So when a lost Russ­ian sol­dier end­ed up stum­bling into one of those civil­ian street patrol, there were no Ukraine author­i­ties left to hand the sol­dier over to. Their options were to either kill the sol­dier or hand him over to the Russ­ian occu­py­ing author­i­ties. And they chose the lat­ter option, in accord with the Gene­va Con­ven­tion, with Kara­ma­likov arrang­ing a swap to hand the sol­dier over. It was those nego­ti­a­tions to turn over the sol­dier, over­heard by Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence, that appears to have doomed Kara­ma­likov. After flee­ing the city on April 14, Kara­ma­likov was stopped by Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence agents, pulled out of his car, brought to an inter­ro­ga­tion cen­ter and report­ed­ly drugged and tor­tured. That’s what hap­pened appar­ent­ly because he did­n’t break the Gene­va Con­ven­tions and kill that sol­dier:

    ...
    The watch­men took the sol­dier to a school and called Mr. Kara­ma­likov. There was no easy solu­tion. The Red Cross, which han­dles pris­on­er issues, was not oper­at­ing in Kher­son at the time, and there was no way to get the cap­tured pilot to Ukrain­ian forces, who were miles away.

    Despite all the anti-Russ­ian feel­ing cours­ing through Kher­son, the civil­ian guards did not mis­treat the sol­dier. A small crowd, curi­ous, gath­ered around him and some took self­ies. Mr. Karamalikov’s lawyer said that his client was deter­mined to treat the sol­dier humane­ly and what he ulti­mate­ly did was in accord with the Gene­va Con­ven­tions.

    Mr. Kara­ma­likov called Alpha and they arranged to meet in the morn­ing. Until then, the sol­dier would stay at his house. At day­break, Mr. Kara­ma­likov met Alpha and hand­ed over the Russ­ian sol­dier.

    What Mr. Kara­ma­likov didn’t know, his lawyer said, was that Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence agents had tapped Alpha’s phone and heard the whole dis­cus­sion.

    ...

    Mr. Kara­ma­likov decid­ed it was time to go. On April 14, he packed his wife, his moth­er-in-law and three of his five chil­dren into two cars to dri­ve 150 miles to Ode­sa, a Ukrain­ian-con­trolled city.

    As soon as they crossed into Ukrain­ian ter­ri­to­ry, they were stopped. Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence agents pulled Mr. Kara­ma­likov out of his car and took him away. His fam­i­ly and lawyer said he was brought to an inter­ro­ga­tion cen­ter in Kryvyi Rih, beat­en all over his body, cut with sharp objects on his legs and inject­ed with drugs and forced to talk.

    Offi­cials in Kher­son declined to com­ment on the alle­ga­tions of tor­ture, but acknowl­edged that at least two of the agents involved in the treat­ment of Mr. Kara­ma­likov have been placed under inves­ti­ga­tion.

    “It’s hard to believe that our own coun­try, which is com­mit­ted to democ­ra­cy and has its own laws, would do this,” his son Artem, 19, said in a phone inter­view.
    ...

    And notice how even the Kher­son prosecutor’s office declined to say what exact­ly Kara­ma­likov was sup­posed to do. The 12-page indict­ment accus­es Kara­ma­likov of help­ing an ene­my sol­dier escape and resume aggres­sion against Ukraine, but the only way for this indict­ment to make sense is if Kara­ma­likov was expect­ed to kill that sol­dier. That’s the obvi­ous answer that the pros­e­cu­tors won’t direct­ly admit:

    ...
    A 12-page indict­ment accus­es Mr. Kara­ma­likov of help­ing an ene­my sol­dier escape and resume aggres­sion against Ukraine. But in inter­views with more than a dozen peo­ple in Kher­son, includ­ing those who expressed reser­va­tions about Mr. Karamalikov’s rep­u­ta­tion as a dom­i­neer­ing busi­ness­man, all of them said he had done the right thing.

    ...

    In the indict­ment, pros­e­cu­tors said that by releas­ing the sol­dier, Mr. Kara­ma­likov “orga­nized the fur­ther par­tic­i­pa­tion of a Russ­ian ser­vice­man in aggres­sion against Ukraine.” They also charged him with leak­ing per­son­nel data on mil­i­tary vet­er­ans and pro-Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal fig­ures. His lawyer said he didn’t do that and that the infor­ma­tion was already pub­licly avail­able.

    Pros­e­cu­tors also accused him of “pro­duc­ing a pos­i­tive image” of Rus­sia by dis­trib­ut­ing Russ­ian human­i­tar­i­an aid and help­ing make Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da videos, which his lawyer denied.

    But the crux of the case, his lawyer said, was the cap­tured sol­dier and “to this day we have asked a ques­tion that no one can answer: What else, in those cir­cum­stances, in that city, at that time, was he sup­posed to do?”

    The Kher­son prosecutor’s office declined to respond to that.

    Shane Dar­cy, an inter­na­tion­al law pro­fes­sor at the Irish Cen­ter for Human Rights of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Gal­way, has been fol­low­ing media reports on col­lab­o­ra­tor inves­ti­ga­tions in Ukraine, includ­ing the Kara­ma­likov case. “It sounds like as col­lab­o­ra­tion, this was a par­tic­u­lar­ly innocu­ous exam­ple, hand­ing over a dazed and con­fused sol­dier,” Mr. Dar­cy said. But, he added, “it’s not for me to define for the Ukraini­ans what they con­sid­er col­lab­o­ra­tion.”
    ...

    Final­ly, note the Kara­ma­likov isn’t the only promi­nent mem­ber of Kher­son­’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty to face charges of col­lab­o­ra­tion: Rab­bi Wolff attests to being sus­pect­ed of col­lab­o­ra­tion for allow­ing armed Russ­ian offi­cers to join prayers at his tem­ple. Again, what was he expect­ed to do? It was an impos­si­ble sit­u­a­tion, at least impos­si­ble under the appar­ent rules the Ukrain­ian author­i­ties are try­ing to enforce:

    ...
    Rab­bi Wolff was speak­ing by phone from Berlin and sound­ed pained. He said he was not sure when or even if he’ll return to Ukraine. Like Mr. Kara­ma­likov, he said that some peo­ple in town sus­pect him of col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Rus­sians for what he views as a benign act: allow­ing a few Jew­ish Russ­ian offi­cers from the occu­py­ing force to join prayers at his tem­ple.

    The rab­bi said that the Russ­ian offi­cers, whom he described as “the men who ran the city,” had showed up at the syn­a­gogue with armed guards and that there had been no way to refuse them. He said that he and his fam­i­ly could have left Kher­son at the begin­ning of the war and avoid­ed all this, as so many police offi­cers and politi­cians did, but that they had stayed and the walls of their house shook from shelling.

    ...

    But in Kherson’s small Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty, the rem­nant of what was once a major strand in this city’s fab­ric, Mr. Kara­ma­likov was wide­ly respect­ed. Before the Holo­caust, Rab­bi Wolff said, Kher­son had 26 tem­ples. Now there is only one left, Kherson’s Chabad Syn­a­gogue, and Mr. Kara­ma­likov reg­u­lar­ly allowed it to use his night­club space for free.
    ...

    Will Rab­bi Wolfe be the next Jew­ish leader of Kher­son to be arrest­ed and tor­tured for the crime of ‘col­lab­o­ra­tion’? Pre­sum­ably not since he man­aged to flee to Berlin and remains unsure when or even if he’ll ever return to Ukraine. Take that in: the head of the last syn­a­gogue in Kher­son isn’t sure if it’s safe to ever return to Ukraine. For the crime of allow­ing armed Russ­ian sol­diers to pray at his syn­a­gogue in an occu­pied city. It’s the kind of sto­ry that rais­es the ques­tion of how many mem­bers of of Ukraine’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty aren’t ulti­mate­ly going to end up get­ting accused of col­lab­o­ra­tion on trumped up charges. We’ll find out. Pre­sum­ably in the form of a grow­ing ter­ri­fied Ukrain­ian Jew­ish dias­po­ra and/or more sto­ries of tar­get­ed abduc­tion and tor­ture.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 13, 2022, 4:54 pm
  19. We got an update on the var­i­ous inves­ti­ga­tions into the Nord­stream pipeline attack. Sort of. The updates come in the form a WaPo arti­cle filled with admis­sions from anony­mous offi­cials famil­iar with the inves­ti­ga­tions admit­ting that the proof of Rus­si­a’s guilt may not be there. And may nev­er be found. That’s the update. A shift from “It was def­i­nite­ly Rus­sia” to “It was prob­a­bly Rus­sia even if we can’t ever prove it.” We’re still hear­ing plen­ty of des­per­ate rea­sons for why Rus­sia would have been tempt­ed to blow up its own pipeline — like how doing so would demon­strate the gen­er­al vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of oth­er pipelines and some­how there­fore scare Ukraine’s allies into giv­ing up their sup­port — but at least now there appear to be more and more gov­ern­ment offi­cials who are pub­licly ques­tion­ing that line of rea­son­ing. Anony­mous­ly:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    No con­clu­sive evi­dence Rus­sia is behind Nord Stream attack

    World lead­ers were quick to blame Moscow for explo­sions along the under­sea nat­ur­al gas pipelines. But some West­ern offi­cials now doubt the Krem­lin was respon­si­ble.

    By Shane Har­ris, John Hud­son, Mis­sy Ryan and Michael Birn­baum
    Decem­ber 21, 2022 at 2:00 a.m. EST

    After explo­sions in late Sep­tem­ber severe­ly dam­aged under­sea pipelines built to car­ry nat­ur­al gas from Rus­sia to Europe, world lead­ers quick­ly blamed Moscow for a brazen and dan­ger­ous act of sab­o­tage. With win­ter approach­ing, it appeared the Krem­lin intend­ed to stran­gle the flow of ener­gy to mil­lions across the con­ti­nent, an act of “black­mail,” some lead­ers said, designed to threat­en coun­tries into with­draw­ing their finan­cial and mil­i­tary sup­port for Ukraine.

    But now, after months of inves­ti­ga­tion, numer­ous offi­cials pri­vate­ly say that Rus­sia may not be to blame after all for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines.

    “There is no evi­dence at this point that Rus­sia was behind the sab­o­tage,” said one Euro­pean offi­cial, echo­ing the assess­ment of 23 diplo­mat­ic and intel­li­gence offi­cials in nine coun­tries inter­viewed in recent weeks.

    Some went so far as to say they didn’t think Rus­sia was respon­si­ble. Oth­ers who still con­sid­er Rus­sia a prime sus­pect said pos­i­tive­ly attribut­ing the attack — to any coun­try — may be impos­si­ble.

    ...

    No one doubts that the dam­age was delib­er­ate. An offi­cial with the Ger­man gov­ern­ment, which is con­duct­ing its own inves­ti­ga­tion, said explo­sives appear to have been placed on the out­side of the struc­tures.

    But even those with inside knowl­edge of the foren­sic details don’t con­clu­sive­ly tie Rus­sia to the attack, offi­cials said, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to share infor­ma­tion about the progress of the inves­ti­ga­tion, some of which is based on clas­si­fied intel­li­gence.

    “Foren­sics on an inves­ti­ga­tion like this are going to be exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult,” said a senior U.S. State Depart­ment offi­cial.

    The Unit­ed States rou­tine­ly inter­cepts the com­mu­ni­ca­tions of Russ­ian offi­cials and mil­i­tary forces, a clan­des­tine intel­li­gence effort that helped accu­rate­ly fore­cast Moscow’s Feb­ru­ary inva­sion of Ukraine. But so far, ana­lysts have not heard or read state­ments from the Russ­ian side tak­ing cred­it or sug­gest­ing that they’re try­ing to cov­er up their involve­ment, offi­cials said.

    Attribut­ing the attack has been chal­leng­ing from the start. The first explo­sion occurred in the mid­dle of the night to the south­east of the Dan­ish island of Born­holm. Sci­en­tists detect­ed two addi­tion­al explo­sions more than 12 hours lat­er to the north­east of the island.

    Giv­en the rel­a­tive­ly shal­low depth of the dam­aged pipelines — approx­i­mate­ly 80 yards at the site of one explo­sion — a num­ber of dif­fer­ent actors could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly have pulled off the attack, pos­si­bly with the use of sub­mersible drones or with the aid of sur­face ships, offi­cials said. The list of sus­pects isn’t lim­it­ed only to coun­tries that pos­sess manned sub­marines or deep-sea demo­li­tions exper­tise.

    The leaks occurred in the exclu­sive eco­nom­ic zones of Swe­den and Den­mark. Euro­pean nations have been attempt­ing to map which ships were in the region in the days before the explo­sions, in the hope of win­now­ing the field of sus­pects.

    We know that this amount of explo­sives has to be a state-lev­el actor,” Finnish For­eign Min­is­ter Pekka Haav­is­to said in an inter­view this month. “It’s not just a sin­gle fish­er­man who decides to put the bomb there. It’s very pro­fes­sion­al.”

    Regard­less of the per­pe­tra­tor, Haav­is­to said that for Fin­land, which isn’t a Nord Stream client, “The les­son learned is that it shows how vul­ner­a­ble our ener­gy net­work, our under­sea cables, inter­net … are for all kinds of ter­ror­ists.”

    Rus­sia remains a key sus­pect, how­ev­er, part­ly because of its recent his­to­ry of bomb­ing civil­ian infra­struc­ture in Ukraine and propen­si­ty for uncon­ven­tion­al war­fare. It’s not such a leap to think that the Krem­lin would attack Nord Stream, per­haps to under­mine NATO resolve and peel off allies that depend on Russ­ian ener­gy sources, offi­cials said.

    But a hand­ful of offi­cials expressed regret that so many world lead­ers point­ed the fin­ger at Moscow with­out con­sid­er­ing oth­er coun­tries, as well as extrem­ist groups, that might have the capa­bil­i­ty and the motive to con­duct the attack.

    “The gov­ern­ments that wait­ed to com­ment before draw­ing con­clu­sions played this right,” said one Euro­pean offi­cial.

    Con­dem­na­tion of Moscow was swift and wide­spread. On Sept. 30, four days after the explo­sions, U.S. Ener­gy Sec­re­tary Jen­nifer Granholm told the BBC it “seems” Rus­sia was to blame. “It is high­ly unlike­ly that these inci­dents are coin­ci­dence,” she said.

    Ger­man Econ­o­my Min­is­ter Robert Habeck also implied that Rus­sia, which has con­sis­tent­ly denied respon­si­bil­i­ty, was respon­si­ble for the explo­sions. “Rus­sia say­ing ‘It wasn’t us’ is like say­ing ‘I’m not the thief,’” Habeck told reporters in ear­ly Octo­ber.

    An advis­er to Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky called the rup­tures “a ter­ror­ist attack planned by Rus­sia and an act of aggres­sion toward [the Euro­pean Union].”

    “No one on the Euro­pean side of the ocean is think­ing this is any­thing oth­er than Russ­ian sab­o­tage,” a senior Euro­pean envi­ron­men­tal offi­cial told The Wash­ing­ton Post in Sep­tem­ber.

    But as the inves­ti­ga­tion drags on, skep­tics point out that Moscow had lit­tle to gain from dam­ag­ing pipelines that fed West­ern Europe nat­ur­al gas from Rus­sia and gen­er­at­ed bil­lions of dol­lars in annu­al rev­enue. The Nord Stream projects had stirred con­tro­ver­sy and debate for years because they yoked Ger­many and oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries to Russ­ian ener­gy sources.

    “The ratio­nale that it was Rus­sia [that attacked the pipelines] nev­er made sense to me,” said one West­ern Euro­pean offi­cial.

    Near­ly a month before the rup­ture, the Russ­ian ener­gy giant Gazprom stopped flows on Nord Stream 1, hours after the Group of Sev­en indus­tri­al­ized nations announced a forth­com­ing price cap on Russ­ian oil, a move intend­ed to put a dent in the Kremlin’s trea­sury. Dur­ing Putin’s long stretch in office, the Krem­lin has used ener­gy as an instru­ment of polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic lever­age, employ­ing the threat of cut­offs to bul­ly coun­tries into going along with its goals, offi­cials said. It didn’t make sense that Rus­sia would aban­don that lever­age.

    Ger­many had halt­ed final autho­riza­tion of Nord Stream 2 just days before Russ­ian forces invad­ed Ukraine. But the pipeline was intact and had already been pumped full with 300 mil­lion cubic meters of nat­ur­al gas to ready it for oper­a­tions.

    Euro­pean and U.S. offi­cials who con­tin­ue to believe that Rus­sia is the most like­ly cul­prit say it had at least one plau­si­ble motive: Attack­ing Nord Stream 1 and 2, which weren’t gen­er­at­ing any rev­enue to fill Russ­ian cof­fers, demon­strat­ed that pipelines, cables and oth­er under­sea infra­struc­ture were vul­ner­a­ble and that the coun­tries that sup­port­ed Ukraine risked pay­ing a ter­ri­ble price.

    ...

    The war prompt­ed Euro­pean coun­tries to build up stock­piles of alter­na­tive ener­gy, mak­ing them less depen­dent on Russ­ian sources. But the Nord Stream attack has left many gov­ern­ments uneasy about the lengths to which Rus­sia or oth­er actors might go.

    Swedish For­eign Min­is­ter Tobias Bill­strom said his gov­ern­ment was wait­ing for the country’s inde­pen­dent prosecutor’s office to com­plete its inves­ti­ga­tion into the explo­sions before reach­ing a con­clu­sion. Swe­den, along with Den­mark, increased its naval patrols right after the attack.

    “We have spo­ken about [the explo­sions] as part of the view that the secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in the north­ern part of Europe has dete­ri­o­rat­ed fol­low­ing Russia’s aggres­sion on Ukraine, with all the impli­ca­tions that it has,” Bill­strom said in an inter­view this month.

    The prospect that the explo­sions may nev­er be defin­i­tive­ly attrib­uted is unset­tling for nations like Nor­way, which has 9,000 kilo­me­ters (5,500 miles) of under­sea gas pipelines to Europe.

    A Nor­we­gian offi­cial said Nor­way is attempt­ing to strength­en secu­ri­ty around its own pipelines and broad­er crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture. It is invest­ing in sur­veil­lance; work­ing with Britain, France and Ger­many to inten­si­fy naval patrols; and try­ing to find ways to keep oil and gas flow­ing in the event of anoth­er attack.

    Nor­way is also inves­ti­gat­ing the appear­ance of uniden­ti­fied aer­i­al drones around its oil and gas facil­i­ties around the time of the Nord Stream attacks.

    “It’s not a good thing,” the offi­cial said, of the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the Nord Stream explo­sions may remain unsolved. “Who­ev­er did it may get away with it.”

    ———–

    “No con­clu­sive evi­dence Rus­sia is behind Nord Stream attack” By Shane Har­ris, John Hud­son, Mis­sy Ryan and Michael Birn­baum; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 12/21/2022

    “Some went so far as to say they didn’t think Rus­sia was respon­si­ble. Oth­ers who still con­sid­er Rus­sia a prime sus­pect said pos­i­tive­ly attribut­ing the attack — to any coun­try — may be impos­si­ble.

    “Some went so far as to say they didn’t think Rus­sia was respon­si­ble.” The out­ra­geous­ness of it all. Some offi­cials are just going off the ranch here and sug­gest­ing that Rus­sia as was­n’t respon­si­ble for blow­ing up its own pipeline. Anony­mous­ly sug­gest­ing it. No one appears to want to put their name the record. Even then, the phras­ing of this shift in blame is lim­it­ed to describ­ing those with detailed knowl­edge of the foren­sic details of the inves­ti­ga­tion as say­ing they can’t con­clu­sive­ly tie Rus­sia to the attack. So it’s real­ly been a shift from “It’s def­i­nite­ly Rus­sia” to “It’s still prob­a­bly Rus­sia but we can’t nec­es­sar­i­ly prove it based on the evi­dence”. Based on what log­ic? Well, by destroy­ing its own pipeline, Rus­sia was demon­strat­ing the poten­tial vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties of oth­er coun­tries’ pipelines. That was the ratio­nale we’re still for why we should still assume Rus­sia blew up its own pipeline despite the lack of evi­dence:

    ...
    No one doubts that the dam­age was delib­er­ate. An offi­cial with the Ger­man gov­ern­ment, which is con­duct­ing its own inves­ti­ga­tion, said explo­sives appear to have been placed on the out­side of the struc­tures.

    But even those with inside knowl­edge of the foren­sic details don’t con­clu­sive­ly tie Rus­sia to the attack, offi­cials said, speak­ing on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to share infor­ma­tion about the progress of the inves­ti­ga­tion, some of which is based on clas­si­fied intel­li­gence.

    “Foren­sics on an inves­ti­ga­tion like this are going to be exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult,” said a senior U.S. State Depart­ment offi­cial.

    The Unit­ed States rou­tine­ly inter­cepts the com­mu­ni­ca­tions of Russ­ian offi­cials and mil­i­tary forces, a clan­des­tine intel­li­gence effort that helped accu­rate­ly fore­cast Moscow’s Feb­ru­ary inva­sion of Ukraine. But so far, ana­lysts have not heard or read state­ments from the Russ­ian side tak­ing cred­it or sug­gest­ing that they’re try­ing to cov­er up their involve­ment, offi­cials said.

    ...

    Euro­pean and U.S. offi­cials who con­tin­ue to believe that Rus­sia is the most like­ly cul­prit say it had at least one plau­si­ble motive: Attack­ing Nord Stream 1 and 2, which weren’t gen­er­at­ing any rev­enue to fill Russ­ian cof­fers, demon­strat­ed that pipelines, cables and oth­er under­sea infra­struc­ture were vul­ner­a­ble and that the coun­tries that sup­port­ed Ukraine risked pay­ing a ter­ri­ble price.
    ...

    At the same time, we’re hear­ing more acknowl­edge­ments of the range pos­si­ble actors who had the capa­bil­i­ties to pull off the attack, includ­ing ter­ror­ists and extrem­ist groups. But still no men­tion of the range of obvi­ous sus­pects with obvi­ous motives and plen­ty of capa­bil­i­ty to pull it off:

    ...
    Attribut­ing the attack has been chal­leng­ing from the start. The first explo­sion occurred in the mid­dle of the night to the south­east of the Dan­ish island of Born­holm. Sci­en­tists detect­ed two addi­tion­al explo­sions more than 12 hours lat­er to the north­east of the island.

    Giv­en the rel­a­tive­ly shal­low depth of the dam­aged pipelines — approx­i­mate­ly 80 yards at the site of one explo­sion — a num­ber of dif­fer­ent actors could the­o­ret­i­cal­ly have pulled off the attack, pos­si­bly with the use of sub­mersible drones or with the aid of sur­face ships, offi­cials said. The list of sus­pects isn’t lim­it­ed only to coun­tries that pos­sess manned sub­marines or deep-sea demo­li­tions exper­tise.

    The leaks occurred in the exclu­sive eco­nom­ic zones of Swe­den and Den­mark. Euro­pean nations have been attempt­ing to map which ships were in the region in the days before the explo­sions, in the hope of win­now­ing the field of sus­pects.

    We know that this amount of explo­sives has to be a state-lev­el actor,” Finnish For­eign Min­is­ter Pekka Haav­is­to said in an inter­view this month. “It’s not just a sin­gle fish­er­man who decides to put the bomb there. It’s very pro­fes­sion­al.”

    Regard­less of the per­pe­tra­tor, Haav­is­to said that for Fin­land, which isn’t a Nord Stream client, “The les­son learned is that it shows how vul­ner­a­ble our ener­gy net­work, our under­sea cables, inter­net … are for all kinds of ter­ror­ists.”

    Rus­sia remains a key sus­pect, how­ev­er, part­ly because of its recent his­to­ry of bomb­ing civil­ian infra­struc­ture in Ukraine and propen­si­ty for uncon­ven­tion­al war­fare. It’s not such a leap to think that the Krem­lin would attack Nord Stream, per­haps to under­mine NATO resolve and peel off allies that depend on Russ­ian ener­gy sources, offi­cials said.

    But a hand­ful of offi­cials expressed regret that so many world lead­ers point­ed the fin­ger at Moscow with­out con­sid­er­ing oth­er coun­tries, as well as extrem­ist groups, that might have the capa­bil­i­ty and the motive to con­duct the attack.
    ...

    And when we hear Swe­den’s For­eign Min­is­ter cau­tion that his gov­ern­ment was wait­ing for the coun­try’s inde­pen­dent pros­e­cu­tor’s office to com­plete its inves­ti­ga­tion before reach­ing a con­clu­sion, let’s not for­get how Swe­den declared back in Octo­ber that it was­n’t going to share its inves­tiga­tive con­clu­sions with any oth­er coun­tries. In oth­er words, don’t hold your breath for a pub­lic sum­ma­ry of that inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion:

    ...

    The war prompt­ed Euro­pean coun­tries to build up stock­piles of alter­na­tive ener­gy, mak­ing them less depen­dent on Russ­ian sources. But the Nord Stream attack has left many gov­ern­ments uneasy about the lengths to which Rus­sia or oth­er actors might go.

    Swedish For­eign Min­is­ter Tobias Bill­strom said his gov­ern­ment was wait­ing for the country’s inde­pen­dent prosecutor’s office to com­plete its inves­ti­ga­tion into the explo­sions before reach­ing a con­clu­sion. Swe­den, along with Den­mark, increased its naval patrols right after the attack.

    “We have spo­ken about [the explo­sions] as part of the view that the secu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion in the north­ern part of Europe has dete­ri­o­rat­ed fol­low­ing Russia’s aggres­sion on Ukraine, with all the impli­ca­tions that it has,” Bill­strom said in an inter­view this month.
    ...

    We’ll see what the ulti­mate ‘offi­cial’ con­clu­sion is on this inves­ti­ga­tion, but it appears that we are see­ing an ‘unof­fi­cial’ anony­mous push to shift the pub­lic expec­ta­tions in advance of what­ev­er that offi­cial con­clu­sion ends up being. And it’s pret­ty clear the expec­ta­tions they’re try­ing to set are that of no con­clu­sive deter­mi­na­tion of the cul­prit is pos­si­ble. Along with the strong inti­ma­tion that we should just assume it was Rus­sia any­way. It’s turn­ing into quite the meta sto­ry.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 22, 2022, 3:27 pm
  20. Just how many Azov Nazi bat­tal­ions are there oper­at­ing inside the Ukrain­ian armed forced today? That’s one of the dis­turb­ing ques­tions raised in the fol­low­ing pair of arti­cles about the ongo­ing inter­na­tion­al pro-Azov pub­lic rela­tions push. A pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign that, as we’ve seen, includ­ed an Azov unit that actu­al­ly trav­eled to Israel in an effort to demon­strate the group’s non-extrem­ist nature.

    As we’re going to see, this pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign is filled with pub­lic assur­ances that the Azov Reg­i­ment has been com­plete­ly purged of any extrem­ists and is just like any oth­er Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary unit. They even replaced the Black Sun/Wolfsangel patch with a tra­di­tion­al tri­dent in May of this year. And there’s no ties what­so­ev­er between the Azov Reg­i­ment in the mil­i­tary and the broad­er Azov move­ment and its Nation­al Corps polit­i­cal wing. No ties at all. That’s the pitch.

    Now, as Michael Col­borne — a jour­nal­ist and researcher for Belling­cat — points out in and fol­low­ing arti­cle, this is a high­ly prob­lem­at­ic nar­ra­tive for a vari­ety a rea­sons, refer­ring to pub­lic state­ments “of senior mem­bers of Azov units and of the Move­ment make clear that the Nation­al Corps was basi­cal­ly used as the orga­ni­za­tion­al ‘spine’ to build up and cre­ate new Azov units, which they treat as part of the same Azov fam­i­ly.”

    Col­borne also points out that, while the black sun sym­bol was indeed offi­cial retired ear­ly this year, Azov’s black sun sym­bol “was still being used as part of the offi­cial Telegram chan­nel’s pro­file pic until ear­li­er this year, and it’s not hard to find indi­vid­ual pic­tures of fight­ers in new­er Azov units — in oth­er words, not the Reg­i­ment — wear­ing that patch.”

    So Col­borne is find­ing evi­dence of a new of new “Azov units”, filled with troops still sport­ing the Nazi patch­es. Which rais­es the obvi­ous ques­tion of how many new Azov units are there being cre­at­ed right now?

    As we’re going to see in the sec­ond arti­cle excerpt below pub­lished last month in Forbes, there’s at least one new Azov mil­i­tary unit that’s been stood up since the start of the war back in Feb­ru­ary: the 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion. The unit was first stood up in the Spring of 2022 and is a com­plete­ly sep­a­rate unit from the Azov Reg­i­ment based in Mar­i­oupol. The Forbes piece goes to great lengths to assure us that the Azov Reg­i­ment was com­plete­ly purged of extrem­ism years ago, as is the 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion and oth­er new­ly formed Azov units.

    Keep in mind that we real­ly should expect that the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary would be more wary more allow­ing these new­er Azov units to become over­run with open Nazi giv­en the inter­na­tion­al sen­si­tiv­i­ties involved. And yet, Michael Col­borne reports that it’s not hard to find pho­tos of Nazi patch­es from that these new units.

    So who should we believe? All of the peo­ple assur­ing us that Azov has been ide­o­log­i­cal­ly cleansed of its extrem­ists? Or our ‘lying’ eyes and ears show­ing us Nazi patch­es and Azov lead­ers talk­ing about how they’re all in one big ‘Azov fam­i­ly’?:

    Haaretz

    Down­play­ing Far-right Ties, Hero of Ukraine’s Azov Unit Holds Israel Pub­lic­i­ty Tour

    Illia Samoilenko of Ukraine’s Azov unit has been speak­ing in Israel about his fight­ing in Mar­i­upol, but has also been assur­ing skep­tics that his group no longer has neo-Nazi affil­i­a­tions

    Sam Sokol
    Dec 20, 2022

    Stand­ing on the board­walk next to the Tel Aviv beach, Lt. Illia Samoilenko shift­ed his cig­a­rette to the hook which replaced the left hand he lost in bat­tle against the Rus­sians and smiled as he described how a left-wing Israeli activist recent­ly admit­ted to being ner­vous about meet­ing him.

    His interlocutor’s hes­i­tan­cy was under­stand­able, giv­en the rep­u­ta­tion of Samoilenko’s unit, a con­tro­ver­sial Ukrain­ian nation­al guard corps called the Azov Reg­i­ment known both for its ties to far-right nation­al­ists and neo-Nazis and for its spir­it­ed last stand against Russ­ian forces in the indus­tri­al city of Mar­i­upol.

    Cap­tured along with hun­dreds of his com­rades fol­low­ing the city’s fall, the tall and rangy intel­li­gence offi­cer spent months in cap­tiv­i­ty before being freed in a pris­on­er swap this Sep­tem­ber.

    It is not clear how many troops serve under Azov, but some media reports have put the num­ber at between 900 and 2,500, a small per­cent­age of the more than 270,000 troops in the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary at the begin­ning of the con­flict.

    ...

    In late Sep­tem­ber, Samoilenko was one of 215 Ukraini­ans, includ­ing the com­man­der and deputy com­man­der of Azov, who were freed in exchange for 55 Russ­ian pris­on­ers as well as Vik­tor Medved­chuk, the leader of a banned pro-Russ­ian par­ty who was fac­ing trea­son charges.

    ...

    Now, less than three months lat­er, Samoilenko is in Israel as part of a pub­lic­i­ty blitz orga­nized by the local activist group, Israeli Friends of Ukraine. Samoilenko has been giv­ing inter­views to local Russ­ian, Hebrew and Eng­lish-lan­guage media and attend­ing screen­ings of a doc­u­men­tary about Russ­ian fil­tra­tion camps — a net­work of facil­i­ties which the U.S. State Depart­ment says have been used to “facil­i­tate the forced relo­ca­tion of Ukraine’s cit­i­zens to Rus­sia.”

    The trip was also orga­nized in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Ukrain­ian Embassy in Tel Aviv and phil­an­thropist Leonid Nevzlin’s Nadav Foun­da­tion. Nev­zlin is a Haaretz share­hold­er.

    His goal, Samoilenko told Haaretz, is to “spread the word, the word of truth to the peo­ple” about the Azov Reg­i­men­t’s “valiant” stand as the final defend­ers of Mar­i­upol, where they were holed up in the city’s Azovstal iron and steel plant under intense Russ­ian fire for near­ly three months, becom­ing a pop­u­lar sym­bol of Ukrain­ian resis­tance in the process.

    ...

    It was found­ed as a vol­un­teer mili­tia by mem­bers of the Patri­ot of Ukraine neo-Nazi group dur­ing the ear­ly days of the 2014 war in the country’s east. Azov helped recap­ture Mar­i­upol from Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratists before being incor­po­rat­ed into the nation­al guard. Its troops have been accused of war crimes by the Unit­ed Nations, while its para­mil­i­tary arm, the Nation­al Corps, has been linked to attacks on local Roma and mem­bers of the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty.

    Israeli Friends of Ukraine’s Anna Zharo­va coun­tered this claim on an Israeli out­let and dis­cussed her rea­sons for bring­ing Samoilenko, as well as Yulia Fedo­siuk, the wife of a cap­tive Azov ser­vice­man, to Israel.

    “Israel val­ues free­dom, val­ues strength, Israel val­ues hon­or. It’s the same things that we also val­ue,” Samoilenko told Haaretz dur­ing an inter­view on Mon­day, assert­ing, in com­ments rem­i­nis­cent of com­par­isons made by his country’s Jew­ish pres­i­dent, Volodymyr Zelen­skyy, that the two nations share a “com­mon mind­set.”

    “Peo­ple are wel­com­ing. I’m not hid­ing who I am,” and Israelis have shown him “great hon­or and respect,” he said. He added that although Azov was ini­tial­ly formed by peo­ple with “shady rep­u­ta­tions” from the mar­gins of soci­ety dur­ing the “chaot­ic” days of the ini­tial Russ­ian inva­sion of 2014, “we grew up, we refor­mat­ted, we changed the sym­bol.”

    Shed­ding the past?

    The sym­bol he was refer­ring to was the regiment’s orig­i­nal logo, the neo-Nazi Son­nen­rad, or black sun, which was replaced by a Wolf­san­gel — a Ger­man­ic sym­bol that was used by var­i­ous SS armored and infantry divi­sions and is now pop­u­lar among neo-Nazis.

    Repeat­ing a line used by Azov’s lead­ers and defend­ers, Samoilenko —who per­son­al­ly has no known far-right sym­pa­thies— stat­ed that the sym­bol real­ly rep­re­sent­ed the con­cept of the “idea of the nation” and did not have any fas­cist or racist con­no­ta­tions.

    “We got rid of all of the adven­tur­ists and the peo­ple with shady rep­u­ta­tions,” he con­tend­ed, adding that there were even Jew­ish mem­bers of the unit, an asser­tion which he was unable to back up imme­di­ate­ly by pro­vid­ing names.

    He also dis­tanced Azov from alle­ga­tions of war crimes, accus­ing groups like the Orga­ni­za­tion for Secu­ri­ty and Co-oper­a­tion in Europe and Human Rights Watch of par­rot­ing Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da, and assert­ed that the unit had no con­nec­tion with the Nation­al Corps.

    Its mem­bers were Azov vet­er­ans but “there was no direct con­nec­tion between us and them, just like the same her­itage and same his­to­ry” because con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly “there can­not be a mil­i­tary unit of the polit­i­cal force and the polit­i­cal force of the mil­i­tary,” he said.

    But these claims are prob­lem­at­ic, coun­tered Michael Col­borne, a jour­nal­ist and researcher who heads up inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism web­site Bellingcat’s work on the East­ern Euro­pean far right.

    Col­borne, whose book “From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Move­ment and the Glob­al Far Right,” was released ear­li­er this year, told Haaretz that despite being retired, Azov’s black sun sym­bol “was still being used as part of the offi­cial Telegram chan­nel’s pro­file pic until ear­li­er this year, and it’s not hard to find indi­vid­ual pic­tures of fight­ers in new­er Azov units — in oth­er words, not the Reg­i­ment — wear­ing that patch.”

    “It cer­tain­ly has­n’t been com­plete­ly con­signed to his­to­ry, even if its use is no longer offi­cial and seems to be increas­ing­ly unof­fi­cial­ly dis­cour­aged,” he said.

    More­over, while the Nation­al Corps does not “legal­ly con­trol the Reg­i­ment,” the pub­lic state­ments “of senior mem­bers of Azov units and of the Move­ment make clear that the Nation­al Corps was basi­cal­ly used as the orga­ni­za­tion­al ‘spine’ to build up and cre­ate new Azov units, which they treat as part of the same Azov fam­i­ly.”

    More­over, “ear­li­er this year a senior Azov fig­ure in an inter­view explic­it­ly described Nation­al Corps as the Reg­i­men­t’s ‘polit­i­cal plat­form’ and part of its ‘long game,’” Col­borne added.

    But while Samoilenko has no known far-right sym­pa­thies, Yulia Fedo­siuk has pre­vi­ous­ly made com­ments which seem to indi­cate a cer­tain antipa­thy to the prin­ci­ples of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy.

    In a 2020 inter­view, she told local Ukrain­ian news site Babel that “peo­ple who take more respon­si­bil­i­ty should have more rights.”

    “I like the democ­ra­cy that Aris­to­tle described: the right to choose belongs to those who have the right edu­ca­tion, intel­lec­tu­al sta­tus. It is wrong to equate the votes of an aca­d­e­m­ic and a per­son who has not fin­ished school. Or the voic­es of a man who com­mit­ted a crime and a woman who helps chil­dren with can­cer,” she declared.

    Asked to clar­i­fy her com­ments, Fedo­siuk issued the fol­low­ing state­ment: “Briefly, the quote means the fol­low­ing: I believe that a tru­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety is a com­plex mech­a­nism con­sist­ing of checks and bal­ances. Gen­er­al vot­ing is only one cell in secur­ing free­doms and coun­ter­ing tyran­ny. In this sense, I like the Repub­li­can prac­tices of the Unit­ed States, with­in the legal sys­tem of which there is an insti­tu­tion of elec­tors, in which only elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the states par­tic­i­pate in the vot­ing. I do not sup­port dic­ta­tor­ship or any oth­er dis­crim­i­na­to­ry form of gov­ern­ment, but I advo­cate a more mean­ing­ful approach to democ­ra­cy.”

    Asked for com­ment, Israeli Friends of Ukraine’s Anna Zharo­va said that she had been unaware of the inter­view while Ukrain­ian Ambas­sador Yev­gen Korniy­chuk told Haaretz that nei­ther Samoilenko nor Fedo­siuk had any ultra­na­tion­al­ist feel­ings “at all.”

    “They are very much sup­port­ing Israel and this was their first trip abroad and after­wards they will be com­ing to the US and Euro­pean coun­tries, but I think it’s impor­tant that the first for­eign trip they made was to Israel in order to share their expe­ri­ence of the war and the strug­gle against Russ­ian fas­cism,” he said.

    ————

    “Down­play­ing Far-right Ties, Hero of Ukraine’s Azov Unit Holds Israel Pub­lic­i­ty Tour” by Sam Sokol; Haaretz; 12/20/2022

    Now, less than three months lat­er, Samoilenko is in Israel as part of a pub­lic­i­ty blitz orga­nized by the local activist group, Israeli Friends of Ukraine. Samoilenko has been giv­ing inter­views to local Russ­ian, Hebrew and Eng­lish-lan­guage media and attend­ing screen­ings of a doc­u­men­tary about Russ­ian fil­tra­tion camps — a net­work of facil­i­ties which the U.S. State Depart­ment says have been used to “facil­i­tate the forced relo­ca­tion of Ukraine’s cit­i­zens to Rus­sia.””

    An Azov pub­lic­i­ty blitz in Israel. That’s the Orwellian pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign that just tran­spired last month, led by Lt. Illia Samoilenko and spon­sored by the “Israeli Friends of Ukraine” group, co-found­ed by Anna Zharo­va, a Glob­al Ukrain­ian Net­work board mem­ber. And as we should expect, both Samoilenko and Zharo­va are adamant that the Azov reg­i­ment is free of extrem­ism and any­thing you hear to the con­trary is Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da:

    ...
    It was found­ed as a vol­un­teer mili­tia by mem­bers of the Patri­ot of Ukraine neo-Nazi group dur­ing the ear­ly days of the 2014 war in the country’s east. Azov helped recap­ture Mar­i­upol from Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratists before being incor­po­rat­ed into the nation­al guard. Its troops have been accused of war crimes by the Unit­ed Nations, while its para­mil­i­tary arm, the Nation­al Corps, has been linked to attacks on local Roma and mem­bers of the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty.

    Israeli Friends of Ukraine’s Anna Zharo­va coun­tered this claim on an Israeli out­let and dis­cussed her rea­sons for bring­ing Samoilenko, as well as Yulia Fedo­siuk, the wife of a cap­tive Azov ser­vice­man, to Israel.

    “Israel val­ues free­dom, val­ues strength, Israel val­ues hon­or. It’s the same things that we also val­ue,” Samoilenko told Haaretz dur­ing an inter­view on Mon­day, assert­ing, in com­ments rem­i­nis­cent of com­par­isons made by his country’s Jew­ish pres­i­dent, Volodymyr Zelen­skyy, that the two nations share a “com­mon mind­set.”

    ...

    Asked for com­ment, Israeli Friends of Ukraine’s Anna Zharo­va said that she had been unaware of the inter­view while Ukrain­ian Ambas­sador Yev­gen Korniy­chuk told Haaretz that nei­ther Samoilenko nor Fedo­siuk had any ultra­na­tion­al­ist feel­ings “at all.”
    ...

    And as we should also expect, Samoilenko is repeat­ing the same nar­ra­tive we’ve been hear­ing for Azov’s defend­ers since 2014: sure, Azov was found­ed by Nazis, but that was then and this is now. The group was purged of all the extrem­ists after get­ting for­mal­ly incor­po­rat­ed into Ukraine’s mil­i­tary. End of sto­ry.

    And note the some­what con­fus­ing detail in this report: the arti­cle seems to indi­cate that the Black Sun patch­es were replaced with Wolf­san­gel patch­es. As we’ve seen, Azov uni­forms have long as a patch with the Black­sun with a Wolf­san­gel over­laid on top of it. That was the sym­bol that was dropped from Azov’s uni­forms and replaced with the same tri­dent used by the rest of Ukraine’s mil­i­tary back in May of last year. So yeah, Azov did indeed drop its Nazi patches...in May of 2022 as part of and Azov reg­i­ments inter­na­tion­al pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign:

    ...
    “Peo­ple are wel­com­ing. I’m not hid­ing who I am,” and Israelis have shown him “great hon­or and respect,” he said. He added that although Azov was ini­tial­ly formed by peo­ple with “shady rep­u­ta­tions” from the mar­gins of soci­ety dur­ing the “chaot­ic” days of the ini­tial Russ­ian inva­sion of 2014, “we grew up, we refor­mat­ted, we changed the sym­bol.”

    Shed­ding the past?

    The sym­bol he was refer­ring to was the regiment’s orig­i­nal logo, the neo-Nazi Son­nen­rad, or black sun, which was replaced by a Wolf­san­gel — a Ger­man­ic sym­bol that was used by var­i­ous SS armored and infantry divi­sions and is now pop­u­lar among neo-Nazis.

    Repeat­ing a line used by Azov’s lead­ers and defend­ers, Samoilenko —who per­son­al­ly has no known far-right sym­pa­thies— stat­ed that the sym­bol real­ly rep­re­sent­ed the con­cept of the “idea of the nation” and did not have any fas­cist or racist con­no­ta­tions.

    “We got rid of all of the adven­tur­ists and the peo­ple with shady rep­u­ta­tions,” he con­tend­ed, adding that there were even Jew­ish mem­bers of the unit, an asser­tion which he was unable to back up imme­di­ate­ly by pro­vid­ing names.
    ...

    Beyond that, we’re being led to believe that the Azov Reg­i­ment has absolute­ly no ties at all to the broad­er Azov move­ment, includ­ing the Nation­al Corps. It was one of the many “prob­lem­at­ic” claims being made on this PR tour as Belling­cat research Michael Col­borne points out. Notably, Col­borne dif­fer­en­ti­ates between the for­mal Azov Reg­i­ment in the mil­i­tary and “new­er Azov units” not in the reg­i­ment. That’s part of the sto­ry here: there are appar­ent­ly new­er Azov units out­side the Azov Reg­i­ment also in oper­a­tion in Ukraine:

    ...
    He also dis­tanced Azov from alle­ga­tions of war crimes, accus­ing groups like the Orga­ni­za­tion for Secu­ri­ty and Co-oper­a­tion in Europe and Human Rights Watch of par­rot­ing Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da, and assert­ed that the unit had no con­nec­tion with the Nation­al Corps.

    Its mem­bers were Azov vet­er­ans but “there was no direct con­nec­tion between us and them, just like the same her­itage and same his­to­ry” because con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly “there can­not be a mil­i­tary unit of the polit­i­cal force and the polit­i­cal force of the mil­i­tary,” he said.

    But these claims are prob­lem­at­ic, coun­tered Michael Col­borne, a jour­nal­ist and researcher who heads up inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism web­site Bellingcat’s work on the East­ern Euro­pean far right.

    Col­borne, whose book “From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Move­ment and the Glob­al Far Right,” was released ear­li­er this year, told Haaretz that despite being retired, Azov’s black sun sym­bol “was still being used as part of the offi­cial Telegram chan­nel’s pro­file pic until ear­li­er this year, and it’s not hard to find indi­vid­ual pic­tures of fight­ers in new­er Azov units — in oth­er words, not the Reg­i­ment — wear­ing that patch.

    “It cer­tain­ly has­n’t been com­plete­ly con­signed to his­to­ry, even if its use is no longer offi­cial and seems to be increas­ing­ly unof­fi­cial­ly dis­cour­aged,” he said.

    More­over, while the Nation­al Corps does not “legal­ly con­trol the Reg­i­ment,” the pub­lic state­ments “of senior mem­bers of Azov units and of the Move­ment make clear that the Nation­al Corps was basi­cal­ly used as the orga­ni­za­tion­al ‘spine’ to build up and cre­ate new Azov units, which they treat as part of the same Azov fam­i­ly.”

    More­over, “ear­li­er this year a senior Azov fig­ure in an inter­view explic­it­ly described Nation­al Corps as the Reg­i­men­t’s ‘polit­i­cal plat­form’ and part of its ‘long game,’” Col­borne added.
    ...

    And while it does­n’t appear that Illia Samoilenko has a per­son­al his­to­ry of voic­ing far right views, we can’t say the same for the oth­er Azov ‘ambas­sador’ on this tour: Yulia Fedo­siuk, the wife anoth­er Azov mem­ber, does­n’t appear to be a very big fan of the ‘one man, one vote’ prin­ci­ple under­ly­ing democ­ra­cy. Sure, she did­n’t come out overt­ly in favor or some sort of fas­cist regime, but she sure hint­ed at it:

    ...
    But while Samoilenko has no known far-right sym­pa­thies, Yulia Fedo­siuk has pre­vi­ous­ly made com­ments which seem to indi­cate a cer­tain antipa­thy to the prin­ci­ples of lib­er­al democ­ra­cy.

    In a 2020 inter­view, she told local Ukrain­ian news site Babel that “peo­ple who take more respon­si­bil­i­ty should have more rights.”

    “I like the democ­ra­cy that Aris­to­tle described: the right to choose belongs to those who have the right edu­ca­tion, intel­lec­tu­al sta­tus. It is wrong to equate the votes of an aca­d­e­m­ic and a per­son who has not fin­ished school. Or the voic­es of a man who com­mit­ted a crime and a woman who helps chil­dren with can­cer,” she declared.

    Asked to clar­i­fy her com­ments, Fedo­siuk issued the fol­low­ing state­ment: “Briefly, the quote means the fol­low­ing: I believe that a tru­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic soci­ety is a com­plex mech­a­nism con­sist­ing of checks and bal­ances. Gen­er­al vot­ing is only one cell in secur­ing free­doms and coun­ter­ing tyran­ny. In this sense, I like the Repub­li­can prac­tices of the Unit­ed States, with­in the legal sys­tem of which there is an insti­tu­tion of elec­tors, in which only elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the states par­tic­i­pate in the vot­ing. I do not sup­port dic­ta­tor­ship or any oth­er dis­crim­i­na­to­ry form of gov­ern­ment, but I advo­cate a more mean­ing­ful approach to democ­ra­cy.”
    ...

    Final­ly, note the oth­er group back­ing this PR tour: Leon­ic Nev­zlin’s Nadav Foun­da­tion. Keep in mind that Nevlin was a close asso­ciate if Mikhail Khodor­kovsky and even­tu­al­ly became the biggest own­er of the defunct Yukos oil giant. In oth­er words, Nev­zlin has a huge finan­cial incen­tive to see some sort of Russ­ian regime change:

    ...
    The trip was also orga­nized in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Ukrain­ian Embassy in Tel Aviv and phil­an­thropist Leonid Nevzlin’s Nadav Foun­da­tion. Nev­zlin is a Haaretz share­hold­er.
    ...

    Now, regard­ing that dis­turb­ing ref­er­ence to “new­er Azov units” sport­ing Black Sun and Wolf­san­gel patch­es, we have to ask how many new Azov units are there at this point? That’s not entire­ly clear, but if the fol­low­ing Forbes piece from last month about the new­ly formed 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion — which was stood up in the Spring of 2022 — is any indi­ca­tion of what to expect, we should expect a lot more arti­cles in the West­ern press pieces assur­ing us that all these new Azov spin­off units aren’t actu­al­ly Nazi bat­tal­ions:

    Forbes

    Ukraine Derad­i­cal­ized Its Extrem­ist Troops. Now They Might Be Prepar­ing A Coun­terof­fen­sive.

    David Axe
    Forbes Staff
    Dec 16, 2022,07:54pm EST

    The nar­ra­tive the Krem­lin advances to jus­ti­fy its bru­tal war on the Ukrain­ian people—that Ukraine is a far-right Nazi regime bent on destroy­ing Russia—is a lie.

    Yes, there real­ly are far-right ele­ments in Ukrain­ian soci­ety. But it’s unfair to describe Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary units—even those that orginal­ly formed with­in fringe groups—as “right-wing.” Kyiv delib­er­ate­ly has de-rad­i­cal­ized these units.

    The 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion is one of sev­er­al units that has under­gone this trans­for­ma­tion. Today the bat­tal­ion essen­tial­ly is indis­tin­guish­able from oth­er Ukrain­ian for­ma­tions.

    The anti-immi­grant Azov Move­ment arguably is the most pow­er­ful of Ukraine’s far-right orga­ni­za­tions. When Russ­ian troops and the sep­a­ratist allies first attacked east­ern Ukraine back in 2014, the Azov Move­ment formed an armed para­mil­i­tary regiment—and resist­ed.

    The Azov Reg­i­ment real­ly was an extrem­ist for­ma­tion. It bor­rowed iconog­ra­phy from Nazi Ger­many and, in addi­tion to fight­ing the Rus­sians, func­tioned as a base of sup­port for its racist founder Andriy Bilet­sky as he suc­cess­ful­ly cam­paigned for a seat in par­lia­ment.

    The Ukrain­ian army in late 2014 for­mal­ly inte­grat­ed the Azov Reg­i­ment. Many of Ukraine’s for­eign allies, includ­ing the Unit­ed States, object­ed to the inte­gra­tion. But the derad­i­cal­iza­tion process already was under­way.

    For starters, Bilet­sky was gone—off cam­paign­ing for the par­lia­men­tary seat he would hold until 2019. What’s more, the Ukrain­ian gen­er­al staff in mid-2015 pulled the Azov Reg­i­ment from the front line for restruc­tur­ing and retrain­ing.

    Mas­sive man­pow­er turnover alone sig­nif­i­cant­ly dilut­ed the regiment’s ide­ol­o­gy. By the time it returned to the front line in ear­ly 2019, the Azov Reg­i­ment prob­a­bly was unrec­og­niz­able to its orig­i­nal mem­bers. It like­ly was even less rec­og­niz­able three years lat­er this Feb­ru­ary, when Rus­sia widened its war on Ukraine.

    “The Azov Reg­i­ment has been repeat­ed­ly recon­sti­tut­ed,” wrote Alas­dair McCal­lum, a researcher at Monash Uni­ver­si­ty in Aus­tralia. “Its extrem­ist ear­ly lead­ers such as the odi­ous Andriy Bilet­sky are long gone, and, more recent­ly, its fear­some, pseu­do-pagan reg­i­men­tal emblem has been aban­doned.

    By the time the Azov Reg­i­ment began spin­ning off suc­ces­sor units, the ide­o­log­i­cal poi­son most­ly was gone. The 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion stood up this spring, around the same time the orig­i­nal reg­i­ment was fight­ing near­ly to the last man and woman in Mar­i­upol, an his­toric city on the Ukrain­ian Black Sea coast that Russ­ian forces sur­round­ed and besieged ear­ly in the wider war.

    The 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion belongs to the Ukrain­ian Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Defense Forces, rough­ly the equiv­a­lent of the U.S. Army Nation­al Guard. Where the Ukrain­ian army’s active for­ma­tions might range across the coun­try, attack­ing and defend­ing where need­ed, ter­ri­to­r­i­al brigades and bat­tal­ions tend to stick to the same cities and oblasts where they recruit their mem­bers.

    So the 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion since this spring has been defend­ing a 50-mile swathe of south­east­ern Ukraine run­ning along the bor­der between Zapor­izhzhia and Donet­sk Oblasts.

    ...

    The bat­tal­ion like many ter­ri­to­r­i­al units appar­ent­ly start­ed out as a light-infantry for­ma­tion. Its heav­i­est weapons were its machine guns, mor­tars and rock­et-pro­pelled grenades. Its heav­i­est vehi­cles were pick­up trucks, some fit­ted with recoil­less rifles.

    Over time, how­ev­er, the 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion like much of the Ukrain­ian army steadi­ly has got­ten heav­ier. It has added M‑113 armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers that Ukraine’s NATO allies have donat­ed. It has cap­tured, and put to use, Russ­ian BMP fight­ing vehicles—and regret­tably paint­ed on at least one BMP a cross sim­i­lar to the Ger­man army’s own insignia. The bat­tal­ion now has tanks and bomb-drop­ping quad­copter drones.

    The heav­ier the bat­tal­ion gets, the hard­er it can fight. In one skir­mish near Vely­ka Novosil­ka, appar­ent­ly in ear­ly Decem­ber, the 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion knocked out five Russ­ian BMPs and a T‑80 tank.

    If and when Ukraine’s south­ern com­mand launch­es an offen­sive from Zapor­izhzhia, the 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion could play an impor­tant role. At the very least, the bat­tal­ion will anchor the offensive’s rear. It’s also pos­si­ble the unit will join active mech­a­nized brigades at the offensive’s van­guard.

    Expect Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­dists to shout “Nazis!” every time the 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion makes a move. Don’t believe it.

    ———–

    “Ukraine Derad­i­cal­ized Its Extrem­ist Troops. Now They Might Be Prepar­ing A Coun­terof­fen­sive.” by David Axe; Forbes; 12/16/2022

    By the time the Azov Reg­i­ment began spin­ning off suc­ces­sor units, the ide­o­log­i­cal poi­son most­ly was gone. The 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion stood up this spring, around the same time the orig­i­nal reg­i­ment was fight­ing near­ly to the last man and woman in Mar­i­upol, an his­toric city on the Ukrain­ian Black Sea coast that Russ­ian forces sur­round­ed and besieged ear­ly in the wider war.”

    Ide­o­log­i­cal­ly puri­fied Azov spin­offs. That’s part of this night­mare sit­u­a­tion. It isn’t just the Azov Reg­i­ment oper­at­ing inside the con­fines of the offi­cial Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary. There’s now spin­off groups like the 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion that were just formed this Spring. How many more Azov spin­offs are there at this point? And how many more are going to be formed by the end of the war? It’s one more omi­nous ques­tion raised by Ukraine’s Azov embrace.

    But we are assured that the 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion and all the oth­er spin­offs have been ide­o­log­i­cal­ly purged of the Nazis. Beyond that, we’re also assured that this purged hap­pened all the way back in 2014 when the Azov Reg­i­ment was first formed...and just ignore the fact that the unit’s Nazi patch­es weren’t replaced until May of 2022:

    ...
    The 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion is one of sev­er­al units that has under­gone this trans­for­ma­tion. Today the bat­tal­ion essen­tial­ly is indis­tin­guish­able from oth­er Ukrain­ian for­ma­tions.

    The anti-immi­grant Azov Move­ment arguably is the most pow­er­ful of Ukraine’s far-right orga­ni­za­tions. When Russ­ian troops and the sep­a­ratist allies first attacked east­ern Ukraine back in 2014, the Azov Move­ment formed an armed para­mil­i­tary regiment—and resist­ed.

    The Azov Reg­i­ment real­ly was an extrem­ist for­ma­tion. It bor­rowed iconog­ra­phy from Nazi Ger­many and, in addi­tion to fight­ing the Rus­sians, func­tioned as a base of sup­port for its racist founder Andriy Bilet­sky as he suc­cess­ful­ly cam­paigned for a seat in par­lia­ment.

    The Ukrain­ian army in late 2014 for­mal­ly inte­grat­ed the Azov Reg­i­ment. Many of Ukraine’s for­eign allies, includ­ing the Unit­ed States, object­ed to the inte­gra­tion. But the derad­i­cal­iza­tion process already was under­way.

    ...

    “The Azov Reg­i­ment has been repeat­ed­ly recon­sti­tut­ed,” wrote Alas­dair McCal­lum, a researcher at Monash Uni­ver­si­ty in Aus­tralia. “Its extrem­ist ear­ly lead­ers such as the odi­ous Andriy Bilet­sky are long gone, and, more recent­ly, its fear­some, pseu­do-pagan reg­i­men­tal emblem has been aban­doned.
    ...

    Also note how these Azov spin­offs aren’t just light­ly armed infantry units. They have tanks and bomb-drop­ping drones. It’s a reminder that Ukraine’s Nazis are going to have tanks and oth­er heavy weapons at their dis­pos­al when they inevitably decide to fol­low­ing through on the sen­ti­ments expressed above by Yulia Fedo­siuk and turn on Ukraine’s democ­ra­cy:

    ...
    The bat­tal­ion like many ter­ri­to­r­i­al units appar­ent­ly start­ed out as a light-infantry for­ma­tion. Its heav­i­est weapons were its machine guns, mor­tars and rock­et-pro­pelled grenades. Its heav­i­est vehi­cles were pick­up trucks, some fit­ted with recoil­less rifles.

    Over time, how­ev­er, the 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion like much of the Ukrain­ian army steadi­ly has got­ten heav­ier. It has added M‑113 armored per­son­nel car­ri­ers that Ukraine’s NATO allies have donat­ed. It has cap­tured, and put to use, Russ­ian BMP fight­ing vehicles—and regret­tably paint­ed on at least one BMP a cross sim­i­lar to the Ger­man army’s own insignia. The bat­tal­ion now has tanks and bomb-drop­ping quad­copter drones.

    The heav­ier the bat­tal­ion gets, the hard­er it can fight. In one skir­mish near Vely­ka Novosil­ka, appar­ent­ly in ear­ly Decem­ber, the 98th Azov Bat­tal­ion knocked out five Russ­ian BMPs and a T‑80 tank.
    ...

    And let’s not for­get what jour­nal­ist Michael Col­borne warned in the above arti­cle: that despite being retired, Azov’s black sun sym­bol “was still being used as part of the offi­cial Telegram chan­nel’s pro­file pic until ear­li­er this year, and it’s not hard to find indi­vid­ual pic­tures of fight­ers in new­er Azov units — in oth­er words, not the Reg­i­ment — wear­ing that patch.

    That’s real­ly the under­ly­ing sto­ry here: We are exper­i­ment an inter­na­tion­al pro-Azov pub­lic rela­tions push to con­vince the inter­na­tion­al pub­lic that the Azov Reg­i­ment is a tru­ly de-Naz­i­fied enti­ty at the same time we are get­ting reports about the ongo­ing Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of new Azov mil­i­tary spin­offs. This isn’t just the coverup of an ongo­ing scan­dal. It’s the coverup of a deep­en­ing scan­dal. Tanks for Nazi units. That’s a scan­dal. Or at least used to be.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 11, 2023, 5:38 pm
  21. Fol­low­ing up on the reports about an Azov del­e­ga­tion trav­el­ing to Israel last month as part of the ongo­ing inter­na­tion­al Azov pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign, it’s worth tak­ing a look at a report out of Haaretz pub­lished back in June head­lined, “The Truth About Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ism and Claims It’s Taint­ed by Nazism.” It’s an inter­est­ing piece that does do a decent job of lay­ing out many of the key his­tor­i­cal facts relat­ed to groups like the OUN and OUN‑B and how their his­to­ry is tied to con­tem­po­rary groups like Azov. But as we’re going to see, the piece also illus­trates one of the phe­nom­e­na that’s become increas­ing­ly com­mon over the last year as West­ern gov­ern­ments and media have bent over back­wards to white­wash the extrem­ist nature of these groups: using his­tor­i­cal nuance as a kind of rhetor­i­cal shield that warps our under­stand­ing of the con­tem­po­rary sit­u­a­tion.

    Not that we don’t want his­tor­i­cal nuance in our analy­sis. Nuance is vital. But not when that nuance is used as a unnu­anced cud­gel that impos­es on kind of ‘both-sidesism’ dis­tor­tion of real­i­ty. Nuance like:

    * the fact that not ALL mem­bers of the Azov Reg­i­ments are Nazis.
    * The fact that not ALL mem­bers of the OUN or OUN‑B engaged in the Holo­caust.
    * The fact that the OUN‑B even­tu­al­ly turned on the Ger­man occu­piers
    * Many of the peo­ple in Ukraine today who pub­licly endorse groups like Azov do so out of a blind sense of nation­al­ism in response to the war, not out of a feal­ty to extrem­ist ide­olo­gies
    * Azov has made a con­scious effort to min­i­mize its pub­lic embrace of anti­semitism or white suprema­cy. Even founder Andriy Bilet­sky now denies anti­semitism or white suprema­cy.
    * That Azov Reg­i­ment was for­mal­ly incor­po­rat­ed into the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary in 2014 and is no longer offi­cial­ly part of the broad­er Azov move­ment.

    These are all real facts and part of any nuanced under­stand­ing of the sit­u­a­tion in Ukraine. But they aren’t some sort of coun­ter­point to the charges that groups like Azov are dom­i­nat­ed by Nazi ide­olo­gies and sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly cod­dled by the Ukrain­ian state. Cod­dling that is point­ed out in the arti­cle too. But when we look at one white­wash­ing piece after anoth­er over the past year, that’s how this nuance is used. As a kind of his­toric ‘both-sidesism’ shield. That’s part of what makes this Haaretz piece so inter­est­ing in light of the Azov del­e­ga­tion’s suc­cess­ful Israeli PR tour: that Haaretz piece pub­lished in June lays out the damn­ing his­tor­i­cal evi­dence of these groups while also being filled with these kinds of ‘both-sidesisms’ nuances. Both-sidesisms that amount to lit­tle more than play­ing dumb about the sit­u­a­tion.

    It’s also rather note­wor­thy that one of the his­to­ri­ans who was mak­ing pains to argue that Azov has effec­tive­ly purged itself of anti­semitism in recent years is none oth­er that Belling­cat’s Michael Col­borne. As we saw in the Haaretz piece about the Azov del­e­ga­tion’s Israeli vis­it last month, Col­borne refutethe idea that the Azov Reg­i­ment has some­how been sep­a­rat­ed from the Nation­al Corps and the broad­er Azov move­ment. Col­borne also point­ed out that, while the Azov Reg­i­ment dropped the Black Sun/Wolfsangel batch­es from its uni­forms back in May of last year, it’s still not hard to find exam­ples of Azov sol­diers with Nazi patch­es online, espe­cial­ly in the new­er Azov units that are being formed in the mil­i­tary. And yet, in this Haaretz arti­cle from back in June, he was more or less going along with the ‘denaz­i­fied Azov’ memes. Two Har­retz pieces just six months apart with two very dif­fer­ent Azov takes by Col­borne. It’s a dis­turbing­ly illus­tra­tive con­trast:

    Haaretz

    The Truth About Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ism and Claims It’s Taint­ed by Nazism

    In light of Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da, Haaretz is delv­ing into the con­cept of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism, to bet­ter under­stand its his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary mean­ing, and find out where the Azov Bat­tal­ion fits in

    Liza Rozovsky
    Jun 1, 2022

    A lit­tle over a year ago, a robust pub­lic debate began in Ukraine sur­round­ing the parade by ultra­na­tion­al­ist groups in Kyiv com­mem­o­rat­ing the Ukrain­ian SS divi­sion known as the 1st Gali­cian. Hun­dreds of peo­ple marched in the cap­i­tal city cen­ter with the flags of the Ukrain­ian vol­un­teer unit estab­lished in April 1943, as part of the Waf­fen SS.

    Cer­e­monies and parades hon­or­ing the divi­sion had been held reg­u­lar­ly in pre­vi­ous years in Lviv, but the demon­stra­tion in the cap­i­tal aroused far more inter­est. Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da had a field day, blow­ing the event out of pro­por­tion. Israel and Ger­many issued con­dem­na­tions, as did Pres­i­dent Zelen­skyy and his par­ty mem­bers; Kyiv munic­i­pal author­i­ties also dis­tanced them­selves from it.

    This Feb­ru­ary, the “de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion” of Ukraine became one of Russia’s lead­ing excus­es for its inva­sion. For years, Russ­ian state broad­casts have been pump­ing mes­sages about the “fas­cist regime” in Kyiv and aired torch­light parades in Ukraine hon­or­ing the nation­al­ist Ukrain­ian leader in the 1930s and 1940s, Stepan Ban­dera. The cam­paign reached a fever pitch on Feb­ru­ary 21 in Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin’s speech to the nation, in which he accused Ukraine of “the geno­cide of almost four mil­lion [Don­bas res­i­dents] who didn’t agree with the coup … and rose up against a move­ment of nation­al­ism and sav­age, aggres­sive neo-Nazism.”

    It is not just homages to a Ukrain­ian SS unit or flag march­es that fuel Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da. Upon the cap­ture of the Azovstal steel plant in Mar­i­upol, Russ­ian Defense Min­istry spokesman Igor Konashenkov boast­ed of the “sur­ren­der of the Azov Nazis,” and pro-Russ­ian media out­lets and Telegram chan­nels shared videos showed the Ukrain­ian cap­tives com­ing out of the plant tak­ing off their clothes and alleged­ly reveal­ing Nazi tat­toos – a swasti­ka, the num­bers 14 and 88, the sym­bols of the SS, and the Black Sun sym­bol. Some Russ­ian law­mak­ers are now call­ing to ban any exchange of the Azovstal pris­on­ers for Russ­ian ones, to have them tried and to over­turn the ban on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment.

    In light of the Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da and Ukrain­ian counter-pro­pa­gan­da, Haaretz is delv­ing into the con­cept of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism, to bet­ter under­stand its his­tor­i­cal and con­tem­po­rary mean­ing, and find out where the Azov Bat­tal­ion fits in.

    Russ­ian van­guard

    The two his­tor­i­cal names most asso­ci­at­ed with the term “Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism” are Stepan Ban­dera, leader of one of the fac­tions of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (ONU) dur­ing World War II, and Roman Shukhevych, com­man­der of the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army, the organization’s mil­i­tary wing. Since 2014, dozens of streets in Ukraine have been named after the two men, who are com­mem­o­rat­ed on boule­vards in Kyiv as well.

    Ban­dera oper­at­ed under­ground for most of his life, and spent almost a total of a decade in prison – in Poland before the war, and dur­ing it in the Sach­sen­hausen con­cen­tra­tion camp in Ger­many. In 1959, he was mur­dered by a KGB agent while liv­ing as an exile in Ger­many and became a nation­al icon. In the Sovi­et nar­ra­tive, and now the Russ­ian, Bandera’s name sym­bol­izes Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists’ col­lab­o­ra­tions with the Nazis, and the expres­sion “Ban­dera men” has become an insult. To some Ukrain­ian exiles and dis­si­dents in the past, and some Ukraini­ans today, Ban­dera has become syn­ony­mous with a Ukrain­ian free­dom fight­er.

    The truth, it seems, is in the mid­dle. “Most col­lab­o­ra­tors, includ­ing those who helped the Nazis per­se­cute the Jews in occu­pied Ukraine, were not Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists,” says Andriy Usach, a his­to­ri­an at Ukrain­ian Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty in Lviv and head of the After the Silence orga­ni­za­tion, which col­lects tes­ti­monies about World War II. “Ger­man researchers place the num­ber of Ukraini­ans who par­tic­i­pat­ed in per­se­cu­tion of the Jews – those who served in the police, vil­lage lead­ers, and so on – at 30,000–40,000. I think the num­ber was high­er – up to 90,000 peo­ple. Most were not Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists.

    Most Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, for their part, were not col­lab­o­ra­tors and did not serve in the police,” he says. “This does not negate the fact that among Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, some served in the police and took part in the Holo­caust. This doesn’t mean that they killed with their own hands, but they guard­ed mass mur­der sites – which is to say, they bore direct respon­si­bil­i­ty for all the Jews of a giv­en town who were mur­dered. This issue was not dis­cussed for a long time. The num­ber of Ukrain­ian his­to­ri­ans who dealt with the sub­ject can be count­ed on two hands.”

    Accord­ing to Yuri Rad­chenko, a Jew­ish Ukrain­ian his­to­ri­an and direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Research on Intereth­nic Rela­tions in East­ern Europe, Ban­dera was just anoth­er local ultra­na­tion­al­ist leader whose impor­tance has been overblown, part­ly because the purg­ing of alter­na­tives in Sovi­et Ukraine. The OUN fol­lowed “a total­i­tar­i­an-author­i­tar­i­an ide­ol­o­gy, with a sig­nif­i­cant anti­se­mit­ic com­po­nent and an affin­i­ty for Nazi Ger­many,” says Rad­chenko.

    An exam­ple of this ide­ol­o­gy can be found in the sum­ma­ry doc­u­ment of the OUN con­fer­ence held in Krakow in April 1941, where the organization’s plan to achieve Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence under war con­di­tions was set. “The Jews in the Sovi­et Union are the most devot­ed sup­port­ers of the Bol­she­vik regime and the van­guard of Moscow’s impe­ri­al­ism in Ukraine,” states the sec­tion refer­ring to Jews, adding: “The anti-Jew­ish sen­ti­ments of the Ukrain­ian mass­es serve the Moscow gov­ern­ment to divert their atten­tion from the real cause of the cat­a­stro­phe and to direct them to pogroms against the Jews at a time of col­lapse. The Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists fights the Jews as the bul­wark of the Mus­covite-Bol­she­vik regime, while remind­ing the mass­es that Moscow is the main ene­my.”

    In 1940, the OUN split into two fac­tions – one led by Ban­dera, which was con­sid­ered to be more rad­i­cal, and the one led by Andriy Mel­nyk, con­sid­ered to be more mod­er­ate, but also more anti­se­mit­ic. Accord­ing to Rad­chenko, Mel­nyk, as opposed to Ban­dera, had his sig­na­ture on anti­se­mit­ic fly­ers. Accord­ing to the Babyn Yar Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Cen­ter’s his­to­ry of the Holo­caust in Ukraine, edit­ed by Holo­caust researcher Karel Berk­hoff, mem­bers of Melnyk’s OUN aid­ed the Nazis after the con­quest of Kyiv. They con­tributed great­ly to the for­ma­tion of the local police aux­il­iary, which threat­ened local res­i­dents with death if they did not hand over Jews, Sovi­et secret police mem­bers and com­mu­nists, and served as trans­la­tors for the SS Ein­satz­grup­pen that car­ried out the mur­ders at Babyn Yar, as well as many oth­ers.

    For their part, the mem­bers of Bandera’s fac­tion made up the two famous bat­tal­ions, Roland and Nachti­gall, which were estab­lished at the begin­ning of 1941 in advance of the Ger­man inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union and were trained by the Abwehr, Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence. In the fall of 1941, the two bat­tal­ions were bro­ken up and reor­ga­nized into a sin­gle bat­tal­ion of Ukrain­ian aux­il­iary police, the Schutz­mannschaft, which fought against par­ti­sans in Belarus. Mem­bers of the OUN and UPA killed Jews with­out orders from the Nazis, most­ly out of the belief that the Jews were active or poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tors with the Sovi­ets, said Usach. For exam­ple, two inci­dents of exe­cu­tions of Jews in Ukraine by the Nachti­gall are known. Roman Shukhevych was the deputy com­man­der of that bat­tal­ion. As for the Roland Bat­tal­ion, no evi­dence exists that it par­tic­i­pat­ed in exe­cu­tions.

    The atti­tude of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, espe­cial­ly the Ban­dera fac­tion toward the Nazis changed over the course of the war. Their ten­sions with Ger­many erupt­ed in the sum­mer of 1941, when it became clear that the Ger­mans had no inten­tion what­so­ev­er of pro­mot­ing Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence. Ban­dera was iso­lat­ed from his sup­port­ers, and with­in a short time he was impris­oned. The ten­sions between the Ukrain­ian bat­tal­ions and the Ger­man com­mand led to their dis­so­lu­tion in 1942, and in 1943 the army of Ukrain­ian rebels head­ed by Shukhevych – which was par­tial­ly com­posed of the for­mer sol­diers of the Roland and Nachti­gall bat­tal­ions – was fight­ing against every­one else: The Sovi­ets, Ger­mans, Jews, and Poles; based on some tes­ti­monies, dit id not show mer­cy for the Ukrain­ian rur­al com­mu­ni­ty, either.

    The anti­se­mit­ic views of the nation­al­ists may have soft­ened dur­ing the war, but only in a minor way. “In 1942, there was a doc­u­ment in which Bandera’s men stat­ed that the destruc­tion of the Jews was a Ger­man mat­ter, in which they were not tak­ing part,” says Usach. “But at the same time, almost no Jews remained in Ukraine. Remorse was not voiced over pre­vi­ous state­ments on the. The OUN also nev­er estab­lished a net­work to aid the Jews, in con­trast for exam­ple to the Pol­ish under­ground, which also had a lot of anti­semites, and its mem­bers mur­dered Jews too.”

    No longer anti­semites

    Bandera’s and Shukhevych’s con­tro­ver­sial actions have served as a tool of anti-Ukrain­ian pro­pa­gan­da in Rus­sia and put the patri­ot­ic seg­ments of Ukrain­ian soci­ety in a sen­si­tive posi­tion – between reap­pro­pri­at­ing nation­al­ism and defen­sive­ness. “In terms of pub­lic aware­ness, the only thing that is impor­tant about these two fig­ures is that they fought for Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence, peri­od,“ says Vyach­eslav Likhachev, a his­to­ri­an and pub­lic activist with Israeli cit­i­zen­ship who has lived in Ukraine for decades. “All the details that are impor­tant to oth­er peo­ple are not impor­tant as far as the Ukrain­ian pub­lic is con­cerned, espe­cial­ly after 2014, when the atten­tion to them became rel­e­vant based on the Ukraine’s strug­gle for inde­pen­dence.”

    But in prac­tice, the sit­u­a­tion is much more com­pli­cat­ed. The names Shukhevych and Ban­dera were at the cen­ter of a pub­lic dis­pute in Ukraine even before 2014. Declar­ing them nation­al heroes and nam­ing streets and oth­er sites after them was a mat­ter for debate and pub­lic and legal dis­pute since at least 2007, and still con­tin­ues. A sur­vey con­duct­ed last year by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ini­tia­tives Foun­da­tion in coop­er­a­tion with the Razumkov Cen­ter, a Ukrain­ian pub­lic pol­i­cy think tank, showed that 46 per­cent of Ukraini­ans sup­port­ed recog­ni­tion of the sol­diers of the Ukrain­ian rebel army as hav­ing fought for Ukraine’s inde­pen­dence. Thir­ty-two per­cent of respon­dents felt Stepan Bandera’s activ­i­ties had a pos­i­tive effect on Ukraine. As might be expect­ed, sup­port for the rebel army and Ban­dera was sig­nif­i­cant­ly stronger in west­ern Ukraine com­pared to the cen­ter – and much more so than in the east and south.

    Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist Michael Col­borne, who mon­i­tors the far right in Ukraine and around the world, recent­ly wrote a book on the Azov move­ment: “From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Move­ment and the Glob­al Far Right.” He says that peo­ple who are active in the Ukrain­ian pub­lic sphere often pro­mote the con­tro­ver­sial fig­ures, orga­ni­za­tions and sym­bols linked to them. “They do so not because they are right wing-extrem­ists or rad­i­cal nation­al­ists. They see the pos­i­tive side of nation­al lib­er­a­tion, but unfor­tu­nate­ly don’t want to rec­og­nize or deal with the more com­plex sides of these move­ments and the hor­rors they took part in.”

    Mon­u­ment to Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Roman Shukhevych (in Edmon­ton, Alber­ta), OUN-UPA leader, took orders from Abwehr #WW2. pic.twitter.com/1hQmNnoDii— Rus­sia in Cana­da (@RussianEmbassyC) July 26, 2016

    Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal soci­ol­o­gist Volodymyr Ishchenko, a researcher at the Insti­tute of East­ern Euro­pean Stud­ies of the Free Uni­ver­si­ty of Berlin, is more scathing in his analy­sis. The far right in Ukraine influ­ences pol­i­tics much more than one might con­clude from its elec­toral size, said Ishchenko. The far-right Svo­bo­da (“free­dom”) par­ty may have only won slight­ly more than 2 per­cent of the vote in the most recent par­lia­men­tary elec­tion and failed to pass the elec­toral thresh­old, but Ishchenko makes it clear that as far as he is con­cerned, the far right has man­aged to set the pub­lic agen­da even with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the par­lia­ment.

    “What was the goal of the rad­i­cals until 2014 – ban­ning the Com­mu­nist Par­ty, the Rus­si­fi­ca­tion of the OUN, has become main­stream, begin­ning in 2014,” he says. Since 2014, when Rus­sia seized the Crimean Penin­su­la and the Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratist war in the Don­bas began, the far right has received sup­port out­side of par­lia­ment too, Ishchenko adds. “They received access to weapons, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of shap­ing orga­nized ide­o­log­i­cal groups, and in pol­i­tics of this type they had no com­peti­tors.”

    Ishchenko says that an exam­ple of this is the block­ing of amend­ments to the con­sti­tu­tion meant to grant a spe­cial sta­tus to the Don­bas region, in line with the Min­sk Pro­to­col, which was sup­posed to end the Don­bas war. In 2015, after par­lia­ment gave ini­tial approval to the amend­ments, Svo­bo­da activists held a vio­lent protest next to the par­lia­ment build­ing that end­ed in a grenade being thrown that killed four police offi­cers who were guard­ing the build­ing. In the end, the law failed to move for­ward. Anoth­er inci­dent show­ing the far right’s influ­ence on pol­i­cy came in Octo­ber 2019, when Azov vet­er­ans occu­pied the vil­lage of Zolote in the Luhan­sk region and refused to leave, in spite of Pres­i­dent Zelenskyy’s inten­tion to with­draw Ukrain­ian forces from the town to begin the imple­men­ta­tion of the Min­sk Pro­to­col, says Ishchenko.

    He says that accord­ing to polling, Ukraini­ans most­ly approved of the Min­sk agree­ments in 2015 and opposed the “no-sur­ren­der” cam­paign the right wing launched in 2019. “There is a pret­ty large gap between what Ukrain­ian soci­ety thinks and Ukrain­ian civ­il soci­ety thinks – that is, activists who voice their opin­ions on social media and go out and protest.”

    Insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion and mod­er­a­tion

    IIn his book, Col­borne describes the Azov move­ment, which grew out of the bat­tal­ion, as an umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion under whose aus­pices there are dif­fer­ent groups with vary­ing degrees of close­ness to itself. In recent years, this umbrel­la has become a place where the entire rad­i­cal right in Ukraine moves. At the heart of the move­ment are the Azov Bat­tal­ion and the Nation­al Corps par­ty led by Andriy Bilet­sky, who pre­vi­ous­ly stood at the head of the far-right orga­ni­za­tion Patri­ot of Ukraine, was one of the founders of the neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tion the Social-Nation­al Assem­bly and has espoused white suprema­cist beliefs on many occa­sions.

    Bilet­sky was the first com­man­der of the Azov Bat­tal­ion and con­tin­ues to rep­re­sent the unit in his pub­lic appear­ances, even though he is no longer offi­cial­ly con­nect­ed to it. A long list of oth­er orga­ni­za­tions are linked to the Azov move­ment, whether offi­cial­ly or not, includ­ing ones involved in vio­lence, includ­ing attacks on fem­i­nists, LGBTQ groups, com­mu­nists and pro-Russ­ian activists, says Col­borne.

    ...

    In spite of this, Col­borne says that the Azov Bat­tal­ion has under­gone changes and become estab­lished over the years. In the first few years after it was found­ed, just a small minor­i­ty of its sol­diers had a con­nec­tion to the far right; today, these num­bers are even small­er and the use of neo-Nazi sym­bols among its mem­bers has been reduced great­ly, he says.

    The Azov Bat­tal­ion and the entire Azov move­ment are almost com­plete­ly untaint­ed by anti­semitism now, he adds. “Not only for Azov but for all the far-right move­ments in Ukraine, espe­cial­ly since 2014, anti­semitism has lost its impor­tance. When I com­pare this to what is hap­pen­ing with the extreme right in oth­er coun­tries in Europe, the lev­el of anti­semitism and the open anti­se­mit­ic rhetoric there is much high­er than any­thing I have seen in the right-wing move­ments in Ukraine in recent years.” White suprema­cy is also not an idea that the lead­ers of the far right, with Bilet­sky at their head, have been pub­licly endors­ing in the past few years.

    Nonethe­less, besides for Ukrain­ian patri­o­tism, the Azov move­ment and rad­i­cal right in Ukraine in gen­er­al have been left with a col­lec­tion of con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues that very much remind one of the ide­olo­gies the Krem­lin relies on today: Oppo­si­tion to fem­i­nism, hatred of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty and devo­tion to “tra­di­tion­al val­ues.”

    “What hap­pened to Rus­sia, and specif­i­cal­ly to Putin, in recent years is grow­ing much clos­er to the ‘Nazis’ against whom he claims he is fight­ing in Ukraine,” Col­borne says. “There are dif­fer­ences between them, but they are much clos­er on the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum that what any of the sides wants to admit.”

    ———-

    “The Truth About Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ism and Claims It’s Taint­ed by Nazism” by Liza Rozovsky; Haaretz; 06/01/2022

    “Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist Michael Col­borne, who mon­i­tors the far right in Ukraine and around the world, recent­ly wrote a book on the Azov move­ment: “From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Move­ment and the Glob­al Far Right.” He says that peo­ple who are active in the Ukrain­ian pub­lic sphere often pro­mote the con­tro­ver­sial fig­ures, orga­ni­za­tions and sym­bols linked to them. “They do so not because they are right wing-extrem­ists or rad­i­cal nation­al­ists. They see the pos­i­tive side of nation­al lib­er­a­tion, but unfor­tu­nate­ly don’t want to rec­og­nize or deal with the more com­plex sides of these move­ments and the hor­rors they took part in.”

    As Michael Col­borne describes, the pro­mo­tion of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist fig­ures and orga­ni­za­tions by the Ukrain­ian pub­lic sphere isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly done by peo­ple who are them­selves Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists but have instead embraced a kind of blind fer­vor induced by the war. At least that’s pre­sum­ably part of the dynam­ic at work here. But, of course, there’s a fine line between gen­uine blind fer­vor vs peo­ple con­scious­ly ‘play­ing dumb’ about the nature of these groups and just play­ing along with the dom­i­nant nar­ra­tives.

    And then, fur­ther down in the arti­cle, we find Col­borne assert­ing that, not just the Azov Bat­tal­ion, but the entire Azov move­ment is almost com­plete­ly untaint­ed by anti­semitism or white suprema­cy now. Even its overt neo-Nazi founder, Andriy Bilet­sky, has been avoid­ing these kind of pub­lic endorse­ments of white suprema­cy in the past few years.

    Now, keep in mind that Col­borne was refut­ing the notion that the Azov Reg­i­ment of the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary was tru­ly ‘de-Naz­i­fied’ after drop­ping the Black Sun and Wolf­san­gel patch­es from its uni­forms in May of last year, point­ing out that it’s not hard to find pho­tos of mem­bers of new Azov units — like the 98th Azov bat­tal­ion — still wear­ing Nazi patch­es. That was from a Decem­ber 2022 Haaretz arti­cle a few weeks ago. But here we find Col­borne in a Haaretz arti­cle six months ear­li­er where he’s more or less voic­ing the sen­ti­ments he just refut­ed last month.

    It’s a great exam­ple of how nuance and com­plex­i­ty, while nec­es­sary for tru­ly under­stand­ing com­plex phe­nom­e­na, can also be used as a kind of fog-of-war shield to obscure unpleas­ant real­i­ties. Yes, point­ing out how the Azov move­ment has been tak­ing pains to white­wash its extrem­ist nature by down­play­ing its anti­semitism and white suprema­cy at the same time the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment was tak­ing steps to reduce overt Nazism of the Azov Reg­i­ment after incor­po­rat­ing it into the mil­i­tary is indeed help­ful nuance for under­stand­ing the sit­u­a­tion. But not if you end the nuance there. That would just be play­ing dumb. There’s a lot more nuance to the sit­u­a­tion, like the fact that fig­ures like Bilet­sky are bla­tant­ly engaged in a white­wash­ing pub­lic rela­tions cam­paign for the pur­pose of deflect­ing inter­na­tion­al crit­i­cism that peo­ple should have the capac­i­ty to rec­og­nize. It’s that simul­ta­ne­ous embrace of ‘nuance’ cou­pled with peo­ple sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly play­ing dumb that is dri­ving much of what we’re see­ing here and even Col­borne, who clear­ly knows bet­ter, was indulging in it:

    ...
    Insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion and mod­er­a­tion

    IIn his book, Col­borne describes the Azov move­ment, which grew out of the bat­tal­ion, as an umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion under whose aus­pices there are dif­fer­ent groups with vary­ing degrees of close­ness to itself. In recent years, this umbrel­la has become a place where the entire rad­i­cal right in Ukraine moves. At the heart of the move­ment are the Azov Bat­tal­ion and the Nation­al Corps par­ty led by Andriy Bilet­sky, who pre­vi­ous­ly stood at the head of the far-right orga­ni­za­tion Patri­ot of Ukraine, was one of the founders of the neo-Nazi orga­ni­za­tion the Social-Nation­al Assem­bly and has espoused white suprema­cist beliefs on many occa­sions.

    Bilet­sky was the first com­man­der of the Azov Bat­tal­ion and con­tin­ues to rep­re­sent the unit in his pub­lic appear­ances, even though he is no longer offi­cial­ly con­nect­ed to it. A long list of oth­er orga­ni­za­tions are linked to the Azov move­ment, whether offi­cial­ly or not, includ­ing ones involved in vio­lence, includ­ing attacks on fem­i­nists, LGBTQ groups, com­mu­nists and pro-Russ­ian activists, says Col­borne.

    ...

    In spite of this, Col­borne says that the Azov Bat­tal­ion has under­gone changes and become estab­lished over the years. In the first few years after it was found­ed, just a small minor­i­ty of its sol­diers had a con­nec­tion to the far right; today, these num­bers are even small­er and the use of neo-Nazi sym­bols among its mem­bers has been reduced great­ly, he says.

    The Azov Bat­tal­ion and the entire Azov move­ment are almost com­plete­ly untaint­ed by anti­semitism now, he adds. “Not only for Azov but for all the far-right move­ments in Ukraine, espe­cial­ly since 2014, anti­semitism has lost its impor­tance. When I com­pare this to what is hap­pen­ing with the extreme right in oth­er coun­tries in Europe, the lev­el of anti­semitism and the open anti­se­mit­ic rhetoric there is much high­er than any­thing I have seen in the right-wing move­ments in Ukraine in recent years.” White suprema­cy is also not an idea that the lead­ers of the far right, with Bilet­sky at their head, have been pub­licly endors­ing in the past few years.

    Nonethe­less, besides for Ukrain­ian patri­o­tism, the Azov move­ment and rad­i­cal right in Ukraine in gen­er­al have been left with a col­lec­tion of con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues that very much remind one of the ide­olo­gies the Krem­lin relies on today: Oppo­si­tion to fem­i­nism, hatred of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty and devo­tion to “tra­di­tion­al val­ues.”
    ...

    This is a good time to recall that dis­turb­ing May 2022 Reuters piece that allowed Bilet­sky to com­plete­ly deny hold­ing any racist or white suprema­cist views at the same time the Azov move­ment denied any ongo­ing ties to Bilet­sky. It’s like every­one decid­ed to just play dumb.

    And a big part of what makes this appar­ent wide­spread pub­lic blind­ness to the extrem­ist nature of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist fig­ures like Stepan Ban­dera or Roman Shukhevych a form of col­lec­tive­ly play­ing dumb is the fact that this embrace of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism has been a high­ly con­tro­ver­sial area of pub­lic dis­pute of years, well before the events of 2014. It’s not like Ukrain­ian soci­ety is gen­uine­ly obliv­i­ous about it’s own his­to­ry. Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism has long been a major area of debate, with polls in 2021 by the Razumkov Cen­ter found that only 46 per­cent of Ukraini­ans sup­port­ed recog­ni­tion of the sol­diers of the Ukrain­ian rebel army as hav­ing fought for Ukraine’s inde­pen­dence and only thir­ty-two per­cent of respon­dents felt Stepan Bandera’s activ­i­ties had a pos­i­tive effect on Ukraine. This is at the same time streets and roads are being renamed for these Nazi-col­lab­o­rat­ing nation­al­ists. In a san­er world, polls like this would be seen as symp­to­matic of the under­ly­ing divi­sions that are fuel­ing Ukraine’s civ­il war. Instead, they’re just ignored while all of Ukraine’s ‘allies’ sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly pre­tend that any crit­i­cisms of the way Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism has been imposed on the pub­lic is ‘Russ­ian pro­pa­gan­da’:

    ...
    The two his­tor­i­cal names most asso­ci­at­ed with the term “Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism” are Stepan Ban­dera, leader of one of the fac­tions of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (ONU) dur­ing World War II, and Roman Shukhevych, com­man­der of the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army, the organization’s mil­i­tary wing. Since 2014, dozens of streets in Ukraine have been named after the two men, who are com­mem­o­rat­ed on boule­vards in Kyiv as well.

    ...

    Bandera’s and Shukhevych’s con­tro­ver­sial actions have served as a tool of anti-Ukrain­ian pro­pa­gan­da in Rus­sia and put the patri­ot­ic seg­ments of Ukrain­ian soci­ety in a sen­si­tive posi­tion – between reap­pro­pri­at­ing nation­al­ism and defen­sive­ness. In terms of pub­lic aware­ness, the only thing that is impor­tant about these two fig­ures is that they fought for Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence, peri­od,“ says Vyach­eslav Likhachev, a his­to­ri­an and pub­lic activist with Israeli cit­i­zen­ship who has lived in Ukraine for decades. “All the details that are impor­tant to oth­er peo­ple are not impor­tant as far as the Ukrain­ian pub­lic is con­cerned, espe­cial­ly after 2014, when the atten­tion to them became rel­e­vant based on the Ukraine’s strug­gle for inde­pen­dence.”

    But in prac­tice, the sit­u­a­tion is much more com­pli­cat­ed. The names Shukhevych and Ban­dera were at the cen­ter of a pub­lic dis­pute in Ukraine even before 2014. Declar­ing them nation­al heroes and nam­ing streets and oth­er sites after them was a mat­ter for debate and pub­lic and legal dis­pute since at least 2007, and still con­tin­ues. A sur­vey con­duct­ed last year by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Ini­tia­tives Foun­da­tion in coop­er­a­tion with the Razumkov Cen­ter, a Ukrain­ian pub­lic pol­i­cy think tank, showed that 46 per­cent of Ukraini­ans sup­port­ed recog­ni­tion of the sol­diers of the Ukrain­ian rebel army as hav­ing fought for Ukraine’s inde­pen­dence. Thir­ty-two per­cent of respon­dents felt Stepan Bandera’s activ­i­ties had a pos­i­tive effect on Ukraine. As might be expect­ed, sup­port for the rebel army and Ban­dera was sig­nif­i­cant­ly stronger in west­ern Ukraine com­pared to the cen­ter – and much more so than in the east and south.
    ...

    Then we get to the ‘nuance’ about the role the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist groups like the OUN played in Holo­caust. Again, we are find­ing nuance being used as a kind of his­tor­i­cal fog-of-war shield. In this case, Andriy Usach, a his­to­ri­an at Ukrain­ian Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty in Lviv and head of the After the Silence orga­ni­za­tion which is focused on expand­ing the Ukrain­ian pub­lic’s acknowl­edge­ment of the Holo­caust, arrives at a kind of ‘well on the one hand...but on the oth­er hand...’ kind of response to ques­tions about the role the OUN and OUN‑B played in the Holo­caust with state­ments like, “Most Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, for their part, were not col­lab­o­ra­tors and did not serve in the police.” Usach then acknowl­edges that, sure, some nation­al­ists did serve in the police and took part in the Holo­caust, but that does­n’t mean they nec­es­sar­i­ly direct­ly killed peo­ple with their own hands, but instead played roles like guard­ing mass mur­der sites. And sure, while these his­toric details might be accu­rate — not all nation­al­ists were mem­bers of the police and not all mem­bers of the police direct­ly killed peo­ple in the Holo­caust — it’s the kind of nuance that nonethe­less white­wash­es the exten­sive evi­dence of the very direc­tor roles played by these groups in the Holo­caust. A role Usach him­self describes fur­ther down in the arti­cle, when he talks about mem­bers of the OUN and UPA killed Jews with­out orders from the Nazis, most­ly out of the belief that the Jews were active or poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tors with the Sovi­ets:

    ...
    Ban­dera oper­at­ed under­ground for most of his life, and spent almost a total of a decade in prison – in Poland before the war, and dur­ing it in the Sach­sen­hausen con­cen­tra­tion camp in Ger­many. In 1959, he was mur­dered by a KGB agent while liv­ing as an exile in Ger­many and became a nation­al icon. In the Sovi­et nar­ra­tive, and now the Russ­ian, Bandera’s name sym­bol­izes Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists’ col­lab­o­ra­tions with the Nazis, and the expres­sion “Ban­dera men” has become an insult. To some Ukrain­ian exiles and dis­si­dents in the past, and some Ukraini­ans today, Ban­dera has become syn­ony­mous with a Ukrain­ian free­dom fight­er.

    The truth, it seems, is in the mid­dle. “Most col­lab­o­ra­tors, includ­ing those who helped the Nazis per­se­cute the Jews in occu­pied Ukraine, were not Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists,” says Andriy Usach, a his­to­ri­an at Ukrain­ian Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty in Lviv and head of the After the Silence orga­ni­za­tion, which col­lects tes­ti­monies about World War II. “Ger­man researchers place the num­ber of Ukraini­ans who par­tic­i­pat­ed in per­se­cu­tion of the Jews – those who served in the police, vil­lage lead­ers, and so on – at 30,000–40,000. I think the num­ber was high­er – up to 90,000 peo­ple. Most were not Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists.

    Most Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, for their part, were not col­lab­o­ra­tors and did not serve in the police,” he says. “This does not negate the fact that among Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, some served in the police and took part in the Holo­caust. This doesn’t mean that they killed with their own hands, but they guard­ed mass mur­der sites – which is to say, they bore direct respon­si­bil­i­ty for all the Jews of a giv­en town who were mur­dered. This issue was not dis­cussed for a long time. The num­ber of Ukrain­ian his­to­ri­ans who dealt with the sub­ject can be count­ed on two hands.

    ...

    For their part, the mem­bers of Bandera’s fac­tion made up the two famous bat­tal­ions, Roland and Nachti­gall, which were estab­lished at the begin­ning of 1941 in advance of the Ger­man inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union and were trained by the Abwehr, Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence. In the fall of 1941, the two bat­tal­ions were bro­ken up and reor­ga­nized into a sin­gle bat­tal­ion of Ukrain­ian aux­il­iary police, the Schutz­mannschaft, which fought against par­ti­sans in Belarus. Mem­bers of the OUN and UPA killed Jews with­out orders from the Nazis, most­ly out of the belief that the Jews were active or poten­tial col­lab­o­ra­tors with the Sovi­ets, said Usach. For exam­ple, two inci­dents of exe­cu­tions of Jews in Ukraine by the Nachti­gall are known. Roman Shukhevych was the deputy com­man­der of that bat­tal­ion. As for the Roland Bat­tal­ion, no evi­dence exists that it par­tic­i­pat­ed in exe­cu­tions.
    ...

    And then, we get to the his­tor­i­cal nuances regard­ing the anti­semitism of these Ukraine nation­al­ists groups dur­ing WWII. As his­to­ri­an Yuri Rad­chenko describes, the OUN fol­lowed “a total­i­tar­i­an-author­i­tar­i­an ide­ol­o­gy, with a sig­nif­i­cant anti­se­mit­ic com­po­nent and an affin­i­ty for Nazi Ger­many,” with its leader, Andriy Mel­nyk, con­sid­ered an even big­ger anti­semite than Stepan Ban­dera. Mem­bers of Mel­nyk’s OUN also con­tributed to the for­ma­tion of local police aux­i­lary units and served as trans­la­tors and the SS Ein­satz­grup­pen. So when we hear cau­tioned nuance about how not all Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists served in the police or played a role in the Holo­caust, it’s impor­tant to keep in mind that these are the kinds of details that are being obscured:

    ...
    Accord­ing to Yuri Rad­chenko, a Jew­ish Ukrain­ian his­to­ri­an and direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Research on Intereth­nic Rela­tions in East­ern Europe, Ban­dera was just anoth­er local ultra­na­tion­al­ist leader whose impor­tance has been overblown, part­ly because the purg­ing of alter­na­tives in Sovi­et Ukraine. The OUN fol­lowed “a total­i­tar­i­an-author­i­tar­i­an ide­ol­o­gy, with a sig­nif­i­cant anti­se­mit­ic com­po­nent and an affin­i­ty for Nazi Ger­many,” says Rad­chenko.

    An exam­ple of this ide­ol­o­gy can be found in the sum­ma­ry doc­u­ment of the OUN con­fer­ence held in Krakow in April 1941, where the organization’s plan to achieve Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence under war con­di­tions was set. “The Jews in the Sovi­et Union are the most devot­ed sup­port­ers of the Bol­she­vik regime and the van­guard of Moscow’s impe­ri­al­ism in Ukraine,” states the sec­tion refer­ring to Jews, adding: “The anti-Jew­ish sen­ti­ments of the Ukrain­ian mass­es serve the Moscow gov­ern­ment to divert their atten­tion from the real cause of the cat­a­stro­phe and to direct them to pogroms against the Jews at a time of col­lapse. The Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists fights the Jews as the bul­wark of the Mus­covite-Bol­she­vik regime, while remind­ing the mass­es that Moscow is the main ene­my.”

    In 1940, the OUN split into two fac­tions – one led by Ban­dera, which was con­sid­ered to be more rad­i­cal, and the one led by Andriy Mel­nyk, con­sid­ered to be more mod­er­ate, but also more anti­se­mit­ic. Accord­ing to Rad­chenko, Mel­nyk, as opposed to Ban­dera, had his sig­na­ture on anti­se­mit­ic fly­ers. Accord­ing to the Babyn Yar Holo­caust Memo­r­i­al Cen­ter’s his­to­ry of the Holo­caust in Ukraine, edit­ed by Holo­caust researcher Karel Berk­hoff, mem­bers of Melnyk’s OUN aid­ed the Nazis after the con­quest of Kyiv. They con­tributed great­ly to the for­ma­tion of the local police aux­il­iary, which threat­ened local res­i­dents with death if they did not hand over Jews, Sovi­et secret police mem­bers and com­mu­nists, and served as trans­la­tors for the SS Ein­satz­grup­pen that car­ried out the mur­ders at Babyn Yar, as well as many oth­ers.
    ...

    Final­ly, we get to the to cru­cial obser­va­tions from Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal soci­ol­o­gist Volodymyr Ishchenko, based in Berlin, who points out what is per­haps the most impor­tant obser­va­tion we can make about the role Ukraine’s far right plays today: its polit­i­cal pow­er isn’t derived from demo­c­ra­t­ic sup­port, which is rather tepid. But they are wild­ly pow­er­ful nonethe­less, with a repeat­ed abil­i­ty to block peace ini­tia­tives and pre­vent the imple­men­ta­tion of the Min­sk accords with threats of vio­lence. We don’t have to ask whether or not groups like Azov pose a threat to Ukraine’s democ­ra­cy. They’ve already sub­vert­ed that democ­ra­cy mul­ti­ple times when it comes to the most press­ing issue of the day:

    ...
    Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal soci­ol­o­gist Volodymyr Ishchenko, a researcher at the Insti­tute of East­ern Euro­pean Stud­ies of the Free Uni­ver­si­ty of Berlin, is more scathing in his analy­sis. The far right in Ukraine influ­ences pol­i­tics much more than one might con­clude from its elec­toral size, said Ishchenko. The far-right Svo­bo­da (“free­dom”) par­ty may have only won slight­ly more than 2 per­cent of the vote in the most recent par­lia­men­tary elec­tion and failed to pass the elec­toral thresh­old, but Ishchenko makes it clear that as far as he is con­cerned, the far right has man­aged to set the pub­lic agen­da even with­out rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the par­lia­ment.

    What was the goal of the rad­i­cals until 2014 – ban­ning the Com­mu­nist Par­ty, the Rus­si­fi­ca­tion of the OUN, has become main­stream, begin­ning in 2014,” he says. Since 2014, when Rus­sia seized the Crimean Penin­su­la and the Russ­ian-backed sep­a­ratist war in the Don­bas began, the far right has received sup­port out­side of par­lia­ment too, Ishchenko adds. “They received access to weapons, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of shap­ing orga­nized ide­o­log­i­cal groups, and in pol­i­tics of this type they had no com­peti­tors.”

    Ishchenko says that an exam­ple of this is the block­ing of amend­ments to the con­sti­tu­tion meant to grant a spe­cial sta­tus to the Don­bas region, in line with the Min­sk Pro­to­col, which was sup­posed to end the Don­bas war. In 2015, after par­lia­ment gave ini­tial approval to the amend­ments, Svo­bo­da activists held a vio­lent protest next to the par­lia­ment build­ing that end­ed in a grenade being thrown that killed four police offi­cers who were guard­ing the build­ing. In the end, the law failed to move for­ward. Anoth­er inci­dent show­ing the far right’s influ­ence on pol­i­cy came in Octo­ber 2019, when Azov vet­er­ans occu­pied the vil­lage of Zolote in the Luhan­sk region and refused to leave, in spite of Pres­i­dent Zelenskyy’s inten­tion to with­draw Ukrain­ian forces from the town to begin the imple­men­ta­tion of the Min­sk Pro­to­col, says Ishchenko.

    He says that accord­ing to polling, Ukraini­ans most­ly approved of the Min­sk agree­ments in 2015 and opposed the “no-sur­ren­der” cam­paign the right wing launched in 2019. “There is a pret­ty large gap between what Ukrain­ian soci­ety thinks and Ukrain­ian civ­il soci­ety thinks – that is, activists who voice their opin­ions on social media and go out and protest.”
    ...

    This is a good time to recall how an Azov del­e­ga­tion marched to Pres­i­dent Zelen­skiy pres­i­den­tial office back in Kyiv in August of 2021 to protest what they feared was a peace treaty Zelen­skiy was plan­ning on sign­ing. When police demand­ed that the group sub­mit to a weapons search, the Azov del­e­ga­tion refused and were giv­en the com­mand to attack the police instead. That’s the real­i­ty of the kind of pow­er these groups wield in Ukraine. The pow­er to attack the pres­i­den­t’s office and get away with it.

    But hey, not every­one involved with Azov is a Nazi. So there’s noth­ing to see here. That’s the nuanced take we’re appar­ent­ly sup­posed to have. Because there can be a lot of nuance in play­ing dumb. Espe­cial­ly when it’s a big col­lec­tive act of play­ing dumb togeth­er.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 13, 2023, 4:47 pm
  22. @Pterrafractyl–

    Nev­er lose sight of the fact that Col­borne works for Belling­cat, a pro­pa­gan­da vehi­cle for West­ern intel/propaganda.

    The notion that the OUN/B “turned” on the Nazis is dubi­ous.

    Their most impor­tant units either col­lab­o­rat­ed with, or were absorbed into, the SS.

    This is tan­ta­mount to equat­ing U.S. troops’ “frag­ging” of offi­cers late in the war with U.S. troops, in effect, “join­ing” with the Vietcong/NVA.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | January 13, 2023, 5:08 pm
  23. The West­’s plan for end­ing the war in Ukraine has long been clear: flood Ukraine with so many weapons that it even­tu­al­ly wins. Whether or not that’s a viable plan is far less clear, but that’s the plan. This is a con­flict intend­ed to be won mil­i­tar­i­ly.

    But as the fol­low­ing blog post by Mark Sle­bo­da reminds us, there’s anoth­er path to peace that’s always been sit­ting there: rid­ding Ukraine’s lead­er­ship of the vir­u­lent­ly anti-Russ­ian nation­al­ists who are the orig­i­nal source of the whole con­flict to begin with. Now, in fair­ness, an anti-Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist plat­form for peace was, more or less, the plat­form Volodymyr Zelen­skiy ran on and won over­whelm­ing­ly with back in 2019. But as we’ve also seen, Zelen­skiy was nev­er actu­al­ly allowed to pur­sue that peace process and was instead faced with the direct threat of a coup by groups like Azov. It’s a key dynam­ic here: not only were the vir­u­lent­ly anti-Russ­ian Nazi-affil­i­at­ed groups like Azov and Right Sec­tor the key fac­tors that drove Ukraine’s civ­il war in the first place back in 2014, but they’ve also been the main groups forc­ing the con­tin­u­a­tion of the con­flict. Peace nego­ti­a­tions are not allowed as long as Ukraine’s nation­al­ists hold the whip hand.

    So with the role that Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism is play­ing — both in start­ing this con­flict of keep­ing it going — in mind, it’s also worth not­ing that Ukraine’s top gen­er­al is an open super fan of both Stepan Ban­dera and Roman Shukhevych. Yes, Gen­er­al Valery Zaluzh­ny does­n’t hide his deep admi­ra­tion for the two deeply divi­sive fig­ures. His desk is adorned with busts of the two, along with the red and black Ban­derite flag hang­ing promi­nent­ly on the wall. And he’s more than hap­py to show it all to inter­view­ers.

    Beyond that, Zaluzh­ny does­n’t mince words about the goals of the mil­i­tary cam­paign he’s wage: kill Rus­sians. Or as Zaluzh­ny put it in an inter­view last month:

    We’ve been at war since 2014… And the most impor­tant expe­ri­ence we had and the one which we have prac­ticed almost like a reli­gion is that Rus­sians and any oth­er ene­mies must be killed, just killed, and most impor­tant­ly, we should not be afraid, not hes­i­tate, to do it. And this is what we are doing.”.

    Rus­sians must just be killed. And, most impor­tant­ly, do not hes­i­tate to do it. Those are the words from a super-fan of the guys who led Ukraine’s holo­caust. Just kill Rus­sians. Don’t be afraid. Don’t hes­i­tate. Do you think maybe this kind of think­ing has from Ukraine’s top mil­i­tary lead­er­ship any­thing to do with the per­pet­u­a­tion of the con­flict? What does this tell the pop­u­la­tions of the Don­bass about their futures should Ukraine retake those ter­ri­to­ries? Don’t for­get that 20% of Ukraine (pre-2014) was eth­nic Russ­ian with a much larg­er per­cent who pri­mar­i­ly spoke Russ­ian. This is huge chunk of the pop­u­lace implic­it­ly threat­ened by the ide­ol­o­gy of the leader of Ukraine’s armed forces.

    And as we’re going to see in the sec­ond arti­cle excerpt below, there’s anoth­er rea­son we should be deeply dis­turb­ing by the gross anti-Russ­ian sen­ti­ments that have gripped Ukraine with no end in sight: it’s spread­ing. Latvia, in par­tic­u­lar, appears to have adopt­ed such an intense­ly anti-Russ­ian offi­cial atti­tude that peo­ple are fear­ing the coun­try is being torn apart. As we should expect in a coun­try that has a 30% eth­nic Russ­ian minor­i­ty. Yep, Latvi­a’s nation­al­ists got so empow­ered over the last year that they basi­cal­ly banned all Russ­ian-lan­guage media. And, sur­prise!, the Russ­ian-speak­ing Lat­vian’s aren’t enthu­si­as­tic about it.

    Even some Lat­vian politi­cians who sup­port­ed the Russ­ian-lan­guage bans admit now it went too far. But they aren’t blam­ing the Lat­vian nation­al­ists. No. It’s all Vladimir Putin’s fault. At least that’s sen­ti­ment expressed.

    So we have a sit­u­a­tion were anti-Russ­ian nation­al­ism has already reached a “kill Rus­sians, do not hes­i­tate, do not be afraid” fer­vor at the same time blame for nation­al­ist excess­es is being blamed on Putin. What­ev­er they do to the Russ­ian-speak­ing pop­u­la­tions is ulti­mate­ly Putin’s fault. It does­n’t bode well:

    The Real Pol­i­tick with Mark Sle­bo­da

    Ukraine’s Com­man­der-in-Chief is an Open Ban­derite Fas­cist

    Mark Sle­bo­da
    Jan 14, 2023

    Since the open­ly West-backed Maid­an Putsch in 2014, Jan­u­ary 1st has been pro­claimed a nation­al hol­i­day in Ukraine, cel­e­brat­ing the birth­day of the geno­ci­dal WW2-era West Ukrain­ian fas­cist and anti-semi­te ide­o­logue, ter­ror­ist insur­gent leader, Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor, and Holo­caust per­pe­tra­tor, Stepan Ban­dera.

    [see pic]
    [see pic]

    For the last eight years it has been marked by hor­ri­fy­ing torch­lit night­time parades of the regime’s NeoN­azi death­squads and brown­shirts goose-step­ping through the streets of the cap­i­tal, Kiev.

    [see pic]

    This year the Kiev Putsch regime’s Par­lia­men­tary body the Rada, cel­e­brat­ed the fas­cist hol­i­day with a tweet, now delet­ed, on Twit­ter show­ing the Com­man­der-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 4 star gen­er­al Valery Zaluzh­ny, stand­ing smil­ing smug­ly, in front of a por­trait of Stepan Ban­dera, accom­pa­nied by one of Bandera’s quotes,
    The com­plete and final vic­to­ry of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism will come when the Russ­ian empire ceas­es to exist.” And then added, “A fight against the Russ­ian empire is cur­rent­ly under­way. And the pre­cepts of Stepan Ban­dera are well known to the com­man­der-in-chief of the armed forces.”

    [see pic]

    This is hard­ly the first such rev­e­la­tion. Zaluzh­nyi is infa­mous­ly known as open ide­o­log­i­cal sup­port­er of Stepan Ban­dera, now offi­cial­ly glo­ri­fied by the West-backed Kiev Putsch regime as a hero and “found­ing father” of the new Ukraine under their rule and vision..

    This is almost cer­tain­ly one of the cri­te­ria for which he was cho­sen to lead the Kiev regime’s mil­i­tary forces.

    In 2021, right after becom­ing the Kiev regime’s Com­man­der-In-Chief, Zaluzh­ny offi­cial­ly appoint­ed Dmit­ry Yarosh, the head and founder of the NeoN­azi & white suprema­cist para­mil­i­tary group, the Right Sec­tor, as his per­son­al “senior mil­i­tary advi­sor”.

    []

    ...

    In anoth­er pho­to from this year, Zaluzh­nyi is shown in uni­form stand­ing in a mil­i­tary office with sev­er­al oth­er sol­diers in front of a desk adorned with busts of OUN‑B lead­ers and Nazi-col­lab­o­ra­tors Stepan Ban­dera and Roman Shukhevych. Pho­tos of both Shukhevych and Ban­dera are also promi­nent­ly hang­ing on the wall in the back­ground along with the red and black Ban­derite flag.

    []

    A sep­a­rate pho­to tak­en of Zaluzhnyi’s office also has a bust of Ban­dera dis­played promi­nent­ly for all to see on a table against the wall.

    []

    In a recent inter­view with the Econ­o­mist, Zaluzh­ny said flat out-
    “We’ve been at war since 2014… And the most impor­tant expe­ri­ence we had and the one which we have prac­ticed almost like a reli­gion is that Rus­sians and any oth­er ene­mies must be killed, just killed, and most impor­tant­ly, we should not be afraid, not hes­i­tate, to do it. And this is what we are doing.”
    Yes they have been indeed killing Rus­sians since 2014.

    In a civ­il con­flict in coun­try where 20% of the pop­u­la­tion is eth­nic Russ­ian and a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of the rest, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the East, are Russ­ian-speak­ing and regard Rus­sians as a broth­er peo­ple, not as “the ene­my”.

    []

    []

    This is the Ban­derite fas­cist Com­man­der-in-Chief of a mil­i­tary armed, trained, giv­en C4ISR, direct­ed and pup­pet­ed by NATO and fund­ed to the cost of now hun­dreds of bil­lions of West­ern tax­pay­er dol­lars in a proxy war on Rus­sia. He’s cel­e­brat­ed in West­ern media reports, mag­a­zine cov­ers, and news­pa­per front pages as a hero!
    How can this be?

    The grim real­i­ty is that as long as Zaluzhny’s hatred and vio­lence, and that of his NeoN­azi hordes, are direct­ed, for the moment, pri­mar­i­ly against eth­nic Rus­sians, “pro-Russ­ian East­ern Ukraini­ans” and left­ists, then his brand of Ban­derite fas­cism is geopo­lit­i­cal­ly use­ful to the West, and thus “kosher”.
    Indeed the US and Cana­da have a long doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of sup­port­ing Ban­derite fas­cists in Ukraine, and their analo­ques in the Baltics, back to the imme­di­ate after­math of WW2.

    Zaluschny…Hey – the bas­tard may be a fas­cist, but he’s OUR fas­cist, god-damn it!

    ———-

    “Ukraine’s Com­man­der-in-Chief is an Open Ban­derite Fas­cist” by Mark Sle­bo­da; The Real Pol­i­tick with Mark Sle­bo­da; 01/14/2023

    “This is hard­ly the first such rev­e­la­tion. Zaluzh­nyi is infa­mous­ly known as open ide­o­log­i­cal sup­port­er of Stepan Ban­dera, now offi­cial­ly glo­ri­fied by the West-backed Kiev Putsch regime as a hero and “found­ing father” of the new Ukraine under their rule and vision..”

    It would be a lot eas­i­er to casu­al­ly dis­miss the Krem­line’s talk­ing points about the Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Ukraine by a gang of Ban­derite fas­cists if the top gen­er­al of Ukraine’s armed forces was­n’t an open admir­er and Stepan Ban­dera. Because there’s no deny­ing Gen­er­al Zalush­ny is a Ban­derite. He makes that abun­dant­ly on a reg­u­lar basis. So it’s real­ly just a ques­tion of whether or not Stepan Ban­dera was a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor fas­cist. Which of course he was. But that’s the sad state of the cur­rent inter­na­tion­al ‘debate’ over the Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of Ukraine: a debate over whether or not Stepan Ban­dera was actu­al­ly a Nazi col­lab­o­rat­ing fas­cist. Or at least that should be the debate because there’s no debat­ing whether or not Ukraine’s top mil­i­tary lead­ers are Ban­derites. But, of course, that’s not a real debate. Ban­dera was an unam­bigu­ous Nazi sym­pa­thiz­er, along with oth­er nation­al­ist heroes from that era like Roman Shukhevych. The top gen­er­al of Ukraine’s armed forces is a fer­vent fol­low­er of two of Ukraine’s lead­ing Nazi col­lab­o­rat­ing nation­al­ist heroes. He even made Dmitro Yarosh — founder of the neo-Nazi Right Sec­tor — a senior mil­i­tary advi­sor. There is no hon­est debate on this mat­ter:

    ...
    This year the Kiev Putsch regime’s Par­lia­men­tary body the Rada, cel­e­brat­ed the fas­cist hol­i­day with a tweet, now delet­ed, on Twit­ter show­ing the Com­man­der-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the 4 star gen­er­al Valery Zaluzh­ny, stand­ing smil­ing smug­ly, in front of a por­trait of Stepan Ban­dera, accom­pa­nied by one of Bandera’s quotes,
    The com­plete and final vic­to­ry of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ism will come when the Russ­ian empire ceas­es to exist.” And then added, “A fight against the Russ­ian empire is cur­rent­ly under­way. And the pre­cepts of Stepan Ban­dera are well known to the com­man­der-in-chief of the armed forces.

    [see pic]

    ...

    In 2021, right after becom­ing the Kiev regime’s Com­man­der-In-Chief, Zaluzh­ny offi­cial­ly appoint­ed Dmit­ry Yarosh, the head and founder of the NeoN­azi & white suprema­cist para­mil­i­tary group, the Right Sec­tor, as his per­son­al “senior mil­i­tary advi­sor”.

    []

    ...

    In anoth­er pho­to from this year, Zaluzh­nyi is shown in uni­form stand­ing in a mil­i­tary office with sev­er­al oth­er sol­diers in front of a desk adorned with busts of OUN‑B lead­ers and Nazi-col­lab­o­ra­tors Stepan Ban­dera and Roman Shukhevych. Pho­tos of both Shukhevych and Ban­dera are also promi­nent­ly hang­ing on the wall in the back­ground along with the red and black Ban­derite flag.

    []

    A sep­a­rate pho­to tak­en of Zaluzhnyi’s office also has a bust of Ban­dera dis­played promi­nent­ly for all to see on a table against the wall.

    []

    ...

    Zaluschny…Hey – the bas­tard may be a fas­cist, but he’s OUR fas­cist, god-damn it!
    ...

    Zaluzh­ny isn’t hid­ing his ide­ol­o­gy at all. It’s all right there for inter­view­ers. Includ­ing his open desire to “kill Russ­ian.” A desire that he describes as “like a reli­gion”. As he puts it, “Rus­sians and any oth­er ene­mies must be killed, just killed, and most impor­tant­ly, we should not be afraid, not hes­i­tate, to do it.” That sure sounds like some­one lead­ing what is effec­tive­ly an eth­nic sec­tar­i­an war against eth­nic Rus­sians. And peo­ple won­der why the pre­dom­i­nant­ly eth­nic-Rus­sia states of Donet­sk the Luhan­sk declared their inde­pen­dence in the first place:

    ...
    In a recent inter­view with the Econ­o­mist, Zaluzh­ny said flat out-
    “We’ve been at war since 2014… And the most impor­tant expe­ri­ence we had and the one which we have prac­ticed almost like a reli­gion is that Rus­sians and any oth­er ene­mies must be killed, just killed, and most impor­tant­ly, we should not be afraid, not hes­i­tate, to do it. And this is what we are doing.”
    Yes they have been indeed killing Rus­sians since 2014.

    In a civ­il con­flict in coun­try where 20% of the pop­u­la­tion is eth­nic Russ­ian and a sig­nif­i­cant pro­por­tion of the rest, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the East, are Russ­ian-speak­ing and regard Rus­sians as a broth­er peo­ple, not as “the ene­my”.

    []

    []
    ...

    And let’s not for­get that there has been almost no mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sion by the lead­er­ship in Kyiv or its West­ern spon­sors about what is to be done about the ‘super­flu­ous’ eth­nic Russ­ian pop­u­la­tions in the sep­a­ratist ter­ri­to­ries. What place would they have in a new­ly reuni­fied Ukraine run by a Ban­derite Ukrain­ian nation­al gov­ern­ment that views Rus­sians as an ene­my that should just be killed with­out hes­i­ta­tion? The fact that these ques­tion effec­tive­ly aren’t ever asked, at least not in pub­lic, is a big clue about the under­ly­ing social dynam­ics at work fuel­ing this con­flict. The same under­ly­ing social dynam­ics that fueled the sep­a­ratism back in 2014. The sim­ple fact of the mat­ter is that minor­i­ty pop­u­la­tions don’t take kind­ly to fas­cist nation­al­ists move­ments that view them as an ‘oth­er’.

    And that brings us to the fol­low­ing high­ly dis­turb­ing arti­cle from last week about the same vir­u­lent­ly anti-Russ­ian dynam­ics tear­ing apart anoth­er soci­ety: Latvia. Yes, with rough­ly 30 per­cent of Latvi­a’s pop­u­la­tion self-iden­ti­fied as Rus­sia-speak­ing, the Lat­vian nation­al­ists have decid­ed to effec­tive­ly ban Russ­ian lan­guage media from the coun­try. And, sur­prise!, the results are a sig­nif­i­cant increase in eth­nic ten­sions. Even some folks who sup­port­ed the lan­guage bans are admit­ting that they were a step too far. And yet, as we’ll see, there’s one per­son who can be ulti­mate­ly blamed for the Lat­vian nation­al­ism threat­en­ing Latvi­a’s social glue: Vladimir Putin. It’s Putin’s fault the Lat­vian nation­al­ists are run­ning out of con­trol. Those are the sen­ti­ments expressed in the arti­cle: a grow­ing sense of angst over the recog­ni­tion the the vir­u­lent­ly anti-Russ­ian Lat­vian nation­al­ism that has swept the coun­try is threat­en­ing to tear it apart, cou­pled with a con­vic­tion that the destruc­tive impact of this nation­al­ism-gone-wild is all Putin’s fault:

    Nation­al Post

    No Russ­ian and no Rus­sians: Ukraine inva­sion has super­charged Lat­vian nation­al­ism

    Back to the U.S.S.R.: Paule Robitaille writes that Sovi­et Union sym­bols used to be tol­er­at­ed, now they’re reminders of Putin’s aggres­sion

    by Paule Robitaille
    Pub­lished Jan 15, 2023 • Updat­ed

    Que­bec jour­nal­ist Paule Robitaille under­takes a jjour­ney through the for­mer Sovi­et Union, where she lived from 1990 to 1996. As we approach next month’s first anniver­sary of the Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine, she exam­ines how Moscow’s aggres­sion is chang­ing the lives of these peo­ple and the frag­ile equi­lib­ri­um with­in these coun­tries.

    RIGA, Latvia — I meet Nils Muiznieks, a for­mer Lat­vian cab­i­net min­is­ter and Amnesty international’s Euro­pean direc­tor, in a warm and cozy café at the edge of Riga’s Old Town. It’s packed with stu­dents chat­ting joy­ful­ly in a mix­ture of Eng­lish, French and Lat­vian. The wait­ress brings me a cap­puc­ci­no and a pop­py­seed cake. I pay in Euros, a ges­ture that reminds me that we are very much in the com­fort zone of the Europe Union. To most peo­ple, that obser­va­tion would seem triv­ial. But not for me who set foot in Latvia for the first time since the Sovi­et col­lapse. And cer­tain­ly not for Nils Muiznieks, the son of refugees who fled Latvia in the 1940s to escape Sovi­et rule, which saw tens of thou­sands of his coun­try­men shipped off to the Gulag.

    Since the war in Ukraine, almost every­one in Latvia feels like Nils – hyper­aware of the fragili­ty of their way of life. In Riga, the war feels very close and imme­di­ate. The Russ­ian and Belaru­sian bor­ders are only a few hours away by car. Despite the pres­ence of a bat­tal­ion of Cana­di­an NATO sol­diers on Lat­vian soil; despite Latvia’s mem­ber­ship in the Euro­pean Union; Lat­vians know how eas­i­ly Rus­sia could swal­low up their tiny coun­try and extin­guish their polit­i­cal free­doms. Their gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing all it can in terms of arms and human­i­tar­i­an aid to Ukraine. “Per capi­ta, we are prob­a­bly the state that gives the most weapons to Ukraine so that they can fight for us,” Nils Muiznieks tells me.

    But what also wor­ries Nils, a for­mer min­is­ter of inte­gra­tion of Latvia, are the eth­nic ten­sions being fanned by the con­flict in Ukraine. This lit­tle Baltic nation of three mil­lion has strug­gled for decades to avoid con­flict with its Russ­ian-speak­ing minor­i­ty, which accounts for a third of the pop­u­la­tion. Now, every­thing is frag­ile.

    “When my 90-year-old par­ents watch the tele­vi­sion news, when they see the hor­rors of the war in Ukraine, the mass graves, the burnt-out build­ings, they see the Sovi­et occu­piers again,” says Nils. “They remem­ber their cul­ture reduced to a folk­loric theme, the dozens of thou­sands of inno­cent peo­ple sent to the Gulag, the Sec­ond World War which dec­i­mat­ed their peo­ple. These trau­mas come to haunt the entire pop­u­la­tion.”

    With emo­tions run­ning high, Lat­vian nation­al­ism has become super-charged. Eth­nic Lat­vians’ polit­i­cal dis­course shows an unequiv­o­cal lack of patience for the Russ­ian-speak­ing minor­i­ty which is reluc­tant to inte­grate after 30 years of inde­pen­dence. “There is no more nuance,” says Nils Muiznieks. On the Russ­ian side, Putin’s pro­pa­gan­da is mak­ing inroads. A poll last sum­mer indi­cat­ed that 25 per cent of Russ­ian-speak­ers opposed the war, 25 per cent sup­port­ed it and 50 per cent were unde­cid­ed.

    “Until now, we avoid­ed eth­nic vio­lence. But the war com­plete­ly under­mined this,” explains Boris Cile­vics, a leader of the Russ­ian speak­ing com­mu­ni­ty and for­mer mem­ber of Lat­vian Par­lia­ment, the Saeima. “What Putin did, played very well in the hands of nation­al­ists.”

    Since the begin­ning of the war in Ukraine, nine months ago, more than 30 crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings have been ini­ti­at­ed in Latvia relat­ed to incit­ing hatred and sup­port­ing Russia’s aggres­sion. A first, accord­ing to Boris Cile­vics.

    Since Feb. 24, the day Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine, the Saeima has been in assim­i­la­tion mode. It passed a law that pro­hibits the teach­ing of Russ­ian in all schools, includ­ing as a sec­ond lan­guage. There is no longer any high­er edu­ca­tion in the lan­guage of Tol­stoy. Gov­ern­ment web­sites are now in Lat­vian only. Since June, all TV chan­nels that orig­i­nate in Rus­sia are banned.

    These mea­sures are seen as so heavy-hand­ed that even their own back­ers admit to feel­ing uneasy. Mar­tin Bon­dars, until recent­ly a mem­ber of the Saiema, con­fides: “I am per­son­al­ly against these laws, but my par­ty and I vot­ed for them, social pres­sure was sim­ply too strong.”

    “Putin killed minor­i­ty rights for Russ­ian speak­ers by manip­u­lat­ing the issue for expan­sion pur­pose,” con­cludes Nils Muiznieks.

    Recent­ly, the sole remain­ing Russ­ian inde­pen­dent tele­vi­sion chan­nel, TV Dozhd (“Rain”), was shut down in Latvia after less than five months on air, accused of show­ing con­tent sym­pa­thet­ic to Moscow’s inva­sion of Ukraine.

    Short­ly after the inva­sion, the Lat­vian gov­ern­ment closed its bor­ders to Russ­ian cit­i­zens — includ­ing young men flee­ing mobi­liza­tion. The only excep­tions: Russ­ian dis­si­dents and inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists. And even then, the shut­down of TV Dozhd demon­strates that every Russ­ian cit­i­zen in Latvia is liv­ing on an ejec­tion seat. Before the inva­sion, Rus­sians were respon­si­ble for mil­lions of euros of invest­ment in the Lat­vian econ­o­my. Now per­ma­nent res­i­den­cy has been with­drawn from all Russ­ian cit­i­zens who own busi­ness­es and real estate. On Sotheby’s and oth­er real estate web­sites, offers to sell are mul­ti­ply­ing.

    With­out Russ­ian big spenders, sales clerks at Burber­ry and Hugo Boss are twid­dling their thumbs. Hele­na, own­er of a lux­u­ry store, won­ders if she will sur­vive. Sales have dropped steadi­ly for nine months. In a coun­try where infla­tion runs at 21 per cent, one of the high­est rates in Europe, the Russ­ian depar­ture could fuel a dan­ger­ous reces­sion.

    Sym­bols of the old Sovi­et Union used to be tol­er­at­ed in Latvia, but these days they’re reminders of Putin’s aggres­sion. Last August, Latvia top­pled a tow­er­ing Sovi­et-era obelisk com­mem­o­rat­ing the Red Army vic­to­ry over Nazi Ger­many, the lat­est in a series of mon­u­ments that have been pulled down in East­ern Europe amid grow­ing hos­til­i­ty toward Rus­sia.

    “The Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine revives two com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent per­cep­tions of his­to­ry. For many, it is a con­tin­u­a­tion of World War Two. For Russ­ian speak­ers, the vic­to­ry mon­u­ments are sym­bols of their par­ents and grand­par­ents who lib­er­at­ed the coun­try from the Nazis. For the eth­nic Lat­vians, the Sovi­et lib­er­a­tion is the begin­ning of a ter­ri­ble occu­pa­tion,” says Boris Cile­vics, ex-mem­ber of Par­lia­ment and leader of Russ­ian com­mu­ni­ty.

    ...

    In 1989, bare­ly a fifth of the Russ­ian pop­u­la­tion could speak some Lat­vian. In 2022, only 22 per cent of the Russ­ian com­mu­ni­ty does not speak Lat­vian. “It is far from per­fect but enor­mous progress was made,” declares Nils Muiznieks. “We can­not afford to lose what we have gained.”

    To quote Boris Cile­vics, who fought for his com­mu­ni­ty all his life: “Putin is the biggest Rus­so­phobe that ever exist­ed.”

    ———–

    “No Russ­ian and no Rus­sians: Ukraine inva­sion has super­charged Lat­vian nation­al­ism” by Paule Robitaille; Nation­al Post; 01/15/2023

    But what also wor­ries Nils, a for­mer min­is­ter of inte­gra­tion of Latvia, are the eth­nic ten­sions being fanned by the con­flict in Ukraine. This lit­tle Baltic nation of three mil­lion has strug­gled for decades to avoid con­flict with its Russ­ian-speak­ing minor­i­ty, which accounts for a third of the pop­u­la­tion. Now, every­thing is frag­ile.”

    A third of Latvi­a’s pop­u­la­tion is get­ting sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly labeled as a kind of inter­nal ene­my thanks to the tur­bocharg­ing of Lat­vian nation­al­ism. It’s hap­pen­ing again. And note how even the fig­ures who now acknowl­edge that this has gone too far in alien­at­ing Latvi­a’s Russ­ian speak­ing pop­u­la­tion choose to blame Putin for the unfold­ing eth­nic ten­sions. As Mar­tin Bon­dars, one of the law­mak­ers who vot­ed for the Rus­sia-lan­guage media bans, asserts, “Putin killed minor­i­ty rights for Russ­ian speak­ers by manip­u­lat­ing the issue for expan­sion pur­pose.” It’s Putin’s fault Lat­vian nation­al­ists are per­se­cut­ing the Russ­ian-speak­ing pop­u­la­tion and dri­ving the nation into a state of social fragili­ty. You all most could­n’t come up with a bet­ter exam­ple of the deeply warped col­lec­tive psy­chol­o­gy at work here. The kind of deeply warped col­lec­tive psy­chol­o­gy that guid­ed by a deep sense of his­tor­i­cal feal­ty for the groups that car­ried out the Holo­caust. It’s a warn­ing sign:

    ...
    With emo­tions run­ning high, Lat­vian nation­al­ism has become super-charged. Eth­nic Lat­vians’ polit­i­cal dis­course shows an unequiv­o­cal lack of patience for the Russ­ian-speak­ing minor­i­ty which is reluc­tant to inte­grate after 30 years of inde­pen­dence. “There is no more nuance,” says Nils Muiznieks. On the Russ­ian side, Putin’s pro­pa­gan­da is mak­ing inroads. A poll last sum­mer indi­cat­ed that 25 per cent of Russ­ian-speak­ers opposed the war, 25 per cent sup­port­ed it and 50 per cent were unde­cid­ed.

    “Until now, we avoid­ed eth­nic vio­lence. But the war com­plete­ly under­mined this,” explains Boris Cile­vics, a leader of the Russ­ian speak­ing com­mu­ni­ty and for­mer mem­ber of Lat­vian Par­lia­ment, the Saeima. “What Putin did, played very well in the hands of nation­al­ists.”

    Since the begin­ning of the war in Ukraine, nine months ago, more than 30 crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings have been ini­ti­at­ed in Latvia relat­ed to incit­ing hatred and sup­port­ing Russia’s aggres­sion. A first, accord­ing to Boris Cile­vics.

    Since Feb. 24, the day Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine, the Saeima has been in assim­i­la­tion mode. It passed a law that pro­hibits the teach­ing of Russ­ian in all schools, includ­ing as a sec­ond lan­guage. There is no longer any high­er edu­ca­tion in the lan­guage of Tol­stoy. Gov­ern­ment web­sites are now in Lat­vian only. Since June, all TV chan­nels that orig­i­nate in Rus­sia are banned.

    These mea­sures are seen as so heavy-hand­ed that even their own back­ers admit to feel­ing uneasy. Mar­tin Bon­dars, until recent­ly a mem­ber of the Saiema, con­fides: “I am per­son­al­ly against these laws, but my par­ty and I vot­ed for them, social pres­sure was sim­ply too strong.”

    “Putin killed minor­i­ty rights for Russ­ian speak­ers by manip­u­lat­ing the issue for expan­sion pur­pose,” con­cludes Nils Muiznieks.

    Recent­ly, the sole remain­ing Russ­ian inde­pen­dent tele­vi­sion chan­nel, TV Dozhd (“Rain”), was shut down in Latvia after less than five months on air, accused of show­ing con­tent sym­pa­thet­ic to Moscow’s inva­sion of Ukraine.

    Short­ly after the inva­sion, the Lat­vian gov­ern­ment closed its bor­ders to Russ­ian cit­i­zens — includ­ing young men flee­ing mobi­liza­tion. The only excep­tions: Russ­ian dis­si­dents and inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ists. And even then, the shut­down of TV Dozhd demon­strates that every Russ­ian cit­i­zen in Latvia is liv­ing on an ejec­tion seat. Before the inva­sion, Rus­sians were respon­si­ble for mil­lions of euros of invest­ment in the Lat­vian econ­o­my. Now per­ma­nent res­i­den­cy has been with­drawn from all Russ­ian cit­i­zens who own busi­ness­es and real estate. On Sotheby’s and oth­er real estate web­sites, offers to sell are mul­ti­ply­ing.
    ...

    Even the Russ­ian cit­i­zens who fled to Latvia are forced to feel like they are liv­ing on an ejec­tion seat. We’re look­ing at raw eth­nic hatred at work. And it’s being direct­ed at 30% of the pop­u­la­tion.

    It’s hard to see how this ends well, but nev­er for­get: what­ev­er hap­pens, it’s all Putin’s fault. Espe­cial­ly the excess­es of the nation­al­ists. Every­thing they do is Putin’s fault. It’s the nar­ra­tive at work today. And pre­sum­ably the nar­ra­tive that will be deployed for decades to come to excuse the mad­ness yet to unfold.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 23, 2023, 5:55 pm
  24. Lies! An com­plete and total fab­ri­ca­tion! That was the Biden White House­’s response to a bomb shell report by Sey­mour Hersh telling the sto­ry of how the US planned and exe­cut­ed the Nord Stream pipeline attacks back in Sep­tem­ber. Plans that appar­ent­ly start­ed back in Decem­ber 2021, months before the inva­sion.

    At least that’s the sto­ry relayed by Hersh from an anony­mous source who appears to have direct knowl­edge of the plan­ning process, mak­ing this the sec­ond sto­ry in recent weeks involv­ing anony­mous sources mak­ing remark­able claims about the increas­ing­ly non-proxy nature of the US’s proxy-war with Rus­sia pub­lished on an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist’s per­son­al blog. Recall that sto­ry pub­lished by inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Jack Mur­phy about the CIA’s remark­ably aggres­sive sab­o­tage pro­gram tar­get­ing Russ­ian infra­struc­ture, which was also based entire­ly on anony­mous US intel­li­gence sources. So in just a few weeks, we’ve seen two explo­sive sto­ries about actions that, if pub­licly proven, could be inter­pret­ed as acts of war against Rus­sia, both based on anony­mous sources and pub­lished on the per­son­al blogs of inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists. What’s going on here?

    It also sounds like keep­ing the oper­a­tion hid­den from con­gress was anoth­er ‘fea­ture’ of the plot. Because it turns out con­gres­sion­al leads — the “Gang of Eight” — only need to be informed about mil­i­tary oper­a­tions that involve the Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand. This plot, how­ev­er, did­n’t involve spe­cial oper­a­tions units. Instead, it relied on deep sea Navy divers alone, who report­ed­ly plant­ed C4 explo­sives on the pipelines dur­ing the June 2022 planned BALTOPS22 Baltic Sea mil­i­tary exer­cis­es. That C4 was set up to be trig­gered by a spe­cial sonar-based sig­nal. That sig­nal was appar­ent­ly trig­gered by the US’s secret part­ner in the plot: Nor­way. On Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022, a Nor­we­gian Navy P8 sur­veil­lance plane dropped a sonar buoy, with the explo­sions hap­pen­ing a few hours lat­er.

    At least that’s the sto­ry com­ing from Her­sh’s anony­mous source with direct knowl­edge of the oper­a­tional plan­ning. And that brings us to what is per­haps the most remark­able detail in this sto­ry: the source claims that the CIA and State Depart­ment were rather cool on the plan over con­cerns that it could end up being a diplo­mat­ic night­mare if evi­dence of the US’s involve­ment became pub­lic. Yes, the CIA and State Depart­ment are depict­ed as rel­a­tive Doves com­pared to the oth­er agen­cies involved with this plan­ning. It’s not exact­ly what one expects when hear­ing about the behind-the-scenes inter-agency wrestling going on with this proxy war. Which, again, rais­es the gen­er­al ques­tion of what exact­ly is going on with this anony­mous­ly sourced sto­ry. Is this intend­ed to reign the con­flict in? Or blow it up even more:

    Sey­mour Hersh

    How Amer­i­ca Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline
    The New York Times called it a “mys­tery,” but the Unit­ed States exe­cut­ed a covert sea oper­a­tion that was kept secret—until now

    Sey­mour Hersh
    02/08/2023

    The U.S. Navy’s Div­ing and Sal­vage Cen­ter can be found in a loca­tion as obscure as its name—down what was once a coun­try lane in rur­al Pana­ma City, a now-boom­ing resort city in the south­west­ern pan­han­dle of Flori­da, 70 miles south of the Alaba­ma bor­der. The center’s com­plex is as non­de­script as its location—a drab con­crete post-World War II struc­ture that has the look of a voca­tion­al high school on the west side of Chica­go. A coin-oper­at­ed laun­dro­mat and a dance school are across what is now a four-lane road.

    The cen­ter has been train­ing high­ly skilled deep-water divers for decades who, once assigned to Amer­i­can mil­i­tary units world­wide, are capa­ble of tech­ni­cal div­ing to do the good—using C4 explo­sives to clear har­bors and beach­es of debris and unex­plod­ed ordinance—as well as the bad, like blow­ing up for­eign oil rigs, foul­ing intake valves for under­sea pow­er plants, destroy­ing locks on cru­cial ship­ping canals. The Pana­ma City cen­ter, which boasts the sec­ond largest indoor pool in Amer­i­ca, was the per­fect place to recruit the best, and most tac­i­turn, grad­u­ates of the div­ing school who suc­cess­ful­ly did last sum­mer what they had been autho­rized to do 260 feet under the sur­face of the Baltic Sea.

    Last June, the Navy divers, oper­at­ing under the cov­er of a wide­ly pub­li­cized mid-sum­mer NATO exer­cise known as BALTOPS 22, plant­ed the remote­ly trig­gered explo­sives that, three months lat­er, destroyed three of the four Nord Stream pipelines, accord­ing to a source with direct knowl­edge of the oper­a­tional plan­ning.

    Two of the pipelines, which were known col­lec­tive­ly as Nord Stream 1, had been pro­vid­ing Ger­many and much of West­ern Europe with cheap Russ­ian nat­ur­al gas for more than a decade. A sec­ond pair of pipelines, called Nord Stream 2, had been built but were not yet oper­a­tional. Now, with Russ­ian troops mass­ing on the Ukrain­ian bor­der and the blood­i­est war in Europe since 1945 loom­ing, Pres­i­dent Joseph Biden saw the pipelines as a vehi­cle for Vladimir Putin to weaponize nat­ur­al gas for his polit­i­cal and ter­ri­to­r­i­al ambi­tions.

    Asked for com­ment, Adri­enne Wat­son, a White House spokesper­son, said in an email, “This is false and com­plete fic­tion.” Tam­my Thorp, a spokesper­son for the Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency, sim­i­lar­ly wrote: “This claim is com­plete­ly and utter­ly false.”

    Biden’s deci­sion to sab­o­tage the pipelines came after more than nine months of high­ly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s nation­al secu­ri­ty com­mu­ni­ty about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mis­sion, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was respon­si­ble.

    There was a vital bureau­crat­ic rea­son for rely­ing on the grad­u­ates of the center’s hard­core div­ing school in Pana­ma City. The divers were Navy only, and not mem­bers of America’s Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand, whose covert oper­a­tions must be report­ed to Con­gress and briefed in advance to the Sen­ate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Admin­is­tra­tion was doing every­thing pos­si­ble to avoid leaks as the plan­ning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022.

    Pres­i­dent Biden and his for­eign pol­i­cy team—National Secu­ri­ty Advis­er Jake Sul­li­van, Sec­re­tary of State Tony Blinken, and Vic­to­ria Nuland, the Under­sec­re­tary of State for Policy—had been vocal and con­sis­tent in their hos­til­i­ty to the two pipelines, which ran side by side for 750 miles under the Baltic Sea from two dif­fer­ent ports in north­east­ern Rus­sia near the Eston­ian bor­der, pass­ing close to the Dan­ish island of Born­holm before end­ing in north­ern Ger­many.

    ...

    From its ear­li­est days, Nord Stream 1 was seen by Wash­ing­ton and its anti-Russ­ian NATO part­ners as a threat to west­ern dom­i­nance. The hold­ing com­pa­ny behind it, Nord Stream AG, was incor­po­rat­ed in Switzer­land in 2005 in part­ner­ship with Gazprom, a pub­licly trad­ed Russ­ian com­pa­ny pro­duc­ing enor­mous prof­its for share­hold­ers which is dom­i­nat­ed by oli­garchs known to be in the thrall of Putin. Gazprom con­trolled 51 per­cent of the com­pa­ny, with four Euro­pean ener­gy firms—one in France, one in the Nether­lands and two in Germany—sharing the remain­ing 49 per­cent of stock, and hav­ing the right to con­trol down­stream sales of the inex­pen­sive nat­ur­al gas to local dis­trib­u­tors in Ger­many and West­ern Europe. Gazprom’s prof­its were shared with the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, and state gas and oil rev­enues were esti­mat­ed in some years to amount to as much as 45 per­cent of Russia’s annu­al bud­get.

    America’s polit­i­cal fears were real: Putin would now have an addi­tion­al and much-need­ed major source of income, and Ger­many and the rest of West­ern Europe would become addict­ed to low-cost nat­ur­al gas sup­plied by Russia—while dimin­ish­ing Euro­pean reliance on Amer­i­ca. In fact, that’s exact­ly what hap­pened. Many Ger­mans saw Nord Stream 1 as part of the deliv­er­ance of for­mer Chan­cel­lor Willy Brandt’s famed Ost­poli­tik the­o­ry, which would enable post­war Ger­many to reha­bil­i­tate itself and oth­er Euro­pean nations destroyed in World War II by, among oth­er ini­tia­tives, uti­liz­ing cheap Russ­ian gas to fuel a pros­per­ous West­ern Euro­pean mar­ket and trad­ing econ­o­my.

    Nord Stream 1 was dan­ger­ous enough, in the view of NATO and Wash­ing­ton, but Nord Stream 2, whose con­struc­tion was com­plet­ed in Sep­tem­ber of 2021, would, if approved by Ger­man reg­u­la­tors, dou­ble the amount of cheap gas that would be avail­able to Ger­many and West­ern Europe. The sec­ond pipeline also would pro­vide enough gas for more than 50 per­cent of Germany’s annu­al con­sump­tion. Ten­sions were con­stant­ly esca­lat­ing between Rus­sia and NATO, backed by the aggres­sive for­eign pol­i­cy of the Biden Admin­is­tra­tion.

    Oppo­si­tion to Nord Stream 2 flared on the eve of the Biden inau­gu­ra­tion in Jan­u­ary 2021, when Sen­ate Repub­li­cans, led by Ted Cruz of Texas, repeat­ed­ly raised the polit­i­cal threat of cheap Russ­ian nat­ur­al gas dur­ing the con­fir­ma­tion hear­ing of Blinken as Sec­re­tary of State. By then a uni­fied Sen­ate had suc­cess­ful­ly passed a law that, as Cruz told Blinken, “halt­ed [the pipeline] in its tracks.” There would be enor­mous polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic pres­sure from the Ger­man gov­ern­ment, then head­ed by Angela Merkel, to get the sec­ond pipeline online.

    Would Biden stand up to the Ger­mans? Blinken said yes, but added that he had not dis­cussed the specifics of the incom­ing President’s views. “I know his strong con­vic­tion that this is a bad idea, the Nord Stream 2,” he said. “I know that he would have us use every per­sua­sive tool that we have to con­vince our friends and part­ners, includ­ing Ger­many, not to move for­ward with it.”

    A few months lat­er, as the con­struc­tion of the sec­ond pipeline neared com­ple­tion, Biden blinked. That May, in a stun­ning turn­around, the admin­is­tra­tion waived sanc­tions against Nord Stream AG, with a State Depart­ment offi­cial con­ced­ing that try­ing to stop the pipeline through sanc­tions and diplo­ma­cy had “always been a long shot.” Behind the scenes, admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials report­ed­ly urged Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky, by then fac­ing a threat of Russ­ian inva­sion, not to crit­i­cize the move.

    There were imme­di­ate con­se­quences. Sen­ate Repub­li­cans, led by Cruz, announced an imme­di­ate block­ade of all of Biden’s for­eign pol­i­cy nom­i­nees and delayed pas­sage of the annu­al defense bill for months, deep into the fall. Politi­co lat­er depict­ed Biden’s turn­about on the sec­ond Russ­ian pipeline as “the one deci­sion, arguably more than the chaot­ic mil­i­tary with­draw­al from Afghanistan, that has imper­iled Biden’s agen­da.”

    The admin­is­tra­tion was floun­der­ing, despite get­ting a reprieve on the cri­sis in mid-Novem­ber, when Germany’s ener­gy reg­u­la­tors sus­pend­ed approval of the sec­ond Nord Stream pipeline. Nat­ur­al gas prices surged 8% with­in days, amid grow­ing fears in Ger­many and Europe that the pipeline sus­pen­sion and the grow­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty of a war between Rus­sia and Ukraine would lead to a very much unwant­ed cold win­ter. It was not clear to Wash­ing­ton just where Olaf Scholz, Germany’s new­ly appoint­ed chan­cel­lor, stood. Months ear­li­er, after the fall of Afghanistan, Scholtz had pub­licly endorsed French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron’s call for a more autonomous Euro­pean for­eign pol­i­cy in a speech in Prague—clearly sug­gest­ing less reliance on Wash­ing­ton and its mer­cu­r­ial actions.

    Through­out all of this, Russ­ian troops had been steadi­ly and omi­nous­ly build­ing up on the bor­ders of Ukraine, and by the end of Decem­ber more than 100,000 sol­diers were in posi­tion to strike from Belarus and Crimea. Alarm was grow­ing in Wash­ing­ton, includ­ing an assess­ment from Blinken that those troop num­bers could be “dou­bled in short order.”

    The administration’s atten­tion once again was focused on Nord Stream. As long as Europe remained depen­dent on the pipelines for cheap nat­ur­al gas, Wash­ing­ton was afraid that coun­tries like Ger­many would be reluc­tant to sup­ply Ukraine with the mon­ey and weapons it need­ed to defeat Rus­sia.

    It was at this unset­tled moment that Biden autho­rized Jake Sul­li­van to bring togeth­er an inter­a­gency group to come up with a plan.

    All options were to be on the table. But only one would emerge.

    PLANNING

    In Decem­ber of 2021, two months before the first Russ­ian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Jake Sul­li­van con­vened a meet­ing of a new­ly formed task force—men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Trea­sury Departments—and asked for rec­om­men­da­tions about how to respond to Putin’s impend­ing inva­sion.

    It would be the first of a series of top-secret meet­ings, in a secure room on a top floor of the Old Exec­u­tive Office Build­ing, adja­cent to the White House, that was also the home of the President’s For­eign Intel­li­gence Advi­so­ry Board (PFIAB). There was the usu­al back and forth chat­ter that even­tu­al­ly led to a cru­cial pre­lim­i­nary ques­tion: Would the rec­om­men­da­tion for­ward­ed by the group to the Pres­i­dent be reversible—such as anoth­er lay­er of sanc­tions and cur­ren­cy restrictions—or irreversible—that is, kinet­ic actions, which could not be undone?

    What became clear to par­tic­i­pants, accord­ing to the source with direct knowl­edge of the process, is that Sul­li­van intend­ed for the group to come up with a plan for the destruc­tion of the two Nord Stream pipelines—and that he was deliv­er­ing on the desires of the Pres­i­dent.

    Over the next sev­er­al meet­ings, the par­tic­i­pants debat­ed options for an attack. The Navy pro­posed using a new­ly com­mis­sioned sub­ma­rine to assault the pipeline direct­ly. The Air Force dis­cussed drop­ping bombs with delayed fus­es that could be set off remote­ly. The CIA argued that what­ev­er was done, it would have to be covert. Every­one involved under­stood the stakes. “This is not kid­die stuff,” the source said. If the attack were trace­able to the Unit­ed States, “It’s an act of war.”

    At the time, the CIA was direct­ed by William Burns, a mild-man­nered for­mer ambas­sador to Rus­sia who had served as deputy sec­re­tary of state in the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion. Burns quick­ly autho­rized an Agency work­ing group whose ad hoc mem­bers included—by chance—someone who was famil­iar with the capa­bil­i­ties of the Navy’s deep-sea divers in Pana­ma City. Over the next few weeks, mem­bers of the CIA’s work­ing group began to craft a plan for a covert oper­a­tion that would use deep-sea divers to trig­ger an explo­sion along the pipeline.

    Some­thing like this had been done before. In 1971, the Amer­i­can intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty learned from still undis­closed sources that two impor­tant units of the Russ­ian Navy were com­mu­ni­cat­ing via an under­sea cable buried in the Sea of Okhot­sk, on Russia’s Far East Coast. The cable linked a region­al Navy com­mand to the main­land head­quar­ters at Vladi­vos­tok.

    A hand-picked team of Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency and Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency oper­a­tives was assem­bled some­where in the Wash­ing­ton area, under deep cov­er, and worked out a plan, using Navy divers, mod­i­fied sub­marines and a deep-sub­ma­rine res­cue vehi­cle, that suc­ceed­ed, after much tri­al and error, in locat­ing the Russ­ian cable. The divers plant­ed a sophis­ti­cat­ed lis­ten­ing device on the cable that suc­cess­ful­ly inter­cept­ed the Russ­ian traf­fic and record­ed it on a tap­ing sys­tem.

    The NSA learned that senior Russ­ian navy offi­cers, con­vinced of the secu­ri­ty of their com­mu­ni­ca­tion link, chat­ted away with their peers with­out encryp­tion. The record­ing device and its tape had to be replaced month­ly and the project rolled on mer­ri­ly for a decade until it was com­pro­mised by a forty-four-year-old civil­ian NSA tech­ni­cian named Ronald Pel­ton who was flu­ent in Russ­ian. Pel­ton was betrayed by a Russ­ian defec­tor in 1985 and sen­tenced to prison. He was paid just $5,000 by the Rus­sians for his rev­e­la­tions about the oper­a­tion, along with $35,000 for oth­er Russ­ian oper­a­tional data he pro­vid­ed that was nev­er made pub­lic.

    That under­wa­ter suc­cess, code­named Ivy Bells, was inno­v­a­tive and risky, and pro­duced invalu­able intel­li­gence about the Russ­ian Navy’s inten­tions and plan­ning.

    Still, the inter­a­gency group was ini­tial­ly skep­ti­cal of the CIA’s enthu­si­asm for a covert deep-sea attack. There were too many unan­swered ques­tions. The waters of the Baltic Sea were heav­i­ly patrolled by the Russ­ian navy, and there were no oil rigs that could be used as cov­er for a div­ing oper­a­tion. Would the divers have to go to Esto­nia, right across the bor­der from Russia’s nat­ur­al gas load­ing docks, to train for the mis­sion? “It would be a goat fu ck,” the Agency was told.

    Through­out “all of this schem­ing,” the source said, “some work­ing guys in the CIA and the State Depart­ment were say­ing, ‘Don’t do this. It’s stu­pid and will be a polit­i­cal night­mare if it comes out.’”

    Nev­er­the­less, in ear­ly 2022, the CIA work­ing group report­ed back to Sullivan’s inter­a­gency group: “We have a way to blow up the pipelines.”

    What came next was stun­ning. On Feb­ru­ary 7, less than three weeks before the seem­ing­ly inevitable Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine, Biden met in his White House office with Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Olaf Scholz, who, after some wob­bling, was now firm­ly on the Amer­i­can team. At the press brief­ing that fol­lowed, Biden defi­ant­ly said, “If Rus­sia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

    Twen­ty days ear­li­er, Under­sec­re­tary Nuland had deliv­ered essen­tial­ly the same mes­sage at a State Depart­ment brief­ing, with lit­tle press cov­er­age. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a ques­tion. “If Rus­sia invades Ukraine, one way or anoth­er Nord Stream 2 will not move for­ward.”

    Sev­er­al of those involved in plan­ning the pipeline mis­sion were dis­mayed by what they viewed as indi­rect ref­er­ences to the attack.

    “It was like putting an atom­ic bomb on the ground in Tokyo and telling the Japan­ese that we are going to det­o­nate it,” the source said. “The plan was for the options to be exe­cut­ed post inva­sion and not adver­tised pub­licly. Biden sim­ply didn’t get it or ignored it.”

    Biden’s and Nuland’s indis­cre­tion, if that is what it was, might have frus­trat­ed some of the plan­ners. But it also cre­at­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty. Accord­ing to the source, some of the senior offi­cials of the CIA deter­mined that blow­ing up the pipeline “no longer could be con­sid­ered a covert option because the Pres­i­dent just announced that we knew how to do it.”

    The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was sud­den­ly down­grad­ed from a covert oper­a­tion requir­ing that Con­gress be informed to one that was deemed as a high­ly clas­si­fied intel­li­gence oper­a­tion with U.S. mil­i­tary sup­port. Under the law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal require­ment to report the oper­a­tion to Con­gress. All they had to do now is just do it—but it still had to be secret. The Rus­sians have superla­tive sur­veil­lance of the Baltic Sea.”

    The Agency work­ing group mem­bers had no direct con­tact with the White House, and were eager to find out if the Pres­i­dent meant what he’d said—that is, if the mis­sion was now a go. The source recalled, “Bill Burns comes back and says, ‘Do it.’”

    THE OPERATION

    ...

    In the past few years of East-West cri­sis, the U.S. mil­i­tary has vast­ly expand­ed its pres­ence inside Nor­way, whose west­ern bor­der runs 1,400 miles along the north Atlantic Ocean and merges above the Arc­tic Cir­cle with Rus­sia. The Pen­ta­gon has cre­at­ed high pay­ing jobs and con­tracts, amid some local con­tro­ver­sy, by invest­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to upgrade and expand Amer­i­can Navy and Air Force facil­i­ties in Nor­way. The new works includ­ed, most impor­tant­ly, an advanced syn­thet­ic aper­ture radar far up north that was capa­ble of pen­e­trat­ing deep into Rus­sia and came online just as the Amer­i­can intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty lost access to a series of long-range lis­ten­ing sites inside Chi­na.

    A new­ly refur­bished Amer­i­can sub­ma­rine base, which had been under con­struc­tion for years, had become oper­a­tional and more Amer­i­can sub­marines were now able to work close­ly with their Nor­we­gian col­leagues to mon­i­tor and spy on a major Russ­ian nuclear redoubt 250 miles to the east, on the Kola Penin­su­la. Amer­i­ca also has vast­ly expand­ed a Nor­we­gian air base in the north and deliv­ered to the Nor­we­gian air force a fleet of Boe­ing-built P8 Posei­don patrol planes to bol­ster its long-range spy­ing on all things Rus­sia.

    In return, the Nor­we­gian gov­ern­ment angered lib­er­als and some mod­er­ates in its par­lia­ment last Novem­ber by pass­ing the Sup­ple­men­tary Defense Coop­er­a­tion Agree­ment (SDCA). Under the new deal, the U.S. legal sys­tem would have juris­dic­tion in cer­tain “agreed areas” in the North over Amer­i­can sol­diers accused of crimes off base, as well as over those Nor­we­gian cit­i­zens accused or sus­pect­ed of inter­fer­ing with the work at the base.

    Nor­way was one of the orig­i­nal sig­na­to­ries of the NATO Treaty in 1949, in the ear­ly days of the Cold War. Today, the supreme com­man­der of NATO is Jens Stoltenberg, a com­mit­ted anti-com­mu­nist, who served as Norway’s prime min­is­ter for eight years before mov­ing to his high NATO post, with Amer­i­can back­ing, in 2014. He was a hard­lin­er on all things Putin and Rus­sia who had coop­er­at­ed with the Amer­i­can intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty since the Viet­nam War. He has been trust­ed com­plete­ly since. “He is the glove that fits the Amer­i­can hand,” the source said.

    Back in Wash­ing­ton, plan­ners knew they had to go to Nor­way. “They hat­ed the Rus­sians, and the Nor­we­gian navy was full of superb sailors and divers who had gen­er­a­tions of expe­ri­ence in high­ly prof­itable deep-sea oil and gas explo­ration,” the source said. They also could be trust­ed to keep the mis­sion secret. (+The Nor­we­gians may have had oth­er inter­ests as well. The destruc­tion of Nord Stream—if the Amer­i­cans could pull it off—would allow Nor­way to sell vast­ly more of its own nat­ur­al gas to Europe.)

    Some­time in March, a few mem­bers of the team flew to Nor­way to meet with the Nor­we­gian Secret Ser­vice and Navy. One of the key ques­tions was where exact­ly in the Baltic Sea was the best place to plant the explo­sives. Nord Stream 1 and 2, each with two sets of pipelines, were sep­a­rat­ed much of the way by lit­tle more than a mile as they made their run to the port of Greif­swald in the far north­east of Ger­many.

    The Nor­we­gian navy was quick to find the right spot, in the shal­low waters of the Baltic sea a few miles off Denmark’s Born­holm Island. The pipelines ran more than a mile apart along a seafloor that was only 260 feet deep. That would be well with­in the range of the divers, who, oper­at­ing from a Nor­we­gian Alta class mine hunter, would dive with a mix­ture of oxy­gen, nitro­gen and heli­um stream­ing from their tanks, and plant shaped C4 charges on the four pipelines with con­crete pro­tec­tive cov­ers. It would be tedious, time con­sum­ing and dan­ger­ous work, but the waters off Born­holm had anoth­er advan­tage: there were no major tidal cur­rents, which would have made the task of div­ing much more dif­fi­cult.

    After a bit of research, the Amer­i­cans were all in.

    At this point, the Navy’s obscure deep-div­ing group in Pana­ma City once again came into play. The deep-sea schools at Pana­ma City, whose trainees par­tic­i­pat­ed in Ivy Bells, are seen as an unwant­ed back­wa­ter by the elite grad­u­ates of the Naval Acad­e­my in Annapo­lis, who typ­i­cal­ly seek the glo­ry of being assigned as a Seal, fight­er pilot, or sub­mariner. If one must become a “Black Shoe”—that is, a mem­ber of the less desir­able sur­face ship command—there is always at least duty on a destroy­er, cruis­er or amphibi­ous ship. The least glam­orous of all is mine war­fare. Its divers nev­er appear in Hol­ly­wood movies, or on the cov­er of pop­u­lar mag­a­zines.

    “The best divers with deep div­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions are a tight com­mu­ni­ty, and only the very best are recruit­ed for the oper­a­tion and told to be pre­pared to be sum­moned to the CIA in Wash­ing­ton,” the source said.

    The Nor­we­gians and Amer­i­cans had a loca­tion and the oper­a­tives, but there was anoth­er con­cern: any unusu­al under­wa­ter activ­i­ty in the waters off Born­holm might draw the atten­tion of the Swedish or Dan­ish navies, which could report it.

    Den­mark had also been one of the orig­i­nal NATO sig­na­to­ries and was known in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty for its spe­cial ties to the Unit­ed King­dom. Swe­den had applied for mem­ber­ship into NATO, and had demon­strat­ed its great skill in man­ag­ing its under­wa­ter sound and mag­net­ic sen­sor sys­tems that suc­cess­ful­ly tracked Russ­ian sub­marines that would occa­sion­al­ly show up in remote waters of the Swedish arch­i­pel­ago and be forced to the sur­face.

    The Nor­we­gians joined the Amer­i­cans in insist­ing that some senior offi­cials in Den­mark and Swe­den had to be briefed in gen­er­al terms about pos­si­ble div­ing activ­i­ty in the area. In that way, some­one high­er up could inter­vene and keep a report out of the chain of com­mand, thus insu­lat­ing the pipeline oper­a­tion. “What they were told and what they knew were pur­pose­ly dif­fer­ent,” the source told me. (The Nor­we­gian embassy, asked to com­ment on this sto­ry, did not respond.)

    The Nor­we­gians were key to solv­ing oth­er hur­dles. The Russ­ian navy was known to pos­sess sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy capa­ble of spot­ting, and trig­ger­ing, under­wa­ter mines. The Amer­i­can explo­sive devices need­ed to be cam­ou­flaged in a way that would make them appear to the Russ­ian sys­tem as part of the nat­ur­al background—something that required adapt­ing to the spe­cif­ic salin­i­ty of the water. The Nor­we­gians had a fix.

    The Nor­we­gians also had a solu­tion to the cru­cial ques­tion of when the oper­a­tion should take place. Every June, for the past 21 years, the Amer­i­can Sixth Fleet, whose flag­ship is based in Gae­ta, Italy, south of Rome, has spon­sored a major NATO exer­cise in the Baltic Sea involv­ing scores of allied ships through­out the region. The cur­rent exer­cise, held in June, would be known as Baltic Oper­a­tions 22, or BALTOPS 22. The Nor­we­gians pro­posed this would be the ide­al cov­er to plant the mines.

    The Amer­i­cans pro­vid­ed one vital ele­ment: they con­vinced the Sixth Fleet plan­ners to add a research and devel­op­ment exer­cise to the pro­gram. The exer­cise, as made pub­lic by the Navy, involved the Sixth Fleet in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Navy’s “research and war­fare cen­ters.” The at-sea event would be held off the coast of Born­holm Island and involve NATO teams of divers plant­i­ng mines, with com­pet­ing teams using the lat­est under­wa­ter tech­nol­o­gy to find and destroy them.

    It was both a use­ful exer­cise and inge­nious cov­er. The Pana­ma City boys would do their thing and the C4 explo­sives would be in place by the end of BALTOPS22, with a 48-hour timer attached. All of the Amer­i­cans and Nor­we­gians would be long gone by the first explo­sion.

    The days were count­ing down. “The clock was tick­ing, and we were near­ing mis­sion accom­plished,” the source said.

    And then: Wash­ing­ton had sec­ond thoughts. The bombs would still be plant­ed dur­ing BALTOPS, but the White House wor­ried that a two-day win­dow for their det­o­na­tion would be too close to the end of the exer­cise, and it would be obvi­ous that Amer­i­ca had been involved.

    Instead, the White House had a new request: “Can the guys in the field come up with some way to blow the pipelines lat­er on com­mand?”

    Some mem­bers of the plan­ning team were angered and frus­trat­ed by the President’s seem­ing inde­ci­sion. The Pana­ma City divers had repeat­ed­ly prac­ticed plant­i­ng the C4 on pipelines, as they would dur­ing BALTOPS, but now the team in Nor­way had to come up with a way to give Biden what he wanted—the abil­i­ty to issue a suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion order at a time of his choos­ing.

    Being tasked with an arbi­trary, last-minute change was some­thing the CIA was accus­tomed to man­ag­ing. But it also renewed the con­cerns some shared over the neces­si­ty, and legal­i­ty, of the entire oper­a­tion.

    The President’s secret orders also evoked the CIA’s dilem­ma in the Viet­nam War days, when Pres­i­dent John­son, con­front­ed by grow­ing anti-Viet­nam War sen­ti­ment, ordered the Agency to vio­late its charter—which specif­i­cal­ly barred it from oper­at­ing inside America—by spy­ing on anti­war lead­ers to deter­mine whether they were being con­trolled by Com­mu­nist Rus­sia.

    The agency ulti­mate­ly acqui­esced, and through­out the 1970s it became clear just how far it had been will­ing to go. There were sub­se­quent news­pa­per rev­e­la­tions in the after­math of the Water­gate scan­dals about the Agency’s spy­ing on Amer­i­can cit­i­zens, its involve­ment in the assas­si­na­tion of for­eign lead­ers and its under­min­ing of the social­ist gov­ern­ment of Sal­vador Allende.

    Those rev­e­la­tions led to a dra­mat­ic series of hear­ings in the mid-1970s in the Sen­ate, led by Frank Church of Ida­ho, that made it clear that Richard Helms, the Agency direc­tor at the time, accept­ed that he had an oblig­a­tion to do what the Pres­i­dent want­ed, even if it meant vio­lat­ing the law.

    In unpub­lished, closed-door tes­ti­mo­ny, Helms rue­ful­ly explained that “you almost have an Immac­u­late Con­cep­tion when you do some­thing” under secret orders from a Pres­i­dent. “Whether it’s right that you should have it, or wrong that you shall have it, [the CIA] works under dif­fer­ent rules and ground rules than any oth­er part of the gov­ern­ment.” He was essen­tial­ly telling the Sen­a­tors that he, as head of the CIA, under­stood that he had been work­ing for the Crown, and not the Con­sti­tu­tion.

    The Amer­i­cans at work in Nor­way oper­at­ed under the same dynam­ic, and duti­ful­ly began work­ing on the new problem—how to remote­ly det­o­nate the C4 explo­sives on Biden’s order. It was a much more demand­ing assign­ment than those in Wash­ing­ton under­stood. There was no way for the team in Nor­way to know when the Pres­i­dent might push the but­ton. Would it be in a few weeks, in many months or in half a year or longer?

    The C4 attached to the pipelines would be trig­gered by a sonar buoy dropped by a plane on short notice, but the pro­ce­dure involved the most advanced sig­nal pro­cess­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Once in place, the delayed tim­ing devices attached to any of the four pipelines could be acci­den­tal­ly trig­gered by the com­plex mix of ocean back­ground nois­es through­out the heav­i­ly traf­ficked Baltic Sea—from near and dis­tant ships, under­wa­ter drilling, seis­mic events, waves and even sea crea­tures. To avoid this, the sonar buoy, once in place, would emit a sequence of unique low fre­quen­cy tonal sounds—much like those emit­ted by a flute or a piano—that would be rec­og­nized by the tim­ing device and, after a pre-set hours of delay, trig­ger the explo­sives. (“You want a sig­nal that is robust enough so that no oth­er sig­nal could acci­den­tal­ly send a pulse that det­o­nat­ed the explo­sives,” I was told by Dr. Theodore Pos­tol, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy at MIT. Pos­tol, who has served as the sci­ence advis­er to the Pentagon’s Chief of Naval Oper­a­tions, said the issue fac­ing the group in Nor­way because of Biden’s delay was one of chance: “The longer the explo­sives are in the water the greater risk there would be of a ran­dom sig­nal that would launch the bombs.”)

    On Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022, a Nor­we­gian Navy P8 sur­veil­lance plane made a seem­ing­ly rou­tine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The sig­nal spread under­wa­ter, ini­tial­ly to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours lat­er, the high-pow­ered C4 explo­sives were trig­gered and three of the four pipelines were put out of com­mis­sion. With­in a few min­utes, pools of methane gas that remained in the shut­tered pipelines could be seen spread­ing on the water’s sur­face and the world learned that some­thing irre­versible had tak­en place.

    FALLOUT

    In the imme­di­ate after­math of the pipeline bomb­ing, the Amer­i­can media treat­ed it like an unsolved mys­tery. Rus­sia was repeat­ed­ly cit­ed as a like­ly cul­prit, spurred on by cal­cu­lat­ed leaks from the White House—but with­out ever estab­lish­ing a clear motive for such an act of self-sab­o­tage, beyond sim­ple ret­ri­bu­tion. A few months lat­er, when it emerged that Russ­ian author­i­ties had been qui­et­ly get­ting esti­mates for the cost to repair the pipelines, the New York Times described the news as “com­pli­cat­ing the­o­ries about who was behind” the attack. No major Amer­i­can news­pa­per dug into the ear­li­er threats to the pipelines made by Biden and Under­sec­re­tary of State Nuland.

    While it was nev­er clear why Rus­sia would seek to destroy its own lucra­tive pipeline, a more telling ratio­nale for the President’s action came from Sec­re­tary of State Blinken.

    Asked at a press con­fer­ence last Sep­tem­ber about the con­se­quences of the wors­en­ing ener­gy cri­sis in West­ern Europe, Blinken described the moment as a poten­tial­ly good one:

    “It’s a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty to once and for all remove the depen­dence on Russ­ian ener­gy and thus to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponiza­tion of ener­gy as a means of advanc­ing his impe­r­i­al designs. That’s very sig­nif­i­cant and that offers tremen­dous strate­gic oppor­tu­ni­ty for the years to come, but mean­while we’re deter­mined to do every­thing we pos­si­bly can to make sure the con­se­quences of all of this are not borne by cit­i­zens in our coun­tries or, for that mat­ter, around the world.”

    More recent­ly, Vic­to­ria Nuland expressed sat­is­fac­tion at the demise of the newest of the pipelines. Tes­ti­fy­ing at a Sen­ate For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee hear­ing in late Jan­u­ary she told Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz, “Like you, I am, and I think the Admin­is­tra­tion is, very grat­i­fied to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of met­al at the bot­tom of the sea.”

    The source had a much more street­wise view of Biden’s deci­sion to sab­o­tage more than 1500 miles of Gazprom pipeline as win­ter approached. “Well,” he said, speak­ing of the Pres­i­dent, “I got­ta admit the guy has a pair of balls. He said he was going to do it, and he did.”

    Asked why he thought the Rus­sians failed to respond, he said cyn­i­cal­ly, “Maybe they want the capa­bil­i­ty to do the same things the U.S. did.

    “It was a beau­ti­ful cov­er sto­ry,” he went on. “Behind it was a covert oper­a­tion that placed experts in the field and equip­ment that oper­at­ed on a covert sig­nal.

    “The only flaw was the deci­sion to do it.”

    ————-

    “How Amer­i­ca Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline” by Sey­mour Hersh; Sey­mour Hersh Sub­stack; 02/08/2023

    Biden’s deci­sion to sab­o­tage the pipelines came after more than nine months of high­ly secret back and forth debate inside Washington’s nation­al secu­ri­ty com­mu­ni­ty about how to best achieve that goal. For much of that time, the issue was not whether to do the mis­sion, but how to get it done with no overt clue as to who was respon­si­ble.”

    Nine months of high­ly secret delib­er­a­tions, start­ing well before the Feb 2022 ini­tial inva­sion. That’s the sce­nario described by Sey­mour Her­sh’s anony­mous source for this sto­ry. It was in Decem­ber of 2021, as Russ­ian troops were build­ing up along the bor­ders, when an inter­a­gency group under the direc­tion of Biden’s nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor Jake Sul­li­van. It was dur­ing those meet­ings when the plans of rely on deep sea Navy divers to plant explo­sives appar­ent­ly came about. Plans that, as the CIA warned at the time, con­sti­tut­ed an act of war if pub­licly revealed. It’s part of the fas­ci­nat­ing con­text of Her­sh’s report: an anony­mous source with direct knowl­edge of these talks plan­ning what amounts to a covert act of war decid­ed to go to Hersh with this sto­ry:

    ...
    The admin­is­tra­tion was floun­der­ing, despite get­ting a reprieve on the cri­sis in mid-Novem­ber, when Germany’s ener­gy reg­u­la­tors sus­pend­ed approval of the sec­ond Nord Stream pipeline. Nat­ur­al gas prices surged 8% with­in days, amid grow­ing fears in Ger­many and Europe that the pipeline sus­pen­sion and the grow­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty of a war between Rus­sia and Ukraine would lead to a very much unwant­ed cold win­ter. It was not clear to Wash­ing­ton just where Olaf Scholz, Germany’s new­ly appoint­ed chan­cel­lor, stood. Months ear­li­er, after the fall of Afghanistan, Scholtz had pub­licly endorsed French Pres­i­dent Emmanuel Macron’s call for a more autonomous Euro­pean for­eign pol­i­cy in a speech in Prague—clearly sug­gest­ing less reliance on Wash­ing­ton and its mer­cu­r­ial actions.

    Through­out all of this, Russ­ian troops had been steadi­ly and omi­nous­ly build­ing up on the bor­ders of Ukraine, and by the end of Decem­ber more than 100,000 sol­diers were in posi­tion to strike from Belarus and Crimea. Alarm was grow­ing in Wash­ing­ton, includ­ing an assess­ment from Blinken that those troop num­bers could be “dou­bled in short order.”

    The administration’s atten­tion once again was focused on Nord Stream. As long as Europe remained depen­dent on the pipelines for cheap nat­ur­al gas, Wash­ing­ton was afraid that coun­tries like Ger­many would be reluc­tant to sup­ply Ukraine with the mon­ey and weapons it need­ed to defeat Rus­sia.

    It was at this unset­tled moment that Biden autho­rized Jake Sul­li­van to bring togeth­er an inter­a­gency group to come up with a plan.

    All options were to be on the table. But only one would emerge.

    PLANNING

    In Decem­ber of 2021, two months before the first Russ­ian tanks rolled into Ukraine, Jake Sul­li­van con­vened a meet­ing of a new­ly formed task force—men and women from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, and the State and Trea­sury Departments—and asked for rec­om­men­da­tions about how to respond to Putin’s impend­ing inva­sion.

    It would be the first of a series of top-secret meet­ings, in a secure room on a top floor of the Old Exec­u­tive Office Build­ing, adja­cent to the White House, that was also the home of the President’s For­eign Intel­li­gence Advi­so­ry Board (PFIAB). There was the usu­al back and forth chat­ter that even­tu­al­ly led to a cru­cial pre­lim­i­nary ques­tion: Would the rec­om­men­da­tion for­ward­ed by the group to the Pres­i­dent be reversible—such as anoth­er lay­er of sanc­tions and cur­ren­cy restrictions—or irreversible—that is, kinet­ic actions, which could not be undone?

    What became clear to par­tic­i­pants, accord­ing to the source with direct knowl­edge of the process, is that Sul­li­van intend­ed for the group to come up with a plan for the destruc­tion of the two Nord Stream pipelines—and that he was deliv­er­ing on the desires of the Pres­i­dent.

    Over the next sev­er­al meet­ings, the par­tic­i­pants debat­ed options for an attack. The Navy pro­posed using a new­ly com­mis­sioned sub­ma­rine to assault the pipeline direct­ly. The Air Force dis­cussed drop­ping bombs with delayed fus­es that could be set off remote­ly. The CIA argued that what­ev­er was done, it would have to be covert. Every­one involved under­stood the stakes. “This is not kid­die stuff,” the source said. If the attack were trace­able to the Unit­ed States, “It’s an act of war.”

    At the time, the CIA was direct­ed by William Burns, a mild-man­nered for­mer ambas­sador to Rus­sia who had served as deputy sec­re­tary of state in the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion. Burns quick­ly autho­rized an Agency work­ing group whose ad hoc mem­bers included—by chance—someone who was famil­iar with the capa­bil­i­ties of the Navy’s deep-sea divers in Pana­ma City. Over the next few weeks, mem­bers of the CIA’s work­ing group began to craft a plan for a covert oper­a­tion that would use deep-sea divers to trig­ger an explo­sion along the pipeline.
    ...

    And then there’s the grim­ly fas­ci­nat­ing impli­ca­tions of the deci­sion to rely on Navy divers: by using Navy-only per­son­nel — avoid­ing the using of the US Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand — the oper­a­tion could be kept hid­den from con­gres­sion­al lead­ers. It’s the kind of detail that again rais­es the ques­tion of who is Her­sh’s anony­mous source for this sto­ry and what is their motive for this leak?

    ...
    There was a vital bureau­crat­ic rea­son for rely­ing on the grad­u­ates of the center’s hard­core div­ing school in Pana­ma City. The divers were Navy only, and not mem­bers of America’s Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand, whose covert oper­a­tions must be report­ed to Con­gress and briefed in advance to the Sen­ate and House leadership—the so-called Gang of Eight. The Biden Admin­is­tra­tion was doing every­thing pos­si­ble to avoid leaks as the plan­ning took place late in 2021 and into the first months of 2022.

    Pres­i­dent Biden and his for­eign pol­i­cy team—National Secu­ri­ty Advis­er Jake Sul­li­van, Sec­re­tary of State Tony Blinken, and Vic­to­ria Nuland, the Under­sec­re­tary of State for Policy—had been vocal and con­sis­tent in their hos­til­i­ty to the two pipelines, which ran side by side for 750 miles under the Baltic Sea from two dif­fer­ent ports in north­east­ern Rus­sia near the Eston­ian bor­der, pass­ing close to the Dan­ish island of Born­holm before end­ing in north­ern Ger­many.

    ...

    The source had a much more street­wise view of Biden’s deci­sion to sab­o­tage more than 1500 miles of Gazprom pipeline as win­ter approached. “Well,” he said, speak­ing of the Pres­i­dent, “I got­ta admit the guy has a pair of balls. He said he was going to do it, and he did.”

    Asked why he thought the Rus­sians failed to respond, he said cyn­i­cal­ly, “Maybe they want the capa­bil­i­ty to do the same things the U.S. did.

    “It was a beau­ti­ful cov­er sto­ry,” he went on. “Behind it was a covert oper­a­tion that placed experts in the field and equip­ment that oper­at­ed on a covert sig­nal.

    “The only flaw was the deci­sion to do it.”
    ...

    And that brings us to what appears to have been some seri­ous dis­agree­ment over this plan, with the CIA and State Depart­ment appar­ent­ly act­ing as the voic­es of cau­tion. It’s remark­able if true giv­en the seem­ing will­ing­ness on the part of the CIA and State Depart­ment to ratch­et up ten­sions with Rus­sia at every oppor­tu­ni­ty over the last decade. It rais­es the ques­tion about who the biggest cheer­lead­ers were for the plan. And, more gen­er­al­ly, just how hawk­ish has the US nation­al secu­ri­ty state become when it comes to Rus­sia? Because hear­ing that the CIA and State Depart­ment act­ing as the voic­es of rel­a­tive rea­son on this plan should be a source of major con­cern:

    ...
    Still, the inter­a­gency group was ini­tial­ly skep­ti­cal of the CIA’s enthu­si­asm for a covert deep-sea attack. There were too many unan­swered ques­tions. The waters of the Baltic Sea were heav­i­ly patrolled by the Russ­ian navy, and there were no oil rigs that could be used as cov­er for a div­ing oper­a­tion. Would the divers have to go to Esto­nia, right across the bor­der from Russia’s nat­ur­al gas load­ing docks, to train for the mis­sion? “It would be a goat fu ck,” the Agency was told.

    Through­out “all of this schem­ing,” the source said, “some work­ing guys in the CIA and the State Depart­ment were say­ing, ‘Don’t do this. It’s stu­pid and will be a polit­i­cal night­mare if it comes out.’”

    Nev­er­the­less, in ear­ly 2022, the CIA work­ing group report­ed back to Sullivan’s inter­a­gency group: “We have a way to blow up the pipelines.”

    What came next was stun­ning. On Feb­ru­ary 7, less than three weeks before the seem­ing­ly inevitable Russ­ian inva­sion of Ukraine, Biden met in his White House office with Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Olaf Scholz, who, after some wob­bling, was now firm­ly on the Amer­i­can team. At the press brief­ing that fol­lowed, Biden defi­ant­ly said, “If Rus­sia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

    Twen­ty days ear­li­er, Under­sec­re­tary Nuland had deliv­ered essen­tial­ly the same mes­sage at a State Depart­ment brief­ing, with lit­tle press cov­er­age. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a ques­tion. “If Rus­sia invades Ukraine, one way or anoth­er Nord Stream 2 will not move for­ward.”

    Sev­er­al of those involved in plan­ning the pipeline mis­sion were dis­mayed by what they viewed as indi­rect ref­er­ences to the attack.

    “It was like putting an atom­ic bomb on the ground in Tokyo and telling the Japan­ese that we are going to det­o­nate it,” the source said. “The plan was for the options to be exe­cut­ed post inva­sion and not adver­tised pub­licly. Biden sim­ply didn’t get it or ignored it.”

    Biden’s and Nuland’s indis­cre­tion, if that is what it was, might have frus­trat­ed some of the plan­ners. But it also cre­at­ed an oppor­tu­ni­ty. Accord­ing to the source, some of the senior offi­cials of the CIA deter­mined that blow­ing up the pipeline “no longer could be con­sid­ered a covert option because the Pres­i­dent just announced that we knew how to do it.”

    The plan to blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2 was sud­den­ly down­grad­ed from a covert oper­a­tion requir­ing that Con­gress be informed to one that was deemed as a high­ly clas­si­fied intel­li­gence oper­a­tion with U.S. mil­i­tary sup­port. Under the law, the source explained, “There was no longer a legal require­ment to report the oper­a­tion to Con­gress. All they had to do now is just do it—but it still had to be secret. The Rus­sians have superla­tive sur­veil­lance of the Baltic Sea.”

    The Agency work­ing group mem­bers had no direct con­tact with the White House, and were eager to find out if the Pres­i­dent meant what he’d said—that is, if the mis­sion was now a go. The source recalled, “Bill Burns comes back and says, ‘Do it.’”
    ...

    Also note this inter­est­ing detail on who pre­cise­ly trig­gered the explo­sions: While it sounds like US Navy divers plant­ed the sonar-trig­gered explo­sives on pipelines dur­ing the BALTOPS22 navy exer­cis­es last June, it was a Nor­we­gian Navy P8 sur­veil­lance plane that actu­al­ly dropped the sonar buoy on Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022. Giv­en the legal dis­clo­sure games­man­ship at work here — like using Navy-only divers to avoid dis­clo­sure demands with con­gress — you have to won­der if hav­ing Nor­way ulti­mate­ly trig­ger the explo­sives offered some addi­tion­al intra-gov­ern­men­tal secre­cy:

    ...
    The Nor­we­gians were key to solv­ing oth­er hur­dles. The Russ­ian navy was known to pos­sess sur­veil­lance tech­nol­o­gy capa­ble of spot­ting, and trig­ger­ing, under­wa­ter mines. The Amer­i­can explo­sive devices need­ed to be cam­ou­flaged in a way that would make them appear to the Russ­ian sys­tem as part of the nat­ur­al background—something that required adapt­ing to the spe­cif­ic salin­i­ty of the water. The Nor­we­gians had a fix.

    The Nor­we­gians also had a solu­tion to the cru­cial ques­tion of when the oper­a­tion should take place. Every June, for the past 21 years, the Amer­i­can Sixth Fleet, whose flag­ship is based in Gae­ta, Italy, south of Rome, has spon­sored a major NATO exer­cise in the Baltic Sea involv­ing scores of allied ships through­out the region. The cur­rent exer­cise, held in June, would be known as Baltic Oper­a­tions 22, or BALTOPS 22. The Nor­we­gians pro­posed this would be the ide­al cov­er to plant the mines.

    The Amer­i­cans pro­vid­ed one vital ele­ment: they con­vinced the Sixth Fleet plan­ners to add a research and devel­op­ment exer­cise to the pro­gram. The exer­cise, as made pub­lic by the Navy, involved the Sixth Fleet in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Navy’s “research and war­fare cen­ters.” The at-sea event would be held off the coast of Born­holm Island and involve NATO teams of divers plant­i­ng mines, with com­pet­ing teams using the lat­est under­wa­ter tech­nol­o­gy to find and destroy them.

    It was both a use­ful exer­cise and inge­nious cov­er. The Pana­ma City boys would do their thing and the C4 explo­sives would be in place by the end of BALTOPS22, with a 48-hour timer attached. All of the Amer­i­cans and Nor­we­gians would be long gone by the first explo­sion.

    The days were count­ing down. “The clock was tick­ing, and we were near­ing mis­sion accom­plished,” the source said.

    And then: Wash­ing­ton had sec­ond thoughts. The bombs would still be plant­ed dur­ing BALTOPS, but the White House wor­ried that a two-day win­dow for their det­o­na­tion would be too close to the end of the exer­cise, and it would be obvi­ous that Amer­i­ca had been involved.

    Instead, the White House had a new request: “Can the guys in the field come up with some way to blow the pipelines lat­er on com­mand?”

    Some mem­bers of the plan­ning team were angered and frus­trat­ed by the President’s seem­ing inde­ci­sion. The Pana­ma City divers had repeat­ed­ly prac­ticed plant­i­ng the C4 on pipelines, as they would dur­ing BALTOPS, but now the team in Nor­way had to come up with a way to give Biden what he wanted—the abil­i­ty to issue a suc­cess­ful exe­cu­tion order at a time of his choos­ing.

    Being tasked with an arbi­trary, last-minute change was some­thing the CIA was accus­tomed to man­ag­ing. But it also renewed the con­cerns some shared over the neces­si­ty, and legal­i­ty, of the entire oper­a­tion.

    The President’s secret orders also evoked the CIA’s dilem­ma in the Viet­nam War days, when Pres­i­dent John­son, con­front­ed by grow­ing anti-Viet­nam War sen­ti­ment, ordered the Agency to vio­late its charter—which specif­i­cal­ly barred it from oper­at­ing inside America—by spy­ing on anti­war lead­ers to deter­mine whether they were being con­trolled by Com­mu­nist Rus­sia.

    ...

    The C4 attached to the pipelines would be trig­gered by a sonar buoy dropped by a plane on short notice, but the pro­ce­dure involved the most advanced sig­nal pro­cess­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Once in place, the delayed tim­ing devices attached to any of the four pipelines could be acci­den­tal­ly trig­gered by the com­plex mix of ocean back­ground nois­es through­out the heav­i­ly traf­ficked Baltic Sea—from near and dis­tant ships, under­wa­ter drilling, seis­mic events, waves and even sea crea­tures. To avoid this, the sonar buoy, once in place, would emit a sequence of unique low fre­quen­cy tonal sounds—much like those emit­ted by a flute or a piano—that would be rec­og­nized by the tim­ing device and, after a pre-set hours of delay, trig­ger the explo­sives. (“You want a sig­nal that is robust enough so that no oth­er sig­nal could acci­den­tal­ly send a pulse that det­o­nat­ed the explo­sives,” I was told by Dr. Theodore Pos­tol, pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy and nation­al secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy at MIT. Pos­tol, who has served as the sci­ence advis­er to the Pentagon’s Chief of Naval Oper­a­tions, said the issue fac­ing the group in Nor­way because of Biden’s delay was one of chance: “The longer the explo­sives are in the water the greater risk there would be of a ran­dom sig­nal that would launch the bombs.”)

    On Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022, a Nor­we­gian Navy P8 sur­veil­lance plane made a seem­ing­ly rou­tine flight and dropped a sonar buoy. The sig­nal spread under­wa­ter, ini­tial­ly to Nord Stream 2 and then on to Nord Stream 1. A few hours lat­er, the high-pow­ered C4 explo­sives were trig­gered and three of the four pipelines were put out of com­mis­sion. With­in a few min­utes, pools of methane gas that remained in the shut­tered pipelines could be seen spread­ing on the water’s sur­face and the world learned that some­thing irre­versible had tak­en place.
    ...

    Now, regard­ing that con­cerns about Den­mark and Swe­den find­ing out about the plot, recall that amaz­ing dec­la­ra­tion made by Swe­den back in Octo­ber: the coun­try was refus­ing to share the con­clu­sions of its inves­ti­ga­tion with any­one due to undis­closed secu­ri­ty con­cerns. And now we’re told that both Den­mark of Swe­den were briefed in advance about pos­si­ble div­ing activ­i­ty in the area:

    ...
    The Nor­we­gians and Amer­i­cans had a loca­tion and the oper­a­tives, but there was anoth­er con­cern: any unusu­al under­wa­ter activ­i­ty in the waters off Born­holm might draw the atten­tion of the Swedish or Dan­ish navies, which could report it.

    Den­mark had also been one of the orig­i­nal NATO sig­na­to­ries and was known in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty for its spe­cial ties to the Unit­ed King­dom. Swe­den had applied for mem­ber­ship into NATO, and had demon­strat­ed its great skill in man­ag­ing its under­wa­ter sound and mag­net­ic sen­sor sys­tems that suc­cess­ful­ly tracked Russ­ian sub­marines that would occa­sion­al­ly show up in remote waters of the Swedish arch­i­pel­ago and be forced to the sur­face.

    The Nor­we­gians joined the Amer­i­cans in insist­ing that some senior offi­cials in Den­mark and Swe­den had to be briefed in gen­er­al terms about pos­si­ble div­ing activ­i­ty in the area. In that way, some­one high­er up could inter­vene and keep a report out of the chain of com­mand, thus insu­lat­ing the pipeline oper­a­tion. “What they were told and what they knew were pur­pose­ly dif­fer­ent,” the source told me. (The Nor­we­gian embassy, asked to com­ment on this sto­ry, did not respond.)
    ...

    Final­ly, it’s worth ask­ing what exact­ly the blow­ing up of Nord Stream did to the prof­it mar­gins of the Euro­pean ener­gy giants. Because it sounds like the out­break of war, in gen­er­al, was great for their prof­its thanks to the ele­vat­ed prices result­ing from the con­flict. What hap­pened to those prof­it mar­gins after the pipeline blew up and prices went even high­er? Sure, we can expect Gazprom’s prof­its to decline as a result of the attack, but what about the com­pa­nies that were mak­ing mas­sive prof­its sim­ply reselling Gazprom’s gas?

    ...
    From its ear­li­est days, Nord Stream 1 was seen by Wash­ing­ton and its anti-Russ­ian NATO part­ners as a threat to west­ern dom­i­nance. The hold­ing com­pa­ny behind it, Nord Stream AG, was incor­po­rat­ed in Switzer­land in 2005 in part­ner­ship with Gazprom, a pub­licly trad­ed Russ­ian com­pa­ny pro­duc­ing enor­mous prof­its for share­hold­ers which is dom­i­nat­ed by oli­garchs known to be in the thrall of Putin. Gazprom con­trolled 51 per­cent of the com­pa­ny, with four Euro­pean ener­gy firms—one in France, one in the Nether­lands and two in Germany—sharing the remain­ing 49 per­cent of stock, and hav­ing the right to con­trol down­stream sales of the inex­pen­sive nat­ur­al gas to local dis­trib­u­tors in Ger­many and West­ern Europe. Gazprom’s prof­its were shared with the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, and state gas and oil rev­enues were esti­mat­ed in some years to amount to as much as 45 per­cent of Russia’s annu­al bud­get.

    ...

    Back in Wash­ing­ton, plan­ners knew they had to go to Nor­way. “They hat­ed the Rus­sians, and the Nor­we­gian navy was full of superb sailors and divers who had gen­er­a­tions of expe­ri­ence in high­ly prof­itable deep-sea oil and gas explo­ration,” the source said. They also could be trust­ed to keep the mis­sion secret. (+The Nor­we­gians may have had oth­er inter­ests as well. The destruc­tion of Nord Stream—if the Amer­i­cans could pull it off—would allow Nor­way to sell vast­ly more of its own nat­ur­al gas to Europe.)
    ...

    This is a good time to note that BP, Total­En­er­gies, Shell, Exxon­Mo­bil, Chevron, and Equinor (Nor­way’s state-backed oil com­pa­ny) all report­ed record prof­its for 2022.

    So we’ll see if this sto­ry gets fleshed out any more or if it’s ulti­mate­ly just dropped and for­got­ten. At least for­got­ten by west­ern audi­ences. Rus­sia pre­sum­ably isn’t for­get­ting about the lat­est evi­dence that it’s locked in a secret direct war with the West any time soon.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 9, 2023, 5:20 pm
  25. It’s a Bird...It’s a Plane! It’s Super­man! Oh F#ck, it’s a bal­loon! Close the skies!

    That was one of the response zany bal­loon-relat­ed sto­ries from the past 24 hours. A “bal­loon-like object in the sky” man­aged to prompt the clos­ing of an entire nation’s air­space for over an hour on Tues­day. But that sto­ry did­n’t come from the US. Or Cana­da. Sur­pris­ing­ly, all things con­sid­ered. No, that sto­ry came out of Moldo­va, the small Euro­pean nation that hap­pens to share a bor­der with Ukraine.

    As we’re going to see, there’s anoth­er shared inter­est that appears to be dri­ving this sto­ry: Moldo­va as EU ambi­tions too. Ambi­tions that have so angered Vladimir Putin and the Krem­lin that Moldo­va now fac­ing a nation­al desta­bi­liza­tion plot. At least those were the claims made by Moldovan Pres­i­dent Maia San­du on Mon­day, one day before the bal­loon scare. A plot had been dis­cov­ered and Moldo­va was an alert.

    So that’s part of the con­text of the bal­loon scare: it fol­lowed an omi­nous press con­fer­ence where Moldova’s pres­i­dent warned the pub­lic of a loom­ing nation­al Russ­ian-led desta­bi­liza­tion plot. A plot with the ulti­mate goal of using Moldo­va against Ukraine in the con­flict.

    But there’s anoth­er key piece of con­text to keep in mind here: the plot was­n’t first pub­lic revealed by Pres­i­dent San­du. Nope, that role fell to Ukraine’s Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skiy, who warned EU lead­ers about a plot against Ukraine last week in Brus­sels. A warn­ing from Zelen­skiy that came one day before the sur­pris­ing res­ig­na­tion announce­ment by Moldovan Prime min­is­ter Natalia Gavrili­ta. Moldo­va has had quite a week. Hence the jit­tery nerves, pre­sum­ably.

    So giv­en that this whole ‘Rus­sia plot’ sto­ry start­ed with Ukraine, but now appears to have been embraced by the Moldovan gov­ern­ment, we have to ask: what is the evi­dence for the plot? Has any­one oth­er than Ukraine — who claims to have inter­cept­ed Rus­sia com­mu­ni­ca­tions reveal­ing the plot — con­firmed the alle­ga­tions? Nope, it appears that the evi­dence for the plot is com­ing entire­ly from Ukraine’s intel­li­gence ser­vices, which passed the evi­dence on to Moldo­va. That’s the larg­er con­text of the Moldovan bal­loon scare: it came days after a nation­al secu­ri­ty cri­sis seem­ing­ly gen­er­at­ed from a Ukraine intel­li­gence report about the loom­ing Russ­ian plot against the coun­try:

    Reuters

    Moldo­va briefly shuts air­space after report of bal­loon-like object

    Feb­ru­ary 14, 2023 6:21 PM UTC
    Updat­ed

    CHISINAU, Feb 14 (Reuters) — Moldo­va briefly closed its air space on Tues­day to inves­ti­gate reports of a bal­loon-like object in the sky, a day after the small east Euro­pean coun­try accused Rus­sia of plot­ting to bring down its gov­ern­ment.

    Rus­sia denied the accu­sa­tion by Pres­i­dent Maia San­du, who has repeat­ed­ly expressed con­cern about Rus­si­a’s inten­tions towards the for­mer Sovi­et repub­lic since Moscow invad­ed Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022.

    Moldova’s civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ty said it act­ed after receiv­ing a defence min­istry report that a small object resem­bling a weath­er bal­loon had been seen over the north of the coun­try, close to the bor­der with Ukraine.

    In a state­ment, it said that “giv­en the weath­er con­di­tions and the impos­si­bil­i­ty of observ­ing and iden­ti­fy­ing the object and its flight path,” the air­space had been closed.

    Once author­i­ties had estab­lished there was no threat to the safe­ty of cit­i­zens, it can­celled the clo­sure an hour and 22 min­utes lat­er.

    Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skiy said last week his coun­try had uncov­ered a Russ­ian intel­li­gence plan “for the destruc­tion of Moldo­va”. Days lat­er, Moldova’s gov­ern­ment resigned.

    ...

    ———-

    “Moldo­va briefly shuts air­space after report of bal­loon-like object”; Reuters; 02/14/2023

    “Moldova’s civ­il avi­a­tion author­i­ty said it act­ed after receiv­ing a defence min­istry report that a small object resem­bling a weath­er bal­loon had been seen over the north of the coun­try, close to the bor­der with Ukraine.”

    It’s a bal­loon! Shut down the skies! That hap­pened.

    But as the fol­low­ing arti­cle reminds us, this kind of bal­loon hys­ter­ics did­n’t hap­pen in a vac­u­um. It hap­pened the day after Moldova’s Pres­i­dent pub­lic announced the deter­mi­na­tion by Moldova’s secu­ri­ty forces about a Russ­ian desta­bi­liza­tion plot. A plot first pub­licly revealed by none oth­er than Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    Moldovan leader out­lines Russ­ian ‘plan’ to top­ple gov­ern­ment

    By STEPHEN McGRATH and CRISTIAN JARDAN
    Mon­day Feb 13, 2023 14:20:44 CST

    CHISINAU, Moldo­va (AP) — Moldova’s pres­i­dent out­lined Mon­day what she described as a plot by Moscow to over­throw her country’s gov­ern­ment using exter­nal sabo­teurs, put the nation “at the dis­pos­al of Rus­sia” and derail its aspi­ra­tions to one day join the Euro­pean Union.

    Pres­i­dent Maia Sandu’s brief­ing comes a week after neigh­bor­ing Ukraine’s Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy said his coun­try had inter­cept­ed plans by Russ­ian secret ser­vices to destroy Moldo­va, claims that were lat­er con­firmed by Moldovan intel­li­gence offi­cials.

    “The plan for the next peri­od involves actions with the involve­ment of diver­sion­ists with mil­i­tary train­ing, cam­ou­flaged in civil­ian clothes, who will under­take vio­lent actions, attack some state build­ings, and even take hostages,” San­du told reporters at a brief­ing.

    Since Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine near­ly a year ago, Moldo­va, a for­mer Sovi­et repub­lic of about 2.6 mil­lion peo­ple, has sought to forge clos­er ties with its West­ern part­ners. Last June, it was grant­ed EU can­di­date sta­tus, the same day as Ukraine.

    San­du said the alleged Russ­ian plot’s pur­pose is “to over­throw the con­sti­tu­tion­al order, to change the legit­i­mate pow­er from (Moldova’s cap­i­tal) Chisin­au to an ille­git­i­mate one,” which she said “which would put our coun­try at the dis­pos­al of Rus­sia, in order to stop the Euro­pean inte­gra­tion process.”

    She defi­ant­ly vowed: “The Kremlin’s attempts to bring vio­lence to our coun­try will not suc­ceed.”

    There was no imme­di­ate reac­tion from Russ­ian offi­cials to Sandu’s claims.

    San­du said that between Octo­ber and Decem­ber Moldovan police and its Intel­li­gence and Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice, the SIS, have inter­vened in “sev­er­al cas­es of orga­nized crim­i­nal ele­ments and stopped attempts at vio­lence.”

    ...

    Moldovan author­i­ties con­firmed that anoth­er mis­sile from the war in Ukraine had entered its air­space on Fri­day.

    Last April, ten­sions in Moldo­va also soared after a series of explo­sions in Transnis­tria — a Rus­sia-backed sep­a­ratist region of Moldo­va where Rus­sia bases about 1,500 troops — which had raised fears it could get dragged into Russia’s war in Ukraine. Transnis­tria has a pop­u­la­tion of about 470,000 and has been under the con­trol of sep­a­ratist author­i­ties since a civ­il war in 1992.

    San­du claimed that Rus­sia wants to use Moldo­va in the war against Ukraine, with­out pro­vid­ing more details, and that infor­ma­tion obtained by intel­li­gence ser­vices con­tained what she described as instruc­tions on rules of entry to Moldo­va for cit­i­zens from Rus­sia, Belarus, Ser­bia, and Mon­tene­gro.

    “I assure you that the state insti­tu­tions are work­ing to pre­vent these chal­lenges and keep the sit­u­a­tion under con­trol,” San­du said.

    She said that Moldova’s Par­lia­ment must adopt draft laws to equip its Intel­li­gence and Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice, and the prosecutor’s office, “with the nec­es­sary tools to com­bat more effec­tive­ly the risks to the country’s secu­ri­ty.”

    Costin Ciobanu, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at the Roy­al Hol­loway Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, said it’s like­ly there “was a huge pres­sure” on Moldovan author­i­ties to explain more to the pub­lic after Zelen­skyy first went pub­lic with the secu­ri­ty infor­ma­tion last week in Brus­sels.

    “Today’s announce­ment by Pres­i­dent San­du legit­imizes the nar­ra­tive that Moldo­va needs to focus on its secu­ri­ty,” he told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press. “Prob­a­bly, based on the evi­dence they received, they are now more sure of these kinds of attempts by Rus­sians.”

    He added that San­du going pub­lic could also be a pre­emp­tive bid to thwart “Russia’s attempts to desta­bi­lize Moldo­va,” in the same way West­ern offi­cials called out the Kremlin’s war plans before its inva­sion of Ukraine.

    The pres­i­dent added that the plan would “rely on sev­er­al inter­nal forces, but espe­cial­ly on crim­i­nal groups” and went on to name two Moldovan oli­garchs, Ilan Shor and Vladimir Pla­hot­ni­uc, both of whom are cur­rent­ly in exile. Both men last year were sanc­tioned by the U.S. and the U.K.

    Last fall, a series of mass anti-gov­ern­ment protests orga­nized by Shor’s pop­ulist, Rus­sia-friend­ly Shor Par­ty, also rocked Moldo­va amid the ener­gy crunch.

    The president’s press brief­ing Mon­day comes after the sur­prise res­ig­na­tion on Fri­day of Moldova’s Prime Min­is­ter Natalia Gavrili­ta. The same day, San­du appoint­ed her defense and secu­ri­ty advis­er, pro-West­ern econ­o­mist Dorin Recean, to suc­ceed Gavrili­ta.

    ...

    ———-

    “Moldovan leader out­lines Russ­ian ‘plan’ to top­ple gov­ern­ment” by STEPHEN McGRATH and CRISTIAN JARDAN; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 02/13/2023

    “San­du said the alleged Russ­ian plot’s pur­pose is “to over­throw the con­sti­tu­tion­al order, to change the legit­i­mate pow­er from (Moldova’s cap­i­tal) Chisin­au to an ille­git­i­mate one,” which she said “which would put our coun­try at the dis­pos­al of Rus­sia, in order to stop the Euro­pean inte­gra­tion process.””

    A plot to block Moldova’s EU inte­gra­tion process. By over­throw­ing the Moldovan gov­ern­ment and replac­ing it with a pro-Krem­lin gov­ern­ment. And then use Moldo­va against Ukraine. That’s the plot Pres­i­dent Maia San­du pub­lic revealed on Mon­day, along with calls to adopt draft laws to equip its Intel­li­gence and Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice, and the prosecutor’s office, “with the nec­es­sary tools to com­bat more effec­tive­ly the risks to the country’s secu­ri­ty.” It’s a giant emer­gency requir­ing an emer­gency response:

    ...
    “The plan for the next peri­od involves actions with the involve­ment of diver­sion­ists with mil­i­tary train­ing, cam­ou­flaged in civil­ian clothes, who will under­take vio­lent actions, attack some state build­ings, and even take hostages,” San­du told reporters at a brief­ing.

    Since Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine near­ly a year ago, Moldo­va, a for­mer Sovi­et repub­lic of about 2.6 mil­lion peo­ple, has sought to forge clos­er ties with its West­ern part­ners. Last June, it was grant­ed EU can­di­date sta­tus, the same day as Ukraine.

    ...

    San­du said that between Octo­ber and Decem­ber Moldovan police and its Intel­li­gence and Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice, the SIS, have inter­vened in “sev­er­al cas­es of orga­nized crim­i­nal ele­ments and stopped attempts at vio­lence.”

    ...

    San­du claimed that Rus­sia wants to use Moldo­va in the war against Ukraine, with­out pro­vid­ing more details, and that infor­ma­tion obtained by intel­li­gence ser­vices con­tained what she described as instruc­tions on rules of entry to Moldo­va for cit­i­zens from Rus­sia, Belarus, Ser­bia, and Mon­tene­gro.

    “I assure you that the state insti­tu­tions are work­ing to pre­vent these chal­lenges and keep the sit­u­a­tion under con­trol,” San­du said.

    She said that Moldova’s Par­lia­ment must adopt draft laws to equip its Intel­li­gence and Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice, and the prosecutor’s office, “with the nec­es­sary tools to com­bat more effec­tive­ly the risks to the country’s secu­ri­ty.”
    ...

    But this pub­lic announce­ment did­n’t just sud­den­ly hap­pen. It was pre­ced­ed by Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent Zelen­sky’s own pub­lic dec­la­ra­tion about the dis­cov­ery of the plot. Yep, it was Volodymyr Zelen­sky who made this a pub­lic issue. San­du had to either deny the sto­ry, or act on it:

    ...
    Pres­i­dent Maia Sandu’s brief­ing comes a week after neigh­bor­ing Ukraine’s Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy said his coun­try had inter­cept­ed plans by Russ­ian secret ser­vices to destroy Moldo­va, claims that were lat­er con­firmed by Moldovan intel­li­gence offi­cials.

    ...

    Costin Ciobanu, a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at the Roy­al Hol­loway Uni­ver­si­ty of Lon­don, said it’s like­ly there “was a huge pres­sure” on Moldovan author­i­ties to explain more to the pub­lic after Zelen­skyy first went pub­lic with the secu­ri­ty infor­ma­tion last week in Brus­sels.

    “Today’s announce­ment by Pres­i­dent San­du legit­imizes the nar­ra­tive that Moldo­va needs to focus on its secu­ri­ty,” he told The Asso­ci­at­ed Press. “Prob­a­bly, based on the evi­dence they received, they are now more sure of these kinds of attempts by Rus­sians.”
    ...

    So with Moldova’s pres­i­dent pub­licly mak­ing these claims fol­low­ing the Ukrain­ian pres­i­dent mak­ing the same claims, we have to ask: did Moldo­va actu­al­ly con­firm these claims them­selves? Or is this all based entire­ly on the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­men­t’s alle­ga­tions? Take a guess. A very cyn­i­cal guess:

    Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty

    Rus­sia Denies It’s Seek­ing To Desta­bi­lize Moldo­va As Chisin­au Calls For ‘Max­i­mum Vig­i­lance’

    By RFE/RL’s Moldovan Ser­vice
    Feb­ru­ary 14, 2023

    Moldovan Pres­i­dent Maia San­du has called for “max­i­mum vig­i­lance” after receiv­ing doc­u­ments from the Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence ser­vices that she said showed that Rus­sia planned to desta­bi­lize Moldo­va by using agents provo­ca­teurs to attack gov­ern­ment build­ings under the guise of pub­lic protests.

    Doc­u­ments received from our Ukrain­ian part­ners show doc­u­men­ta­tion of the loca­tions and logis­ti­cal aspects of orga­niz­ing these sub­ver­sions,” San­du said on Feb­ru­ary 13.

    “The plan also involves the use of peo­ple from out­side the coun­try for vio­lent actions.”

    Reports about the alleged plot are “deeply con­cern­ing,” White House Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil spokesman John Kir­by said on Feb­ru­ary 13.

    While reports about the plot have not been inde­pen­dent­ly con­firmed, it is “cer­tain­ly not out­side the bounds of Russ­ian behav­ior, and we absolute­ly stand with the Moldovan gov­ern­ment and the Moldovan peo­ple,” Kir­by said.

    Rus­si­a’s For­eign Min­istry on Feb­ru­ary 14 reject­ed the reports, say­ing, “Such claims are com­plete­ly unfound­ed and unsub­stan­ti­at­ed.”

    Rus­sia blamed Ukraine for stir­ring ten­sion between Rus­sia and Moldo­va, say­ing Kyiv was try­ing to draw Moldo­va “into a tough con­fronta­tion with Rus­sia.”

    ...

    The Moldovan Intel­li­gence and Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice (SIS) con­firmed on Feb­ru­ary 9 that it had received infor­ma­tion about the alleged plan from its Ukrain­ian coun­ter­part, but said it could not give any more details “because there’s the risk of jeop­ar­diz­ing dif­fer­ent ongo­ing oper­a­tional activ­i­ties.”

    The alleged plan came to light ear­li­er that day when Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skiy told an EU sum­mit in Brus­sels that Kyiv had “inter­cept­ed the plan for the destruc­tion of Moldo­va by Russ­ian intel­li­gence.”

    Zelen­skiy said the plan was very sim­i­lar to the one devised by Rus­sia to take over Ukraine. He added that he did not know whether Moscow ulti­mate­ly ordered the plan to be car­ried out.

    On Feb­ru­ary 13, San­du said that plan involved “diver­sion­ists with mil­i­tary train­ing and cam­ou­flaged in civil­ian clothes,” and that instruc­tions were dis­cov­ered for cit­i­zens from Ser­bia, Rus­sia, Belarus, and Mon­tene­gro to enter Moldo­va to car­ry it out.

    Rus­si­a’s goal, San­du said, was to change “the legit­i­mate pow­er from Chisin­au to an ille­git­i­mate one,” as well as to thwart Moldova’s Euro­pean inte­gra­tion efforts and to use Moldo­va in Rus­si­a’s war against Ukraine.

    San­du said that anti-gov­ern­ment demon­stra­tions that took place in Moldo­va from Sep­tem­ber to Novem­ber were also part of an effort to under­mine the coun­try.

    The protests, orga­nized by the Russ­ian-friend­ly Shor Par­ty, called for ear­ly elec­tions and the res­ig­na­tion of the pro-West­ern San­du.

    “Attempts to under­mine the state also exist­ed last fall, but they did not achieve their goals, thanks to the prompt action of our secu­ri­ty and pub­lic order insti­tu­tions,” San­du said.

    “In autumn, the focus was on the ener­gy cri­sis, which was sup­posed to cause major dis­con­tent among the pop­u­la­tion and lead to vio­lent actions.”

    San­du called on state insti­tu­tions to exer­cise “max­i­mum vig­i­lance” and for the par­lia­ment to quick­ly adopt draft laws aimed at strength­en­ing the SIS’s role in pre­vent­ing and coun­ter­ing inter­nal and exter­nal threats to Moldova’s secu­ri­ty.

    ———-

    “Rus­sia Denies It’s Seek­ing To Desta­bi­lize Moldo­va As Chisin­au Calls For ‘Max­i­mum Vig­i­lance’ ” By RFE/RL’s Moldovan Ser­vice; Radio Free Europe/Radio Lib­er­ty; 02/14/2023

    The Moldovan Intel­li­gence and Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice (SIS) con­firmed on Feb­ru­ary 9 that it had received infor­ma­tion about the alleged plan from its Ukrain­ian coun­ter­part, but said it could not give any more details “because there’s the risk of jeop­ar­diz­ing dif­fer­ent ongo­ing oper­a­tional activ­i­ties.””

    This was­n’t a case of two dif­fer­ent intel­li­gence ser­vices tri­an­gu­lat­ing towards the same con­clu­sion. The ‘evi­dence’ is com­ing all com­ing from one source: Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence:

    ...
    Doc­u­ments received from our Ukrain­ian part­ners show doc­u­men­ta­tion of the loca­tions and logis­ti­cal aspects of orga­niz­ing these sub­ver­sions,” San­du said on Feb­ru­ary 13.

    “The plan also involves the use of peo­ple from out­side the coun­try for vio­lent actions.”

    Reports about the alleged plot are “deeply con­cern­ing,” White House Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil spokesman John Kir­by said on Feb­ru­ary 13.

    While reports about the plot have not been inde­pen­dent­ly con­firmed, it is “cer­tain­ly not out­side the bounds of Russ­ian behav­ior, and we absolute­ly stand with the Moldovan gov­ern­ment and the Moldovan peo­ple,” Kir­by said.

    ...

    The alleged plan came to light ear­li­er that day when Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skiy told an EU sum­mit in Brus­sels that Kyiv had “inter­cept­ed the plan for the destruc­tion of Moldo­va by Russ­ian intel­li­gence.”

    Zelen­skiy said the plan was very sim­i­lar to the one devised by Rus­sia to take over Ukraine. He added that he did not know whether Moscow ulti­mate­ly ordered the plan to be car­ried out.
    ...

    And there we have it: either Ukraine detect­ed a real Rus­sia plot to desta­bi­lize Moldo­va. Or this is a Ukrain­ian plot to whip up pro­pa­gan­da in a neigh­bor. Either way, there’s a plot afoot.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 14, 2023, 5:29 pm
  26. It was a well-timed sur­prise: Pres­i­dent Biden’s trip to Ukraine was indeed an unsched­uled sur­prise when he sud­den­ly arrived in Kiev one day before the 1 year anniver­sary of the start of Rus­si­a’s ‘Spe­cial Mil­i­tary Oper­a­tion’ in Ukraine. At least, it was an unsched­uled sur­prise for most of the world. Some peo­ple and gov­ern­ments obvi­ous­ly had to know in advance.

    And while the tim­ing was obvi­ous­ly intend­ed to be a kind of pre­but­tal to Vladimir Putin’s speech to the Russ­ian peo­ple, it’s worth not­ing anoth­er sto­ry bub­bling beneath the sur­face that could be shap­ing Biden’s sur­pris­ing Euro­pean tour in inter­est­ing ways behind the scenes: Sy Her­sh’s explo­sive report alleg­ing the US and Nor­way car­ried out the Nord Stream bomb­ings, pub­lished just a cou­ple of weeks ago. Sure, that report has receive min­i­mal cov­er­age in the US media, but it’s hard to imag­ine that this is a sto­ry that’s just going to go away. Espe­cial­ly in the coun­tries most heav­i­ly impact­ed like Ger­many.

    And that brings us to a fas­ci­nat­ing new inter­view of Hersh in Jacobin where Hersh address­es some of the crit­i­cisms he’s received for his ini­tial report while also giv­ing some incred­i­ble new details on the sto­ry. Includ­ing one par­tic­u­lar detail that could go a long way in explain­ing why it is that the CIA — the agency that appar­ent­ly came up with the bomb­ing plan in first place — has seem­ing­ly soured on the whole oper­a­tion and blame it on Biden: as Hersh tells it, while eight C4 bombs were plant­ed on the four pipelines (two bombs apiece), only six of those bombs explod­ed! Whoops. Keep in mind that only three of the four pipelines (Nord Stream 1 and 2 both have two pipelines) were actu­al­ly hit. So this new detail is con­sis­tent with that fact.

    This is a good point to recall what Hersh described as one of the points of ten­sion between Biden and the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty when this plot was being exe­cut­ed: ini­tial­ly, the plan was to place the bombs on the pipeline in June of 2022 dur­ing the BALTOPS Naval war games, and then blow them up soon after­wards. But Biden got cold feet and want­ed to instead put them on a timer that could be set off at a lat­er date. This was done, but with con­cerns that the longer they wait­ed the high­er the odds of the sonar trig­ger­ing mech­a­nism not work­ing. And, sure enough, it sounds like that’s what hap­pened. Two bombs did­n’t go off. And were pre­sum­ably just left there, as mas­sive evi­dence to a mas­sive crime.

    This is also a good time to recall how Swe­den declared back in Octo­ber that it wasn’t going to share its inves­tiga­tive con­clu­sions with any oth­er coun­tries. It imme­di­ate­ly raised the ques­tion of what Swe­den had already found. Well, how about two unex­plod­ed C4 bombs?

    Anoth­er new detail in the inter­view is that Hersh insists that, while the peo­ple who build pipelines weren’t for­mal­ly told what was planned, they knew. In oth­er words, this is an open secret inside the indus­try. Which pre­sum­ably means it’s an open secret in gov­ern­ments across the world.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, Hersh also sug­gests that Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Olaf Scholz also knew what was com­ing. If so, that would be quite a scan­dal for the Ger­man gov­ern­ment too.

    Hersh also pro­vides some push­back on one of the main crit­i­cisms he’s received since putting out the ini­tial report: no open source records show any flights by Nor­we­gian planes in the area in the days lead­ing up to the Sep­tem­ber 26 explo­sions. As Hersh puts it, any seri­ous intel­li­gence oper­a­tion takes into account open source data. Some­one took care of it. It’s the kind of detail that isn’t just rel­e­vant in this sto­ry but all sort of reports. Open source intel­li­gence isn’t some­how per­fect. It can be spoofed too.

    So that’s the huge update to this sto­ry: the mis­sion was a suc­cess...and also a wild­ly scan­dalous poten­tial fail­ure that poten­tial­ly left two of the eight C4 bombs still attached. And this is all an open secret.:

    Jacobin

    Sey­mour Hersh: The US Destroyed the Nord Stream Pipeline

    An inter­view with Sey­mour Hersh

    Last week, renowned inves­tiga­tive reporter Sey­mour Hersh pub­lished an arti­cle claim­ing that the US was respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion of the Nord Stream pipeline trans­port­ing nat­ur­al gas to Ger­many from Rus­sia. He spoke to Jacobin about the alle­ga­tions.

    Inter­view by Fabi­an Schei­dler
    02.15.2023

    On Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022, the Nord Stream nat­ur­al gas pipeline from Rus­sia to Ger­many was large­ly destroyed by sev­er­al explo­sions in the Baltic Sea. Last week, the award-win­ning inves­tiga­tive reporter Sey­mour Hersh pub­lished an arti­cle, based on infor­ma­tion from a sin­gle anony­mous source, argu­ing that the Biden admin­is­tra­tion and the CIA were respon­si­ble.

    Hersh won the Pulitzer Prize in 1970 for the role he played in break­ing the sto­ry of the My Lai mas­sacre, an inci­dent in which US sol­diers killed between three and five hun­dred unarmed civil­ians. He spoke to Fabi­an Schei­dler for Jacobin about the alle­ga­tions he made in his most recent arti­cle and the influ­ence that the CIA and the nation­al secu­ri­ty state has on Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    Please start to lay out your find­ings in detail. What hap­pened pre­cise­ly accord­ing to your source, who was involved, and what were the motives behind it?

    Sey­mour Hersh

    What I’ve done is sim­ply explain the obvi­ous. It was just a sto­ry that was beg­ging to be told. In late Sep­tem­ber of 2022, eight bombs were sup­posed to go off; six went off under the water near the island of Born­holm in the Baltic Sea, in the area where it is rather shal­low. They destroyed three of the four major pipelines in the Nord Stream 1 and 2.

    Nord Stream 1 has been feed­ing gas fuel [to Ger­many] for many years at very low prices. And then both pipelines were blown up, and the ques­tion was why, and who did it. On Feb­ru­ary 7, 2022, in the buildup to the war in Ukraine, the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, Joe Biden, at a press con­fer­ence at the White House with Ger­man chan­cel­lor Olaf Scholz, said that we can stop Nord Stream.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    The exact word­ing from Joe Biden was “If Rus­sia invades, there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2, we will bring an end to it.” And when a reporter asked how exact­ly he intend­ed to do it, giv­en that the project was with­in the con­trol of Ger­many, Biden just said, “I promise we will be able to do it.”

    Sey­mour Hersh

    His under sec­re­tary of state, Vic­to­ria Nuland, who was deeply involved in what they call the Maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion in 2014, used sim­i­lar lan­guage a cou­ple of weeks ear­li­er.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    You say that the deci­sion to take out the pipeline was tak­en even ear­li­er by Pres­i­dent Biden. You lay out the sto­ry from the begin­ning, chrono­log­i­cal­ly from Decem­ber 2021, when the nation­al secu­ri­ty advi­sor Jake Sul­li­van con­vened, accord­ing to your piece, a meet­ing of the new­ly formed task force from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the CIA, the State and the Trea­sury depart­ments. You write, “Sul­li­van intend­ed for the group to come up with a plan for the destruc­tion of the two Nord Stream pipelines.”

    Sey­mour Hersh

    This group ini­tial­ly was con­vened in Decem­ber to study the prob­lem. They brought in the CIA and so on; they were meet­ing in a very secret office. Right next door to the White House, there’s an office build­ing that’s called the Exec­u­tive Office Build­ing. It is con­nect­ed under­ground through a tun­nel. And at the top of it is a meet­ing place for a secret group, an out­side group of advi­sors called the President’s Intel­li­gence Advi­so­ry Board. I only report­ed that to let the peo­ple in the White House know that I do know some­thing.

    The meet­ing was con­vened to study the prob­lem: What are we going to do if Rus­sia is going to war? This is three months before the war, before Christ­mas of 2022. It was a high-lev­el group; it prob­a­bly had a dif­fer­ent name, I just called it the “inter­a­gency group” — I don’t know the for­mal name, if there was one. It was the CIA and the Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency, which mon­i­tors and inter­cepts com­mu­ni­ca­tions; the State Depart­ment and the Trea­sury Depart­ment, which sup­plies mon­ey; and prob­a­bly a few oth­er groups that were involved. The Joint Chiefs of Staff had rep­re­sen­ta­tion as well.

    The big task they had was to give rec­om­men­da­tions about what to do about stop­ping Rus­sia, mea­sures that are either reversible, like more sanc­tions and eco­nom­ic pres­sure, or irre­versible, kinet­ic things — explod­ing things, for exam­ple. I don’t want to talk specif­i­cal­ly about any par­tic­u­lar meet­ing because I have to pro­tect my source. I don’t know how many peo­ple were at the meet­ing, do you under­stand what I mean?

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    In the arti­cle, you wrote that, in ear­ly 2022, the CIA work­ing group report­ed back to Sullivan’s inter­a­gency group and they said, “We have a way to blow up the pipelines.”

    Sey­mour Hersh

    They did have a way. There were peo­ple there who under­stood what we call in Amer­i­ca “mine war­fare.” In the Unit­ed States Navy, there are groups that go into sub­marines — there’s also one com­mand about nuclear engi­neer­ing — and there is a min­ing com­mand. Under­ground min­ing is very impor­tant, and we have skilled min­ers. Prob­a­bly the most impor­tant place for train­ing min­ers is in this lit­tle resort town called Pana­ma City in the mid­dle of nowhere in Flori­da.

    We train very good peo­ple there and we use them. Min­ers are very impor­tant. You get clogged entries into ports; they can blow up things in the way. If we don’t like a cer­tain country’s under­wa­ter pipelines for oil, we can blow them up too. It’s not always good things they do but they’re very secre­tive. For the group at the White House, it was clear they could blow up the pipelines. There’s an explo­sive called C‑4, which is incred­i­bly pow­er­ful, dev­as­tat­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly with the amount they use. You can con­trol and oper­ate it remote­ly with under­wa­ter sonar devices. They send very low-fre­quen­cy sig­nals.

    So it was pos­si­ble, and they told the White House that, by ear­ly Jan­u­ary, because two or three weeks lat­er, Under Sec­re­tary of State Vic­to­ria Nuland said we can do it. I think this was Jan­u­ary 20. And then the pres­i­dent as well, with Olaf Scholz, said on Feb­ru­ary 7 that we could do it. Scholz said noth­ing spe­cif­ic; he was vague. But a ques­tion that I would ask Scholz, if I had a par­lia­men­tary hear­ing, is this: Did Pres­i­dent Biden tell you about this? Did he tell you at that time why he was so con­fi­dent he could blow it up?

    We didn’t have a plan yet, but we knew we had the capa­bil­i­ty to do it.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    What role did Nor­way play in the oper­a­tion?

    Sey­mour Hersh

    Well, Nor­way is a great sea­man nation, and they have under­ground ener­gy. They’re also very anx­ious to increase the amount of nat­ur­al gas they can sell to West­ern Europe and Ger­many. And they have done that, they’ve increased their export. So, for eco­nom­ic rea­sons, why not join with the Unit­ed States? They also have a resid­ual dis­like of Rus­sia.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    In your arti­cle, you write that the Secret Ser­vice and the navy of Nor­way were involved, and you say that Swe­den and Den­mark were sort of briefed but not told every­thing.

    Sey­mour Hersh

    The way it was put to me is: if you didn’t tell them, you didn’t need to tell them. In oth­er words, you were doing what you were doing, and they knew what you were doing and they under­stood what was going on, but maybe nobody ever said yes. I worked on that issue very much with the peo­ple I was talk­ing to. The bot­tom line is, to do this mis­sion, the Nor­we­gians had to find the right place. The divers that were being trained in Pana­ma City could go to three hun­dred feet under­wa­ter with­out a heavy div­ing tank, only a mix­ture of oxy­gen and nitro­gen and heli­um.

    The Nor­we­gians found us a place off Born­holm island in the Baltic that was only 260-feet deep so they could oper­ate. They would have to return slow­ly. There was a decom­pres­sion cham­ber, and we used the Nor­we­gian sub­ma­rine hunter. Only two divers were used for the four pipelines.

    One prob­lem was how to deal with those peo­ple who mon­i­tor the Baltic Sea. It is very thor­ough­ly mon­i­tored, and there’s a great deal of open­ly avail­able infor­ma­tion, so we took care of this; there were three or four dif­fer­ent peo­ple for that. And what we then did is real­ly sim­ple. Every sum­mer for twen­ty-one years, our navy Sixth Fleet, which has con­trol of the Mediter­ranean and also the Baltic Sea, has an exer­cise for NATO navies in the Baltic (BALTOPS). And we’d bring a navy car­ri­er or large ships around. It was a very open thing. The Rus­sians cer­tain­ly knew about it. We did pub­lic­i­ty. And in this one, for the first time in his­to­ry, the Baltic Sea NATO oper­a­tion had a new pro­gram. It was going to have an exer­cise in drop­ping mines and find­ing mines for ten or twelve days.

    Sev­er­al nations sent out min­ing teams, and one group would drop the mine and anoth­er min­ing group from their coun­try would go hunt and blow it up. So you had a peri­od where there are things blow­ing up, and in that time the Nor­we­gians could recov­er deep-sea divers. The two pipelines run about a mile apart; they’re under the dirt a lit­tle but they’re not hard to get to, and they had prac­ticed this. It didn’t take more than a few hours to plant the bombs.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    So this was in June 2022?

    Sey­mour Hersh

    Yes, they did it around ten days into June, at the end of the exer­cise, but at the last minute the White House got ner­vous. The pres­i­dent said he’s afraid of doing it. He changed his mind and gave them the order that he want­ed the right to bomb any­time, to set the bombs off any­time remote­ly by us. You do it with just a reg­u­lar sonar, actu­al­ly a Raytheon build. You fly over and drop a cylin­der down. It sends a low-fre­quen­cy sig­nal — you can describe it as a flute sound tone, you can make dif­fer­ent fre­quen­cies. But the wor­ry was that one of the bombs, if left in the water too long, would not work, and two did not — they only got three of the four pipelines. So there was a pan­ic inside the group to find the right means, and we actu­al­ly had to go to oth­er intel­li­gence agen­cies that I didn’t write about.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    And so what hap­pened then? They placed it, they found a way to con­trol it remote­ly . . .

    Sey­mour Hersh

    Joe Biden decid­ed not to blow them up. It was in ear­ly June, five months into the war, but then, in Sep­tem­ber, he decid­ed to do it.

    I’ll tell you some­thing. The oper­a­tional peo­ple, the peo­ple who do kinet­ic things for the Unit­ed States, they do what the pres­i­dent says, and they ini­tial­ly thought this was a use­ful weapon that he could use in nego­ti­a­tions.

    But at some point, once the Rus­sians went in, and then when the oper­a­tion was done, this became increas­ing­ly odi­ous to the peo­ple who did it. These are well-trained peo­ple; they are in the high­est lev­el of secret intel­li­gence agen­cies. They turned on the project. They thought this was an insane thing to do. And with­in a week, or three or four days after the bomb­ing, after they did what they were ordered to, there was a lot of anger and hos­til­i­ty. This is obvi­ous­ly reflect­ed in the fact that I’m learn­ing so much about it.

    And I’ll tell you some­thing else. The peo­ple in Amer­i­ca and Europe who build pipelines know what hap­pened. I’m telling you some­thing impor­tant. The peo­ple who own com­pa­nies that build pipelines know the sto­ry. I didn’t get the sto­ry from them but I learned quick­ly they know.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    Let’s go back to this sit­u­a­tion in June last year. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden decid­ed not to do it direct­ly and post­poned it. So why did they do it then in Sep­tem­ber?

    Sey­mour Hersh

    The sec­re­tary of state, Antho­ny Blinken, said a few days after the pipeline was blown up, at a news con­fer­ence, that a major eco­nom­ic and almost mil­i­tary force was tak­en away from Vladimir Putin. He said this was a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty, as Rus­sia could no longer weaponize the pipelines — mean­ing that it was not able to force West­ern Europe not to sup­port the Unit­ed States in the war. The fear was that West­ern Europe would not go along any longer in the war. I think that the rea­son they decid­ed to do it then was that the war wasn’t going well for the West, and they were afraid with win­ter com­ing. The Nord Stream 2 has been sanc­tioned by Ger­many, and the Unit­ed States was afraid that Ger­many would lift the sanc­tions because of a bad win­ter.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    Accord­ing to you, what were the motives when you look behind the scenes? The US gov­ern­ment was opposed to the pipeline for many rea­sons. Some say they were opposed to it because they want­ed to weak­en Rus­sia, to weak­en the ties between Rus­sia and West­ern Europe, Ger­many espe­cial­ly. But maybe also to weak­en the Ger­man econ­o­my, which, after all, is a com­peti­tor to the US econ­o­my. With the high gas prices, enter­pris­es have start­ed to move to the Unit­ed States. So what’s your sense of the motives of the US gov­ern­ment, if they blew up the pipeline?

    Sey­mour Hersh

    I don’t think they thought it through. I know this sounds strange. I don’t think that Blinken and some oth­ers in the admin­is­tra­tion are deep thinkers. There cer­tain­ly are peo­ple in the Amer­i­can econ­o­my who like the idea of us being more com­pet­i­tive. We’re sell­ing LNG, liq­ue­fied gas, at extreme­ly big prof­its; we’re mak­ing a lot of mon­ey on it. I’m sure there were some peo­ple think­ing, boy, this is going to be a long-time boost for the Amer­i­can econ­o­my.

    But in that White House, I think the obses­sion was always reelec­tion, and they want­ed to win the war, they want­ed to get a vic­to­ry, they want Ukraine to some­how mag­i­cal­ly win.

    There could be some peo­ple who think maybe it’ll be bet­ter for our econ­o­my if the Ger­man econ­o­my is weak, but that’s crazy think­ing. I think, basi­cal­ly, that we’ve bit­ten deep into some­thing that’s not going to work. The war is not going to turn out well for this gov­ern­ment.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    How do you think this war could end?

    Sey­mour Hersh

    It doesn’t mat­ter what I think. What I know is there’s no way this war is going to turn out the way we want, and I don’t know what we’re going to do as we go fur­ther down the line. It scares me if the pres­i­dent was will­ing to do this.

    And the peo­ple who did this mis­sion believed that the pres­i­dent did real­ize what he was doing to the peo­ple of Ger­many, that he was pun­ish­ing them for a war that wasn’t going well. And in the long run, this is going to be very detri­men­tal not only to his rep­u­ta­tion as the pres­i­dent but polit­i­cal­ly too. It’s going to be a stig­ma for Amer­i­ca.

    So what you have is a White House that thought it may have a los­ing card: Ger­many and West­ern Europe may stop giv­ing the arms we want and the Ger­man chan­cel­lor could turn the pipeline on — that was always a fear. I would be ask­ing a lot of ques­tions to Chan­cel­lor Scholz. I would ask him what he learned in Feb­ru­ary when he was with the pres­i­dent. The oper­a­tion was a big secret, and the pres­i­dent wasn’t sup­posed to tell any­body about this capa­bil­i­ty. But he does talk. He says things that he doesn’t want to.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    Your sto­ry was report­ed in West­ern media with some restraint and crit­i­cism. Some attacked your rep­u­ta­tion or said that you have only one anony­mous source, and that’s not reli­able.

    Sey­mour Hersh

    How could I pos­si­bly talk about a source? I’ve writ­ten many sto­ries based on unnamed sources. If I named some­body, they’d be fired, or, worse, jailed. The law is so strict. I’ve nev­er had any­body exposed, and of course when I write I say, as I did in this arti­cle, it’s a source, peri­od. And over the years, the sto­ries I’ve writ­ten have always been accept­ed. I have used for this sto­ry the same cal­iber of skilled fact-check­ers as had worked with me at the New York­er mag­a­zine. Of course, there are many ways to ver­i­fy obscure infor­ma­tion told to me.

    And, you know, a per­son­al attack on me doesn’t get to the point. The point is that Biden chose to keep Ger­many cold this win­ter. The pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States would rather see Ger­many cold [because of ener­gy short­ages] than Ger­many pos­si­bly not sup­port­ive in the Ukraine war, and that, to me, is going to be a dev­as­tat­ing thing for this White House. For me, and I think also for the peo­ple on the mis­sion, it was appalling.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    The point is also that it can be per­ceived as an act of war not only against Rus­sia but against West­ern allies, espe­cial­ly Ger­many.

    Sey­mour Hersh

    Let’s keep it sim­ple. I can tell you that the peo­ple involved in the oper­a­tion saw the pres­i­dent as choos­ing to keep Ger­many cold for his short-range polit­i­cal goals, and that hor­ri­fied them. I’m talk­ing about Amer­i­can peo­ple that are intense­ly loy­al to the Unit­ed States. In the CIA, it’s under­stood that, as I put it in my arti­cle, they work for the Crown, they don’t work for the Con­sti­tu­tion.

    The one virtue of the CIA is that a pres­i­dent, who can’t get his agen­da through Con­gress and nobody lis­tens to him, can take a walk in the back­yard of the Rose Gar­den of the White House with the CIA direc­tor and some­body can get hurt eight thou­sand miles away. That’s always been the sell­ing point of the CIA, which I have prob­lems with. But even that com­mu­ni­ty is appalled that he chose to keep Europe cold in sup­port of a war that he’s not going to win. And that, to me, is heinous.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    You said in your arti­cle that the plan­ning of the attack was not report­ed to Con­gress, as is nec­es­sary with oth­er covert oper­a­tions.

    Sey­mour Hersh

    It also wasn’t report­ed to many places inside the mil­i­tary. There were oth­er peo­ple in oth­er insti­tu­tions that should have known but were not informed. The oper­a­tion was very secret.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    There was some cri­tique of your arti­cle by peo­ple who are engaged in eval­u­at­ing open-source intel­li­gence (OSINT) on ships and air­planes in the Baltic Sea region, say­ing that no Nor­we­gian plane was detect­ed direct­ly at the spot of the explo­sions on Sep­tem­ber 26 or the days before.

    Sey­mour Hersh

    Any seri­ous covert oper­a­tion takes OSINT into account and works around it. As I said, there were peo­ple on the mis­sion who took care of this issue.

    ...

    ————

    “Sey­mour Hersh: The US Destroyed the Nord Stream Pipeline” by Fabi­an Schei­dler; Jacobin; 02/15/2023

    “What I’ve done is sim­ply explain the obvi­ous. It was just a sto­ry that was beg­ging to be told. In late Sep­tem­ber of 2022, eight bombs were sup­posed to go off; six went off under the water near the island of Born­holm in the Baltic Sea, in the area where it is rather shal­low. They destroyed three of the four major pipelines in the Nord Stream 1 and 2.”

    Eight bombs were plant­ed, but only six went off, inca­pac­i­tat­ing only three of the four pipelines. That’s the iron­i­cal­ly explo­sive detail in this Hersh inter­view that poten­tial­ly adds a whole new lay­er to this sto­ry. Because if two bombs did­n’t go off, that implies some poten­tial­ly pow­er­ful evi­dence was still left attached to the crime scene. Oops.

    So is that the key detail that explains why at least one per­son in the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty with direct knowl­edge of the plan­ning and exe­cu­tion of the plot is going to Sy Hersh with a nar­ra­tive about an out­raged intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty that only belat­ed soured on the whole plot? Because one of the mys­ter­ies lin­ger­ing over Her­sh’s report is the basic motive. Who came to him with this sto­ry and why? Because as Hersh describes, the CIA seemed to be ful­ly on board with the plot from the out­set. It was their idea in the first place. But, we are told, they came to view the whole thing as a giant mis­take with poten­tial­ly very neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions. So, again, is the fact that two of the eight C4 bombs appar­ent­ly did­n’t go off part of the motive here?

    Let’s also recall anoth­er detail from Her­sh’s ini­tial report: the bombs were plant­ed dur­ing the BALTOPS Naval war games in June of 2022, in ini­tial plans of blow­ing the pipelines short­ly after­wards. But Biden got cold feet and made a last-minute deci­sion to mod­i­fy the oper­a­tion and set the bombs up to be det­o­nat­ed at a lat­er date using a sonar buoy. But, as we were also told, there were con­cerns that the trig­ger­ing devices would­n’t work over time. And, sure enough, we’re now learn­ing that two of the bombs did­n’t go off, poten­tial­ly leav­ing some this high­ly inflam­ma­to­ry evi­dence (lit­er­al­ly) just sit­ting there, wait­ing to cre­ate an inter­na­tion­al scan­dal. So, again, is that the rea­son for the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty’s appar­ent­ly sud­den sour­ing on the plot? In oth­er words, are we look­ing at pre­emp­tive ass cov­er­ing? And is the CIA try­ing to throw Biden under the bus for a plan that went awry? These are just some of the huge ques­tions raised by the rev­e­la­tion that only 6 and the 8 bombs went off:

    ...
    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    In your arti­cle, you write that the Secret Ser­vice and the navy of Nor­way were involved, and you say that Swe­den and Den­mark were sort of briefed but not told every­thing.

    Sey­mour Hersh

    The way it was put to me is: if you didn’t tell them, you didn’t need to tell them. In oth­er words, you were doing what you were doing, and they knew what you were doing and they under­stood what was going on, but maybe nobody ever said yes. I worked on that issue very much with the peo­ple I was talk­ing to. The bot­tom line is, to do this mis­sion, the Nor­we­gians had to find the right place. The divers that were being trained in Pana­ma City could go to three hun­dred feet under­wa­ter with­out a heavy div­ing tank, only a mix­ture of oxy­gen and nitro­gen and heli­um.

    The Nor­we­gians found us a place off Born­holm island in the Baltic that was only 260-feet deep so they could oper­ate. They would have to return slow­ly. There was a decom­pres­sion cham­ber, and we used the Nor­we­gian sub­ma­rine hunter. Only two divers were used for the four pipelines.

    One prob­lem was how to deal with those peo­ple who mon­i­tor the Baltic Sea. It is very thor­ough­ly mon­i­tored, and there’s a great deal of open­ly avail­able infor­ma­tion, so we took care of this; there were three or four dif­fer­ent peo­ple for that. And what we then did is real­ly sim­ple. Every sum­mer for twen­ty-one years, our navy Sixth Fleet, which has con­trol of the Mediter­ranean and also the Baltic Sea, has an exer­cise for NATO navies in the Baltic (BALTOPS). And we’d bring a navy car­ri­er or large ships around. It was a very open thing. The Rus­sians cer­tain­ly knew about it. We did pub­lic­i­ty. And in this one, for the first time in his­to­ry, the Baltic Sea NATO oper­a­tion had a new pro­gram. It was going to have an exer­cise in drop­ping mines and find­ing mines for ten or twelve days.

    Sev­er­al nations sent out min­ing teams, and one group would drop the mine and anoth­er min­ing group from their coun­try would go hunt and blow it up. So you had a peri­od where there are things blow­ing up, and in that time the Nor­we­gians could recov­er deep-sea divers. The two pipelines run about a mile apart; they’re under the dirt a lit­tle but they’re not hard to get to, and they had prac­ticed this. It didn’t take more than a few hours to plant the bombs.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    So this was in June 2022?

    Sey­mour Hersh

    Yes, they did it around ten days into June, at the end of the exer­cise, but at the last minute the White House got ner­vous. The pres­i­dent said he’s afraid of doing it. He changed his mind and gave them the order that he want­ed the right to bomb any­time, to set the bombs off any­time remote­ly by us. You do it with just a reg­u­lar sonar, actu­al­ly a Raytheon build. You fly over and drop a cylin­der down. It sends a low-fre­quen­cy sig­nal — you can describe it as a flute sound tone, you can make dif­fer­ent fre­quen­cies. But the wor­ry was that one of the bombs, if left in the water too long, would not work, and two did not — they only got three of the four pipelines. So there was a pan­ic inside the group to find the right means, and we actu­al­ly had to go to oth­er intel­li­gence agen­cies that I didn’t write about.
    ...

    But then we get this oth­er rev­e­la­tion: the peo­ple who own com­pa­nies that build pipelines know the real sto­ry. That’s a lot of peo­ple. Well con­nect­ed influ­en­tial peo­ple. In oth­er words, this is an open secret:

    ...
    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    And so what hap­pened then? They placed it, they found a way to con­trol it remote­ly . . .

    Sey­mour Hersh

    Joe Biden decid­ed not to blow them up. It was in ear­ly June, five months into the war, but then, in Sep­tem­ber, he decid­ed to do it.

    I’ll tell you some­thing. The oper­a­tional peo­ple, the peo­ple who do kinet­ic things for the Unit­ed States, they do what the pres­i­dent says, and they ini­tial­ly thought this was a use­ful weapon that he could use in nego­ti­a­tions.

    But at some point, once the Rus­sians went in, and then when the oper­a­tion was done, this became increas­ing­ly odi­ous to the peo­ple who did it. These are well-trained peo­ple; they are in the high­est lev­el of secret intel­li­gence agen­cies. They turned on the project. They thought this was an insane thing to do. And with­in a week, or three or four days after the bomb­ing, after they did what they were ordered to, there was a lot of anger and hos­til­i­ty. This is obvi­ous­ly reflect­ed in the fact that I’m learn­ing so much about it.

    And I’ll tell you some­thing else. The peo­ple in Amer­i­ca and Europe who build pipelines know what hap­pened. I’m telling you some­thing impor­tant. The peo­ple who own com­pa­nies that build pipelines know the sto­ry. I didn’t get the sto­ry from them but I learned quick­ly they know.
    ...

    And yet, despite that ‘open secret’ sta­tus, we are also told that this oper­a­tion was so secret even insti­tu­tions that should have known were not informed. It’s a scan­dalous open secret:

    ...
    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    You said in your arti­cle that the plan­ning of the attack was not report­ed to Con­gress, as is nec­es­sary with oth­er covert oper­a­tions.

    Sey­mour Hersh

    It also wasn’t report­ed to many places inside the mil­i­tary. There were oth­er peo­ple in oth­er insti­tu­tions that should have known but were not informed. The oper­a­tion was very secret.
    ...

    And that ‘open secret’ sta­tus brings us to this oth­er new detail Hersh brings up in response to a num­ber of crit­i­cism his ini­tial report got over the claims that open source data showed no Nor­we­gian plane activ­i­ty in the area where the sonar buoy was alleged­ly dropped on the days lead­ing up to the Sep­tem­ber 26 explo­sions. As Hersh put it, “there were peo­ple on the mis­sion who took care of this issue.” That points to anoth­er area where this oper­a­tion could have achieved ‘open secret’ sta­tus:

    ...
    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    There was some cri­tique of your arti­cle by peo­ple who are engaged in eval­u­at­ing open-source intel­li­gence (OSINT) on ships and air­planes in the Baltic Sea region, say­ing that no Nor­we­gian plane was detect­ed direct­ly at the spot of the explo­sions on Sep­tem­ber 26 or the days before.

    Sey­mour Hersh

    Any seri­ous covert oper­a­tion takes OSINT into account and works around it. As I said, there were peo­ple on the mis­sion who took care of this issue.
    ...

    And note how Hersh is hint­ing at what appears to be a more wide­spread anger inside the CIA at Biden for run­ning this oper­a­tion, despite his report appar­ent­ly rely­ing on a sin­gle anony­mous source. We are told that at least part of the anger inside the CIA was over the per­cep­tion that Biden did the oper­a­tion as a kind of delib­er­ate pun­ish­ment against Ger­many. And yet, Hersh also sug­gests that Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Olaf Scholz may have been informed by Biden in advance of the oper­a­tion. It points towards anoth­er mas­sive ‘open secret’ angle to this sto­ry: if the Ger­many knew, that’s a pret­ty mas­sive scan­dal for that gov­ern­ment too. That fear of inter­na­tion­al scan­dal is at least part of the motive Her­sh’s anony­mous source is say­ing is behind this CIA anger direct­ed at Biden, along with an appar­ent dis­gust with how Ger­many is being treat­ed. Again, out­rage and dis­gust over a plot the CIA appar­ent­ly hatched in the first place:

    ...
    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    How do you think this war could end?

    Sey­mour Hersh

    It doesn’t mat­ter what I think. What I know is there’s no way this war is going to turn out the way we want, and I don’t know what we’re going to do as we go fur­ther down the line. It scares me if the pres­i­dent was will­ing to do this.
    And the peo­ple who did this mis­sion believed that the pres­i­dent did real­ize what he was doing to the peo­ple of Ger­many, that he was pun­ish­ing them for a war that wasn’t going well. And in the long run, this is going to be very detri­men­tal not only to his rep­u­ta­tion as the pres­i­dent but polit­i­cal­ly too. It’s going to be a stig­ma for Amer­i­ca.

    So what you have is a White House that thought it may have a los­ing card: Ger­many and West­ern Europe may stop giv­ing the arms we want and the Ger­man chan­cel­lor could turn the pipeline on — that was always a fear. I would be ask­ing a lot of ques­tions to Chan­cel­lor Scholz. I would ask him what he learned in Feb­ru­ary when he was with the pres­i­dent. The oper­a­tion was a big secret, and the pres­i­dent wasn’t sup­posed to tell any­body about this capa­bil­i­ty. But he does talk. He says things that he doesn’t want to.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    Your sto­ry was report­ed in West­ern media with some restraint and crit­i­cism. Some attacked your rep­u­ta­tion or said that you have only one anony­mous source, and that’s not reli­able.

    Sey­mour Hersh

    How could I pos­si­bly talk about a source? I’ve writ­ten many sto­ries based on unnamed sources. If I named some­body, they’d be fired, or, worse, jailed. The law is so strict. I’ve nev­er had any­body exposed, and of course when I write I say, as I did in this arti­cle, it’s a source, peri­od. And over the years, the sto­ries I’ve writ­ten have always been accept­ed. I have used for this sto­ry the same cal­iber of skilled fact-check­ers as had worked with me at the New York­er mag­a­zine. Of course, there are many ways to ver­i­fy obscure infor­ma­tion told to me.

    And, you know, a per­son­al attack on me doesn’t get to the point. The point is that Biden chose to keep Ger­many cold this win­ter. The pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States would rather see Ger­many cold [because of ener­gy short­ages] than Ger­many pos­si­bly not sup­port­ive in the Ukraine war, and that, to me, is going to be a dev­as­tat­ing thing for this White House. For me, and I think also for the peo­ple on the mis­sion, it was appalling.

    Fabi­an Schei­dler

    The point is also that it can be per­ceived as an act of war not only against Rus­sia but against West­ern allies, espe­cial­ly Ger­many.

    Sey­mour Hersh

    Let’s keep it sim­ple. I can tell you that the peo­ple involved in the oper­a­tion saw the pres­i­dent as choos­ing to keep Ger­many cold for his short-range polit­i­cal goals, and that hor­ri­fied them. I’m talk­ing about Amer­i­can peo­ple that are intense­ly loy­al to the Unit­ed States. In the CIA, it’s under­stood that, as I put it in my arti­cle, they work for the Crown, they don’t work for the Con­sti­tu­tion.

    The one virtue of the CIA is that a pres­i­dent, who can’t get his agen­da through Con­gress and nobody lis­tens to him, can take a walk in the back­yard of the Rose Gar­den of the White House with the CIA direc­tor and some­body can get hurt eight thou­sand miles away. That’s always been the sell­ing point of the CIA, which I have prob­lems with. But even that com­mu­ni­ty is appalled that he chose to keep Europe cold in sup­port of a war that he’s not going to win. And that, to me, is heinous.
    ...

    Again, this was an oper­a­tion that the CIA came up with in the first place! So are they real­ly con­cerned about the impact on Ger­many? Or the fact that the incrim­i­nat­ing evi­dence was left at the scene of the crime? Time will tell. Pos­si­bly in in form of some sort of big inter­na­tion­al scan­dal accu­sa­tions involv­ing all sorts of fin­ger­point­ing and denials. Let’s just hope the next phase of this sto­ry does­n’t include a slew of new mys­te­ri­ous explo­sions. But we’ll see. There’s unfor­tu­nate­ly a vari­ety of ways to respond to unof­fi­cial open secrets.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 21, 2023, 4:49 pm
  27. He’s ruf­fling feath­ers again. Pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Sachs said the things one isn’t sup­posed to say in polite com­pa­ny, this time at the UN. Sachs end­ed up get­ting invit­ed to make a pre­sen­ta­tion before the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil dur­ing a ses­sion when Rus­sia accused the coun­tries car­ry­ing out their Nord Stream inves­ti­ga­tions — Swe­den, Den­mark, and Ger­many — a refus­ing to give Rus­sia any infor­ma­tion. As a result, Rus­sia is call­ing on the UN to con­duct an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion. Calls echoed by Sachs, who made the case of US cul­pa­bil­i­ty while cit­ed the new report­ing by Sy Hersh.

    This isn’t the for first time Sachs made these alle­ga­tions. In fact, he had a Bloomberg TV cut short back in Octo­ber for mak­ing the same sug­ges­tion. But it’s the first time he made these alle­ga­tions before the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil. So we’ll see if these calls for a UN inves­ti­ga­tion gets any trac­tion. But as Sachs notes, at this point Her­sh’s report rep­re­sents the only pub­licly avail­able account­ing of what hap­pened.

    So while it’s hard to imag­ine the UN actu­al­ly agree­ing to an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion, it’s not hard to imag­ine that these calls for an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion are going to prompt some sort of release to the pub­lic of the inves­tiga­tive find­ings. At least the find­ings the inves­ti­ga­tors are com­fort­able releas­ing at this point. Which pre­sum­ably will just be more reit­er­a­tions of ‘we have no idea who did this’, but with a few more details:

    Asso­ci­at­ed Press

    Rus­sia and West clash over probe of Nord Stream sab­o­tage

    By EDITH M. LEDERER
    Tues­day Feb­ru­ary 21 2023 22:16:15 CST

    UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Rus­sia clashed with the Unit­ed States and oth­er West­ern nations Tues­day over the Kremlin’s call for a U.N. inves­ti­ga­tion of last September’s sab­o­tage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines from Rus­sia to West­ern Europe.

    Russia’s U.N. Ambas­sador Vass­i­ly Neben­zia told the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil that Moscow has “no trust” in the sep­a­rate inves­ti­ga­tions being car­ried out by Den­mark, Swe­den and Ger­many, but it does “ful­ly trust” U.N. Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Anto­nio Guter­res to estab­lish an inde­pen­dent inter­na­tion­al inves­ti­ga­tion of the explo­sions.

    The Unit­ed States, Unit­ed King­dom, France and oth­ers said author­i­ties from the three coun­tries are still inves­ti­gat­ing the pipeline attacks and the real rea­son Rus­sia raised Nord Stream 1 and 2 now was to divert atten­tion from the first anniver­sary of its inva­sion of Ukraine and high-lev­el U.N. activ­i­ties for the next three days includ­ing adop­tion of a Gen­er­al Assem­bly res­o­lu­tion con­demn­ing Moscow’s action.

    “Today’s meet­ing is a bla­tant attempt to dis­tract from this,” U.S. Min­is­ter-Coun­selor John Kel­ley told the coun­cil. “As the world unites this week to call for a just and secure peace in Ukraine con­sis­tent with the U.N. Char­ter, Rus­sia des­per­ate­ly wants to change the sub­ject.”

    Ahead of the meet­ing, the ambas­sadors of Den­mark, Swe­den and Ger­many sent a let­ter to coun­cil mem­bers say­ing their inves­ti­ga­tions have estab­lished the pipelines were exten­sive­ly dam­aged “by pow­er­ful explo­sions due to sab­o­tage.”

    The let­ter, cir­cu­lat­ed Tues­day morn­ing, said fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tions are being con­duct­ed in all three coun­tries and that it’s unclear when they will fin­ish. It says Russ­ian author­i­ties have been informed about the inves­ti­ga­tions.

    But Russia’s deputy U.N. ambas­sador Dmit­ry Polyan­sky told reporters: “They are claim­ing that they are inform­ing Rus­sia about it which is not true ... Any attempt for us to get any infor­ma­tion was reject­ed by them or ignored.”

    Rus­sia cir­cu­lat­ed a draft res­o­lu­tion to coun­cil mem­bers late last week ask­ing the U.N. sec­re­tary-gen­er­al to urgent­ly estab­lish a com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate the Nord Stream attacks. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil experts held closed con­sul­ta­tions Mon­day on the pro­posed res­o­lu­tion and coun­cil diplo­mats said there was oppo­si­tion to it.

    Russia’s Neben­zia said Moscow hasn’t been allowed to join inves­ti­ga­tions by any of the three coun­tries, say­ing they “are not only not trans­par­ent, but it is quite clear that they seek just to cov­er the tracks and stick up for their ... Amer­i­can broth­er.”

    Rus­sia has alleged that the U.S. was behind the sab­o­tage, which its pro­posed res­o­lu­tion says “occurred after the repeat­ed threats to the Nord Stream by the lead­er­ship of the Unit­ed States.”

    Kel­ley, the U.S. diplo­mat, respond­ed, telling the coun­cil “clear­ly and plain­ly: Accu­sa­tions that the Unit­ed States was involved in this act of sab­o­tage are com­plete­ly false. The Unit­ed States was not involved in any way.”

    Nord Stream 1 car­ried Russ­ian gas to Ger­many until Moscow cut off sup­plies at the end of August 2022. Nord Stream 2 nev­er entered ser­vice as Ger­many sus­pend­ed its cer­ti­fi­ca­tion process short­ly before Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. The explo­sions on both occurred on Sept. 26.

    U.N. polit­i­cal chief Rose­mary DiCar­lo briefed the Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, say­ing the U.N. is not in a posi­tion to ver­i­fy any claims relat­ing to the explo­sions and urg­ing “all con­cerned to show restraint and avoid any spec­u­la­tion.”

    “While exact­ly what hap­pened beneath the waters of the Baltic Sea in Sep­tem­ber 2022 is still unclear, what­ev­er caused the inci­dent, its fall­out counts among the many risks the inva­sion of Ukraine has unleashed,” she said.

    Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Sachs, an econ­o­mist who said he was appear­ing before the coun­cil on his own behalf, said the con­se­quences of the sab­o­tage were “enor­mous” not only from the eco­nom­ic loss­es but in the height­ened threat to all cross-bor­der infra­struc­ture includ­ing under­sea inter­net cables and off­shore wind farms.

    “It is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil to take up the ques­tion of who might have car­ried out the act in order to bring the per­pe­tra­tor to inter­na­tion­al jus­tice, to pur­sue com­pen­sa­tion for the dam­aged par­ties and to pre­vent future such actions,” he said.

    Sachs said the destruc­tion of the pipelines “required a very high degree of plan­ning, exper­tise and tech­no­log­i­cal capac­i­ty,” and to do so in the exclu­sive eco­nom­ic zones of Den­mark and Swe­den “adds great­ly to the com­plex­i­ty of the oper­a­tion.”

    “Only a hand­ful of state lev­el actors have both the tech­ni­cal capac­i­ty and access to the Baltic Sea to have car­ried out this action includ­ing the Unit­ed States, Rus­sia, the Unit­ed King­dom, Poland, Nor­way, Ger­many, Den­mark and Swe­den, either indi­vid­u­al­ly or in some com­bi­na­tion,” Sachs said. “Ukraine lacks the nec­es­sary tech­nolo­gies as well as access to the Baltic Sea.”

    In their let­ter to the coun­cil, Den­mark, Swe­den and Ger­many reit­er­at­ed that acts of sab­o­tage against the pipelines were “unac­cept­able, endan­ger inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty and give cause for our deep con­cern.”

    They added that con­cerns about the indi­rect effects on green­house gas emis­sions are ”sub­stan­tial and wor­ri­some.”

    ...

    ———–

    “Rus­sia and West clash over probe of Nord Stream sab­o­tage” By EDITH M. LEDERER; Asso­ci­at­ed Press; 02/21/2023

    Russia’s Neben­zia said Moscow hasn’t been allowed to join inves­ti­ga­tions by any of the three coun­tries, say­ing they “are not only not trans­par­ent, but it is quite clear that they seek just to cov­er the tracks and stick up for their ... Amer­i­can broth­er.””

    Yes, while Rus­si­a’s pipeline was attacked, it has­n’t been allowed to actu­al inves­ti­gate. That role is left up to Swe­den, Den­mark, and Ger­many, and they aren’t talk­ing. Hence the calls for a UN inves­ti­ga­tion. A call that U.N. polit­i­cal chief Rose­mary DiCar­lo did­n’t sound par­tic­u­lar­ly recep­tive towards:

    ...
    Ahead of the meet­ing, the ambas­sadors of Den­mark, Swe­den and Ger­many sent a let­ter to coun­cil mem­bers say­ing their inves­ti­ga­tions have estab­lished the pipelines were exten­sive­ly dam­aged “by pow­er­ful explo­sions due to sab­o­tage.”

    The let­ter, cir­cu­lat­ed Tues­day morn­ing, said fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tions are being con­duct­ed in all three coun­tries and that it’s unclear when they will fin­ish. It says Russ­ian author­i­ties have been informed about the inves­ti­ga­tions.

    But Russia’s deputy U.N. ambas­sador Dmit­ry Polyan­sky told reporters: “They are claim­ing that they are inform­ing Rus­sia about it which is not true ... Any attempt for us to get any infor­ma­tion was reject­ed by them or ignored.”

    Rus­sia cir­cu­lat­ed a draft res­o­lu­tion to coun­cil mem­bers late last week ask­ing the U.N. sec­re­tary-gen­er­al to urgent­ly estab­lish a com­mis­sion to inves­ti­gate the Nord Stream attacks. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil experts held closed con­sul­ta­tions Mon­day on the pro­posed res­o­lu­tion and coun­cil diplo­mats said there was oppo­si­tion to it.

    ...

    U.N. polit­i­cal chief Rose­mary DiCar­lo briefed the Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, say­ing the U.N. is not in a posi­tion to ver­i­fy any claims relat­ing to the explo­sions and urg­ing “all con­cerned to show restraint and avoid any spec­u­la­tion.”

    “While exact­ly what hap­pened beneath the waters of the Baltic Sea in Sep­tem­ber 2022 is still unclear, what­ev­er caused the inci­dent, its fall­out counts among the many risks the inva­sion of Ukraine has unleashed,” she said.
    ...

    And that brings us to the appear­ance by Jef­frey Sachs before the Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, echo­ing both the calls for an inde­pen­dent UN inves­ti­ga­tion but also point­ing the fin­ger at the US. It’s an appear­ance that would have been some­what sur­pris­ing had Sachs not already tak­en the sur­pris­ing stance of declar­ing the ori­gin of COVID as hav­ing like­ly come from a US lab. Still, it’s remark­able:

    ...
    Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Sachs, an econ­o­mist who said he was appear­ing before the coun­cil on his own behalf, said the con­se­quences of the sab­o­tage were “enor­mous” not only from the eco­nom­ic loss­es but in the height­ened threat to all cross-bor­der infra­struc­ture includ­ing under­sea inter­net cables and off­shore wind farms.

    “It is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil to take up the ques­tion of who might have car­ried out the act in order to bring the per­pe­tra­tor to inter­na­tion­al jus­tice, to pur­sue com­pen­sa­tion for the dam­aged par­ties and to pre­vent future such actions,” he said.

    Sachs said the destruc­tion of the pipelines “required a very high degree of plan­ning, exper­tise and tech­no­log­i­cal capac­i­ty,” and to do so in the exclu­sive eco­nom­ic zones of Den­mark and Swe­den “adds great­ly to the com­plex­i­ty of the oper­a­tion.”

    “Only a hand­ful of state lev­el actors have both the tech­ni­cal capac­i­ty and access to the Baltic Sea to have car­ried out this action includ­ing the Unit­ed States, Rus­sia, the Unit­ed King­dom, Poland, Nor­way, Ger­many, Den­mark and Swe­den, either indi­vid­u­al­ly or in some com­bi­na­tion,” Sachs said. “Ukraine lacks the nec­es­sary tech­nolo­gies as well as access to the Baltic Sea.”
    ...

    And as Sach’s full speech — pub­lished by Con­sor­tium News — makes clear, Sachs was cit­ing Her­sh’s report when mak­ing this call of an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion, not­ing that the report is the only detailed account­ing of what hap­pened to date:

    Con­sor­tium News

    WATCH: UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Nord Stream Attack

    Feb­ru­ary 21, 2023

    Ray McGov­ern and Jef­fery Sachs addressed the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil Tues­day on the Nord Stream pipelines sab­o­tage in light of Sy Hersh’s report­ing.

    The Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil meet­ing was called by Rus­sia after Sey­mour Hersh’s report point­ed to the U.S. and Nor­way as the cul­prits.

    [see video of Ray McGov­ern’s UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil address]

    [see video of Jef­frey Sach’s UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil address]

    My name is Jef­frey Sachs. I am a uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. I’m a spe­cial­ist in the glob­al econ­o­my, includ­ing glob­al trade, finance, infra­struc­ture and eco­nom­ic state­craft. I have appeared before the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil on my own behalf. I rep­re­sent no gov­ern­ment or orga­ni­za­tion in the tes­ti­mo­ny that I will deliv­er. The destruc­tion of the Nord Stream pipelines on Sep­tem­ber 26th, 2022, con­sti­tutes an act of inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism and rep­re­sents a threat to the peace.

    It is the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil to take up the ques­tion of who might have car­ried out the act in order to bring the per­pe­tra­tor to inter­na­tion­al jus­tice to pur­sue com­pen­sa­tion for the dam­aged par­ties and to pre­vent future such actions. The con­se­quences of the destruc­tion of the Nord Stream pipelines are enor­mous. They include not only the vast eco­nom­ic loss­es relat­ed to the pipelines them­selves and their future poten­tial use, but also the height­ened threat to tran­sit bound­ary infra­struc­ture of all kinds sub­ma­rine Inter­net cables, inter­na­tion­al pipelines for gas and hydro­gen trans­bound­ary pow­er trans­mis­sion, off­shore wind farms and more.

    ...

    The Nord Stream 2 pipelines, some 1200 kilo­me­ters in length, con­tained around 200,000 pipes. The pipelines sit on the sea floor. Destroy­ing a pipeline of heavy rolled steel encased in con­crete at depths of 70 to 90 meters requires a high­ly advanced tech­nol­o­gy for trans­porta­tion of the explo­sives. Div­ing to install the explo­sives and det­o­na­tion to do so unde­tect­ed in the exclu­sive eco­nom­ic zones of Den­mark and Swe­den adds great­ly to the com­plex­i­ty of the oper­a­tion.

    As a num­ber of senior offi­cials have pub­licly con­firmed, an action of this sort must have been car­ried out by a state lev­el actor. Only a hand­ful of state lev­el actors have both the tech­ni­cal capac­i­ty and access to the Baltic Sea to have car­ried out this action, includ­ing the Unit­ed States, Rus­sia, the Unit­ed King­dom, Poland, Nor­way, Ger­many, Den­mark and Swe­den, either indi­vid­u­al­ly or in some com­bi­na­tion.

    Ukraine lacks the nec­es­sary tech­nolo­gies, as well as access to the Baltic Sea. A recent report by the Wash­ing­ton Post revealed that the intel­li­gence agen­cies of the NATO coun­tries have pri­vate­ly con­clud­ed that there is no evi­dence what­so­ev­er that Rus­sia car­ried out this action. This also com­ports with the fact that Rus­sia had no obvi­ous motive to car­ry out this act of ter­ror­ism on its own crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture.

    Indeed, Rus­sia is like­ly to bear con­sid­er­able expens­es to repair the pipelines. Three coun­tries have report­ed­ly car­ried out inves­ti­ga­tions of the Nord Stream ter­ror­ism. Den­mark, Ger­many and Swe­den. These coun­tries pre­sum­ably know much more about the cir­cum­stances of the ter­ror­ist attack. Swe­den in par­tic­u­lar, has per­haps the most to tell the world about the crime scene, which its divers inves­ti­gat­ed. Yet instead of shar­ing this infor­ma­tion glob­al­ly, Swe­den has kept the results of its inves­ti­ga­tion secret from the rest of the world.

    Swe­den has refused to share its find­ings with Rus­sia and turned down a joint inves­ti­ga­tion with Den­mark and Ger­many in the inter­est of glob­al peace. The U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil should require these coun­tries to imme­di­ate­ly turn over the results of their inves­ti­ga­tions to the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil. There is only one detailed account to date of the Nord Stream destruc­tion. The one recent­ly put for­ward by inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Sey­mour Hersh, osten­si­bly based on infor­ma­tion leaked to Hersh by an unnamed source. Hersh attrib­ut­es the Nord Stream destruc­tion to a deci­sion ordered by U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and car­ried out by U.S. agents in a covert oper­a­tion that Hersh describes in detail.

    The White House has described Hersh’s account as, quote, com­plete­ly and utter­ly false, unquote, but did not offer any infor­ma­tion con­tra­dict­ing Hersh’s account and did not offer any alter­na­tive expla­na­tion. Senior U.S. offi­cials made state­ments before and after the Nord Stream destruc­tion that showed the U.S. ani­mus towards the pipelines. On Jan­u­ary 27th, 2022, Under­sec­re­tary of State Vic­to­ria Nuland tweet­ed, quote, If Rus­sia invades Ukraine one way or anoth­er, Nord Stream two will not move for­ward, end quote.

    On Feb­ru­ary 7th, Pres­i­dent Biden said, quote, If Rus­sia invades again, then there will be no longer Nord Stream 2 We will bring an end to it. End quote. When asked by the reporter how he would do that, he respond­ed, quote, I promise you, we will be able to do it. End quote. On Sep­tem­ber 30th, 2022, imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the ter­ror­ist attack on the pipeline, Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken declared that the destruc­tion of the pipeline is, quote, also a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty.

    It’s a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty to once and for all remove the depen­dance on Russ­ian ener­gy, and that’s to take away from Vladimir Putin the weaponiza­tion of ener­gy as a means of advanc­ing his impe­r­i­al design. End quote. On Jan­u­ary 28th, 2023, Under­sec­re­tary Nuland declared, in tes­ti­mo­ny to Sen­a­tor Ted Cruz in the U.S. Sen­ate, quote, I am, and I think the admin­is­tra­tion is very grat­i­fied to know that Nord Stream 2 is now, as you like to say, a hunk of met­al at the bot­tom of the sea.

    End quote. Such lan­guage is not at all appro­pri­ate in the face of inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism. I hope that the Unit­ed States, togeth­er with all oth­er Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil mem­bers, will con­demn this act of inter­na­tion­al ter­ror­ism and join togeth­er in an urgent U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil led inves­ti­ga­tion of this inter­na­tion­al crime in order to deter­mine the truth. The truth is not yet known by the world, but it is know­able more than ever.

    The world depends on the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil to do its work to stop the esca­la­tion to a new world war. The world will be safe only when the per­ma­nent mem­bers work togeth­er diplo­mat­i­cal­ly to solve glob­al crises, includ­ing the war in Ukraine and the ris­ing ten­sions in East Asia. The U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil pro­vides the unique glob­al venue for that peace affirm­ing work.

    More than ever, we need a healthy, func­tion­ing U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil car­ry­ing out the mis­sion assigned to it by the U.N. Char­ter. A U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil objec­tive inves­ti­ga­tion of the Nord Stream 2 ter­ror­ism, in which all coun­tries con­tribute what they know, is impor­tant for the glob­al con­fi­dence in this body and most impor­tant­ly, for glob­al peace and sus­tain­able devel­op­ment. Thank you very much.

    ———-

    “WATCH: UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil on Nord Stream Attack”; Con­sor­tium News; 02/21/2023

    “Swe­den has refused to share its find­ings with Rus­sia and turned down a joint inves­ti­ga­tion with Den­mark and Ger­many in the inter­est of glob­al peace. The U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil should require these coun­tries to imme­di­ate­ly turn over the results of their inves­ti­ga­tions to the U.N. Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil. There is only one detailed account to date of the Nord Stream destruc­tion. The one recent­ly put for­ward by inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Sey­mour Hersh, osten­si­bly based on infor­ma­tion leaked to Hersh by an unnamed source. Hersh attrib­ut­es the Nord Stream destruc­tion to a deci­sion ordered by U.S. Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and car­ried out by U.S. agents in a covert oper­a­tion that Hersh describes in detail.

    As we can see, Pro­fes­sor Sachs explic­it­ly cit­ed Sy Her­sh’s report, not­ing that it is the only detailed account of what hap­pened to date. Yes, Swe­den, Den­mark, and Ger­many all have ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions. Inves­ti­ga­tions with still secret con­clu­sions.

    And as Sachs also not­ed in his speech, it’s Swe­den in par­tic­u­lar that like­ly has the most to share in the inves­ti­ga­tion. And yet, as we’ve seen, Swe­den has already declared that it will not share the results of its inves­ti­ga­tion with any­one. And then there’s the fact that Hersh has sub­se­quent­ly revealed that only 6 out of the 8 C4 bombs actu­al­ly went off, sug­gest­ing there could have been some very incrim­i­nat­ing evi­dence left behind:

    ...
    As a num­ber of senior offi­cials have pub­licly con­firmed, an action of this sort must have been car­ried out by a state lev­el actor. Only a hand­ful of state lev­el actors have both the tech­ni­cal capac­i­ty and access to the Baltic Sea to have car­ried out this action, includ­ing the Unit­ed States, Rus­sia, the Unit­ed King­dom, Poland, Nor­way, Ger­many, Den­mark and Swe­den, either indi­vid­u­al­ly or in some com­bi­na­tion.

    Ukraine lacks the nec­es­sary tech­nolo­gies, as well as access to the Baltic Sea. A recent report by the Wash­ing­ton Post revealed that the intel­li­gence agen­cies of the NATO coun­tries have pri­vate­ly con­clud­ed that there is no evi­dence what­so­ev­er that Rus­sia car­ried out this action. This also com­ports with the fact that Rus­sia had no obvi­ous motive to car­ry out this act of ter­ror­ism on its own crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture.

    Indeed, Rus­sia is like­ly to bear con­sid­er­able expens­es to repair the pipelines. Three coun­tries have report­ed­ly car­ried out inves­ti­ga­tions of the Nord Stream ter­ror­ism. Den­mark, Ger­many and Swe­den. These coun­tries pre­sum­ably know much more about the cir­cum­stances of the ter­ror­ist attack. Swe­den in par­tic­u­lar, has per­haps the most to tell the world about the crime scene, which its divers inves­ti­gat­ed. Yet instead of shar­ing this infor­ma­tion glob­al­ly, Swe­den has kept the results of its inves­ti­ga­tion secret from the rest of the world.
    ...

    So with Pro­fes­sor Sachs cit­ing Her­sh’s report to make a call for a UN-spon­sored inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion, here’s a reminder that this isn’t the first time we’ve heard Pro­fes­sor Sachs point the fin­ger at the US over the attacks. In fact, he made these same sug­ges­tions back in Octo­ber, days after the attack, dur­ing a Bloomberg inter­view that ulti­mate­ly got cut short after Sachs went ‘off script’:

    news.com.au

    US pro­fes­sor hauled off air over Nord Stream pipeline accu­sa­tion

    A renowned pro­fes­sor has accused the US of sab­o­tag­ing the Nord Stream pipeline, prompt­ing tele­vi­sion hosts to pull the pin on his inter­view.

    Alex Blair
    Octo­ber 5, 2022 — 10:16AM

    A pro­fes­sor has accused the US of sab­o­tag­ing the Nord Stream pipeline in the Baltic Sea, prompt­ing tele­vi­sion hosts to pull the pin on his TV inter­view.

    Speak­ing with Bloomberg, Pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Sachs float­ed the idea the pipeline, which has been at the cen­tre of a glob­al “who­dunit” saga in recent weeks, was struck by the US — not Vladimir Putin’s forces — as a means of doing dam­age to Rus­sia beyond eco­nom­ic sanc­tions.

    ...

    West­ern ana­lysts have so far most­ly point­ed the fin­ger at Rus­sia as being respon­si­ble for the sab­o­tage.

    Prof Sachs — a world renowned econ­o­mist and senior UN advi­sor — was crit­i­cised for echo­ing a claim made by Russ­ian author­i­ties.

    “A lot of the world is watch­ing these events in hor­ror,” Prof Sachs said.

    “They view this as a hor­ri­ble clash between Rus­sia and the US. They don‘t see this, as we do in the media, as an unpro­voked attack by Rus­sia on Ukraine.

    “Most of the world doesn‘t see it the way we describe it. Most of the world is just ter­ri­fied right now, frankly.

    “I would bet (the explo­sion) was a US action, per­haps US and Poland,” he said.

    Bloomberg host Tom Keene quick­ly inter­ject­ed, ask­ing Prof Sachs to pro­duce evi­dence for his claims.

    “Jeff, we’ve got to stop there,” he said. “Why do you feel that was a US action? What evi­dence do you have of that?”

    Prof Sachs said radars detect­ing US heli­copters in the area, cou­pled with key state­ments made by the White House regard­ing Russia’s stran­gle­hold on Euro­pean ener­gy sup­plies, led him to make the con­clu­sion.

    “Well, first, there is direct radar evi­dence that US mil­i­tary heli­copters that are nor­mal­ly based in Gdan­sk were cir­cling over this area,” Sachs said.

    “We also had the threat from (Joe Biden) ear­li­er this year that ‘one way or anoth­er we are going to end Nord Stream’.

    “We also had a remark­able state­ment from Sec­re­tary of State Blinken last Fri­day in a press con­fer­ence where he said ‘this is also a tremen­dous oppor­tu­ni­ty’.

    “That’s a strange way to talk if you’re wor­ried about pira­cy on inter­na­tion­al infra­struc­ture of vital sig­nif­i­cance.”

    Pro­fes­sor Sachs on Bloomberg says US did Nord­stream and explains evi­dence, then gets yanked off the air...??sound ??#Nord­StreamSab­o­tage #NordStream2 #nord­streampipeline pic.twitter.com/2aULsrxUbW— Wall Street Sil­ver (@WallStreetSilv) Octo­ber 3, 2022

    Speak­ing in Feb­ru­ary, weeks before Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine, Pres­i­dent Biden promised the US would “bring an end” to the Nord Stream 2 nat­ur­al gas pipeline if Rus­sia cross the bor­der.

    “If Rus­sia invades – that means tanks or troops cross­ing the bor­der of Ukraine – then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it,” Pres­i­dent Biden said at the time.

    Sachs acknowl­edged his take “runs counter to our nar­ra­tive” in the US and accused his nation’s media of neglect­ing the issue.

    “I know it runs counter to our nar­ra­tive, you‘re not allowed to say these things in the West, but the fact of the mat­ter is all over the world when I talk to peo­ple, they think the US did it,” he said.

    “Even reporters on our papers that are involved tell me ‘of course’ (the US did it), but it doesn’t show up in our media.”

    Sachs’ accu­sa­tion came as Ger­many announced it will form a joint inves­ti­ga­tion unit with Den­mark and Swe­den to probe the appar­ent “sab­o­tage” against the under­wa­ter pipelines from Rus­sia.

    Ger­man Chan­cel­lor Olaf Scholz said Fri­day that Berlin would “sup­port the joint inves­ti­ga­tion” of the inci­dent with Den­mark and Swe­den, in a video call with coun­ter­parts from both coun­tries.

    Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter Nan­cy Faeser told the week­ly Bild am Son­ntag news­pa­per that she had agreed with her fel­low inte­ri­or min­is­ters that the work would be con­duct­ed by a “joint inves­ti­ga­tion team under EU law” with staff from the three coun­tries.

    “All indi­ca­tions point to an act of sab­o­tage against the North Stream pipelines,” she was quot­ed as say­ing.

    She added the team would bring in exper­tise from “the navy, police and intel­li­gence ser­vices”.

    Author­i­ties are prac­ti­cis­ing “increased vig­i­lance” to pro­tect Germany’s ener­gy infra­struc­ture but said there were “no con­crete threat indi­ca­tions for Ger­man sites — as of now”.

    Faeser had told the dai­ly Sued­deutsche Zeitung Fri­day that Ger­man police were patrolling the North and Baltic Seas with “all avail­able forces” fol­low­ing the explo­sions, in co-oper­a­tion with neigh­bour­ing coun­tries.

    Swedish author­i­ties have since blocked off the area around the Nord Stream pipeline while the sus­pect­ed sab­o­tage was inves­ti­gat­ed.

    In order to fur­ther the inves­ti­ga­tion into “aggra­vat­ed sab­o­tage,” the pros­e­cu­tor in charge had decid­ed “to block off the area in order to do a crime scene inves­ti­ga­tion,” the Swedish Pros­e­cu­tion Author­i­ty said in a state­ment.

    “The inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues, we are at an inten­sive stage... I under­stand the con­sid­er­able pub­lic inter­est, but we are in the ear­ly stages of a pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion and I can there­fore not com­ment on details about which inves­ti­ga­to­ry mea­sures we are tak­ing.”

    ———–

    “US pro­fes­sor hauled off air over Nord Stream pipeline accu­sa­tion” by Alex Blair; news.com.au; 10/05/2022

    “Speak­ing with Bloomberg, Pro­fes­sor Jef­frey Sachs float­ed the idea the pipeline, which has been at the cen­tre of a glob­al “who­dunit” saga in recent weeks, was struck by the US — not Vladimir Putin’s forces — as a means of doing dam­age to Rus­sia beyond eco­nom­ic sanc­tions.”

    As we can see, Pro­fes­sor Sach­s’s sus­pi­cions about the cul­prit behind the Nord Stream attack isn’t new. He was mak­ing these same obser­va­tions in the days fol­low­ing the attack, result­ing in at least one TV inter­view get­ting cut short.

    But it’s also worth not­ing one poten­tial­ly sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence in the obser­va­tions Sachs was mak­ing back in Octo­ber com­pared to the account described in the Hersh report: Sachs referred to reports of radar show­ing US heli­copters oper­at­ing in the area around where the bombs were plant­ed in the days lead­ing up to the explo­sions. Recall how Scott Rit­ter referred to these same reports. Her­sh’s account, on the oth­er hand, described the use of Nor­we­gian heli­copters to actu­al­ly drop the sonar buoys to trig­ger the bombs. These aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mutu­al­ly exclu­sive sce­nar­ios. But it’s one incon­sis­ten­cy to keep in eye on as this inves­ti­ga­tion unfolds:

    ...
    Bloomberg host Tom Keene quick­ly inter­ject­ed, ask­ing Prof Sachs to pro­duce evi­dence for his claims.

    “Jeff, we’ve got to stop there,” he said. “Why do you feel that was a US action? What evi­dence do you have of that?”

    Prof Sachs said radars detect­ing US heli­copters in the area, cou­pled with key state­ments made by the White House regard­ing Russia’s stran­gle­hold on Euro­pean ener­gy sup­plies, led him to make the con­clu­sion.

    “Well, first, there is direct radar evi­dence that US mil­i­tary heli­copters that are nor­mal­ly based in Gdan­sk were cir­cling over this area,” Sachs said.
    ...

    Final­ly, regard­ing Swe­den’s refusal to shared the results of its inves­ti­ga­tion with any­one and the intrigu­ing pos­si­bil­i­ty that two out of eight bombs nev­er explod­ed accord­ing to Her­sh’s source. Note how Swe­den blocked of the area in the imme­di­ate peri­od after the attack. So if there were indeed two bombs still left on the pipeline, that rais­es the ques­tion: did Swe­den remove them before allow­ing Ger­man and Dan­ish inves­ti­ga­tion teams into the area?

    ...
    Swedish author­i­ties have since blocked off the area around the Nord Stream pipeline while the sus­pect­ed sab­o­tage was inves­ti­gat­ed.

    In order to fur­ther the inves­ti­ga­tion into “aggra­vat­ed sab­o­tage,” the pros­e­cu­tor in charge had decid­ed “to block off the area in order to do a crime scene inves­ti­ga­tion,” the Swedish Pros­e­cu­tion Author­i­ty said in a state­ment.

    “The inves­ti­ga­tion con­tin­ues, we are at an inten­sive stage... I under­stand the con­sid­er­able pub­lic inter­est, but we are in the ear­ly stages of a pre­lim­i­nary inves­ti­ga­tion and I can there­fore not com­ment on details about which inves­ti­ga­to­ry mea­sures we are tak­ing.”
    ...

    And that ques­tion of whether or not Swe­den secret­ly removed any unex­plod­ed bombs fur­ther rais­es obvi­ous ques­tions about the util­i­ty of a UN inves­ti­ga­tion at this point. The crime scene has already been scrubbed. So real­ly, it’s not so much a new UN inves­ti­ga­tion that’s need­ed at this point but rather the release of what­ev­er Swe­den already knows. Don’t hold your breath.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | February 22, 2023, 5:38 pm
  28. Who is Ursu­la von der Leyen’s core con­stituen­cy? Whose inter­ests is she serv­ing and what are the inter­est groups that have pro­pelled her mete­oric polit­i­cal ascen­dance? Those are some of the grim­ly fas­ci­nat­ing ques­tions raised in the fol­low­ing Covert Action Mag­a­zine about the excep­tion­al polit­i­cal pedi­gree back­ground of the cur­rent EU Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent. Because Ursu­la isn’t just the scion of two promi­nent Ger­man aris­to­crat­ic dynas­ties. She’s also the daugh­ter of for­mer CDU leader Ernst Albrecht. And as we’re going to see, Ernst turns out to be a kind of poster-child for the utter fail­ure of any real ‘de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion’ of post-war Ger­many. While Ernst, born in 1930, was just a child dur­ing WWII, he was a full grown in adult in 1958 when he got his first polit­i­cal job at the Euro­pean Coal and Steel Com­mis­sion (now the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion) as the chief of staff for Euro­pean Com­mis­sion­er for Com­pe­ti­tion Hans von der Groeben. Ernst held this role until 1967, when Ernst was pro­mot­ed to the role of the Com­mis­sion’s Direc­tor of Com­pe­ti­tion.

    So who was Hans von der Groeben? Well, it turns out he was a WWII deputy deputy for the Reich Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture under the com­mand of fanat­i­cal Richard Walther Dar­ré, the even­tu­al head of both the SS Race and Reset­tle­ment Office and lat­er the Reich Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture and archi­tect of the Nazi “blood and soil” vision for a new Aryan aris­toc­ra­cy. Togeth­er with Hans von der Groeben, Dar­ré imple­ment­ed what was known as the Hunger Plan to feed the Reich using slave labor on con­quered ter­ri­to­ries. Yes, Dar­ré’s deputy in exe­cut­ing the Hunger Plan was Ern­st’s Albrecht’s boss at the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. It turns out you could be a deputy for that guy, help him imple­ment a mass slave pro­gram, and end up a mem­ber of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion 15 years lat­er. And what was Dar­ré’s pun­ish­ment? Get­ting sen­tences to sev­en years in prison and serv­ing only three before get­ting released. That’s part of the sto­ry here.

    But Ernst was­n’t just rub­bing shoul­ders with ex-Nazis at the EC. After get­ting elect­ed gov­er­nor of Low­er Sax­ony in 1970, Ernst, then a CDU par­ty leader, pro­ceed­ed to woo new mem­bers to the par­ty. In par­tic­u­lar, almost all of the mem­bers of the neo-Nazi Deutsche Reichspartei (DRP) par­ty, whose mem­bers prac­tice “Eso­teric Hit­lerism”. Beyond that, Ernst select­ed as his Jus­tice Min­is­ter Hans Puvo­gel, a fanat­i­cal Nazi who used his legal knowl­edge as a lawyer dur­ing WWII to jus­ti­fy the exter­mi­na­tion of Nazi racial ene­mies. Puvo­gel even argued for the mass euthana­sia and ster­il­iza­tion of all infe­ri­or races as a way of solv­ing the Nazi “race prob­lem” in his doc­tor­al the­sis. That was who Ernst select­ed as his Jus­tice Min­is­ter.

    In 1978, Puvo­gel was even­tu­al­ly forced to resign after his Nazi past was exposed. But not before the Celle Hole scan­dal, a 1978 false flag attack on a Ger­man prison con­coct­ed by the Low­er Sax­ony pol­i­cy. The attack was appar­ent­ly intend­ed to frame the Red Army Fac­tion (RAF) and jus­ti­fy a wors­en­ing of prison con­di­tions for RAF pris­on­ers. The whole affair was even­tu­al­ly exposed and hushed up, but there was always the ques­tion of what exact­ly the motive was, with per­sis­tent rumors that Ernst was dri­ven by fears of an RAF kid­nap­ping plot tar­get­ing Ursu­la. Why would the RAF have a pos­si­ble motive to kid­nap Ern­st’s daugh­ter? In retal­i­a­tion for Ern­st’s Nazi sym­pa­thies, accord­ing to the rumor. Who knows of there’s any truth to those rumors, but the fact that Ursu­la went off to attend the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics under the assumed name of Rose Lad­son to con­ceal her iden­ti­ty indi­cates the rumors were tak­en very seri­ous­ly.

    Flash for­ward to Ursu­la’s own turn in pol­i­tics and we find some­one who keeps get­ting pro­mot­ed no mat­ter what. Ursu­la got her polit­i­cal start with a defeat in a region­al CDU elec­tion pri­ma­ry in 2003. That expe­ri­ence was appar­ent­ly enough to earn her the role of Min­is­ter of Labor and Fam­i­ly Affairs when Angela Merkel select­ed Ursu­la for the role in 2005 despite a near com­plete lack of expe­ri­ence. In 2013, Merkel again pro­mot­ed Ursu­la to the role of Defense Min­is­ter. As we’ve seen, it was in that role as Ger­many’s Defense Min­ster that Ursu­la became a cham­pi­on for the idea of an ‘EU Army’.

    But as we’ve also seen, Ursu­la’s time as Defense Min­is­ter also includ­ed the grow­ing scan­dal of the Naz­i­fi­ca­tion of the KSK spe­cial forces unit and relat­ed far right plots against the gov­ern­ment. Beyond that, as the arti­cle below describes, that was the “con­sul­tant affair”, where Ursu­la effec­tive­ly gave McK­in­sey Con­sult­ing group half a bil­lion dol­lars to ‘reform’ the defense min­istry. It was far from a smooth tenure. But despite that, Ursu­la man­aged to get nom­i­nat­ed as Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion in 2019, a deci­sion that over­ruled seri­ous mis­giv­ings from Ger­man law­mak­ers and the Ger­many pub­lic at the time. In fact, polls in 2019 showed a major­i­ty of Ger­mans saw her as unfit for the role. But she got it.

    Oh, and sur­prise, she’s still a fan of the ‘EU Army’ con­cept in her new role as Com­mis­sion Pres­i­dent, all the more so thanks to the con­flict in Ukraine. Ursu­la may not be super pop­u­lar with her domes­tic con­stituen­cy in Ger­many, but you can be pret­ty con­fi­dent she’s very pop­u­lar with the EU’s mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex.

    It’s that sor­did polit­i­cal pedi­gree that pos­es the ques­tion: who is Ursu­la von der Leyen’s core polit­i­cal con­stituen­cy? She’s got ‘juice’. Clear­ly. It’s just not clear who makes up that con­stituen­cy. Which is part of what makes her fam­i­ly’s his­to­ry of run­ning cov­er for ‘ex’-Nazis so grim­ly fas­ci­nat­ing: she’s clear­ly got big fans in Ger­many’s ‘deep state’. A ‘deep state’ built upon a failed process of de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion that her father helped fos­ter:

    Covert Action Mag­a­zine

    Ukraine Hawk Who Heads Euro­pean Com­mis­sion Has a Nazi Pedi­gree She Does Not Want You to Know About

    By Evan Reif -
    Feb­ru­ary 17, 2023

    Her father Ernst Albrecht, Pres­i­dent of the Ger­man state of Low­er Sax­ony from 1978 to 1990, brought unre­ha­bil­i­tat­ed Nazis into his admin­is­tra­tion and car­ried out a black-flag ter­ror­ist oper­a­tion designed to dis­cred­it the left-wing Red Army Fac­tion.

    In the wake of the Rus­so-Ukrain­ian war, terms like “Euro­pean val­ues” have come back into the main­stream. One of the peo­ple who has been most respon­si­ble for this is Ursu­la von der Leyen, the pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion who is now a near­ly omnipresent fig­ure in the media.

    [See Ursu­la von der Leyen quote]

    Accord­ing to Ursu­la, “Euro­pean val­ues” rep­re­sent only the high­est attrib­ut­es of humankind: free­dom, jus­tice, sol­i­dar­i­ty, and rule of law.

    Of course, any­one with even a pass­ing knowl­edge of his­to­ry can tell you that these are noth­ing but euphemisms. Not long ago, “Euro­pean val­ues” meant some­thing very dif­fer­ent. Those val­ues drew the bor­ders of the world in oceans of blood, both of Euro­peans and those they con­quered. A look at the his­to­ry of Ursula’s aris­to­crat­ic Euro­pean fam­i­ly can show us the true face of these “Euro­pean val­ues” and how the rul­ing class prof­it­ed from impos­ing them on the world.

    Sins of the Father

    If we suc­ceed in bring­ing peo­ple of above-aver­age capa­bil­i­ties to gov­er­nance an autoc­ra­cy or the rule of the few will be able to cre­ate a bet­ter order than the rule of the peo­ple.” – Ernst Albrecht

    Ursu­la von der Leyen is the scion of two aris­to­crat­ic Ger­man fam­i­lies. She was born Ursu­la Albrecht, the daugh­ter of a promi­nent Euro­pean bureau­crat, CDU par­ty leader, and for­mer gov­er­nor of Low­er Sax­ony, Ernst Albrecht. The fam­i­ly care­ful­ly nur­tured a cos­mopoli­tan image as Ernst spent most of his life work­ing for the EU and var­i­ous pre­cur­sor orga­ni­za­tions. Grow­ing up, Ursu­la was nick­named “Röschen” (Rosie in Eng­lish) by her father, and images of the hap­py fam­i­ly fea­tured heav­i­ly in her father’s polit­i­cal adver­tise­ments.

    The Albrecht fam­i­ly made its for­tune by using its posi­tion as cus­toms enforcers in the Holy Roman Empire to dom­i­nate the cot­ton mar­kets of 19th-cen­tu­ry Bre­men and, from there, the name Albrecht has been a fix­ture through­out Ger­man his­to­ry.

    As is typ­i­cal for bour­geois Ger­mans, the oth­er­wise exhaus­tive­ly doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of the Albrecht fam­i­ly has a mys­te­ri­ous gap between 1936 and 1945. To avoid uncom­fort­able ques­tions about where their pow­er and mon­ey came from and what they did to earn it, the House of Albrecht, like so many oth­ers, is con­tent to pre­tend the Nazi regime sim­ply nev­er exist­ed. Since we will nev­er have answers, per­haps if we raise a light to what sur­rounds this void, the shad­ow it casts can show us the true shape of the “Euro­pean val­ues” Ursu­la is so fond of.

    To begin, we can look at Ernst’s first job in pol­i­tics, with the Euro­pean Coal and Steel Com­mis­sion under the direc­tion of anoth­er aris­to­crat, Hans von der Groeben.

    Hans was already a long-time bureau­crat by this point. Dur­ing the war, he worked as a deputy for the Reich Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture under the com­mand of Richard Walther Dar­ré. Dar­ré was a fanat­i­cal Nazi, writ­ing his first fas­cist pro­pa­gan­da in 1926 and join­ing the Nazi Par­ty in 1930.

    He soon joined the SS and his loy­al­ty and ded­i­ca­tion to the cause led Hein­rich Himm­ler to per­son­al­ly select Ober­grup­pen­führer Dar­ré as head of both the SS Race and Reset­tle­ment Office and lat­er the Reich Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture. Dar­ré was one of the party’s lead­ing ide­ol­o­gists, and he com­bined the tasks of the agri­cul­tur­al and race offices to set the foun­da­tion for Gen­er­alplan Ost, the Nazi plan to exter­mi­nate the entire Slav­ic race and col­o­nize East­ern Europe.

    Dar­ré was the archi­tect of the Nazi “blood and soil” agrar­i­an poli­cies and sought to cre­ate a new land-own­ing “Aryan” aris­toc­ra­cy. He passed laws requir­ing an “Aryan cer­tifi­cate” to inher­it farm­land and was instru­men­tal in Nazi eugen­ics pro­grams, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Lebens­born pro­gram, designed to breed a new gen­er­a­tion of “Aryan” super­men and purge the Ger­man peo­ple of “unde­sir­able blood­lines.”

    [see pho­to of Dar­ré shak­ing hands with Hitler.]

    One of his most promis­ing acolytes was a doc­tor by the name of Josef Men­gele who was put in charge of “racial health” poli­cies with­in the depart­ment. Men­gele would lat­er go on to become the infa­mous angel of death who car­ried out some of the vilest crimes in his­to­ry with his indus­tri­al-scale med­ical exper­i­ments at Auschwitz con­cen­tra­tion camp. Men­gele par­tic­u­lar­ly tar­get­ed chil­dren as his vic­tims and kept them alive for months to gain as much data as pos­si­ble. He nev­er for­got where he came from: Men­gele always cit­ed Dar­ré as inspi­ra­tion for his ideas on “racial hygiene.”

    -After the war, Men­gele escaped jus­tice by flee­ing to Argenti­na and lat­er Brazil on the “rat lines” oper­at­ed by CIA agent, future head of West Ger­man intel­li­gence and unre­formed Nazi Rein­hard Gehlen and was pro­tect­ed under the per­son­al order of CIA Direc­tor Allen Dulles, who viewed Men­gele as a use­ful ally in his war against the USSR. Men­gele died a free man in 1976 and was buried under the name Wolf­gang Ger­hard in São Paulo, Brazil.

    Dar­ré was proud of his work. He wrote thou­sands of pages out­lin­ing his plans in var­i­ous pub­li­ca­tions, and rou­tine­ly gave speech­es inside Nazi Ger­many pro­mot­ing his ideas.

    “By blitzkrieg…before autumn…we shall be the absolute mas­ters of two continents…a new aris­toc­ra­cy of Ger­man mas­ters will be created….[With] slaves assigned to it, these slaves to be their prop­er­ty and to con­sist of land­less, non-Ger­man nation­als…we actu­al­ly have in mind a mod­ern form of medieval slav­ery which we must and will intro­duce because we urgent­ly need it in order to ful­fill our great tasks. These slaves will by no means be denied the bless­ings of illit­er­a­cy; high­er edu­ca­tion will, in future, be reserved only for the Ger­man pop­u­la­tion of Europe…” – Richard Dar­réRichard Dar­ré

    Togeth­er with Hans von der Groeben, they imple­ment­ed what was known as the Hunger Plan to feed the Reich at the expense of con­quered ter­ri­to­ries. Mil­lions of slaves worked on star­va­tion rations, forced to send every morsel of food to the Reich where it would be used to quite lit­er­al­ly sus­tain the Nazi machine which oppressed them. By 1944, more than 15 mil­lion tons of food­stuffs had been req­ui­si­tioned from the USSR, and this led to the inten­tion­al deaths by star­va­tion of more than 10 mil­lion peo­ple. Accord­ing to Darré’s plan, after they had been all been ster­il­ized and starved to death, the Slav­ic “Unter­men­sch” was to be replaced by Darré’s new race of “Aryan” aris­to­crats, ready to use this land for the ben­e­fit of the Reich.

    After the war, Dar­ré was arrest­ed and tried for war crimes at Nurem­berg. He was found guilty, but despite the scope and scale of his crimes, he received a sen­tence of only sev­en years. He served just three of them and was released in 1950. He died of liv­er can­cer in 1953. While this sen­tence was shock­ing­ly lenient, it could have been worse. Hans nev­er saw the inside of the court­room.

    This was very com­mon after the war. The “lib­er­al inter­na­tion­al­ists” such as Allen Dulles, in charge of Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy, were not both­ered by the crimes of the Nazi regime. Indeed, as ear­ly as 1940 Dulles was already argu­ing for an alliance with Nazi Ger­many, and in 1944 was meet­ing with Nazi intel­li­gence to arrange a sep­a­rate peace to use the Nazis as a weapon against the USSR.

    They sought only tri­als for the most egre­gious Nazis and, even then, ensured that their sen­tences were as lenient as pos­si­ble. The rank-and-file of the Nazi regime, the army of peo­ple who phys­i­cal­ly made the Nazi machine do the mur­der­ous work of sub­ju­gat­ing and exter­mi­nat­ing an entire con­ti­nent went almost entire­ly unpun­ished for their crimes.

    In the case of peo­ple like Hans von der Groeben, they were reward­ed with jobs in the new “de-Naz­i­fied” West Ger­man gov­ern­ment. Despite the pre­tens­es of a new Ger­many, only the names changed. The same bureau­crats labored toward the same goal, the destruc­tion of the Sovi­et Union and its peo­ple, by any means nec­es­sary. The state machin­ery once called the Greater Ger­man Reich had now sim­ply been absorbed into a new struc­ture, now called the North Atlantic Treaty Orga­ni­za­tion (NATO).

    Now in the posi­tion of the deputy, Ernst Albrecht took on the same role his boss had in the 1940s, this time with “blood and soil” replaced with “Euro­pean val­ues.”

    Although Ernst Albrecht was a few years too young to have been a Nazi him­self, through­out his long polit­i­cal career he made his sym­pa­thies very clear. Ernst was an elit­ist drip­ping with con­tempt for the com­mon peo­ple and want­ed to bring about what he deemed elite rule in Ger­many as opposed to the rule of the “unin­sight­ful” mob. Giv­en that he nev­er missed a chance to ven­er­ate the Third Reich and its killers, it is very clear whom Ernst con­sid­ered elite.

    The rule of the peo­ple, espe­cial­ly direct rule, is essen­tial­ly such that deci­sions are not deter­mined by the insight of the insight­ful [elite], but rather by the com­mon aver­age lev­el based on the major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion.” – Ernst Albrecht, The State, Idea and Real­i­ty: Out­lines of a Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy

    Dur­ing his time as leader of the Chris­t­ian Demo­c­ra­t­ic Union (one of Germany’s two largest polit­i­cal par­ties) gov­ern­ment of the Ger­man state of Low­er Sax­ony, Ernst suc­cess­ful­ly wooed mem­bers of the neo-Nazi Deutsche Reichspartei (DRP) into the ranks of the CDU. The DRP prac­ticed what was known as Eso­teric Hit­lerism, a bizarre vari­ety of neo-Nazism that claims Hitler is the lit­er­al rein­car­na­tion of the Hin­du god Vish­nu and the “Aryans” of Nazism are the same Aryans who once inhab­it­ed ancient India.

    The ide­ol­o­gy was cre­at­ed by Sav­it­ri Devi, a French-born Nazi spy who had been expelled from Ger­many in 1951 for repeat­ed­ly spread­ing Nazi pro­pa­gan­da and came to the DRP through Devi’s clos­est friend, Nazi pilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel, who was work­ing as an arms deal­er for South Amer­i­can fas­cists and active­ly plot­ting to over­throw the Ger­man gov­ern­ment in favor of a Nazi dic­ta­tor­ship.

    Rudel and Devi believed that, if they suc­ceed­ed in build­ing a new Reich, Hitler would be rein­car­nat­ed once more as the Hin­du god Kal­ki to cleanse all infe­ri­or races and lead the “Aryan” peo­ple to a par­adise called Hyper­borea. Despite this, Albrecht’s CDU absorbed the DRP almost com­plete­ly, as they were wor­ried that the DRP would oth­er­wise erode their vot­er base. The strat­e­gy of kow­tow­ing to Nazis worked, and Albrecht’s CDU gov­erned the region con­tin­u­ous­ly from 1976 to 1990.

    When he came to pow­er, one of the elites Ernst entrust­ed to rule was his jus­tice min­is­ter, a jurist by the name of Hans Puvo­gel. Once again, he picked a fanat­i­cal Nazi. Puvo­gel joined the Sturmabteilung, the para­mil­i­tary arm of the Nazi Par­ty in 1934 and, by 1937, he was a region­al leader in the Ger­man Nazi Par­ty (NSDAP). Puvo­gel used his skills as a lawyer to help jus­ti­fy the exter­mi­na­tion of Nazi racial ene­mies. In his doc­tor­al the­sis, he argued for the mass euthana­sia and ster­il­iza­tion of all infe­ri­or races as a way of solv­ing the Nazi “race prob­lem.”

    When he was exposed in 1978, Puvo­gel lied and said he was in a small right-wing group called Steel Hel­met which was absorbed into the Nazi Par­ty, but main­tained he had no Nazi past. Doc­u­ments released by the Low­er Sax­ony par­lia­ment in 2012 have proven that this was a lie. Puvo­gel nev­er even tried to dis­tance him­self from the con­tents of his dis­ser­ta­tion, and as far as any­one knows he went to the grave a com­mit­ted Nazi. For his part, Ernst Albrecht sim­ply nev­er men­tioned it. The strat­e­gy of sim­ply pre­tend­ing the Third Reich nev­er exist­ed paid off once more as Albrecht him­self faced no real con­se­quences.

    An individual’s worth in the com­mu­ni­ty is mea­sured by his racial per­son­al­i­ty. Only a racial­ly valu­able per­son has the right to exist with­in the com­mu­ni­ty. Some­one who is use­less for the com­mu­ni­ty because of his infe­ri­or­i­ty, or even harm­ful to it, is to be elim­i­nat­ed.” – Hans Puvo­gel

    Ernst did not just work for Nazis, fill his cab­i­net with Nazis and invite Nazis into his par­ty; he also spent a great deal of time court­ing Nazi vot­ers. Ernst and his deputies were fix­tures at Nazi vet­er­an events through­out Low­er Sax­ony.

    Albrecht’s deputy min­is­ter, close friend, and Nazi offi­cer Wil­fried Has­sel­mann even gave the keynote speech at a Knight’s Cross Asso­ci­a­tion din­ner in 1978, in which he ven­er­at­ed the worst killers of Hitler’s Reich as brave and hon­or­able men, whose courage was an exam­ple for future gen­er­a­tions who would be inspired by their “Euro­pean val­ues.”

    Albrecht and Puvo­gel were also involved in a bomb attack known as the Celle Hole scan­dal. On the 25th of July, 1978, a bomb was det­o­nat­ed on the wall of the prison, in Celle, Ger­many. The bomb did not have the desired effect, cre­at­ing only a small hole, and a group of 12 men who were sup­posed to enter the prison were forced to flee. The per­pe­tra­tors escaped, but a Mer­cedes was found loaded with a rub­ber raft, escape tools, a Walther hand­gun, and forged pass­ports, one of which had a pic­ture of jailed left-wing mil­i­tant Sig­urd Debus. Lat­er, tools were plant­ed in Debus’s cell to seal the deal, mak­ing the whole affair seem like a failed escape plan from the Red Army Fac­tion (RAF).

    Albrecht hailed the attacks as a suc­cess­ful oper­a­tion, which he claims stopped a rob­bery and mur­der (he pro­vid­ed no evi­dence for this), and the inci­dent was used to jus­ti­fy the wors­en­ing of con­di­tions for Debus and oth­er jailed RAF mem­bers. The RAF respond­ed with a hunger strike, which even­tu­al­ly led to the death of Debus in 1981.

    How­ev­er, the sto­ry nev­er quite added up. The RAF mem­bers main­tained their inno­cence, and mount­ing pres­sure from lawyers and the pub­lic even­tu­al­ly led to a par­lia­men­tary inquiry in 1986, which found that there was no escape attempt, no rob­bery or mur­der, and that the entire affair was a false-flag attack called Oper­a­tion Fire Mag­ic, planned by the Ger­man Fed­er­al and Low­er Sax­ony police with the approval of Ernst Albrecht. A Low­er Sax­ony police­man even det­o­nat­ed the bomb. Despite this, noth­ing hap­pened to Albrecht or his gov­ern­ment. The embar­rass­ing affair was quick­ly hushed up, and Debus’s death was reduced to lit­tle more than one name on the long list of those who have starved to death for the ben­e­fit of the Albrechts.

    It is still unclear why Ernst Albrecht car­ried out this ter­ror­ist attack against his own coun­try; how­ev­er, it is pos­si­ble that it was linked to per­sis­tent rumors that the RAF was seek­ing to kid­nap his beloved daugh­ter Ursu­la in retal­i­a­tion for Ernst’s Nazi sym­pa­thies. Because of rumors, when Ursu­la enrolled in the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, she did so under the assumed name of Rose Lad­son to con­ceal her iden­ti­ty. That name was not cho­sen at ran­dom. Rather, it is the link to anoth­er time House Albrecht’s “Euro­pean val­ues” were imposed upon the world.

    The Dix­ie Rose

    The reli­gious and moral instruc­tion of the negroes has, for sev­er­al years, been a sub­ject of great inter­est to me, and I am sat­is­fied that our exer­tions in their behalf (although much, very much, yet remains to be done) are not only mis­un­der­stood abroad, but unap­pre­ci­at­ed. To improve the negro is a far more ardu­ous task than many, who have no expe­ri­ence in teach­ing them, are aware. They are nat­u­ral­ly dull, and of a weak intel­lect, but gen­er­al­ly pos­sess­ing good mem­o­ries; and those who have been engaged in this work of char­i­ty, have to lament, after much labour, that the instruc­tion they have endeav­oured to give, although remem­bered, has been per­vert­ed and mis­di­rect­ed. – James H. Lad­son, “The Reli­gious Instruc­tion of the Negroes”

    Ursu­la chose her name after anoth­er branch of her fam­i­ly, the Lad­sons of South Car­oli­na. The Lad­sons were a fam­i­ly of slave traders, plan­ta­tion own­ers and seces­sion­ists. Although the Lad­sons do not bear an aris­to­crat­ic title like Albrecht or von der Leyen, they bore all the same hall­marks of the Euro­pean aris­toc­ra­cy. The Albrecht cot­ton busi­ness brought the fam­i­ly in close con­tact with the Lad­sons and the rela­tion­ship grew until, in 1902, Mary Lad­son-Robert­son mar­ried Carl Albrecht, join­ing the two fam­i­lies by blood.

    ...

    In South Car­oli­na, the Lad­sons con­sol­i­dat­ed their wealth and pow­er, even­tu­al­ly becom­ing one of the most influ­en­tial fam­i­lies in the state, with deep con­nec­tions to finance, pol­i­tics and, of course, slav­ery. Much like the aris­to­crats of Europe, the Lad­sons strength­ened their house through mar­riage to oth­er elite fam­i­lies, most of whom were in the slave trade. Among their ances­tors were men like James Moore, the for­mer gov­er­nor of Car­oli­na who earned his posi­tion through geno­ci­dal raids in which more than 4,000 indige­nous Apalachee peo­ple were tak­en as slaves, even­tu­al­ly lead­ing to the com­plete exter­mi­na­tion of the tribe.

    In the 1790s, the Lad­sons were able to secure their place at the top ech­e­lons of the slave trade through a mar­riage into the Wragg fam­i­ly. Joseph Wragg was the most pro­lif­ic slave trad­er and one of the wealth­i­est men in the Amer­i­c­as. He start­ed out as a cap­tain on slave ships until he earned enough mon­ey to buy his own slave mar­ket and a plan­ta­tion near Charleston. Between 1717 and 1747, at least 10,000 peo­ple were kid­napped from their homes, put in chains, and forced into the dark, over­crowd­ed holds of “Guinea­men” to be sold as chat­tel by Joseph Wragg and com­pa­ny at the Wragg wharf in Wrag­g­borogh, South Car­oli­na.

    ...

    Every Rose Has Its Thorns

    “She has a pro­found Euro­pean cul­ture, she’s born in Brus­sels and is the daugh­ter of a Brus­sels func­tionary so I can say she has the union’s DNA in her.”Emmanuel Macron

    It is not at all unfair to ask where Ursu­la von der Leyen’s family’s mon­ey and pow­er came from, and what they did to earn it, espe­cial­ly giv­en that Ursu­la has ben­e­fit­ted enor­mous­ly from her family’s wealth and con­nec­tions to fur­ther her own career, which can stand on its own as an exam­ple of cor­rup­tion, severe scan­dal, incom­pe­tence and, pos­si­bly, even out­right trea­son. Her time as a politi­cian shows that Ursula’s apple has not fall­en far from the Albrecht fam­i­ly tree.

    Ursu­la first entered pol­i­tics in 2003 when she was defeat­ed via tech­ni­cal­i­ty in a Hanover region­al elec­tion pri­ma­ry by CDU stal­wart Lutz von der Hei­de. This was unac­cept­able for Ursula’s father Ernst, who launched a full-court press along­side his old deputy and Wehrma­cht artillery offi­cer Wil­fried Has­sel­mann.

    The two set to work both cam­paign­ing for Ursu­la and smear­ing her oppo­nent, who had held the seat for more than 15 years at this point. At the time, Ursu­la had a long-run­ning col­umn in far-right tabloid Bild, a news­pa­per found­ed by ex-Nazi pro­pa­gan­dist and CIA asset Axel Springer which has been sanc­tioned dozens of times for vio­la­tions of Ger­man law and, through this, she was able to effec­tive­ly ampli­fy their attacks on von der Hei­de. Soon, all of Ger­many was read­ing the lat­est dirt about a pri­ma­ry for a small region­al elec­tion.

    The cam­paign was deci­sive and, in the sec­ond round of vot­ing, Ursu­la won by a two-thirds major­i­ty. It was a safe seat so, as the new CDU can­di­date, Ursu­la was elect­ed eas­i­ly. Con­sid­er­ing this, it is impos­si­ble to sep­a­rate Ursu­la von der Leyen from her father’s lega­cy.

    Two years lat­er, she was picked by Angela Merkel to serve as Min­is­ter of Labor and Fam­i­ly Affairs, despite her almost non-exis­tent polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence. In this role, she was most­ly not­ed for cut­ting social ser­vices for the blind and try­ing to ban heavy-met­al albums, a resumé that would not seem to jus­ti­fy fur­ther pro­mo­tion.

    Despite this, she was pro­mot­ed to Min­is­ter of Defense in 2013, a move which baf­fled the oppo­si­tion. It was here that the “Euro­pean val­ues” of Ursu­la von der Leyen began to show their shape once more.

    Ursula’s man­date was to expand and increase readi­ness of the Bun­deswehr, and she set about the job with gus­to. She began a con­stant drum­beat for war, argu­ing that the Ger­man army was too small and unpre­pared to face what­ev­er new ene­my she con­jured up on that day. Be it Afghanistan, Iran, Chi­na, Rus­sia or Syr­ia, Ursu­la con­sis­tent­ly advo­cat­ed for more weapons, more war, and more mon­ey. Ursu­la even pro­posed a Ger­man for­eign legion to bol­ster the ranks of the Bun­deswehr, a pro­pos­al that was met with hor­ror and con­dem­na­tion from all sides.

    Almost imme­di­ate­ly, she said that the min­istry required out­side help and hired one of the favorite and most crim­i­nal con­sul­tants of the neo-lib­er­al polit­i­cal class, the CIA-affil­i­at­ed McK­in­sey, for­mer home to such lumi­nar­ies as Susan Rice, Chelsea Clin­ton, Pete Buttigieg and many oth­er politi­cians and busi­ness exec­u­tives of dubi­ous char­ac­ter. McKinsey’s ten­drils reach into gov­ern­ments and cor­po­ra­tions through­out the world, and it exem­pli­fies the “revolv­ing door” among gov­ern­ment, intel­li­gence and big busi­ness.

    It was more than just a con­sul­tan­cy: McK­in­sey was giv­en direct con­trol of the min­istry, with con­sul­tant Katrin Sud­er award­ed a new posi­tion inside the min­istry to “reform the arma­ments sec­tor.” Ursu­la shov­eled near­ly half a bil­lion euros into the cof­fers of McK­in­sey and oth­ers for “con­sult­ing” ser­vices, and received absolute­ly noth­ing in return. The unelect­ed Sud­er was seen so often beside von der Leyen that the oppo­si­tion joked she was Ursula’s new body­guard.

    This brazen cor­rup­tion became known as the con­sul­tant affair” and was so severe that it led to a par­lia­men­tary inquiry, with oppo­si­tion from both the left and right demand­ing answers from von der Leyen. Ursu­la respond­ed most­ly by stonewalling, sim­ply refus­ing to answer ques­tions or pro­vide infor­ma­tion, even­tu­al­ly destroy­ing evi­dence of her mis­deeds before she could be brought before Par­lia­ment. As there was no evi­dence, the inquiry failed. For her role in the affair, Katrin Sud­er was award­ed the Bun­deswehr Cross of Hon­or by von der Leyen.

    The scan­dal was so seri­ous, so brazen and so utter­ly baf­fling that the oppo­si­tion Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty open­ly accused Ursu­la von der Leyen of trea­son, work­ing in the inter­ests of the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment as opposed to Ger­many:

    As Fed­er­al Defense Min­is­ter, von der Leyen behaved as the U.S. Pres­i­dent want­ed when he called for increase in mil­i­tary spend­ing: high­er mil­i­tary bud­gets, increased arma­ments instead of dis­ar­ma­ment. And although this min­is­ter got into trou­ble because of her high spend­ing on con­sult­ing firms and var­i­ous per­son­nel deci­sions and was any­thing but a role mod­el, she became Pres­i­dent of the EU Com­mis­sion. That is a key func­tion and it is impor­tant for the U.S.

    The deci­sion for von der Leyen hap­pened qui­et­ly back­stage. No sen­si­ble per­son can explain why she was giv­en this impor­tant office. A par­tial expla­na­tion is that she had the sup­port of impor­tant coun­tries from East­ern Europe. The Unit­ed States has a great influ­ence on these states.

    In the first major crit­i­cal case, von der Leyen imme­di­ate­ly and unequiv­o­cal­ly rep­re­sent­ed the U.S. posi­tion, where she said Iran itself is to be blamed for the con­fronta­tion in the Mid­dle East and for the exe­cu­tion of the Iran­ian gen­er­al. With her, the Unit­ed States can prob­a­bly also stake a claim on oth­er occa­sions and play a key role in shap­ing the inter­nal struc­ture of the Euro­pean Union. Ursu­la von der Leyen is the per­fect exam­ple of an ‘agent of influ­ence.’”

    – Albrecht Müller, SPD mem­ber of par­lia­ment Jan­u­ary 2, 2021

    Ursula’s Bun­deswehr was more than just a fundrais­ing scheme for a par­a­sitic con­sul­tant class. It was also an incu­ba­tor for the same vile ide­ol­o­gy her father spent his entire life pro­mot­ing. Under von der Leyen, far-right and neo-Nazi sym­pa­thies explod­ed in the ranks of the Bun­deswehr.

    Despite repeat­ed warn­ings from both with­in and out­side of the army, von der Leyen did noth­ing sub­stan­tial. Her McK­in­sey con­sul­tants cre­at­ed sen­si­tiv­i­ty train­ing cours­es for the army, and Ursu­la made con­stant pub­lic­i­ty tours of mil­i­tary bases, but the prob­lem con­tin­ued to get worse. Final­ly, in 2018, a plot was uncov­ered from the elite Kom­man­do Spezialkräfte (KSK) spe­cial forces unit to assas­si­nate Ger­man politi­cians and over­throw the Ger­man gov­ern­ment.

    Fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tions in 2019 revealed that the spe­cial forces unit was not only infest­ed with open neo-Nazis, but they had been active­ly plan­ning to over­throw the Ger­man gov­ern­ment for at least three years. Fur­ther­more, despite being repeat­ed­ly warned, Ursu­la von der Leyen and her army of con­sul­tants had at best done noth­ing and at worst active­ly exac­er­bat­ed the issue.

    A raid uncov­ered caches of weapons, explo­sives and Nazi mem­o­ra­bil­ia. Fur­ther audits revealed 48,000 rounds of ammu­ni­tion and rough­ly 135 pounds of plas­tic explo­sives unac­count­ed for, leav­ing many Ger­man politi­cians to ques­tion just how many more of these ter­ror­ist cells exist­ed with­in the Bun­deswehr. The miss­ing ammo and explo­sives have nev­er been found. In the end, the Min­istry of Defense had no choice but to dis­band the KSK entire­ly.

    Despite all of this, Ursu­la was con­sid­ered a favorite to suc­ceed Jens Stoltenberg as sec­re­tary gen­er­al of NATO. Giv­en the alliance’s his­to­ry with Nazis, it should be no sur­prise that her ties to the far right were either ignored or, more like­ly, count­ed in her favor.

    The rea­son Ursu­la was not cho­sen was because she had once again failed upwards and had already been elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion in a close elec­tion which she won despite almost uni­ver­sal con­dem­na­tion from Ger­man politi­cians both from her own par­ty and the oppo­si­tion. Angela Merkel, von der Leyen’s boss and close friend, had to abstain from the vote after the Ger­man Par­lia­ment refused to even nom­i­nate Ursu­la.

    The move was, how­ev­er, wel­comed by for­eign politi­cians such as Emmanuel Macron, who released a laugh­able state­ment in which he said “I’ve seen her capac­i­ty to get things done, and to avoid being cap­tive to par­tic­u­lar inter­ests” about the leader who only months before had been accused of trea­son for her com­plete sub­mis­sion to for­eign spe­cial inter­ests. Bloomberg called the woman who had spent near­ly five years cre­at­ing new cab­i­net posi­tions for her friends and at best ignor­ing if not active­ly incu­bat­ing a sec­ond Beer Hall Putsch a “Tough, Vision­ary reformer.”

    Ursu­la was the first woman to hold this posi­tion, and the sec­ond with any con­nec­tion to the Nazis: For­mer Wehrma­cht artillery offi­cer and Nazi law pro­fes­sor Wal­ter Hall­stein had got­ten his start in pol­i­tics argu­ing for the virtues of the Nurem­burg race laws as a young man, demon­strat­ing his life­long com­mit­ment to “Euro­pean val­ues.”

    It was from her new plat­form in Brus­sels that the whole world got to see the “Euro­pean val­ues” of Ursu­la von der Leyen. After the out­break of war in Ukraine, Ursu­la has dom­i­nat­ed the news as one of the most force­ful and stead­fast advo­cates for more war, more sanc­tions and more weapons.

    ...

    As it turns out, Ursu­la has fam­i­ly ties to this area as well. The last time a von der Leyen was in Ukraine, Ursula’s dis­tant rel­a­tive Joachim was bring­ing “Euro­pean val­ues” to Ukraine as the Nazi Gaulti­er of Gali­cia. In what the Nazis called Oper­a­tion Rein­hard, the region was ren­dered “Juden Frei” thanks to the dili­gent efforts of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists, who served as pun­ish­ers for the Nazi regime, only to escape pun­ish­ment thanks to the efforts of the Unit­ed States and NATO.

    Now, Joachim’s descen­dant stands with those of the nation­al­ists once more, bring­ing death and dev­as­ta­tion to the peo­ple of Ukraine and the world. How many more must die this time for the “Euro­pean val­ues” of Ursu­la von der Leyen?

    ————

    “Ukraine Hawk Who Heads Euro­pean Com­mis­sion Has a Nazi Pedi­gree She Does Not Want You to Know About” By Evan Reif; Covert Action Mag­a­zine; 02/17/2023

    “It is not at all unfair to ask where Ursu­la von der Leyen’s family’s mon­ey and pow­er came from, and what they did to earn it, espe­cial­ly giv­en that Ursu­la has ben­e­fit­ted enor­mous­ly from her family’s wealth and con­nec­tions to fur­ther her own career, which can stand on its own as an exam­ple of cor­rup­tion, severe scan­dal, incom­pe­tence and, pos­si­bly, even out­right trea­son. Her time as a politi­cian shows that Ursula’s apple has not fall­en far from the Albrecht fam­i­ly tree.”

    Yes, Ursu­la von der Leyen has quite the pedi­gree. She’s the scion of two Ger­man aris­to­crat­ic dynas­ties and appears to have the abil­i­ty to fail upward polit­i­cal­ly no mat­ter how many scan­dals she whips up. That’s part of why Ursu­la’s fam­i­ly his­to­ry is more than just triv­ia. She’s almost like a Ger­man George W. Bush: des­tined for high office regard­less of com­pe­tence or char­ac­ter.

    But as we can see with the sor­did his­to­ry of her father Ernst Albrecht, Ursu­la has anoth­er major par­al­lel with the Bush fam­i­ly: a his­to­ry of col­lab­o­rat­ing with Nazis. In the case of the Bush fam­i­ly, we can point to Prescott Bush’s dirty WWII deal­ings with the Nazis involv­ing oth­er in coor­di­na­tion with fig­ures like the Dulles broth­ers. The Albrechts, on the oth­er hand, have a 1936–1945 mys­tery gap in the fam­i­ly’s record­ed his­to­ry. What’s under that rock? And while Ernst Albrecht was just a child dur­ing WWII, that did­n’t stop him from col­lab­o­rat­ing with Nazis. He just did the col­lab­o­rat­ing long after the war: In 1958, Albrecht took a posi­tion work­ing with the Euro­pean Coal and Steel Com­mis­sion (now just the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion) under the direc­tion of anoth­er aris­to­crat, Hans von der Groeben, a WWII deputy deputy for the Reich Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture under the com­mand of fanat­i­cal Richard Walther Dar­ré, the even­tu­al head of both the SS Race and Reset­tle­ment Office and lat­er the Reich Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture and archi­tect of the Nazi “blood and soil” vision for a new Aryan aris­toc­ra­cy. Togeth­er with Hans von der Groeben, Dar­ré imple­ment­ed what was known as the Hunger Plan to feed the Reich using slave labor on con­quered ter­ri­to­ries. It turns out you could be a deputy for that guy, help him imple­ment a mass slave pro­gram, and end up a mem­ber of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion 15 years lat­er. And what was Dar­ré’s pun­ish­ment? Get­ting sen­tences to sev­en years in prison and serv­ing only three before get­ting released. That’s part of the con­text of Ernst Albrecht’s intro­duc­tion into pol­i­tics: it was hap­pen­ing dur­ing dur­ing the peri­od when the ‘de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion’ of Ger­many was tran­si­tion­ing from tragedy to farce:

    ...
    Ursu­la von der Leyen is the scion of two aris­to­crat­ic Ger­man fam­i­lies. She was born Ursu­la Albrecht, the daugh­ter of a promi­nent Euro­pean bureau­crat, CDU par­ty leader, and for­mer gov­er­nor of Low­er Sax­ony, Ernst Albrecht. The fam­i­ly care­ful­ly nur­tured a cos­mopoli­tan image as Ernst spent most of his life work­ing for the EU and var­i­ous pre­cur­sor orga­ni­za­tions. Grow­ing up, Ursu­la was nick­named “Röschen” (Rosie in Eng­lish) by her father, and images of the hap­py fam­i­ly fea­tured heav­i­ly in her father’s polit­i­cal adver­tise­ments.

    ...

    As is typ­i­cal for bour­geois Ger­mans, the oth­er­wise exhaus­tive­ly doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of the Albrecht fam­i­ly has a mys­te­ri­ous gap between 1936 and 1945. To avoid uncom­fort­able ques­tions about where their pow­er and mon­ey came from and what they did to earn it, the House of Albrecht, like so many oth­ers, is con­tent to pre­tend the Nazi regime sim­ply nev­er exist­ed. Since we will nev­er have answers, per­haps if we raise a light to what sur­rounds this void, the shad­ow it casts can show us the true shape of the “Euro­pean val­ues” Ursu­la is so fond of.

    To begin, we can look at Ernst’s first job in pol­i­tics, with the Euro­pean Coal and Steel Com­mis­sion under the direc­tion of anoth­er aris­to­crat, Hans von der Groeben.

    Hans was already a long-time bureau­crat by this point. Dur­ing the war, he worked as a deputy for the Reich Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture under the com­mand of Richard Walther Dar­ré. Dar­ré was a fanat­i­cal Nazi, writ­ing his first fas­cist pro­pa­gan­da in 1926 and join­ing the Nazi Par­ty in 1930.

    He soon joined the SS and his loy­al­ty and ded­i­ca­tion to the cause led Hein­rich Himm­ler to per­son­al­ly select Ober­grup­pen­führer Dar­ré as head of both the SS Race and Reset­tle­ment Office and lat­er the Reich Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture. Dar­ré was one of the party’s lead­ing ide­ol­o­gists, and he com­bined the tasks of the agri­cul­tur­al and race offices to set the foun­da­tion for Gen­er­alplan Ost, the Nazi plan to exter­mi­nate the entire Slav­ic race and col­o­nize East­ern Europe.

    Dar­ré was the archi­tect of the Nazi “blood and soil” agrar­i­an poli­cies and sought to cre­ate a new land-own­ing “Aryan” aris­toc­ra­cy. He passed laws requir­ing an “Aryan cer­tifi­cate” to inher­it farm­land and was instru­men­tal in Nazi eugen­ics pro­grams, par­tic­u­lar­ly the Lebens­born pro­gram, designed to breed a new gen­er­a­tion of “Aryan” super­men and purge the Ger­man peo­ple of “unde­sir­able blood­lines.”

    ...

    Togeth­er with Hans von der Groeben, they imple­ment­ed what was known as the Hunger Plan to feed the Reich at the expense of con­quered ter­ri­to­ries. Mil­lions of slaves worked on star­va­tion rations, forced to send every morsel of food to the Reich where it would be used to quite lit­er­al­ly sus­tain the Nazi machine which oppressed them. By 1944, more than 15 mil­lion tons of food­stuffs had been req­ui­si­tioned from the USSR, and this led to the inten­tion­al deaths by star­va­tion of more than 10 mil­lion peo­ple. Accord­ing to Darré’s plan, after they had been all been ster­il­ized and starved to death, the Slav­ic “Unter­men­sch” was to be replaced by Darré’s new race of “Aryan” aris­to­crats, ready to use this land for the ben­e­fit of the Reich.

    After the war, Dar­ré was arrest­ed and tried for war crimes at Nurem­berg. He was found guilty, but despite the scope and scale of his crimes, he received a sen­tence of only sev­en years. He served just three of them and was released in 1950. He died of liv­er can­cer in 1953. While this sen­tence was shock­ing­ly lenient, it could have been worse. Hans nev­er saw the inside of the court­room.

    This was very com­mon after the war. The “lib­er­al inter­na­tion­al­ists” such as Allen Dulles, in charge of Amer­i­can for­eign pol­i­cy, were not both­ered by the crimes of the Nazi regime. Indeed, as ear­ly as 1940 Dulles was already argu­ing for an alliance with Nazi Ger­many, and in 1944 was meet­ing with Nazi intel­li­gence to arrange a sep­a­rate peace to use the Nazis as a weapon against the USSR.

    They sought only tri­als for the most egre­gious Nazis and, even then, ensured that their sen­tences were as lenient as pos­si­ble. The rank-and-file of the Nazi regime, the army of peo­ple who phys­i­cal­ly made the Nazi machine do the mur­der­ous work of sub­ju­gat­ing and exter­mi­nat­ing an entire con­ti­nent went almost entire­ly unpun­ished for their crimes.

    In the case of peo­ple like Hans von der Groeben, they were reward­ed with jobs in the new “de-Naz­i­fied” West Ger­man gov­ern­ment. Despite the pre­tens­es of a new Ger­many, only the names changed. The same bureau­crats labored toward the same goal, the destruc­tion of the Sovi­et Union and its peo­ple, by any means nec­es­sary. The state machin­ery once called the Greater Ger­man Reich had now sim­ply been absorbed into a new struc­ture, now called the North Atlantic Treaty Orga­ni­za­tion (NATO).
    ...

    And it was in that spir­it of ‘de-Naz­i­fi­ca­tion’ that we find Ernst using his CDU lead­er­ship role to suc­cess­ful­ly woo mem­bers of the neo-Nazi DRP into the par­ty. Not just some DRP mem­bers. Almost all of them. Woo­ing that was pre­sum­ably assist­ed by the fact that Albrecht was a fix­ture at Nazi vet­er­an events:

    ...
    Although Ernst Albrecht was a few years too young to have been a Nazi him­self, through­out his long polit­i­cal career he made his sym­pa­thies very clear. Ernst was an elit­ist drip­ping with con­tempt for the com­mon peo­ple and want­ed to bring about what he deemed elite rule in Ger­many as opposed to the rule of the “unin­sight­ful” mob. Giv­en that he nev­er missed a chance to ven­er­ate the Third Reich and its killers, it is very clear whom Ernst con­sid­ered elite.

    ...

    Dur­ing his time as leader of the Chris­t­ian Demo­c­ra­t­ic Union (one of Germany’s two largest polit­i­cal par­ties) gov­ern­ment of the Ger­man state of Low­er Sax­ony, Ernst suc­cess­ful­ly wooed mem­bers of the neo-Nazi Deutsche Reichspartei (DRP) into the ranks of the CDU. The DRP prac­ticed what was known as Eso­teric Hit­lerism, a bizarre vari­ety of neo-Nazism that claims Hitler is the lit­er­al rein­car­na­tion of the Hin­du god Vish­nu and the “Aryans” of Nazism are the same Aryans who once inhab­it­ed ancient India.

    ...

    Rudel and Devi believed that, if they suc­ceed­ed in build­ing a new Reich, Hitler would be rein­car­nat­ed once more as the Hin­du god Kal­ki to cleanse all infe­ri­or races and lead the “Aryan” peo­ple to a par­adise called Hyper­borea. Despite this, Albrecht’s CDU absorbed the DRP almost com­plete­ly, as they were wor­ried that the DRP would oth­er­wise erode their vot­er base. The strat­e­gy of kow­tow­ing to Nazis worked, and Albrecht’s CDU gov­erned the region con­tin­u­ous­ly from 1976 to 1990.

    ...

    Ernst did not just work for Nazis, fill his cab­i­net with Nazis and invite Nazis into his par­ty; he also spent a great deal of time court­ing Nazi vot­ers. Ernst and his deputies were fix­tures at Nazi vet­er­an events through­out Low­er Sax­ony.
    ...

    And then there’s the for­mer Nazi fanat­ic Hans Puvo­gel who Albrecht chose as his Low­er Sax­ony jus­tice min­is­ter. It was 1978 when Puvo­gel’s Nazi ide­o­logue past was exposed and he was forced to resign. That same year, the Low­er Sax­ony police appear to have car­ried out some sort of false flag attack on a prison intend­ed to set up the RAF. Why? We don’t know, but it’s pos­si­ble that it was linked to rumors that the RAF was seek­ing to kid­nap his Ursu­la in retal­i­a­tion for Ernst’s Nazi sym­pa­thies. Who knows if that’s true. Either way, it was pub­licly exposed in 1986 and Ursu­la ulti­mate­ly enrolled in the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics under that assumed name of Rose Lad­son:

    ...
    When he came to pow­er, one of the elites Ernst entrust­ed to rule was his jus­tice min­is­ter, a jurist by the name of Hans Puvo­gel. Once again, he picked a fanat­i­cal Nazi. Puvo­gel joined the Sturmabteilung, the para­mil­i­tary arm of the Nazi Par­ty in 1934 and, by 1937, he was a region­al leader in the Ger­man Nazi Par­ty (NSDAP). Puvo­gel used his skills as a lawyer to help jus­ti­fy the exter­mi­na­tion of Nazi racial ene­mies. In his doc­tor­al the­sis, he argued for the mass euthana­sia and ster­il­iza­tion of all infe­ri­or races as a way of solv­ing the Nazi “race prob­lem.”

    ...

    Albrecht and Puvo­gel were also involved in a bomb attack known as the Celle Hole scan­dal. On the 25th of July, 1978, a bomb was det­o­nat­ed on the wall of the prison, in Celle, Ger­many. The bomb did not have the desired effect, cre­at­ing only a small hole, and a group of 12 men who were sup­posed to enter the prison were forced to flee. The per­pe­tra­tors escaped, but a Mer­cedes was found loaded with a rub­ber raft, escape tools, a Walther hand­gun, and forged pass­ports, one of which had a pic­ture of jailed left-wing mil­i­tant Sig­urd Debus. Lat­er, tools were plant­ed in Debus’s cell to seal the deal, mak­ing the whole affair seem like a failed escape plan from the Red Army Fac­tion (RAF).

    Albrecht hailed the attacks as a suc­cess­ful oper­a­tion, which he claims stopped a rob­bery and mur­der (he pro­vid­ed no evi­dence for this), and the inci­dent was used to jus­ti­fy the wors­en­ing of con­di­tions for Debus and oth­er jailed RAF mem­bers. The RAF respond­ed with a hunger strike, which even­tu­al­ly led to the death of Debus in 1981.

    How­ev­er, the sto­ry nev­er quite added up. The RAF mem­bers main­tained their inno­cence, and mount­ing pres­sure from lawyers and the pub­lic even­tu­al­ly led to a par­lia­men­tary inquiry in 1986, which found that there was no escape attempt, no rob­bery or mur­der, and that the entire affair was a false-flag attack called Oper­a­tion Fire Mag­ic, planned by the Ger­man Fed­er­al and Low­er Sax­ony police with the approval of Ernst Albrecht. A Low­er Sax­ony police­man even det­o­nat­ed the bomb. Despite this, noth­ing hap­pened to Albrecht or his gov­ern­ment. The embar­rass­ing affair was quick­ly hushed up, and Debus’s death was reduced to lit­tle more than one name on the long list of those who have starved to death for the ben­e­fit of the Albrechts.

    It is still unclear why Ernst Albrecht car­ried out this ter­ror­ist attack against his own coun­try; how­ev­er, it is pos­si­ble that it was linked to per­sis­tent rumors that the RAF was seek­ing to kid­nap his beloved daugh­ter Ursu­la in retal­i­a­tion for Ernst’s Nazi sym­pa­thies. Because of rumors, when Ursu­la enrolled in the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, she did so under the assumed name of Rose Lad­son to con­ceal her iden­ti­ty. That name was not cho­sen at ran­dom. Rather, it is the link to anoth­er time House Albrecht’s “Euro­pean val­ues” were imposed upon the world.

    ...

    Ursu­la chose her name after anoth­er branch of her fam­i­ly, the Lad­sons of South Car­oli­na. The Lad­sons were a fam­i­ly of slave traders, plan­ta­tion own­ers and seces­sion­ists. Although the Lad­sons do not bear an aris­to­crat­ic title like Albrecht or von der Leyen, they bore all the same hall­marks of the Euro­pean aris­toc­ra­cy. The Albrecht cot­ton busi­ness brought the fam­i­ly in close con­tact with the Lad­sons and the rela­tion­ship grew until, in 1902, Mary Lad­son-Robert­son mar­ried Carl Albrecht, join­ing the two fam­i­lies by blood.
    ...

    That fas­ci­nat­ing fam­i­ly his­to­ry isn’t just part of the sto­ry of who Ursu­la von der Leyen is and where she came from. It’s direct­ly relat­ed to her own incred­i­ble rise in pol­i­tics begin­ning with Angela Merkel to serve as Min­is­ter of Labor and Fam­i­ly Affairs in 2005 despite a near com­plete lack of polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence. In 2013, Merkel pro­mot­ed her to the Min­is­ter of Defense, where she became cham­pi­on of the ‘EU Army’ con­cept. But Ursu­la was a cham­pi­on of some­thing else too: McK­in­sey con­sul­tan­cy group, which was scan­dalous­ly giv­en direct con­trol inside the defense min­istry as part of some sort of “reform” push:

    ...
    Ursu­la first entered pol­i­tics in 2003 when she was defeat­ed via tech­ni­cal­i­ty in a Hanover region­al elec­tion pri­ma­ry by CDU stal­wart Lutz von der Hei­de. This was unac­cept­able for Ursula’s father Ernst, who launched a full-court press along­side his old deputy and Wehrma­cht artillery offi­cer Wil­fried Has­sel­mann.

    ...

    Two years lat­er, she was picked by Angela Merkel to serve as Min­is­ter of Labor and Fam­i­ly Affairs, despite her almost non-exis­tent polit­i­cal expe­ri­ence. In this role, she was most­ly not­ed for cut­ting social ser­vices for the blind and try­ing to ban heavy-met­al albums, a resumé that would not seem to jus­ti­fy fur­ther pro­mo­tion.

    Despite this, she was pro­mot­ed to Min­is­ter of Defense in 2013, a move which baf­fled the oppo­si­tion. It was here that the “Euro­pean val­ues” of Ursu­la von der Leyen began to show their shape once more.

    Ursula’s man­date was to expand and increase readi­ness of the Bun­deswehr, and she set about the job with gus­to. She began a con­stant drum­beat for war, argu­ing that the Ger­man army was too small and unpre­pared to face what­ev­er new ene­my she con­jured up on that day. Be it Afghanistan, Iran, Chi­na, Rus­sia or Syr­ia, Ursu­la con­sis­tent­ly advo­cat­ed for more weapons, more war, and more mon­ey. Ursu­la even pro­posed a Ger­man for­eign legion to bol­ster the ranks of the Bun­deswehr, a pro­pos­al that was met with hor­ror and con­dem­na­tion from all sides.

    Almost imme­di­ate­ly, she said that the min­istry required out­side help and hired one of the favorite and most crim­i­nal con­sul­tants of the neo-lib­er­al polit­i­cal class, the CIA-affil­i­at­ed McK­in­sey, for­mer home to such lumi­nar­ies as Susan Rice, Chelsea Clin­ton, Pete Buttigieg and many oth­er politi­cians and busi­ness exec­u­tives of dubi­ous char­ac­ter. McKinsey’s ten­drils reach into gov­ern­ments and cor­po­ra­tions through­out the world, and it exem­pli­fies the “revolv­ing door” among gov­ern­ment, intel­li­gence and big busi­ness.

    It was more than just a con­sul­tan­cy: McK­in­sey was giv­en direct con­trol of the min­istry, with con­sul­tant Katrin Sud­er award­ed a new posi­tion inside the min­istry to “reform the arma­ments sec­tor.” Ursu­la shov­eled near­ly half a bil­lion euros into the cof­fers of McK­in­sey and oth­ers for “con­sult­ing” ser­vices, and received absolute­ly noth­ing in return. The unelect­ed Sud­er was seen so often beside von der Leyen that the oppo­si­tion joked she was Ursula’s new body­guard.

    This brazen cor­rup­tion became known as the con­sul­tant affair” and was so severe that it led to a par­lia­men­tary inquiry, with oppo­si­tion from both the left and right demand­ing answers from von der Leyen. Ursu­la respond­ed most­ly by stonewalling, sim­ply refus­ing to answer ques­tions or pro­vide infor­ma­tion, even­tu­al­ly destroy­ing evi­dence of her mis­deeds before she could be brought before Par­lia­ment. As there was no evi­dence, the inquiry failed. For her role in the affair, Katrin Sud­er was award­ed the Bun­deswehr Cross of Hon­or by von der Leyen.
    ...

    And we can’t for­get the KSK affair that just keeps get­ting worse. That was on Ursu­la’s watch too:

    ...
    Ursula’s Bun­deswehr was more than just a fundrais­ing scheme for a par­a­sitic con­sul­tant class. It was also an incu­ba­tor for the same vile ide­ol­o­gy her father spent his entire life pro­mot­ing. Under von der Leyen, far-right and neo-Nazi sym­pa­thies explod­ed in the ranks of the Bun­deswehr.

    Despite repeat­ed warn­ings from both with­in and out­side of the army, von der Leyen did noth­ing sub­stan­tial. Her McK­in­sey con­sul­tants cre­at­ed sen­si­tiv­i­ty train­ing cours­es for the army, and Ursu­la made con­stant pub­lic­i­ty tours of mil­i­tary bases, but the prob­lem con­tin­ued to get worse. Final­ly, in 2018, a plot was uncov­ered from the elite Kom­man­do Spezialkräfte (KSK) spe­cial forces unit to assas­si­nate Ger­man politi­cians and over­throw the Ger­man gov­ern­ment.
    ...

    Despite all that, Ursu­la was pro­mot­ed again to Pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion despite a lack of domes­tic pop­u­lar­i­ty. Again, she’s got juice:

    ...
    Despite all of this, Ursu­la was con­sid­ered a favorite to suc­ceed Jens Stoltenberg as sec­re­tary gen­er­al of NATO. Giv­en the alliance’s his­to­ry with Nazis, it should be no sur­prise that her ties to the far right were either ignored or, more like­ly, count­ed in her favor.

    The rea­son Ursu­la was not cho­sen was because she had once again failed upwards and had already been elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion in a close elec­tion which she won despite almost uni­ver­sal con­dem­na­tion from Ger­man politi­cians both from her own par­ty and the oppo­si­tion. Angela Merkel, von der Leyen’s boss and close friend, had to abstain from the vote after the Ger­man Par­lia­ment refused to even nom­i­nate Ursu­la.

    The move was, how­ev­er, wel­comed by for­eign politi­cians such as Emmanuel Macron, who released a laugh­able state­ment in which he said “I’ve seen her capac­i­ty to get things done, and to avoid being cap­tive to par­tic­u­lar inter­ests” about the leader who only months before had been accused of trea­son for her com­plete sub­mis­sion to for­eign spe­cial inter­ests. Bloomberg called the woman who had spent near­ly five years cre­at­ing new cab­i­net posi­tions for her friends and at best ignor­ing if not active­ly incu­bat­ing a sec­ond Beer Hall Putsch a “Tough, Vision­ary reformer.”
    ...

    And guess what one of Ursu­la’s pet issues has been as the new EU Pres­i­dent: a pan-Euro­pean Army capa­ble of oper­at­ing inde­pen­dent­ly of NATO.

    She’s got her agen­da. But whose agen­da is it? It’s a ques­tion that has long lin­gered over her polit­i­cal career. Poised to linger ever more omi­nous­ly after her next seem­ing­ly inevitable unearned pro­mo­tion.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 1, 2023, 4:50 pm
  29. Curi­ouser and curi­ouser: We got a big update on the Nord Stream inves­ti­ga­tions. Two seem­ing­ly inde­pen­dent updates, real­ly, although they both seem to be point­ing in the same direc­tion. The same con­fus­ing direc­tion that sug­gests the ori­gins of the attack did NOT start in DC but, instead, may have Ukrain­ian ori­gins or per­haps was a false flag attack set­ting up Ukraine or car­ried out by inde­pen­dent pro-Ukrain­ian forces. That’s the new nar­ra­tive. It was ‘pro-Ukrain­ian’ groups. Maybe. We don’t know and may nev­er know.

    The first report, pub­lished in the NY Times, is based on unnamed US gov­ern­ment offi­cials who clear­ly aim that “new intel­li­gence” is point­ing towards a “pro-Ukrain­ian group” car­ry­ing out the attack. But there’s no evi­dence it was Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment-backed group. While the iden­ti­ties and affil­i­a­tions of the per­pe­tra­tors remains a mys­tery, we are told US offi­cials who have reviewed this ‘new intel­li­gence’ believe the sabo­teurs were most like­ly Ukrain­ian or Russ­ian nation­als, or some com­bi­na­tion of the two. No Amer­i­can or British nation­als were involved, we are assured. And we are told that the explo­sives were most like­ly plant­ed with the help of expe­ri­enced divers who did not appear to be work­ing for mil­i­tary or intel­li­gence ser­vices, but it is pos­si­ble that the per­pe­tra­tors received spe­cial­ized gov­ern­ment train­ing in the past.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, the NY Times piece also includes some inves­tiga­tive details from an unnamed Euro­pean law­mak­er who was briefed in late 2022 by his coun­try’s main for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice. We are told from this law­mak­er that more than 1,000 pounds of “mil­i­tary grade” explo­sives were used. Recall Sey­mour Her­sh’s recent inter­view where he relays the detail from his sources that only 6 out of 8 C4 bombs went off. Two were left unex­plod­ed. It was always pret­ty obvi­ous that mil­i­tary-grade explo­sives were like­ly used, but it’s note­wor­thy that Her­sh’s report is align­ing with the claims of the Euro­pean law­mak­er about the nature of the explo­sives.

    We are also told by that Euro­pean law­mak­er that around 45 “ghost ships” with loca­tion transpon­ders turned off, were pass­ing through the area where the bomb­ings took place. And that brings us to the sec­ond arti­cle about the Nord Stream inves­ti­ga­tion pub­lished on the same day. An inves­ti­ga­tion pub­lished in Die Zeit con­duct­ed by a con­sor­tium of Ger­man media out­lets. An inves­ti­ga­tion that claims to have tracked down the boat used in the attacks! Yes, accord­ing to the Ger­man medi­an con­sor­tium’s inves­ti­ga­tion, a yacht owned by two Ukraini­ans based in a Pol­ish port was rent­ed by a group of 6 peo­ple. The group con­sist­ed of a cap­tain, two divers, two div­ing assis­tants and a doc­tor. Five men and a woman. Explo­sives were trans­port­ed to the port in a deliv­ery truck. And after the oper­a­tion, the yacht was returned ‘uncleaned’ with the residue of explo­sives found on the table in the cab­in.

    So how were all these remark­able details learned? Well, we’re told a West­ern intel­li­gence ser­vice sent a tip to Euro­pean part­ner ser­vices short­ly after the attacks indi­cat­ing a Ukrain­ian com­man­do was respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion. Sub­se­quent intel­li­gence fur­ther point­ed towards a pro-Ukrain­ian group being respon­si­ble. So this Ger­man media inves­ti­ga­tion appears to be based, in part, in infor­ma­tion pro­vid­ed by a Euro­pean intel­li­gence ser­vice.

    And yet, despite iden­ti­fy­ing the boat and even the com­po­si­tion of the attack team, we are told the inves­ti­ga­tors could­n’t deter­mine the iden­ti­ties or nation­al­i­ties of the cul­prits. It’s a lev­el of ambi­gu­i­ty that has inves­ti­ga­tors report­ed­ly remain­ing open to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that it was a false flag oper­a­tion intend­ed to impli­cate Ukraine.

    So we get one report in the MY Times based on unnamed US gov­ern­ment sources claim­ing that intel­li­gence is point­ing towards as ‘pro-Ukrain­ian’ group of Ukrain­ian or Russ­ian nation­als car­ry­ing out the attack, with caveats that it prob­a­bly was­n’t the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment who actu­al­ly ordered it. And US and British nation­als were def­i­nite­ly NOT involved. And on the same day we get anoth­er Ger­man media inves­ti­ga­tion seem­ing­ly based on Euro­pean intel­li­gence sources that claims to have iden­ti­fied the Ukrain­ian-owned yacht used in the oper­a­tion. And yet that report sug­gests the yacht was rent­ed by a team com­prised of peo­ple from unknown nation­al­i­ties. Tak­en togeth­er, the new nar­ra­tive appears to be “It def­i­nite­ly was­n’t the US.! Maybe Ukraini­ans? Maybe? But if so, it was­n’t the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. Maybe. We’ll prob­a­bly nev­er know.” Ok, first, here’s the NY Times piece push­ing the ‘it was Ukraini­ans, but not the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment’ nar­ra­tive:

    The New York Times

    Intel­li­gence Sug­gests Pro-Ukrain­ian Group Sab­o­taged Pipelines, U.S. Offi­cials Say

    New intel­li­gence report­ing amounts to the first sig­nif­i­cant known lead about who was respon­si­ble for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines that car­ried nat­ur­al gas from Rus­sia to Europe.

    By Adam Entous, Julian E. Barnes and Adam Gold­man
    March 7, 2023

    WASHINGTON — New intel­li­gence reviewed by U.S. offi­cials sug­gests that a pro-Ukrain­ian group car­ried out the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines last year, a step toward deter­min­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for an act of sab­o­tage that has con­found­ed inves­ti­ga­tors on both sides of the Atlantic for months.

    U.S. offi­cials said that they had no evi­dence Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky of Ukraine or his top lieu­tenants were involved in the oper­a­tion, or that the per­pe­tra­tors were act­ing at the direc­tion of any Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials.

    ...

    Ukraine and its allies have been seen by some offi­cials as hav­ing the most log­i­cal poten­tial motive to attack the pipelines. They have opposed the project for years, call­ing it a nation­al secu­ri­ty threat because it would allow Rus­sia to sell gas more eas­i­ly to Europe.

    Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary intel­li­gence offi­cials say they had no role in the attack and do not know who car­ried it out. After this arti­cle was pub­lished, Mykhai­lo Podolyak, a senior advis­er to Mr. Zelen­sky, post­ed on Twit­ter that Ukraine “has noth­ing to do with the Baltic Sea mishap.” He added that he had no infor­ma­tion about pro-Ukrain­ian “sab­o­tage groups.”

    U.S. offi­cials said there was much they did not know about the per­pe­tra­tors and their affil­i­a­tions. The review of new­ly col­lect­ed intel­li­gence sug­gests they were oppo­nents of Pres­i­dent Vladimir V. Putin of Rus­sia, but does not spec­i­fy the mem­bers of the group, or who direct­ed or paid for the oper­a­tion.

    U.S. offi­cials declined to dis­close the nature of the intel­li­gence, how it was obtained or any details of the strength of the evi­dence it con­tains.. They have said that there are no firm con­clu­sions about it, leav­ing open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the oper­a­tion might have been con­duct­ed off the books by a proxy force with con­nec­tions to the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment or its secu­ri­ty ser­vices.

    ...

    Offi­cials who have reviewed the intel­li­gence said they believed the sabo­teurs were most like­ly Ukrain­ian or Russ­ian nation­als, or some com­bi­na­tion of the two. U.S. offi­cials said no Amer­i­can or British nation­als were involved.

    The pipelines were ripped apart by deep sea explo­sions in Sep­tem­ber, in what U.S. offi­cials described at the time as an act of sab­o­tage. Euro­pean offi­cials have pub­licly said they believe the oper­a­tion that tar­get­ed Nord Stream was prob­a­bly state spon­sored, pos­si­bly because of the sophis­ti­ca­tion with which the per­pe­tra­tors plant­ed and det­o­nat­ed the explo­sives on the floor of the Baltic Sea with­out being detect­ed. U.S. offi­cials have not stat­ed pub­licly that they believe the oper­a­tion was spon­sored by a state.

    The explo­sives were most like­ly plant­ed with the help of expe­ri­enced divers who did not appear to be work­ing for mil­i­tary or intel­li­gence ser­vices, U.S. offi­cials who have reviewed the new intel­li­gence said. But it is pos­si­ble that the per­pe­tra­tors received spe­cial­ized gov­ern­ment train­ing in the past.

    Offi­cials said there were still enor­mous gaps in what U.S. spy agen­cies and their Euro­pean part­ners knew about what tran­spired. But offi­cials said it might con­sti­tute the first sig­nif­i­cant lead to emerge from sev­er­al close­ly guard­ed inves­ti­ga­tions, the con­clu­sions of which could have pro­found impli­ca­tions for the coali­tion sup­port­ing Ukraine.

    Any sug­ges­tion of Ukrain­ian involve­ment, whether direct or indi­rect, could upset the del­i­cate rela­tion­ship between Ukraine and Ger­many, sour­ing sup­port among a Ger­man pub­lic that has swal­lowed high ener­gy prices in the name of sol­i­dar­i­ty.

    U.S. offi­cials who have been briefed on the intel­li­gence are divid­ed about how much weight to put on the new infor­ma­tion. All of them spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss clas­si­fied intel­li­gence and mat­ters of sen­si­tive diplo­ma­cy.

    U.S. offi­cials said the new intel­li­gence report­ing has increased their opti­mism that Amer­i­can spy agen­cies and their part­ners in Europe can find more infor­ma­tion, which could allow them to reach a firm con­clu­sion about the per­pe­tra­tors. It is unclear how long that process will take. Amer­i­can offi­cials recent­ly dis­cussed the intel­li­gence with their Euro­pean coun­ter­parts, who have tak­en the lead in inves­ti­gat­ing the attack.

    ...

    Ear­ly last year, Pres­i­dent Biden, after meet­ing with Chan­cel­lor Olaf Scholz of Ger­many at the White House, said Mr. Putin’s deci­sion about whether to attack Ukraine would deter­mine the fate of Nord Stream 2. “If Rus­sia invades, that means tanks and troops cross­ing the bor­der of Ukraine again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” Mr. Biden said. “We will bring an end to it.”

    When asked exact­ly how that would be accom­plished, Mr. Biden cryp­ti­cal­ly said, “I promise you we’ll be able to do it.”

    A cou­ple weeks lat­er, Mr. Scholz announced that his gov­ern­ment would block the Nord Stream 2 pipeline from becom­ing oper­a­tional. Two days after that, Rus­sia launched the much-antic­i­pat­ed inva­sion.

    Since the explo­sions along the pipelines in Sep­tem­ber, there has been ram­pant spec­u­la­tion about what tran­spired on the sea floor near the Dan­ish island of Born­holm.

    Poland and Ukraine imme­di­ate­ly accused Rus­sia of plant­i­ng the explo­sives, but they offered no evi­dence.

    Rus­sia, in turn, accused Britain of car­ry­ing out the oper­a­tion — also with­out evi­dence. Rus­sia and Britain have denied any involve­ment in the explo­sions.

    Last month, the inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Sey­mour Hersh pub­lished an arti­cle on the newslet­ter plat­form Sub­stack con­clud­ing that the Unit­ed States car­ried out the oper­a­tion at the direc­tion of Mr. Biden. In mak­ing his case, Mr. Hersh cit­ed the president’s prein­va­sion threat to “bring an end” to Nord Stream 2, and sim­i­lar state­ments by oth­er senior U.S. offi­cials.

    U.S. offi­cials say Mr. Biden and his top aides did not autho­rize a mis­sion to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, and they say there was no U.S. involve­ment.

    Any find­ings that put blame on Kyiv or Ukrain­ian prox­ies could prompt a back­lash in Europe and make it hard­er for the West to main­tain a unit­ed front in sup­port of Ukraine.

    U.S. offi­cials and intel­li­gence agen­cies acknowl­edge that they have lim­it­ed vis­i­bil­i­ty into Ukrain­ian deci­sion-mak­ing.

    Despite Ukraine’s deep depen­dence on the Unit­ed States for mil­i­tary, intel­li­gence and diplo­mat­ic sup­port, Ukrain­ian offi­cials are not always trans­par­ent with their Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts about their mil­i­tary oper­a­tions, espe­cial­ly those against Russ­ian tar­gets behind ene­my lines. Those oper­a­tions have frus­trat­ed U.S. offi­cials, who believe that they have not mea­sur­ably improved Ukraine’s posi­tion on the bat­tle­field, but have risked alien­at­ing Euro­pean allies and widen­ing the war.

    The oper­a­tions that have unnerved the Unit­ed States includ­ed a strike in ear­ly August on Russia’s Saki Air Base on the west­ern coast of Crimea, a truck bomb­ing in Octo­ber that destroyed part of the Kerch Strait Bridge, which links Rus­sia to Crimea, and drone strikes in Decem­ber aimed at Russ­ian mil­i­tary bases in Ryazan and Engels, about 300 miles beyond the Ukrain­ian bor­der.

    But there have been oth­er acts of sab­o­tage and vio­lence of more ambigu­ous prove­nance that U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies have had a hard­er time attribut­ing to Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vices.

    One of those was a car bomb near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dug­i­na, the daugh­ter of a promi­nent Russ­ian nation­al­ist.

    Kyiv denied any involve­ment but U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies even­tu­al­ly came to believe that the killing was autho­rized by what offi­cials called “ele­ments” of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. In response to the find­ing, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion pri­vate­ly rebuked the Ukraini­ans and warned them against tak­ing sim­i­lar actions.

    The explo­sions that rup­tured the Nord Stream pipelines took place five weeks after Ms. Dugina’s killing. After the Nord Stream oper­a­tion, there was hushed spec­u­la­tion — and wor­ry — in Wash­ing­ton that parts of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment might have been involved in that oper­a­tion as well.

    The new intel­li­gence pro­vid­ed no evi­dence so far of the Ukrain­ian government’s com­plic­i­ty in the attack on the pipelines, and U.S. offi­cials say the Biden administration’s lev­el of trust in Mr. Zelen­sky and his senior nation­al secu­ri­ty team has been steadi­ly increas­ing.

    Days after the explo­sion, Den­mark, Swe­den and Ger­many began their own sep­a­rate inves­ti­ga­tions into the Nord Stream oper­a­tion.

    Intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment agen­cies on both sides of the Atlantic have had dif­fi­cul­ty obtain­ing con­crete evi­dence about what hap­pened on the sea floor in the hours, days and weeks before the explo­sions.

    The pipelines them­selves were not close­ly mon­i­tored, by either com­mer­cial or gov­ern­ment sen­sors. More­over, find­ing the ves­sel or ves­sels involved has been com­pli­cat­ed by the fact that the explo­sions took place in a heav­i­ly traf­ficked area.

    That said, inves­ti­ga­tors have many leads to pur­sue.

    Accord­ing to a Euro­pean law­mak­er briefed late last year by his country’s main for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice, inves­ti­ga­tors have been gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion about an esti­mat­ed 45 “ghost ships” whose loca­tion transpon­ders were not on or were not work­ing when they passed through the area, pos­si­bly to cloak their move­ments.

    The law­mak­er was also told that more than 1,000 pounds of “mil­i­tary grade” explo­sives were used by the per­pe­tra­tors.

    ...

    ———–

    “Intel­li­gence Sug­gests Pro-Ukrain­ian Group Sab­o­taged Pipelines, U.S. Offi­cials Say” by Adam Entous, Julian E. Barnes and Adam Gold­man; The New York Times; 03/07/2023

    U.S. offi­cials declined to dis­close the nature of the intel­li­gence, how it was obtained or any details of the strength of the evi­dence it con­tains. They have said that there are no firm con­clu­sions about it, leav­ing open the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the oper­a­tion might have been con­duct­ed off the books by a proxy force with con­nec­tions to the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment or its secu­ri­ty ser­vices.”

    US offi­cials won’t dis­close the nature of the intel­li­gence, how it was obtained, or even the strength of the evi­dence. It’s so lit­tle info that we are left with a range of pos­si­bil­i­ties, includ­ing the obvi­ous pos­si­bil­i­ty that the per­pe­tra­tors were oper­at­ing as a state-backed proxy force. And yet, despite that appar­ent extreme ambi­gu­i­ty regard­ing the iden­ti­ties of the peo­ple who car­ried this out, we’re simul­ta­ne­ous­ly told that the explo­sives were like­ly plant­ed with the help of “expe­ri­enced divers who did not appear to be work­ing for mil­i­tary or intel­li­gence ser­vice.” It’s an odd mix of ambi­gu­i­ty and cer­tain­ty:

    ...
    U.S. offi­cials said that they had no evi­dence Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky of Ukraine or his top lieu­tenants were involved in the oper­a­tion, or that the per­pe­tra­tors were act­ing at the direc­tion of any Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cials.

    ...

    U.S. offi­cials said there was much they did not know about the per­pe­tra­tors and their affil­i­a­tions. The review of new­ly col­lect­ed intel­li­gence sug­gests they were oppo­nents of Pres­i­dent Vladimir V. Putin of Rus­sia, but does not spec­i­fy the mem­bers of the group, or who direct­ed or paid for the oper­a­tion.

    ...

    Offi­cials who have reviewed the intel­li­gence said they believed the sabo­teurs were most like­ly Ukrain­ian or Russ­ian nation­als, or some com­bi­na­tion of the two. U.S. offi­cials said no Amer­i­can or British nation­als were involved.

    ...

    The explo­sives were most like­ly plant­ed with the help of expe­ri­enced divers who did not appear to be work­ing for mil­i­tary or intel­li­gence ser­vices, U.S. offi­cials who have reviewed the new intel­li­gence said. But it is pos­si­ble that the per­pe­tra­tors received spe­cial­ized gov­ern­ment train­ing in the past.
    ...

    This ‘non-state-backed actors’ nar­ra­tive com­ing out of the US is also con­trast­ed with the pri­or pub­lic state­ments from Euro­pean offi­cials say­ing they the sophis­ti­ca­tion involved points to it being a state-spon­sored attack. The new claim that the bombs were most like­ly plant­ed with the help of “expe­ri­enced divers who did not appear to be work­ing for mil­i­tary or intel­li­gence ser­vices” is pre­sum­ably meant to address that aspect of the inves­ti­ga­tion:

    ...
    The pipelines were ripped apart by deep sea explo­sions in Sep­tem­ber, in what U.S. offi­cials described at the time as an act of sab­o­tage. Euro­pean offi­cials have pub­licly said they believe the oper­a­tion that tar­get­ed Nord Stream was prob­a­bly state spon­sored, pos­si­bly because of the sophis­ti­ca­tion with which the per­pe­tra­tors plant­ed and det­o­nat­ed the explo­sives on the floor of the Baltic Sea with­out being detect­ed. U.S. offi­cials have not stat­ed pub­licly that they believe the oper­a­tion was spon­sored by a state.
    ...

    And then there’s this inter­est­ing detail pro­vid­ed by an unnamed Euro­pean law­mak­er: the law­mak­er’s intel­li­gence ser­vice found an esti­mat­ed 45 “ghost ships” oper­a­tion in that area. Also, this law­mak­er con­firms that more than 1,000 pounds of “mil­i­tary grade” explo­sives were used in the attack. Keep in mind that key detail from Sey­mour Her­sh’s recent inter­view: only 6 out of 8 C4 bombs went off. Two were left unex­plod­ed. So that’s two sep­a­rate sources point­ing towards the use of mil­i­tary grade explo­sives:

    ...
    The explo­sions that rup­tured the Nord Stream pipelines took place five weeks after Ms. Dugina’s killing. After the Nord Stream oper­a­tion, there was hushed spec­u­la­tion — and wor­ry — in Wash­ing­ton that parts of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment might have been involved in that oper­a­tion as well.

    The new intel­li­gence pro­vid­ed no evi­dence so far of the Ukrain­ian government’s com­plic­i­ty in the attack on the pipelines, and U.S. offi­cials say the Biden administration’s lev­el of trust in Mr. Zelen­sky and his senior nation­al secu­ri­ty team has been steadi­ly increas­ing.

    Days after the explo­sion, Den­mark, Swe­den and Ger­many began their own sep­a­rate inves­ti­ga­tions into the Nord Stream oper­a­tion.

    Intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment agen­cies on both sides of the Atlantic have had dif­fi­cul­ty obtain­ing con­crete evi­dence about what hap­pened on the sea floor in the hours, days and weeks before the explo­sions.

    The pipelines them­selves were not close­ly mon­i­tored, by either com­mer­cial or gov­ern­ment sen­sors. More­over, find­ing the ves­sel or ves­sels involved has been com­pli­cat­ed by the fact that the explo­sions took place in a heav­i­ly traf­ficked area.

    That said, inves­ti­ga­tors have many leads to pur­sue.

    Accord­ing to a Euro­pean law­mak­er briefed late last year by his country’s main for­eign intel­li­gence ser­vice, inves­ti­ga­tors have been gath­er­ing infor­ma­tion about an esti­mat­ed 45 “ghost ships” whose loca­tion transpon­ders were not on or were not work­ing when they passed through the area, pos­si­bly to cloak their move­ments.

    The law­mak­er was also told that more than 1,000 pounds of “mil­i­tary grade” explo­sives were used by the per­pe­tra­tors.
    ...

    And then we get to this very inter­est­ing part of the report: the anony­mous US offi­cials talk­ing to the NY times about this also expressed a sense of frus­tra­tion on the part of the US over Ukraine’s attacks on Russ­ian tar­gets deep behind ene­my lines. Don’t for­get that remark­able report pub­lished by Jack Mur­phy — also on his per­son­al blog, much like Her­sh’s report — based on anony­mous source in the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty describ­ing a remark­ably aggres­sive CIA-spon­sored sab­o­tage cam­paign oper­at­ing deep inside Rus­sia. So are we see­ing a reflec­tion of dif­fer­ing views inside the US gov­ern­ment? Or a reflec­tion of a cov­er-sto­ry? A bit of both?

    ...
    U.S. offi­cials and intel­li­gence agen­cies acknowl­edge that they have lim­it­ed vis­i­bil­i­ty into Ukrain­ian deci­sion-mak­ing.

    Despite Ukraine’s deep depen­dence on the Unit­ed States for mil­i­tary, intel­li­gence and diplo­mat­ic sup­port, Ukrain­ian offi­cials are not always trans­par­ent with their Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts about their mil­i­tary oper­a­tions, espe­cial­ly those against Russ­ian tar­gets behind ene­my lines. Those oper­a­tions have frus­trat­ed U.S. offi­cials, who believe that they have not mea­sur­ably improved Ukraine’s posi­tion on the bat­tle­field, but have risked alien­at­ing Euro­pean allies and widen­ing the war.

    The oper­a­tions that have unnerved the Unit­ed States includ­ed a strike in ear­ly August on Russia’s Saki Air Base on the west­ern coast of Crimea, a truck bomb­ing in Octo­ber that destroyed part of the Kerch Strait Bridge, which links Rus­sia to Crimea, and drone strikes in Decem­ber aimed at Russ­ian mil­i­tary bases in Ryazan and Engels, about 300 miles beyond the Ukrain­ian bor­der.

    But there have been oth­er acts of sab­o­tage and vio­lence of more ambigu­ous prove­nance that U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies have had a hard­er time attribut­ing to Ukrain­ian secu­ri­ty ser­vices.

    One of those was a car bomb near Moscow in August that killed Daria Dug­i­na, the daugh­ter of a promi­nent Russ­ian nation­al­ist.

    Kyiv denied any involve­ment but U.S. intel­li­gence agen­cies even­tu­al­ly came to believe that the killing was autho­rized by what offi­cials called “ele­ments” of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment. In response to the find­ing, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion pri­vate­ly rebuked the Ukraini­ans and warned them against tak­ing sim­i­lar actions.
    ...

    And those ques­tions of what we’re actu­al­ly look­ing at with this new report brings us to the oth­er new report just pub­lished in Die Zeit on the same day as this NY Times report. As we’re going to see in the Google-trans­lat­ed excerpt below, this inves­ti­ga­tion car­ried out by a con­sor­tium of Ger­man media out­lets appears to have inde­pen­dent­ly arrived at a set of con­clu­sions that just so hap­pen to align sig­nif­i­cant­ly with the nar­ra­tive pushed in that NY Times piece. It turns out the Ger­man media con­sor­tium deter­mined the boat used in the attack: a yacht based in Poland owned by two Ukraini­ans.

    So are the Ukrain­ian own­ers of the yacht the per­pe­tra­tors? Not exact­ly. Instead, we are told that the team of six peo­ple — five men and a woman — rent­ed the yacht using pro­fes­sion­al­ly made forged pass­ports. The group con­sist­ed of a cap­tain, two divers, two div­ing assis­tants and a doc­tor. Explo­sives were trans­port­ed to the port in a deliv­ery truck. And after the oper­a­tion, the yacht was returned ‘uncleaned’ with the residue of explo­sives found on the table in the cab­in. And yet, despite that remark­able lev­el of detail, we are told the inves­ti­ga­tors could­n’t deter­mine the iden­ti­ties or nation­al­i­ties of the cul­prits. It’s a lev­el of ambi­gu­i­ty that has inves­ti­ga­tors remain­ing open to the pos­si­bil­i­ty that it was a false flag oper­a­tion intend­ed to impli­cate Ukraine.

    So, rough­ly a month after Sey­mour Her­sh’s damn­ing piece, we got two big updates on the Nord Stream inves­ti­ga­tion released on the same day point­ing in same direc­tion. The same vague direc­tion of ‘Maybe Ukraine, but who knows?’:

    Trans­lat­ed with Google Trans­late

    Die Zeit

    Nord Stream inves­ti­ga­tions: Traces lead to Ukraine
    Inves­ti­ga­tors have iden­ti­fied the boat from which the Nord Stream attacks were car­ried out. Appar­ent­ly it was rent­ed by a com­pa­ny owned by Ukraini­ans.

    By Hol­ger Stark
    Mar 7, 2023 at 6:03 p.m

    The Ger­man inves­tiga­tive author­i­ties have appar­ent­ly made a break­through in solv­ing the attack on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines. After joint research by the ARD cap­i­tal stu­dio, the ARD polit­i­cal mag­a­zine Kon­traste, SWR and ZEIT, it was pos­si­ble to large­ly recon­struct how and when the explo­sive attack was pre­pared in the course of the inves­ti­ga­tion. Accord­ing­ly, traces lead in the direc­tion of Ukraine. How­ev­er, inves­ti­ga­tors have not yet found any evi­dence as to who ordered the destruc­tion. On the night of Sep­tem­ber 26, 2022, three of the four strands of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines on the bot­tom of the Baltic Sea were destroyed by explo­sions.

    Specif­i­cal­ly, accord­ing to infor­ma­tion from the ARD cap­i­tal stu­dio, Kon­traste, SWR and ZEIT, the inves­ti­ga­tors suc­ceed­ed in iden­ti­fy­ing the boat that was alleged­ly used for the secret oper­a­tion. It is said to be a yacht rent­ed from a com­pa­ny based in Poland, appar­ent­ly owned by two Ukraini­ans. Accord­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tion, the secret oper­a­tion at sea was car­ried out by a team of six peo­ple. It is said to have been five men and one woman. Accord­ing­ly, the group con­sist­ed of a cap­tain, two divers, two div­ing assis­tants and a doc­tor, who are said to have trans­port­ed the explo­sives to the crime scenes and placed them there. The nation­al­i­ty of the per­pe­tra­tors is appar­ent­ly unclear. The assas­sins used pro­fes­sion­al­ly forged pass­ports, which are said to have been used, among oth­er things, to rent the boat.

    Accord­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tion, the com­mand set sail from Ros­tock on Sep­tem­ber 6, 2022. The equip­ment for the secret oper­a­tion was pre­vi­ous­ly trans­port­ed to the port in a deliv­ery truck, it is said. Accord­ing to the research, the inves­ti­ga­tors sub­se­quent­ly man­aged to locate the boat again the fol­low­ing day in Wieck (Darß) and lat­er on the Dan­ish island of Chris­tian­sø, north-east of Born­holm. The yacht was then returned to the own­er in an uncleaned con­di­tion. Accord­ing to research, inves­ti­ga­tors found traces of explo­sives on the table in the cab­in. Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion from the ARD cap­i­tal stu­dio, Kon­traste, SWR and ZEIT, a West­ern secret ser­vice is said to have sent a tip to Euro­pean part­ner ser­vices in the autumn, i.e. short­ly after the destruc­tion, accord­ing to which a Ukrain­ian com­man­do was respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion. After that, there are said to have been fur­ther intel­li­gence indi­ca­tions that a pro-Ukrain­ian group could be respon­si­ble.

    The ARD cap­i­tal stu­dio, Kon­traste, SWR and ZEIT spoke to sources in sev­er­al coun­tries for their research. Secu­ri­ty author­i­ties in Ger­many, Den­mark, Swe­den, the Nether­lands and the USA were involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion into the destruc­tion of the pipelines. In Ger­many, the Attor­ney Gen­er­al is in charge of the inves­ti­ga­tion, which has com­mis­sioned both the Fed­er­al Crim­i­nal Police Office and the Fed­er­al Police. Even if traces lead to Ukraine, the inves­ti­ga­tors have not yet been able to find out who com­mis­sioned the sus­pect­ed group of per­pe­tra­tors. In inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty cir­cles, it is not ruled out that it could also be a false flag oper­a­tion. This means that traces could also have been delib­er­ate­ly laid that point to Ukraine as the cul­prit. How­ev­er, the inves­ti­ga­tors have appar­ent­ly found no evi­dence that con­firms such a sce­nario.

    ...

    ————

    “Nord Stream inves­ti­ga­tions: Traces lead to Ukraine” By Hol­ger Stark; Die Zeit; 03/07/2023

    Specif­i­cal­ly, accord­ing to infor­ma­tion from the ARD cap­i­tal stu­dio, Kon­traste, SWR and ZEIT, the inves­ti­ga­tors suc­ceed­ed in iden­ti­fy­ing the boat that was alleged­ly used for the secret oper­a­tion. It is said to be a yacht rent­ed from a com­pa­ny based in Poland, appar­ent­ly owned by two Ukraini­ans. Accord­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tion, the secret oper­a­tion at sea was car­ried out by a team of six peo­ple. It is said to have been five men and one woman. Accord­ing­ly, the group con­sist­ed of a cap­tain, two divers, two div­ing assis­tants and a doc­tor, who are said to have trans­port­ed the explo­sives to the crime scenes and placed them there. The nation­al­i­ty of the per­pe­tra­tors is appar­ent­ly unclear. The assas­sins used pro­fes­sion­al­ly forged pass­ports, which are said to have been used, among oth­er things, to rent the boat.

    They found the boat! It’s as remark­able alleged find by this Ger­man media inves­ti­ga­tion. Beyond that, they know quite a bit about the per­pe­tra­tors: five men and a woman work­ing in the roles of cap­tain, two divers, two div­ing assis­tants and a doc­tor used pro­fes­sion­al­ly forged pass­ports to rent the boat iden­ti­fied by this Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tion. They even deter­mined that traces of explo­sives were found on the boat after the attack and some­how deter­mined that the equip­ment for the oper­a­tion was trans­port­ed to the iden­ti­fied port on a deliv­ery truck. Despite all that, the iden­ti­ties, or even nation­al­i­ties, of the per­pe­tra­tors remains a mys­tery and inves­ti­ga­tors aren’t yet rul­ing out the pos­si­bil­i­ty that this is all part of the false flag oper­a­tion designed to point back to Ukraine:

    ...
    Accord­ing to the inves­ti­ga­tion, the com­mand set sail from Ros­tock on Sep­tem­ber 6, 2022. The equip­ment for the secret oper­a­tion was pre­vi­ous­ly trans­port­ed to the port in a deliv­ery truck, it is said. Accord­ing to the research, the inves­ti­ga­tors sub­se­quent­ly man­aged to locate the boat again the fol­low­ing day in Wieck (Darß) and lat­er on the Dan­ish island of Chris­tian­sø, north-east of Born­holm. The yacht was then returned to the own­er in an uncleaned con­di­tion. Accord­ing to research, inves­ti­ga­tors found traces of explo­sives on the table in the cab­in. Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion from the ARD cap­i­tal stu­dio, Kon­traste, SWR and ZEIT, a West­ern secret ser­vice is said to have sent a tip to Euro­pean part­ner ser­vices in the autumn, i.e. short­ly after the destruc­tion, accord­ing to which a Ukrain­ian com­man­do was respon­si­ble for the destruc­tion. After that, there are said to have been fur­ther intel­li­gence indi­ca­tions that a pro-Ukrain­ian group could be respon­si­ble.

    The ARD cap­i­tal stu­dio, Kon­traste, SWR and ZEIT spoke to sources in sev­er­al coun­tries for their research. Secu­ri­ty author­i­ties in Ger­many, Den­mark, Swe­den, the Nether­lands and the USA were involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion into the destruc­tion of the pipelines. In Ger­many, the Attor­ney Gen­er­al is in charge of the inves­ti­ga­tion, which has com­mis­sioned both the Fed­er­al Crim­i­nal Police Office and the Fed­er­al Police. Even if traces lead to Ukraine, the inves­ti­ga­tors have not yet been able to find out who com­mis­sioned the sus­pect­ed group of per­pe­tra­tors. In inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty cir­cles, it is not ruled out that it could also be a false flag oper­a­tion. This means that traces could also have been delib­er­ate­ly laid that point to Ukraine as the cul­prit. How­ev­er, the inves­ti­ga­tors have appar­ent­ly found no evi­dence that con­firms such a sce­nario.
    ...

    “In inter­na­tion­al secu­ri­ty cir­cles, it is not ruled out that it could also be a false flag oper­a­tion. This means that traces could also have been delib­er­ate­ly laid that point to Ukraine as the cul­prit.”

    LOL, we’re just one spec­u­la­tive jump away from, “it was Rus­sia, set­ting up Ukraine in a false flag attack!” We’re not there yet, but give it time. What is clear at this point is that Sey­mour Her­sh’s explo­sive report­ing hit a nerve. The kind of painful nerve that neces­si­tates the rapid deploy­ment of new nar­ra­tives. No mat­ter how sil­ly. It’s a stan­dard tac­tic for these kinds of sit­u­a­tions.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 8, 2023, 4:59 pm
  30. The Nord Stream inves­ti­ga­tion updates keep com­ing. And keep get­ting weird­er and weird­er. Fol­low­ing up on the pair of arti­cles pub­lished on Tues­day point­ing at a neb­u­lous ‘pro-Ukrain­ian group’ of non-state actors being respon­si­ble for the Nord Stream attacks, Der SPIEGEL came out with a remark­able update. They found the boat: the “Androm­e­da”, a 15 meters long, 5 cab­ins Bavaria Cruis­er 50, rent­ed out by a com­pa­ny from Meck­len­burg-Vor­pom­mern, Ger­many.

    There’s still no updates on the iden­ti­ties of the cul­prits or their asso­ci­a­tions. But the crim­i­nal boat has been found. At least that’s the sto­ry we’re get­ting. A sto­ry that, as the fol­low­ing analy­sis by OSINT ana­lyst Oliv­er Alexan­der points out, rais­es quite a few addi­tion­al ques­tions. The kinds of ques­tions that raise the ques­tion of whether or not we’re just being fed a pile of non­sense. Like basic ques­tions of whether or not a 15 meter yacht could even han­dle the vol­ume of sophis­ti­cat­ed equip­ment need­ed for this oper­a­tion.

    And yet, as we’re also going to see, it appears that the sto­ry of this mys­tery boat is being cor­rob­o­rat­ed by a num­ber of dif­fer­ent agen­cies. For exam­ple, the Dan­ish news­pa­per Ekstra Bladet has also con­firmed that police had con­duct­ed an inves­ti­ga­tion on the island of Chris­tian­sø into a boat that was docked on the island between the 16th and 18th Sep­tem­ber (the bomb­ings hap­pened on Sep­tem­ber 26). This appears to be the sto­ry West­ern gov­ern­ments are going with. Holes or not:

    OSINT & Analy­sis by Oliv­er Alexan­der

    The Nord Stream Androm­e­da Sto­ry: What We Know and What We Don’t
    A look at what we know about the recent devel­op­ment regard­ing a char­tered yacht, Androm­e­da, as well as the ques­tions posed by this sup­posed series of events.

    Oliv­er Alexan­der
    03/09/2023

    Two days ago, The New York Times pub­lished an arti­cle in which an anony­mous US offi­cial sug­gest­ed that the oper­a­tion to sab­o­tage the Nord Stream pipelines may have been con­duct­ed by a pro-Ukrain­ian group. Unfor­tu­nate­ly this arti­cle con­tained very lit­tle ver­i­fi­able new infor­ma­tion with no con­crete details that could in any­way be inves­ti­gat­ed fur­ther.

    “U.S. offi­cials declined to dis­close the nature of the intel­li­gence, how it was obtained or any details of the strength of the evi­dence it con­tains.”

    Short­ly there­after Zeit pub­lished an arti­cle with an inves­ti­ga­tion they had done pro­vid­ing more details. This arti­cle lays out that a group of 6 uniden­ti­fied peo­ple, pos­si­bly from a pro-Ukrain­ian group, used high qual­i­ty fake pass­ports and char­tered a yacht in Ros­tock on Sep­tem­ber 6th before head­ing to place explo­sives at the Nord Stream sab­o­tage sites. The yacht report­ed­ly made a stop in Weick and on Chrisi­tan­sø as part of the trip. The yacht was lat­er searched by the Ger­man author­i­ties and traces of explo­sives were found. The arti­cle also stat­ed that the char­ter was paid for by a Pol­ish com­pa­ny owned by two Ukraini­ans.

    Over the last two days, parts of this sto­ry have been cor­rob­o­rat­ed, while oth­er parts have raised fur­ther ques­tions. Ini­tial­ly we can look at the aspects of the sto­ry that can be cor­rob­o­rat­ed.

    The Dan­ish news­pa­per Ekstra Bladet con­firmed that police had con­duct­ed an inves­ti­ga­tion on the island of Chris­tian­sø and was look­ing for a spe­cif­ic ves­sel that was docked on the island between the 16th and 18th Sep­tem­ber.

    SPIEGEL Poli­tik released an arti­cle that gave a detailed descrip­tion of the yacht involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion. In this arti­cle it is stat­ed that the yacht was over 15 meters long, had 5 cab­ins, could accom­mo­date 11 peo­ple and cost just under 3000 Euros a week to rent. They also stat­ed that the yacht was rent­ed out by a com­pa­ny from Meck­len­burg-Vor­pom­mern, Ger­many.

    This infor­ma­tion made it pos­si­ble to nar­row the search down to two ves­sels out of the Hohe Düne mari­na in Ros­tock, rent­ed out by Mola Yacht­ing GmbH. These two ves­sels are both Bavaria Cruis­er 50 yachts. These yachts are 15.57 meters long, can accom­mo­date 11 peo­ple in 5 cab­ins and cost 2998 Euros a week to rent for the time peri­od in Sep­tem­ber. Unfor­tu­nate­ly accord­ing to the Mola Yacht­ing web­site, these two yachts are not equipped with an AIS (Auto­mat­ic Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Sys­tem), which means that the move­ments can­not be tracked using ship track­ing site like Marine­Traf­fic.

    This could then be fur­ther nar­rowed down to the spe­cif­ic ves­sel the “Androm­e­da” through the help of sev­er­al sources with knowl­edge of the inves­ti­ga­tion. This has now been pub­licly con­firmed by the SPIEGEL. The Androm­e­da can be seen in this 2017 video from Yacht TV.

    Know­ing the ves­sel, a hole in the Zeit sto­ry became appar­ent. In the arti­cle it is claimed that the yacht was spot­ted in Wieck auf dem Darß on the 7th Sep­tem­ber. Look­ing at nau­ti­cal charts of the area, this would be high­ly unlike­ly as the Wieck auf dem Darß har­bor only has a depth of 1.4m while a Bavaria Cruis­er 50 has a draft of 2.25m.

    This incon­sis­ten­cy was fur­ther rein­forced after Ost­see Zeitung inter­viewed the har­bor­mas­ter at Wieck auf dem Darß where he stat­ed that he had nev­er been con­tact­ed by the author­i­ties and sus­pect­ed that there had been a mix-up. This left the more suit­able mari­na of Wiek on the island of Rügen as the more like­ly can­di­date. This has today been con­firmed by WELT after inter­view­ing the har­bor­mas­ter at Wiek who could con­firm that they had been pre­vi­ous­ly con­tact­ed by author­i­ties regard­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

    This error has now been edit­ed and cor­rect­ed to Wiek, Rügen in the Zeit sto­ry, though it rais­es ques­tions as to how the sto­ry went ahead with this rather large error.

    The Zeit arti­cle and over­all sto­ry leaves many unan­swered ques­tions includ­ing sev­er­al of the points that are used to point at a pro-Ukrain­ian group. It is stat­ed that the group has been pro­fes­sion­al­ly trained and used very high qual­i­ty fake pass­ports dur­ing the oper­a­tion to pro­tect their iden­ti­ty. At the same time though the boat char­ter was report­ed­ly paid for by a Pol­ish com­pa­ny owned by two Ukraini­ans leav­ing a very direct link back to Ukraine. It is also stat­ed that the yacht was returned “uncleaned” after the char­ter, which undoubtably aid­ed the author­i­ties in find­ing explo­sive residue inside the boat on the table. For a high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed oper­a­tion car­ried out with focus on secre­cy and appar­ent sub­terfuge, why did the team involved decide to be so care­less at this piv­otal final moment as to not clean the yacht pri­or to return­ing it?

    The Times wrote anoth­er piece where they state that the explo­sives were dri­ven from Poland into Ger­many. Why would the group acquire explo­sives in Poland and then risk trans­port­ing it over the bor­der to Ger­many and sail of out Ros­tock? It would have been safer and logis­ti­cal­ly eas­i­er to set sail from a Pol­ish mari­na which is also clos­er to Born­holm and the site of the Nord Stream sab­o­tage. This adds a large amount of increased com­plex­i­ty and risk for no log­i­cal rea­son.

    Depend­ing on the amount of explo­sives used in the sab­o­tage of the Nord Stream pipeline, the size of the ves­sel can also be ques­tioned. In the arti­cle by The New York Times, they men­tioned a pre­vi­ous quote from the inves­ti­ga­tion that stat­ed that up to 500kg of explo­sives was used at each Nord Stream 1 site. If this is true, that would make the use of a Bavaria Cruis­er 50 to per­form this sab­o­tage very unlike­ly. Trans­port­ing this amount of explo­sive on a 15m yacht along with 6 peo­ple and large amount of tanks and equip­ment for the dives would be close to impos­si­ble, not to men­tion the task of mov­ing this amount of explo­sives from the yacht down to the pipes. Even with a small amount of explo­sives, per­form­ing sev­er­al tech­ni­cal dives to 80m from a yacht like the Androm­e­da would be very dif­fi­cult and high­ly imprac­ti­cal.

    The sto­ry also makes no men­tion of the Greek flagged crude oil car­ri­er the Min­er­va Julie which cir­cled the area around the Nord Stream 1 explo­sion sites between the 5th and 13th Sep­tem­ber. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly the exact same time as the “Androm­e­da” would have been in the area plac­ing the charges on the pipes. Using the “Androm­e­da” to trans­port the team and pos­si­ble sup­plies and meet up with the Min­er­va Julie sounds like a more plau­si­ble sce­nario to me.

    Addi­tion­al­ly, the loca­tions of the Nord Stream 1 explo­sions are in some of the deep­est water in the area direct­ly sur­round­ing Born­holm. Why would a non-state actor oper­at­ing off a 50 foot yacht decide to place the explo­sives at the most dif­fi­cult and time-con­sum­ing loca­tion? The ves­sel was rel­a­tive­ly small and not equipped with active AIS, so there would be hun­dreds of more acces­si­ble loca­tions along the pipes for the sabo­teurs to place the explo­sive charges. On top of this, blow­ing the pipeline towards the deep­est point in the area reduces the amount of the pipeline that is flood­ed and as a result makes it eas­i­er and cheap­er to repair. The group chose the most dif­fi­cult area to per­form the dive where the dam­age would be the eas­i­est to repair.

    ...

    All in all, this inves­ti­ga­tion into the Androm­e­da adds sev­er­al inter­est­ing details to the sto­ry, but also leaves a lot more mys­tery out there. It is inter­est­ing to note that the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment is strong­ly deny­ing this series of events and stick­ing firm­ly with the Sey­mour Hersh sto­ry that I have pre­vi­ous­ly debunked. Today Dmit­ry Peskov was quot­ed say­ing “As for some kind of pro-Ukrain­ian” Dr. Evil “, who orga­nized all this, it’s hard to believe in it.” This rais­es some ques­tions as to why Rus­sia is so keen to com­plete­ly dis­miss a sce­nario that impli­cates Ukraine in the destruc­tion of Nord Stream.

    ———-

    “The Nord Stream Androm­e­da Sto­ry: What We Know and What We Don’t” by Oliv­er Alexan­der; OSINT & Analy­sis by Oliv­er Alexan­der; OSINT & Analy­sis by Oliv­er Alexan­der; 03/09/2023

    This could then be fur­ther nar­rowed down to the spe­cif­ic ves­sel the “Androm­e­da” through the help of sev­er­al sources with knowl­edge of the inves­ti­ga­tion. This has now been pub­licly con­firmed by the SPIEGEL. The Androm­e­da can be seen in this 2017 video from Yacht TV.”

    They found the boat! By piec­ing togeth­er the avail­able data, SPIEGEL’s inves­ti­ga­tion nar­rowed it down to the “Androm­e­da”, a 15 meter Bavaria Cruis­er 50 yacht. A yacht that seems like a rather odd choice for this oper­a­tion. Odd both in terms of the boat’s phys­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties for a job like that and odd in terms of where the boat was based. Why did this team of six peo­ple appar­ent­ly dri­ve explo­sive in Poland, then cross the bor­der to Ger­many to set sail, when Pol­ish ports were much clos­er to the Born­holm site of the sab­o­tage? And why did they leave it “uncleaned” after the oper­a­tion? But per­haps the biggest ques­tion is whether or not a Bavaria Cruis­er 50 would even be capa­ble of trans­port­ing all of the equip­ment need­ed for a div­ing oper­a­tion on that scale:

    ...
    The Zeit arti­cle and over­all sto­ry leaves many unan­swered ques­tions includ­ing sev­er­al of the points that are used to point at a pro-Ukrain­ian group. It is stat­ed that the group has been pro­fes­sion­al­ly trained and used very high qual­i­ty fake pass­ports dur­ing the oper­a­tion to pro­tect their iden­ti­ty. At the same time though the boat char­ter was report­ed­ly paid for by a Pol­ish com­pa­ny owned by two Ukraini­ans leav­ing a very direct link back to Ukraine. It is also stat­ed that the yacht was returned “uncleaned” after the char­ter, which undoubtably aid­ed the author­i­ties in find­ing explo­sive residue inside the boat on the table. For a high­ly sophis­ti­cat­ed oper­a­tion car­ried out with focus on secre­cy and appar­ent sub­terfuge, why did the team involved decide to be so care­less at this piv­otal final moment as to not clean the yacht pri­or to return­ing it?

    The Times wrote anoth­er piece where they state that the explo­sives were dri­ven from Poland into Ger­many. Why would the group acquire explo­sives in Poland and then risk trans­port­ing it over the bor­der to Ger­many and sail of out Ros­tock? It would have been safer and logis­ti­cal­ly eas­i­er to set sail from a Pol­ish mari­na which is also clos­er to Born­holm and the site of the Nord Stream sab­o­tage. This adds a large amount of increased com­plex­i­ty and risk for no log­i­cal rea­son.

    Depend­ing on the amount of explo­sives used in the sab­o­tage of the Nord Stream pipeline, the size of the ves­sel can also be ques­tioned. In the arti­cle by The New York Times, they men­tioned a pre­vi­ous quote from the inves­ti­ga­tion that stat­ed that up to 500kg of explo­sives was used at each Nord Stream 1 site. If this is true, that would make the use of a Bavaria Cruis­er 50 to per­form this sab­o­tage very unlike­ly. Trans­port­ing this amount of explo­sive on a 15m yacht along with 6 peo­ple and large amount of tanks and equip­ment for the dives would be close to impos­si­ble, not to men­tion the task of mov­ing this amount of explo­sives from the yacht down to the pipes. Even with a small amount of explo­sives, per­form­ing sev­er­al tech­ni­cal dives to 80m from a yacht like the Androm­e­da would be very dif­fi­cult and high­ly imprac­ti­cal.
    ...

    And then there’s the cor­rec­tion that was added to the orig­i­nal Die Zeit arti­cle, which ini­tial­ly claimed that the yacht was spot­ted in Wieck auf dem Darß on the 7th Sep­tem­ber, an area too shal­low for a boat that size. The arti­cle has now been cor­rect­ed to Wiek on the island of Rügen. Acci­dents hap­pen and facts can get con­fused in unfold­ing sto­ries, but it’s anoth­er hint that what we are get­ting now with this over­all ‘pro-Ukrain­ian mys­tery group’ sto­ry is a con­ve­nient fic­tion:

    ...
    Know­ing the ves­sel, a hole in the Zeit sto­ry became appar­ent. In the arti­cle it is claimed that the yacht was spot­ted in Wieck auf dem Darß on the 7th Sep­tem­ber. Look­ing at nau­ti­cal charts of the area, this would be high­ly unlike­ly as the Wieck auf dem Darß har­bor only has a depth of 1.4m while a Bavaria Cruis­er 50 has a draft of 2.25m.

    This incon­sis­ten­cy was fur­ther rein­forced after Ost­see Zeitung inter­viewed the har­bor­mas­ter at Wieck auf dem Darß where he stat­ed that he had nev­er been con­tact­ed by the author­i­ties and sus­pect­ed that there had been a mix-up. This left the more suit­able mari­na of Wiek on the island of Rügen as the more like­ly can­di­date. This has today been con­firmed by WELT after inter­view­ing the har­bor­mas­ter at Wiek who could con­firm that they had been pre­vi­ous­ly con­tact­ed by author­i­ties regard­ing the sit­u­a­tion.

    This error has now been edit­ed and cor­rect­ed to Wiek, Rügen in the Zeit sto­ry, though it rais­es ques­tions as to how the sto­ry went ahead with this rather large error.
    ...

    Final­ly, it’s worth not­ing that, yes, Oliv­er Alexan­der did indeed write a piece debunk­ing Sey­mour Her­sh’s ini­tial report­ing. But it’s worth not­ing that the piece relied heav­i­ly on open source infor­ma­tion about the loca­tions of var­i­ous Nor­we­gian naval ves­sels and find­ing appar­ent con­tra­dic­tions between Her­sh’s sto­ry and that open source info. So it’s impor­tant to recall how Her­sh’s sto­ry includ­ed the caveat that open source infor­ma­tion was indeed being active­ly scrubbed by intel­li­gence agen­cies as part of this oper­a­tion. That capac­i­ty to scrub and manip­u­late open source info is poten­tial­ly a big part of this entire sto­ry:

    ...
    All in all, this inves­ti­ga­tion into the Androm­e­da adds sev­er­al inter­est­ing details to the sto­ry, but also leaves a lot more mys­tery out there. It is inter­est­ing to note that the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment is strong­ly deny­ing this series of events and stick­ing firm­ly with the Sey­mour Hersh sto­ry that I have pre­vi­ous­ly debunked. Today Dmit­ry Peskov was quot­ed say­ing “As for some kind of pro-Ukrain­ian” Dr. Evil “, who orga­nized all this, it’s hard to believe in it.” This rais­es some ques­tions as to why Rus­sia is so keen to com­plete­ly dis­miss a sce­nario that impli­cates Ukraine in the destruc­tion of Nord Stream.
    ...

    Of course, whether or not this lat­est “Androm­e­da” sto­ry is all non­sense, that does­n’t mean Her­sh’s report isn’t filled with mis­in­for­ma­tion too. Feed­ing Hersh a sto­ry that’s most­ly true but spiked with bad info is a pret­ty stan­dard approach to poi­son­ing the infor­ma­tion well. The big sto­ry here isn’t the spe­cif­ic alle­ga­tions get­ting leaked to reporters and whether or not the alle­ga­tions are true. The big sto­ry is the appar­ent lack of any seri­ous inves­ti­ga­tion that is cre­at­ing this infor­ma­tion vac­u­um. Don’t for­get how Swe­den declared back in Octo­ber that it wasn’t going to share its inves­tiga­tive con­clu­sions with any oth­er coun­tries. An inves­tiga­tive coverup has been hap­pen­ing in plain sight for months and remains ongo­ing. That larg­er ongo­ing offi­cial coverup is the big sto­ry here. These ‘updates’, dis­in­fo or not, are just addi­tion­al con­text for that ongo­ing inter­na­tion­al coverup.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | March 9, 2023, 5:04 pm
  31. Well, it was a nice try, but it appears the ‘Ukrain­ian yacht’ sto­ry about the Nord Stream pipeline has already fall­en apart. Not that it was ever a seri­ous expla­na­tion. But there’s no deny­ing the sto­ry was tak­en seri­ous­ly, at least at first. Now, Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tors appears to view the yacht sto­ry as not only implau­si­ble but a pos­si­ble decoy to cov­er for the real per­pe­tra­tors.

    So we’ve at last hit a point in the offi­cial inves­ti­ga­tions where cov­er ups are being seri­ous­ly con­sid­ered. The iden­ti­ty of par­ties car­ry­ing out the cov­er up remains unex­plored, but it’s progress. But don’t assume the progress will con­tin­ue. As Sy Hersh describes in a new inter­view below, jour­nal­ists are des­per­ate not to look under this rock. But it’s not just jour­nal­ists. As on Euro­pean diplo­mat described the approach­es of West­ern gov­ern­ment to the inves­ti­ga­tion, , “It’s like a corpse at a fam­i­ly gathering...It’s bet­ter not to know.”:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    Inves­ti­ga­tors skep­ti­cal of yacht’s role in Nord Stream bomb­ing
    Offi­cials believe more than one ves­sel might have been involved in sab­o­tag­ing the nat­ur­al gas pipeline last year and won­der if a 50-foot sail­ing yacht that inves­ti­ga­tors scoured for clues could be a decoy

    By Shane Har­ris, Souad Mekhen­net, Love­day Mor­ris, Michael Birn­baum and Kate Brady
    April 3, 2023 at 11:29 a.m. EDT

    After sabo­teurs severe­ly dam­aged the Nord Stream nat­ur­al gas pipelines last Sep­tem­ber, Ger­man offi­cials zeroed in on a rent­ed sail­boat that appeared to have tak­en part in plant­i­ng explo­sive devices deep below the sur­face of the Baltic Sea.

    But after months of inves­ti­ga­tion, law enforce­ment offi­cials now sus­pect that the 50-foot yacht, the Androm­e­da, was prob­a­bly not the only ves­sel used in the auda­cious attack. They also say the boat may have been a decoy, put to sea to dis­tract from the true per­pe­tra­tors, who remain at large, accord­ing to offi­cials with knowl­edge of an inves­ti­ga­tion led by Germany’s attor­ney gen­er­al. They spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to share details about the active inquiry, includ­ing doubts about the Andromeda’s role that haven’t been pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed.

    Offi­cials hope that the true pur­pose of Androm­e­da in the deep-sea demo­li­tion will pro­vide fur­ther insight in a high-stakes, inter­na­tion­al who­dun­nit that could even­tu­al­ly lead to those respon­si­ble and explain their motives, which remain unclear.

    U.S. and Euro­pean offi­cials said they still don’t know for sure who is behind the under­wa­ter attack. But sev­er­al said they shared Ger­man skep­ti­cism that a crew of six peo­ple on one sail­boat laid the hun­dreds of pounds of explo­sives that dis­abled Nord Stream 1 and part of Nord Stream 2, a new­er set of pipelines that wasn’t yet deliv­er­ing gas to cus­tomers.

    Experts not­ed that while it was the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble to place the explo­sives on the pipeline by hand, even skilled divers would be chal­lenged sub­merg­ing more than 200 feet to the seabed and slow­ly ris­ing to the sur­face to allow time for their bod­ies to decom­press.

    Such an oper­a­tion would have tak­en mul­ti­ple dives, expos­ing the Androm­e­da to detec­tion from near­by ships. The mis­sion would have been eas­i­er to hide and pull off using remote­ly pilot­ed under­wa­ter vehi­cles or small sub­marines, said div­ing and sal­vage experts who have worked in the area of the explo­sion, which fea­tures rough seas and heavy ship­ping traf­fic.

    The Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tion has deter­mined that traces of “mil­i­tary-grade” explo­sives found on a table inside the boat’s cab­in match the batch of explo­sives used on the pipeline. Sev­er­al offi­cials doubt­ed that skilled sabo­teurs would leave such glar­ing evi­dence of their guilt behind. They won­der if the explo­sive traces — col­lect­ed months after the rent­ed boat was returned to its own­ers — were meant to false­ly lead inves­ti­ga­tors to the Androm­e­da as the ves­sel used in the attack.

    “The ques­tion is whether the sto­ry with the sail­boat is some­thing to dis­tract or only part of the pic­ture,” said one per­son with knowl­edge of the inves­ti­ga­tion.

    Still oth­ers allow that the bombers may sim­ply have been slop­py.

    “It doesn’t all fit,” a senior Euro­pean secu­ri­ty offi­cial said of the frag­ments of evi­dence. “But peo­ple can make mis­takes.”

    Sus­pi­cions turn to Poland and Ukraine

    The Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tion has linked the yacht rental to a Pol­ish com­pa­ny, which is in turn owned by a Euro­pean com­pa­ny that’s con­nect­ed to a promi­nent Ukrain­ian, fuel­ing spec­u­la­tion from Berlin to War­saw to Kyiv that a deep-pock­et­ed par­ti­san may have financed the oper­a­tion. The iden­ti­ty of the Pol­ish com­pa­ny and the Ukrain­ian indi­vid­ual, as well as his poten­tial motive, remains unclear.

    Based on the ini­tial Ger­man find­ings, offi­cials have been whis­per­ing about the poten­tial involve­ment of the Pol­ish or Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment in the attack. Poland arguably had a motive, some said, con­sid­er­ing it has been among the most vocal crit­ics of the Nord Stream project since it began in the late 1990s, warn­ing that the pipelines, run­ning from west­ern Rus­sia to Ger­many, would make Europe depen­dent on the Krem­lin for ener­gy.

    Marcin Przy­dacz, the Pol­ish president’s chief for­eign pol­i­cy advis­er, urged cau­tion about reach­ing con­clu­sions from the ini­tial evi­dence. He too shared the view that the Androm­e­da could be a red her­ring, but said it may have been plant­ed by Moscow.

    “This could be a Russ­ian game to blame” Poland, Przy­dacz said in an inter­view at the pres­i­den­tial palace in War­saw. “Poland had noth­ing to do with this [attack].”

    ...

    Sus­pi­cion also has turned toward Ukraine as the cul­prit behind the Nord Stream bomb­ings, based in part on inter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions of pro-Ukraine indi­vid­u­als dis­cussing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of car­ry­ing out an attack on the pipelines before the explo­sions, The Wash­ing­ton Post pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed.

    A senior West­ern secu­ri­ty offi­cial with knowl­edge of the secret­ly gath­ered intel­li­gence said the com­mu­ni­ca­tions were only dis­cov­ered after the bomb­ing, when West­ern spy agen­cies began search­ing their records for insights.

    “Ukraine absolute­ly did not par­tic­i­pate in the attack on Nord Stream,” Mykhai­lo Podolyak, a top advis­er to Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky, said last month, ques­tion­ing why his coun­try would con­duct an oper­a­tion that “desta­bi­lizes the region and will divert atten­tion from the war, which is cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly not ben­e­fi­cial to us.”

    Those who sus­pect Ukrain­ian involve­ment said that dis­abling the pipeline could have been an effort to gal­va­nize allied sup­port in the face of Russ­ian aggres­sion, and par­tic­u­lar­ly to strength­en Ger­man resolve. Ger­many had halt­ed acti­vat­ed autho­riza­tion for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline days before Rus­sia invad­ed Ukraine.

    Offi­cials in the Unit­ed States and Europe ini­tial­ly blamed Rus­sia for the bomb­ing. The coun­try had already halt­ed gas flows on Nord Stream 1, the old­er of the two sets of pipelines. That sug­gest­ed that Moscow was will­ing to engage in a form of polit­i­cal black­mail with ener­gy sup­plies.

    One of the pair of Nord Stream 2 pipes remains intact. Both of the Nord Stream 1 lines were sev­ered in the explo­sions on Sept. 26.

    Some offi­cials said that Ukrain­ian sabo­teurs or those from oth­er coun­tries act­ing in what they felt were Ukraine’s best inter­est could have attacked Nord Stream with­out Zelensky’s knowl­edge, argu­ing that he doesn’t have com­plete vis­i­bil­i­ty into all the oper­a­tions of his gov­ern­ment or the mil­i­tary. That kind of plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty could pro­tect the cel­e­brat­ed leader and damp­en the polit­i­cal fall­out of a brazen attack tied to his coun­try, these offi­cials said.

    No coun­try has pro­vid­ed firm evi­dence tying the attacks to Ukraine, and a senior Biden admin­is­tra­tion offi­cial has cau­tioned that the inter­cept­ed com­mu­ni­ca­tions of pro-Ukrain­ian actors are not con­clu­sive.

    Ger­man Defense Min­is­ter Boris Pis­to­rius warned against mak­ing ear­ly con­clu­sions as to who was respon­si­ble, sug­gest­ing that it might be a “false flag” oper­a­tion, an idea echoed by oth­er Ger­man politi­cians.

    Roderich Kiesewet­ter, a Ger­man law­mak­er who is part of a com­mit­tee that was briefed last month by intel­li­gence offi­cials on the probe’s progress, said he believes that inves­ti­ga­tors have not yet com­mu­ni­cat­ed any results because the “evi­dence is far too thin.”

    Kiesewet­ter said that unfound­ed spec­u­la­tion over the cul­prits could endan­ger cohe­sion in Europe. “We should con­tin­ue to ask who had an inter­est in the det­o­na­tion” and who “ben­e­fits from uncer­tain­ty and accu­sa­tions,” he said.

    Trail of bread­crumbs

    As the Nord Stream mys­tery has turned into an inter­na­tion­al game of Clue, Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tors have scoured the Androm­e­da for leads. Offi­cials first became inter­est­ed in the ves­sel after the country’s domes­tic intel­li­gence agency received a “very con­crete tip” from a West­ern intel­li­gence ser­vice that the boat may have been involved in the sab­o­tage, accord­ing to a Ger­man secu­ri­ty offi­cial, who declined to name the coun­try that shared the infor­ma­tion.

    Ger­man author­i­ties deter­mined that the tip was cred­i­ble and passed the infor­ma­tion onto law enforce­ment offi­cials, the offi­cial said.

    The Androm­e­da left a vir­tu­al trail of bread­crumbs as it set off from a Ger­man port for the Baltic Sea, accord­ing to inves­ti­ga­tors.

    Mola Yacht­ing rent­ed out the boat on Sept. 6 from Hohe Düne har­bor in Warnemünde, a Ger­man port town on the Baltic, near Ros­tock, which is about 145 miles north of Berlin. The rental loca­tion is in plain sight of a huge vaca­tion com­plex, home to a five-star hotel, sev­en restau­rants and a high-end shop­ping area, with views across the har­bor.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors said the boat then trav­eled in a north­east­er­ly direc­tion, stop­ping in Hafendorf Wiek, or “Wiek har­bor vil­lage,” on the north­ern­most part of Rügen island.

    When a reporter from The Post vis­it­ed in ear­ly March, the area had emp­tied out, save for the odd local dog-walk­er brav­ing the bit­ing tem­per­a­tures. A half-dozen yachts bobbed in the water where the Androm­e­da is said to have been. “Inves­ti­ga­tors came [in] mid-Jan­u­ary, and we helped them where we could,” said the har­bor mas­ter, René Red­mann.

    “It wouldn’t be unusu­al for a boat set­ting off from Ros­tock with the des­ti­na­tion of Born­holm to stop in Wiek,” Red­mann not­ed, refer­ring to a Dan­ish island near the site of the Nord Stream explo­sion. Inves­ti­ga­tors believe that the Androm­e­da left Hafendorf Wiek and moored off the coast of the tiny island Chris­tian­so, near Born­holm.

    A stop in Hafendork Wiek may have offered the Andromeda’s crew a final chance to stock up on sup­plies before head­ing to the explo­sion site.

    “Lots of things are loaded on the boats … includ­ing gro­ceries,” Red­mann said. “Some peo­ple stop to tank up on fuel.” Red­mann would not con­firm that the Androm­e­da stopped there, cit­ing the con­tin­u­ing law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tion. But he said he wouldn’t have any record of the crew’s iden­ti­ties, just the name of the boat, the num­ber of peo­ple aboard and the type of ves­sel.

    “Record­ing names of pas­sen­gers is the job of the char­ter,” Red­mann said.

    Thomas Richter, co-own­er of the char­ter com­pa­ny Mola, said that the search of the Androm­e­da took place in Dranske, on Rügen island, where the yacht was kept in win­ter stor­age. He declined to share fur­ther details.

    ‘Don’t talk about Nord Stream’

    For all the intrigue around who bombed the pipeline, some West­ern offi­cials are not so eager to find out.

    At gath­er­ings of Euro­pean and NATO pol­i­cy­mak­ers, offi­cials have set­tled into a rhythm, said one senior Euro­pean diplo­mat: “Don’t talk about Nord Stream.” Lead­ers see lit­tle ben­e­fit from dig­ging too deeply and find­ing an uncom­fort­able answer, the diplo­mat said, echo­ing sen­ti­ments of sev­er­al peers in oth­er coun­tries who said they would rather not have to deal with the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Ukraine or allies were involved.

    Even if there were a clear cul­prit, it would not like­ly stop the pro­vi­sion of arms to Ukraine, dimin­ish the lev­el of anger with Rus­sia or alter the strat­e­gy of the war, these offi­cials argued. The attack hap­pened months ago and allies have con­tin­ued to com­mit more and heav­ier weapons to the fight, which faces a piv­otal peri­od in the next few months.

    Since no coun­try is yet ruled out from hav­ing car­ried out the attack, offi­cials said they were loath to share sus­pi­cions that could acci­den­tal­ly anger a friend­ly gov­ern­ment that might have had a hand in bomb­ing Nord Stream.

    In the absence of con­crete clues, an awk­ward silence has pre­vailed.

    “It’s like a corpse at a fam­i­ly gath­er­ing,” the Euro­pean diplo­mat said, reach­ing for a grim anal­o­gy. Every­one can see there’s a body lying there, but pre­tends things are nor­mal. “It’s bet­ter not to know.”

    ———-

    “Inves­ti­ga­tors skep­ti­cal of yacht’s role in Nord Stream bomb­ing” by Shane Har­ris, Souad Mekhen­net, Love­day Mor­ris, Michael Birn­baum and Kate Brady; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 04/03/2023

    ““It’s like a corpse at a fam­i­ly gath­er­ing,” the Euro­pean diplo­mat said, reach­ing for a grim anal­o­gy. Every­one can see there’s a body lying there, but pre­tends things are nor­mal. “It’s bet­ter not to know.””

    Don’t look at the corpse. That’s the pre­vail­ing atti­tude. An increas­ing­ly ran­cid corpse that is increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to ignore as one cov­er sto­ry after anoth­er falls apart. First it was “Russ­ian obvi­ous­ly bombed its own pipeline!” And when that fell apart we got this ‘Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dent mys­tery yacht’ sto­ry. A sto­ry that looks, to inves­ti­ga­tors, to be a pos­si­ble decoy at best. Don’t look at the corpse:

    ...
    But after months of inves­ti­ga­tion, law enforce­ment offi­cials now sus­pect that the 50-foot yacht, the Androm­e­da, was prob­a­bly not the only ves­sel used in the auda­cious attack. They also say the boat may have been a decoy, put to sea to dis­tract from the true per­pe­tra­tors, who remain at large, accord­ing to offi­cials with knowl­edge of an inves­ti­ga­tion led by Germany’s attor­ney gen­er­al. They spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to share details about the active inquiry, includ­ing doubts about the Andromeda’s role that haven’t been pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed.

    Offi­cials hope that the true pur­pose of Androm­e­da in the deep-sea demo­li­tion will pro­vide fur­ther insight in a high-stakes, inter­na­tion­al who­dun­nit that could even­tu­al­ly lead to those respon­si­ble and explain their motives, which remain unclear.

    U.S. and Euro­pean offi­cials said they still don’t know for sure who is behind the under­wa­ter attack. But sev­er­al said they shared Ger­man skep­ti­cism that a crew of six peo­ple on one sail­boat laid the hun­dreds of pounds of explo­sives that dis­abled Nord Stream 1 and part of Nord Stream 2, a new­er set of pipelines that wasn’t yet deliv­er­ing gas to cus­tomers.

    Experts not­ed that while it was the­o­ret­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble to place the explo­sives on the pipeline by hand, even skilled divers would be chal­lenged sub­merg­ing more than 200 feet to the seabed and slow­ly ris­ing to the sur­face to allow time for their bod­ies to decom­press.

    Such an oper­a­tion would have tak­en mul­ti­ple dives, expos­ing the Androm­e­da to detec­tion from near­by ships. The mis­sion would have been eas­i­er to hide and pull off using remote­ly pilot­ed under­wa­ter vehi­cles or small sub­marines, said div­ing and sal­vage experts who have worked in the area of the explo­sion, which fea­tures rough seas and heavy ship­ping traf­fic.

    The Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tion has deter­mined that traces of “mil­i­tary-grade” explo­sives found on a table inside the boat’s cab­in match the batch of explo­sives used on the pipeline. Sev­er­al offi­cials doubt­ed that skilled sabo­teurs would leave such glar­ing evi­dence of their guilt behind. They won­der if the explo­sive traces — col­lect­ed months after the rent­ed boat was returned to its own­ers — were meant to false­ly lead inves­ti­ga­tors to the Androm­e­da as the ves­sel used in the attack.

    “The ques­tion is whether the sto­ry with the sail­boat is some­thing to dis­tract or only part of the pic­ture,” said one per­son with knowl­edge of the inves­ti­ga­tion.

    ...

    As the Nord Stream mys­tery has turned into an inter­na­tion­al game of Clue, Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tors have scoured the Androm­e­da for leads. Offi­cials first became inter­est­ed in the ves­sel after the country’s domes­tic intel­li­gence agency received a “very con­crete tip” from a West­ern intel­li­gence ser­vice that the boat may have been involved in the sab­o­tage, accord­ing to a Ger­man secu­ri­ty offi­cial, who declined to name the coun­try that shared the infor­ma­tion.

    Ger­man author­i­ties deter­mined that the tip was cred­i­ble and passed the infor­ma­tion onto law enforce­ment offi­cials, the offi­cial said.

    The Androm­e­da left a vir­tu­al trail of bread­crumbs as it set off from a Ger­man port for the Baltic Sea, accord­ing to inves­ti­ga­tors.

    ...

    For all the intrigue around who bombed the pipeline, some West­ern offi­cials are not so eager to find out.

    At gath­er­ings of Euro­pean and NATO pol­i­cy­mak­ers, offi­cials have set­tled into a rhythm, said one senior Euro­pean diplo­mat: “Don’t talk about Nord Stream.” Lead­ers see lit­tle ben­e­fit from dig­ging too deeply and find­ing an uncom­fort­able answer, the diplo­mat said, echo­ing sen­ti­ments of sev­er­al peers in oth­er coun­tries who said they would rather not have to deal with the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Ukraine or allies were involved.
    ...

    And that stench of death brings us to the fol­low­ing Sy Hersh inter­view in The Pos­til. As we should expect, Hersh is extreme­ly crit­i­cal of the ongo­ing media cov­er­age of the Nord Stream attack. Or lack of cov­er­age, as is typ­i­cal­ly the case. But it does­n’t sound like Hersh is under the impres­sion that jour­nal­ists are gen­uine­ly con­vinced that these cov­er sto­ries are true. Instead, Hersh describes an almost ‘open secret’ sta­tus quo, where every­one knows what is like­ly the truth but des­per­ate­ly wants to avoid talk­ing about it. In oth­er words, it real­ly is like a corpse at a fam­i­ly gath­er­ing:

    The Pos­til Mag­a­zine

    Our Inter­view with Sey­mour Hersh

    April 1, 2023

    Recent­ly, Patrik Baab had the occa­sion to speak with award-win­ning inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist and writer, Sey­mour Hersh. We are so very pleased to bring you this inter­view. [The views expressed remain those of Mr. Hersh and do not nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect those of the Pos­til].

    Patrik Baab (PB): Thank you very much for agree­ing to be inter­viewed. In your Nord Stream sto­ry, you named Mr. Biden as the offi­cial who ordered the destruc­tion, but now you’re fac­ing a mas­sive cov­er up. What’s behind that? The New York Times and Ger­man pub­li­ca­tion [Die Zeit] pub­lished the same sto­ry about a sail­ing yacht and named the Ukrain­ian crew as being com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent from gov­ern­ments. Can this be?

    Sey­mour Hersh (SH): I real­ly don’t know how, but if I were either at The New York Times or Die Zeit I would won­der why two enti­ties 3000–3500 miles away across an ocean had the same idea that Ukraini­ans did it. I don’t quite under­stand why. I did ask one of the reporters: if there were traces of dyna­mite on the yacht, why didn’t they try and find out what hap­pened to the one mine? It’s a mine, not real­ly a bomb. It’s a mine with the plas­tic to blow it up, but it’s a min­ing device on the water—so why didn’t they try and find it? And he said, well, because we did. The Swedes and the Danes were there with­in days. But the Amer­i­cans had already come and tak­en the unex­plod­ed bomb way and I said, ‘Why do you think they did that?’ And he said, “You know how Amer­i­cans are.”

    They like to be first. What can I do with that? There’s anoth­er answer for why they did it. Now everybody’s chas­ing a piece of pipe that absolute­ly has noth­ing to do with any­thing. And they write sto­ries and sto­ries about that and not about the ele­phant in the room. The sto­ry I wrote, it’s not the way I would run a news­pa­per. But maybe that’s why I’m not edi­tor of a news­pa­per or ever want­ed to be. So, the answer to your ques­tion is, you’re ask­ing the wrong per­son about that ques­tion. All I could do is offer spec­u­la­tion. And you have the same spec­u­la­tion I do. I’m sure it’s the same rea­son you can sell that sto­ry of a yacht. I don’t want to ruin anybody’s day, but it’s a 49-foot yacht. And let’s say it could go out into the Baltic Sea. It could find a pipeline and sec­ond­ly, it could drop an anchor 260-feet to the bot­tom so they could secure the boat so divers could dive off from the back end of a boat. You can’t get a lad­der on it because that’s where the engines are. And there’s oth­er stuff on the yacht. How do you get past that?

    If a yacht had anchors that go 260-feet, it would prob­a­bly sink, or at least one side would be in the water. But any­way, so there you are. I can’t answer any­body not try­ing to deal with reality—they are so eager to have a counter sto­ry, but this is part of the busi­ness. But for each news­pa­per not to say, how does the oth­er guy get this? And then won­der why I accept the reporter in Ger­many, who’s a very decent guy, who did come and see me to say that he nev­er talked to the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. And I said, I changed my sto­ry to indi­cate that he did not talk to the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. And The New York Times peo­ple only talk to peo­ple who had access to the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty. But that doesn’t change the fact that some­thing hap­pened that clear­ly has some­thing to do with the Amer­i­can intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty on both sides of the ocean. But I can’t explain why either news­pa­per, they are two won­der­ful news­pa­pers, and the reporters in ques­tion are per­fect­ly com­pe­tent. I mean, I know one of them well. Excel­lent reporter in Ger­many. I’ve known him for years.

    I don’t know why they can’t sit back and say, well, maybe we should do some more report­ing on this. But no, it’s not going to hap­pen.

    PB: Prob­a­bly the rea­son is that the press is not part of the inves­ti­ga­tion. They are part of the cov­er-up.

    SH: Well, but that’s mak­ing an impli­ca­tion that I don’t think exists. I don’t think they have any notion they’re part of a cov­er-up. That’s the point. I don’t think the whole pur­pose of hav­ing a good intel­li­gence ser­vice like you guys cer­tain­ly do, and you know how close­ly they work with us. If you don’t, you prob­a­bly can guess. We’re allies, par­tic­u­lar­ly after 9/11, strong allies. But I don’t think they’re part of the cov­er-up in the sense that they know they are. There’s some­thing in the world called crit­i­cal think­ing. And I just don’t know why we don’t have more crit­i­cal think­ing on this sto­ry than we’ve had so far.

    PB: In Ger­many the Rus­sians were late­ly blamed for the explo­sion. Is this pos­si­ble? Would they destroy their own pipeline?

    SH: Well, you have the same answer I do, which is, of course not. First of all, Mr. Putin had already stopped Nord Stream I, which, as you know, has been going since 2011, and mak­ing Ger­many indus­try great, com­bine the largest chem­i­cal com­pa­ny in the world, BASF, and the great auto­mo­bile mak­ers. And you’re mak­ing Ger­many warm and wealthy and able to also share the wealth with the rest of Europe. Much of the gas they were get­ting from North Stream I was far more than they need­ed.

    And by the way, Nord Stream II, the one that was blown up, had so much gas in it, and it had just been built and been approved. And then your Chan­cel­lor sanc­tioned it, I think obvi­ous­ly at the request of Amer­i­ca a year and a half ago. So, it was less filled, with 750 miles of methane gas, which is why there was such an explo­sion.

    I had a sto­ry which, when they even­tu­al­ly trig­gered the mines, they had to do with a low fre­quen­cy sonar because any­thing high fre­quen­cy gets burned up in the water. Low fre­quen­cy can go, and it’s just a series of knocks. It’s not a com­pli­cat­ed sig­nal— any­way, the open-source intel­li­gence peo­ple, who only see sig­nals not pho­tographs, in the begin­ning, all made it clear that there was no such air­plane. But it didn’t explain why some­thing blew up, because all you have to do is turn off the transpon­der, the IFF (Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Friend or Foe Sys­tem).

    When you can turn it off, nobody can see you. It’s a safe­ty mech­a­nism. And cer­tain­ly, I assure you, the peo­ple run­ning the mis­sion for the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent out of Nor­way, as I wrote ear­li­er, knew all about how to put all the sig­nals they want­ed any­where, and they went away in the Baltic Sea. I joke they could have recre­at­ed the Japan­ese arma­da sail­ing towards Pearl Har­bor in 1941 to start the war right there.

    I spent three months on that sto­ry. It wasn’t some­thing I did yes­ter­day. And the fact that they didn’t use sources—you’re talk­ing to a man who’s been doing sto­ries against the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty and oth­er things, let’s see, for 50 years. I think in sev­en or eight years I worked at The New York Times, I must have writ­ten 800 or so sto­ries, maybe five, had a source named. Most of them were just unnamed, of course, and the two sto­ries in The New York Times had no named sources either.

    So that’s the irony of all of this. But you’re ask­ing the right sort of meta­phys­i­cal ques­tions about what is going on here. I can’t answer what is going on here. There’s some col­lec­tive pan­ic in the West.

    PB: It’s very inter­est­ing to me that the cov­er-up start­ed a few days after a vis­it of Ger­man chan­cel­lor Olaf Scholz in Wash­ing­ton in ear­ly March. Do you find this inter­est­ing?

    SH: The cov­er-up start­ed well before Scholz’s visit—it start­ed right away. The bombs went off in late Sep­tem­ber of last year, and the sanc­tion­ing well before the war began in Feb­ru­ary. This all start­ed in Decem­ber of 2021 with the meet­ings I wrote about in that first arti­cle; start­ed in the White House or in the build­ing next to the Exec­u­tive Office Build­ing. They all start­ed these secret meet­ings look­ing for options to give the Pres­i­dent to maybe get Putin to step down. And the one that came out was the bomb­ing of the pipelines. And Pres­i­dent Biden did say that in Feb­ru­ary 19, 2020, about 13–14 months ago, before the war with Scholz there. And at that point, I was asked imme­di­ate­ly, did he know? I don’t know what he knew.

    I don’t know whether the Pres­i­dent told Scholz, but I know at that con­ver­sa­tion that time, he was there, and he was asked after­wards what he thought, and he was com­pli­men­ta­ry. He said, I’m with the Amer­i­cans. He didn’t say, “I hope, of course, the pipeline will not be blown up.” That’s for sure. He didn’t say any­thing like that, and he said noth­ing else.

    And, yes, you’re right. A month ago, he did come and vis­it the pres­i­dent; a very strange vis­it. He flew over on the chancellor’s plane with no press—that’s unusu­al. Also, he had no pub­lic events except a 10-minute event with Pres­i­dent Biden, where they both told each oth­er how won­der­ful they were, no ques­tions asked, and then a pri­vate 80-min­utes meet­ing. He was treat­ed like some­body who just walked. He’s the Ger­man Chan­cel­lor. He had no news con­fer­ence with the pres­i­dent, no din­ner. He just slunk in and slunk out. You and your guys in Ger­many need to wor­ry about him. But at that point you could say, if he didn’t know, he has cer­tain­ly been a col­lab­o­ra­tor in the cov­er-up.

    You can’t ask me to guess what was is in his mind. I have no idea. But he cer­tain­ly knew what the Pres­i­dent want­ed, even though I have no idea what they talked about pri­vate­ly. I wrote a sto­ry the oth­er day for my Sub­stack sub­scribers. I wouldn’t go to the news­pa­pers with this because I just know the Amer­i­can news­pa­pers don’t want me to write sto­ries. The lib­er­al ones are adverse. They’re so fright­ened of anoth­er Trump com­ing in, anoth­er Repub­li­can lunatic, that they can’t look at Biden objec­tive­ly. That’s my view. But I’ll tell you when I do my report­ing. Now, I’ve been around a long time. I’ve hired one of the best edi­tors I work with here in Wash­ing­ton, New York, and also in the Lon­don Review. And I have a fact check­er. The New York­er had superb fact check­ers. Every line was checked. I hired the very best fact check­er that worked with me ten years ago when I worked at The New York­er.

    But that’s a good stan­dard. The media in Amer­i­ca has gone hay­wire. Trump did that. You’re either for Fox News or you’re against Fox News. So, it’s just irra­tional. What can I tell you?

    PB: Could you imag­ine that Ger­man chan­cel­lor was black­mailed by US. Secret Ser­vices?

    SH: You are very meta­phys­i­cal. I don’t imag­ine any­thing; that’s my life. No, I think if any­thing, I don’t think he’s a dupe. I think at this point we have to assume that he’s aware what hap­pened or cer­tain­ly has a sus­pi­cion. And he’s cer­tain­ly going along now with the Amer­i­can sto­ry that we don’t know any­thing.

    I’ve been in Wash­ing­ton a long time, and Joe Biden was some­body who had a lot of expe­ri­ence. He’s the rea­son we have Clarence Thomas; he was chair­man of the Judi­cia­ry Com­mit­tee and ignored the com­plaints made against him. He also sup­port­ed his chair­man of the For­eign Rela­tions Com­mit­tee in the Sen­ate. These are big jobs. You don’t get this far by nec­es­sar­i­ly being won­der­ful. You get there by stay­ing and being reelect­ed. You out­live oth­ers and you get senior­i­ty. And he was one of those peo­ple who sup­port­ed the Amer­i­can deci­sion to respond to a Sun­ni extreme posi­tion that Osama bin Laden took: Sun­ni fanati­cism.

    We respond­ed to a Sun­ni attack by bomb­ing and attack­ing Iraq, which was run by an awful man, Sad­dam Hus­sein, who hap­pened to also be as hos­tile to Sun­ni rad­i­calisms as we were. And then we went and attacked Syr­ia, under Bashar Assad, who also was some­one who had no use for Sun­ni rad­i­cal­ism. So, you can’t explain this is a pat­tern. I’m sor­ry that Joe Biden and his imme­di­ate team fits so nice­ly into—we all hate Com­mu­nism and we all hate Putin. We all hate Xi and we all hate, hate, hate, hate. We hate, hate, hate. That’s what we get out of Amer­i­ca these days. We hate this and hate this. But he was putting pres­sure on Ger­many, which, as you know, since World War II has been not inter­est­ed in rearm­ing.

    As much as I have had prob­lems with Ger­man lead­ers, Willy Brandt in par­tic­u­lar, the whole idea of Ger­man pol­i­tics towards the East was a fan­tas­tic idea. We know we bombed you and did what Ger­man armies do, but now we’re going to be good allies. We’re going to be trad­ing part­ners. We’re going to build our­selves up as an indus­tri­al base, and we’re going to prove to you we can be in NATO and we can join West­ern Europe, and the French can maybe pull back on their hatred of us. And he did that. Egon Bahr, I remem­ber, used to come to Wash­ing­ton. I was a reporter then, I think, with The New York Times. I used to meet with him. There was real­ly good stuff done with Kissinger, too. As awful and as immoral as he was, the whole rebuild­ing of Europe and putting Ger­many back in the pic­ture was done very bril­liant­ly in the 1970s and 1980s. And this guy now, my pres­i­dent is so fear­ful that the inde­pen­dence Ger­many has had and NATO with the begin­ning of indif­fer­ence towards our com­mit­ment to the war in Iraq. I think by the time in late Sep­tem­ber, it was clear, the best Amer­i­ca was going to get in that war with Zelen­sky and the cor­rup­tion at the top of the mil­i­tary in his office, too, was going to be a stale­mate. And we’ve now put $120 Bil­lion into it in a time of infla­tion.

    And look at you guys. Your infla­tion is going out of sight. It won’t get bet­ter. So, what if he told you he killed your pipeline because he was so afraid, as Amer­i­ca has been for five gen­er­a­tions of Russ­ian gas and oil becom­ing a weapon, a polit­i­cal weapon in Europe for Rus­sia. That’s been the under­ly­ing fear. Biden has giv­en speech­es about that when he was Vice-Pres­i­dent. Jack Kennedy gave speech­es about it. I’ve also writ­ten about this. And so the posi­tion we had is, well, maybe Ger­many and even NATO might not go all the way with us in the next six months as this war goes on and costs more mon­ey and doesn’t go any­where. So, I’m not going to give them a chance to do that, to walk away, because I’m going to take away their gas, I’m going to blow up their pipeline. And why Ger­many to this point is still going along. You got through the win­ter because it was mild and you had reserves; but look out, it’s going to be a very bad next year for your indus­try. You could buy alter­na­tive gas, but there was noth­ing like the sweet methane gas you got from Rus­sia.

    And you don’t have as much. It doesn’t come as cheap­ly. You’re going to end up with liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas. You’re going to look at renew­ables a lit­tle bit. Your coun­try, BASF, is look­ing into Chi­na, so I under­stand, talk­ing to them about maybe mov­ing some facil­i­ties there where they can be assured of gas. And you have bak­eries shut­ting down—six, eight, if they have a dozen ovens shut­ting down half of them or eight of them because they don’t have enough gas to pro­duce the bread that they could sell. It’s going to be bad and it’s going to fall on Biden, and I think it’s going to be a dis­as­ter for him polit­i­cal­ly by the mid­dle of this year. So, I’m con­tent to wait. Why aren’t you?

    PB: Was there a dis­rup­tion in the secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus in Amer­i­ca between the neo­cons around Biden and the CIA?

    SH: Well, watch this space, as they say. I’m writ­ing more about it right now. Not so much about that spe­cif­ic point, but there’s clear­ly a dis­tinc­tion between what some of the peo­ple in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty think and what the White House does. I don’t think anybody’s in sup­port of the con­stant White House scream­ing at Rus­sia and Chi­na and con­stant­ly exag­ger­at­ing what’s going on in the war, which is there’s an extreme dif­fer­ence of opin­ion between the Pres­i­dent and the For­eign Sec­re­tary, Tony Blinken. I mean, it’s the first time we’ve had an Amer­i­can For­eign Sec­re­tary of State refus­ing to meet with his Chi­nese coun­ter­part because of a bal­loon. Tell me about that. What does that mean, a bal­loon? You’re not going to go because of a bal­loon that’s been fly­ing around for­ev­er? Come on. Come on. I’m an Amer­i­can. I love my coun­try as much as any­body. I’ve had every rea­son to. Nobody both­ers me. I do my job, and I just don’t know why oth­ers in the press… I guess it’s because I only can think of it. It has to be some sort of polit­i­cal thing because of what the hor­rors we all went through with Trump.

    There’s the irra­tional Trump. I think nobody wants that again. And so, Biden becomes the only one that can hold. I don’t under­stand. I don’t under­stand why the Amer­i­can Sen­ate, which was so crit­i­cal when I wrote about the Viet­nam War crit­i­cal­ly, I wrote about the My Lai mas­sacre 50 years ago. And nobody believed it then. So, the idea that the sto­ries I write aren’t believed is not a new idea for me. I’ve been there before. It’ll all come out.

    Look, it hap­pened. What I said hap­pened did hap­pen, and they can’t get off it. The White House can com­mis­sion a new study tomor­row that will come out in two weeks and say we’ve looked at the prob­lem, and we and cer­tain ele­ments of the CIA say that we don’t know what hap­pened; but no sign that Amer­i­ca did it. I’m sure that’s going to be the next lie com­ing. Why not? But why not? But you’re not going to tell me Putin did that. I’ve read Putin’s speech­es. I don’t agree with him. You can nev­er sup­port a man who chose war when there were oth­er options. I know he was squeezed, but it was the blood­i­est war in Europe since World War II. And we had the Balka­ns and we had Chech­nya but this is noth­ing like what’s going on in the Ukraine. And Rus­sia and Ukraine. It goes back to so many gen­er­a­tions. But in the 1930s, remem­ber, har­vests were bad, there was star­va­tion, and we took all of the weeds from the Ukraine and brought it into Moth­er Rus­sia. Ukraini­ans died in 1932 while the Rus­sians stood by, tak­ing their food away from them. But any­way, that’s anoth­er sto­ry.

    PB: Who was direct­ly involved in the plan­ning team for destroy­ing the pipeline?

    SH: Oh, come on, come on. Human beings. How’s that? Is that a good enough answer? No. I could just tell you on gen­er­al prin­ci­ples, and I have been as I say, I’ve been writ­ing about this stuff for a long time. In many ways. No, the way you do some­thing like this is as few peo­ple as pos­si­ble know, and nobody in the White House. You have a head of the CIA, and he may know what­ev­er you want to tell him. And if he’s smart, he doesn’t want to know much; but you tell him the min­i­mum. But he’s the one that says the Pres­i­dent says, yes, go. The pres­i­dent says, no, don’t go. But how they do it is nev­er com­mit­ted. You can nev­er trust the lead­er­ship to write a mem­oir and start reveal­ing secrets. The pro­fes­sion­als that do this stuff, it’s the very min­i­mum. The big point that every­body miss­es is Nor­way was very impor­tant. It was Nor­we­gian ships, Nor­we­gian train­ing, Nor­we­gian involve­ment. We don’t know the Baltic Sea. And you’re sud­den­ly going to have a bunch of divers jump­ing around the Baltic Sea where there’s been no oil or gas below the sur­face, ever. What? And the Rus­sians cer­tain­ly have sur­veil­lance.

    There’s under­wa­ter sur­veil­lance, sub­marines. Every­body watch­es the Baltic Sea because it’s so close to the good and the bad in the world, the dirty com­mies and the rest of us. And so, it’s a huge sea. Peo­ple for­get that pipeline, that the two pipelines—one blown up and one stopped—all blown up by now was actu­al­ly 760 miles long. One straight pipeline from Rus­sia, from right near Leningrad or St. Peters­burg now, from that cor­ner of Rus­sia, all the way down into Ger­many; an amaz­ing pro­duc­tion. It must have cost hun­dreds of mil­lions, if not bil­lions, to build, and to be all blown away. And the law on this is very inter­est­ing. I did a lot of work on the law of the sea because there were treaties signed by Amer­i­ca and the world in the 1980s, 1984, when the first tele­graph lines were made.

    And we also signed both treaties. Since then, there’s no spe­cif­ic law say­ing if an oil pipeline under­wa­ter was cut, it’s a crim­i­nal act. I mean, it’s clear if a case ever arose, a court would find it to be crim­i­nal. But there’s no law. Although, begin­ning with coax­i­al cables and the TV cables and the under­ground cables, we now run, for every­thing. A lot of stuff is in the air now, too; but 30 years ago, they were cables with com­mu­ni­ca­tion devices. I’m sure the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry laws applied; but now the one thing that’s sure, if it is found that the Unit­ed States did it, they’re liable to the com­pa­nies. Gazprom and anoth­er group. One of the pipelines is owned by a con­sor­tium that involves the Russ­ian oligarchs—51% oli­garchs and 49% West­ern Europe com­pa­nies that sup­ply nat­ur­al gas. I don’t know what the make­up of the sec­ond pipeline is, but we’re talk­ing about poten­tial bil­lions in dam­ages and law­suits. And then you also have the ques­tion of whether or not it’s a vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law. All those issues are to be decid­ed. And so, I can imag­ine that wouldn’t be some­thing this White House wants to deal with, par­tic­u­lar­ly when Biden wants to run again in 2024.

    PB: Will it destroy the Ger­man Amer­i­can rela­tion­ship?

    SH: I don’t think it will. It clear­ly has it poi­soned it on an offi­cial basis. And so far, there’s no sign that the aver­age Ger­man is con­vinced that the aver­age Amer­i­can is against them, because that’s absolute­ly not so. But it does cause diplo­mat­ic issues for NATO, too. I mean, NATO coun­tries. This cost and this infla­tion that you’re now hav­ing in Ger­many is not going to get bet­ter. And the lack of gas, I don’t know West­ern Europe, Ger­many in par­tic­u­lar, but air con­di­tion­ing is wide­spread, but not as wide­spread here. But all of the ener­gy for air con­di­tion­ing, all of the ener­gy to pro­duce heat, large­ly the tur­bines are charged by nat­ur­al gas because you had it, so you didn’t use coal. Gas was clean­er. Some peo­ple in France I know, friends, that are pay­ing five times as much for elec­tric­i­ty because it’s pow­ered by tur­bines pow­ered by nat­ur­al gas, and the gas is cost­ing more. Same in Italy. With nat­ur­al gas, it’s three, four times more expen­sive. And so, they’re talk­ing now in France of putting back two nuclear ener­gy plants into busi­ness, which were shut down because of all the prob­lems there are with not so much the mechan­ics of a nuclear plant, but the peo­ple who run it.

    They just can’t seem to get it straight. What hap­pened in Cher­nobyl? What hap­pened in Three Mile Island in Amer­i­ca? So, I think we’re going to start going back to, more the issue is, will West Ger­many go back to more renew­ables? The Chi­nese are way ahead of us on that, and that may hap­pen; but that would be a good sign. We go back into renew­ables with more enthu­si­asm. But still, to get it done in time to mit­i­gate the cost of not hav­ing the gas you did is not going to hap­pen.

    In Ger­many we have how many Amer­i­can troops there right now? We’ve got what, dozens of bases still, don’t we? In Ger­many? It’s not an occu­pa­tion. I don’t think we’re going to lose per­son to per­son friend­ship and eco­nom­ic rela­tion­ships. But polit­i­cal­ly, I don’t know.

    I don’t do pol­i­tics. I’ve nev­er gone and tes­ti­fied to Con­gress. I just don’t do it. I’m talk­ing to you in a polit­i­cal way because you’re ask­ing me the ques­tions. But if you’re ask­ing dif­fer­ent ques­tions, I talk to you, too, about it. But you’re ask­ing the kind of ques­tions that the news­pa­pers should be ask­ing but they’re not.

    PB: Why did the Unit­ed States involve Nor­way? Was this a kind of plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty?

    SH: No. Nor­way has been our pet. They’ve been our lit­tle pet dog. Nor­we­gian secret ser­vices were involved with us in oper­a­tions in North Viet­nam before the war was declared. Nor­way has always been ter­rif­ic. Very com­pe­tent sea­men. They have the best PT (Patrol Tor­pe­do) boats in the world. They have the most advanced PT boats after World War II and they were used by us, by the Amer­i­can CIA and the Amer­i­can Seals to run covert oper­a­tions in North Viet­nam. So, we’ve had a long rela­tion­ship. But don’t for­get it’s a bor­der that’s 1400 miles from Oslo all the way to the North Pole where they meet Rus­sia. And we have put prob­a­bly hun­dreds of mil­lions into Norway—it’s more in the last decade. We’ve built an amaz­ing syn­thet­ic aper­ture radar—the most advanced radar that can mon­i­tor up and near the Arc­tic Cir­cle.

    There’s Kola Penin­su­la on the oth­er side of it about 220 miles as the bird flies where there is one of the largest Russ­ian mis­sile sites. And we mon­i­tor that with the radar. There was a shut­down of a Nor­we­gian sub­ma­rine base that was used in World War II. We rebuilt it, way up north. This is way up north in Nor­way. Swe­den is very close to the bor­der there. And we built a new sub­ma­rine-base, state of the art. There’s a major Nor­we­gian air base and navy base we’ve also put mon­ey into and have share facil­i­ties with. So, they’ve become our boys, our pets. And they were very impor­tant. We couldn’t have done this oper­a­tion with­out them.

    It was the Nor­we­gian ships that did drop the min­ers off. And so, it’s just a rela­tion­ship that’s very secure and nobody talks about it. Most of the exer­cis­ing was done near Nor­way in the water­ways of the Baltic nar­row area where there’s a major island, and at var­i­ous times the pipelines were in a twelve miles lim­it of waters of both Den­mark and Swe­den. And I think both of those coun­tries have not been very straight­for­ward about what they know, and what they knew all along. I’ve writ­ten about it because I don’t have a piece of paper say­ing that. But two and two usu­al­ly is four. Even if nobody counts.

    If nobody’s count­ing, it’s noth­ing. There’s all this clown game going about inves­ti­gat­ing the bot­tom of the sea because of a rusty pipe. I mean, it’s all very sil­ly.

    PB: The Nor­we­gian Prime Min­is­ter Jonas Gahr Støre vis­it­ed the Unit­ed States in mid-Sep­tem­ber 2022 and he met the Sec­re­tary of the Navy, Car­los del Toro and the speak­er of the White House (at the time), Nan­cy Pelosi.

    SH: None of those; Nan­cy Pelosi, the speak­er, they don’t know about these mis­sions. They wouldn’t know about a secret mis­sion, even if it was going then, which I don’t think it was that ear­ly in 2022. Maybe it was. I don’t know. No, of course not. No, the cir­cle is very small. No, you would tell Con­gress? Are you kid­ding?

    I think the rea­son that it was so secre­tive is that so few peo­ple knew. That’s the only way you can run an oper­a­tion. You know how many divers we used for four pipelines? Two. Two very high­ly skilled Amer­i­can Navy divers. Not from the Seals, not from Spe­cial Forces. Because if you use Spe­cial Forces, you have to make a dif­fer­ent kind of report­ing. You have to report it up to Con­gress. But the Navy, even if the CIA is involved and they bring in the Navy, you don’t have to do that. Just a mil­i­tary mis­sion. Con­gress doesn’t have to know about it. And they don’t want to tell Con­gress any­way, any­thing. No, it’s very few peo­ple. The Nor­we­gians had the boats and they had the exper­tise.

    They knew the bot­tom of the sea. They knew the cur­rents. The Baltic emp­ties every year; there’s a tremen­dous flow in and out. It’s pret­ty cor­rupt­ed now because of pol­lu­tion. It used to be great cod fish­ing.

    PB: So, the Amer­i­cans used the Nor­we­gian P8‑A Posei­don to ver­i­fy the explo­sion after the attack.

    SH: No, they didn’t have to ver­i­fy any­thing. No. There was a plane used. It was a P8‑A plane. It did not have its IFF on. It did not have its transpon­der on. So, there was no way to see it. The prob­lem, as I said ear­li­er, with all the peo­ple who say there was no plane, we couldn’t track a plane, is, of course, they weren’t think­ing about the fact there were no transpon­ders. And I remem­ber with­in days what they called open-source intel­li­gence, peo­ple were talk­ing about, there was no such plane. I wrote about a plane drop­ping a sonar in Sep­tem­ber to trig­ger the bombs. But the prob­lem was, they would all report about what they couldn’t find. But then the prob­lem was, some­thing blew up. How did it blow up, if they couldn’t see a plane? Well, but that wasn’t an issue. They would just write about the fact that they couldn’t find a plane, not acknowl­edg­ing that it’s very easy to hide a plane. You can hide ships, too, by the same thing. They have elec­tron­ic stuff they can shut down. They have emer­gency fre­quen­cies.

    Any­way, even yachts have what they call an AIS sys­tem. A yacht of the kind of stature that alleged­ly was used to do it, as we’ve been read­ing, would have to have in case you get in trou­ble, you have to have some way of know­ing where you are to tell the Coast Guard. So, they have to have a sys­tem that tells them where they are. It’s an elec­tron­ic sys­tem that can be mon­i­tored. You can turn it off, too. But any­way, the plane could have been flown by any­body. What­ev­er I wrote is due to what the infor­ma­tion I had. I think it was a P8‑A, flown by Amer­i­cans; in an Amer­i­can P8‑A. And some­body said there were no such planes in Nor­way. Well, not to their knowl­edge, maybe; but there were. So, there you are. What hap­pened, hap­pened, peri­od.

    PB: What will hap­pen in the next weeks? What do you think? Do you have a new aspect of the sto­ry, or do you think about new reac­tions in the press?

    SH: Well, no, I don’t wor­ry about the press. I can’t wor­ry about them. Why would I wor­ry about them? I’ve been writ­ing sto­ries that the press ignored all my life. They either come true or they don’t. No, I’m writ­ing more about the whole issue, of course, because it’s my White House and my Pres­i­dent, our pol­i­cy. I’m enti­tled to do that. I’m sur­prised you’re so focused on the press, because it is not going to be a friend of this sto­ry.

    It’s just not going to be; they just have drawn a line that a yacht did it. Or now, what was the oth­er thing? That there was one sto­ry in Lon­don the oth­er day, a trawler did it. Or they had all these boats doing it. And that’s much more fun for them, than to deal with a sto­ry some­body else wrote. I know that when I worked at The New York Times, you wouldn’t dare ask me to chase some­body else’s sto­ry. I would say, oh, no, that’s not for me. So, the good reporters at The Times, the reporters that actu­al­ly do have sources, don’t want to do some­body else’s sto­ry. That’s beneath them; so, it just gets done. Some kid will be assigned to check it, and he calls the White House and they say it’s not so. You got a sto­ry. In fact, they actu­al­ly ran the same sto­ry two or three times. The White House ini­tial­ly said it wasn’t so, and then two weeks lat­er, anoth­er press spokesman who hap­pened to be retired, cred­i­ble, said the same thing, and they wrote the sto­ry just as if the White House had first announced it.

    ...

    ———–

    “Our Inter­view with Sey­mour Hersh”; The Pos­til Mag­a­zine; 04/01/2023

    “And we also signed both treaties. Since then, there’s no spe­cif­ic law say­ing if an oil pipeline under­wa­ter was cut, it’s a crim­i­nal act. I mean, it’s clear if a case ever arose, a court would find it to be crim­i­nal. But there’s no law. Although, begin­ning with coax­i­al cables and the TV cables and the under­ground cables, we now run, for every­thing. A lot of stuff is in the air now, too; but 30 years ago, they were cables with com­mu­ni­ca­tion devices. I’m sure the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry laws applied; but now the one thing that’s sure, if it is found that the Unit­ed States did it, they’re liable to the com­pa­nies. Gazprom and anoth­er group. One of the pipelines is owned by a con­sor­tium that involves the Russ­ian oligarchs—51% oli­garchs and 49% West­ern Europe com­pa­nies that sup­ply nat­ur­al gas. I don’t know what the make­up of the sec­ond pipeline is, but we’re talk­ing about poten­tial bil­lions in dam­ages and law­suits. And then you also have the ques­tion of whether or not it’s a vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law. All those issues are to be decid­ed. And so, I can imag­ine that wouldn’t be some­thing this White House wants to deal with, par­tic­u­lar­ly when Biden wants to run again in 2024.

    Are we going to see law­suits against the US gov­ern­ment over the Nord Stream bomb­ings for bil­lions of dol­lars in dam­ages? It’s a sce­nario Sy Hersh does­n’t rule out and pre­sum­ably some­thing the Biden White House keen­ly wants to avoid. The more the cov­er sto­ries fall apart, the greater the odds of that sce­nario play­ing out.

    But it’s the fact that all of this appears to be an open secret that is per­haps the most remark­able dynam­ic at work here. Even ran­dom reporters Hersh has spo­ken to just assumes the US man­aged to remove the two unex­plod­ed bombs before Swedish or Dan­ish inves­ti­ga­tion teams arrived:

    ...
    Patrik Baab (PB): Thank you very much for agree­ing to be inter­viewed. In your Nord Stream sto­ry, you named Mr. Biden as the offi­cial who ordered the destruc­tion, but now you’re fac­ing a mas­sive cov­er up. What’s behind that? The New York Times and Ger­man pub­li­ca­tion [Die Zeit] pub­lished the same sto­ry about a sail­ing yacht and named the Ukrain­ian crew as being com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent from gov­ern­ments. Can this be?

    Sey­mour Hersh (SH): I real­ly don’t know how, but if I were either at The New York Times or Die Zeit I would won­der why two enti­ties 3000–3500 miles away across an ocean had the same idea that Ukraini­ans did it. I don’t quite under­stand why. I did ask one of the reporters: if there were traces of dyna­mite on the yacht, why didn’t they try and find out what hap­pened to the one mine? It’s a mine, not real­ly a bomb. It’s a mine with the plas­tic to blow it up, but it’s a min­ing device on the water—so why didn’t they try and find it? And he said, well, because we did. The Swedes and the Danes were there with­in days. But the Amer­i­cans had already come and tak­en the unex­plod­ed bomb way and I said, ‘Why do you think they did that?’ And he said, “You know how Amer­i­cans are.”
    ...

    How were US oper­a­tives able to work in that area with­out leav­ing an open source trail? Well, as Hersh describes, all any­one would have to do to oper­ate large­ly in secret — with respect to leav­ing an open source trail infor­ma­tion — is turn off the var­i­ous IFF transpon­ders, whether we’re talk­ing about ships or planes. The way Hersh describes it, hid­ing the oper­a­tion was the easy part:

    ...
    PB: In Ger­many the Rus­sians were late­ly blamed for the explo­sion. Is this pos­si­ble? Would they destroy their own pipeline?

    SH: Well, you have the same answer I do, which is, of course not. First of all, Mr. Putin had already stopped Nord Stream I, which, as you know, has been going since 2011, and mak­ing Ger­many indus­try great, com­bine the largest chem­i­cal com­pa­ny in the world, BASF, and the great auto­mo­bile mak­ers. And you’re mak­ing Ger­many warm and wealthy and able to also share the wealth with the rest of Europe. Much of the gas they were get­ting from North Stream I was far more than they need­ed.

    And by the way, Nord Stream II, the one that was blown up, had so much gas in it, and it had just been built and been approved. And then your Chan­cel­lor sanc­tioned it, I think obvi­ous­ly at the request of Amer­i­ca a year and a half ago. So, it was less filled, with 750 miles of methane gas, which is why there was such an explo­sion.

    I had a sto­ry which, when they even­tu­al­ly trig­gered the mines, they had to do with a low fre­quen­cy sonar because any­thing high fre­quen­cy gets burned up in the water. Low fre­quen­cy can go, and it’s just a series of knocks. It’s not a com­pli­cat­ed sig­nal— any­way, the open-source intel­li­gence peo­ple, who only see sig­nals not pho­tographs, in the begin­ning, all made it clear that there was no such air­plane. But it didn’t explain why some­thing blew up, because all you have to do is turn off the transpon­der, the IFF (Iden­ti­fi­ca­tion Friend or Foe Sys­tem).

    When you can turn it off, nobody can see you. It’s a safe­ty mech­a­nism. And cer­tain­ly, I assure you, the peo­ple run­ning the mis­sion for the Amer­i­can pres­i­dent out of Nor­way, as I wrote ear­li­er, knew all about how to put all the sig­nals they want­ed any­where, and they went away in the Baltic Sea. I joke they could have recre­at­ed the Japan­ese arma­da sail­ing towards Pearl Har­bor in 1941 to start the war right there.

    ...

    PB: So, the Amer­i­cans used the Nor­we­gian P8‑A Posei­don to ver­i­fy the explo­sion after the attack.

    SH: No, they didn’t have to ver­i­fy any­thing. No. There was a plane used. It was a P8‑A plane. It did not have its IFF on. It did not have its transpon­der on. So, there was no way to see it. The prob­lem, as I said ear­li­er, with all the peo­ple who say there was no plane, we couldn’t track a plane, is, of course, they weren’t think­ing about the fact there were no transpon­ders. And I remem­ber with­in days what they called open-source intel­li­gence, peo­ple were talk­ing about, there was no such plane. I wrote about a plane drop­ping a sonar in Sep­tem­ber to trig­ger the bombs. But the prob­lem was, they would all report about what they couldn’t find. But then the prob­lem was, some­thing blew up. How did it blow up, if they couldn’t see a plane? Well, but that wasn’t an issue. They would just write about the fact that they couldn’t find a plane, not acknowl­edg­ing that it’s very easy to hide a plane. You can hide ships, too, by the same thing. They have elec­tron­ic stuff they can shut down. They have emer­gency fre­quen­cies.

    Any­way, even yachts have what they call an AIS sys­tem. A yacht of the kind of stature that alleged­ly was used to do it, as we’ve been read­ing, would have to have in case you get in trou­ble, you have to have some way of know­ing where you are to tell the Coast Guard. So, they have to have a sys­tem that tells them where they are. It’s an elec­tron­ic sys­tem that can be mon­i­tored. You can turn it off, too. But any­way, the plane could have been flown by any­body. What­ev­er I wrote is due to what the infor­ma­tion I had. I think it was a P8‑A, flown by Amer­i­cans; in an Amer­i­can P8‑A. And some­body said there were no such planes in Nor­way. Well, not to their knowl­edge, maybe; but there were. So, there you are. What hap­pened, hap­pened, peri­od.
    ...

    And then there’s the alleged coop­er­a­tion of Nor­way — , which Hersh describes as the US’s ‘pet’- and the use of Nor­we­gian ships to drop of the div­ing teams. So if that Ukrain­ian yacht was indeed a planned decoy, it was a decoy to dis­tract from a Nor­we­gian ship:

    ...
    PB: Who was direct­ly involved in the plan­ning team for destroy­ing the pipeline?

    SH: Oh, come on, come on. Human beings. How’s that? Is that a good enough answer? No. I could just tell you on gen­er­al prin­ci­ples, and I have been as I say, I’ve been writ­ing about this stuff for a long time. In many ways. No, the way you do some­thing like this is as few peo­ple as pos­si­ble know, and nobody in the White House. You have a head of the CIA, and he may know what­ev­er you want to tell him. And if he’s smart, he doesn’t want to know much; but you tell him the min­i­mum. But he’s the one that says the Pres­i­dent says, yes, go. The pres­i­dent says, no, don’t go. But how they do it is nev­er com­mit­ted. You can nev­er trust the lead­er­ship to write a mem­oir and start reveal­ing secrets. The pro­fes­sion­als that do this stuff, it’s the very min­i­mum. The big point that every­body miss­es is Nor­way was very impor­tant. It was Nor­we­gian ships, Nor­we­gian train­ing, Nor­we­gian involve­ment. We don’t know the Baltic Sea. And you’re sud­den­ly going to have a bunch of divers jump­ing around the Baltic Sea where there’s been no oil or gas below the sur­face, ever. What? And the Rus­sians cer­tain­ly have sur­veil­lance.

    ...

    PB: Why did the Unit­ed States involve Nor­way? Was this a kind of plau­si­ble deni­a­bil­i­ty?

    SH: No. Nor­way has been our pet. They’ve been our lit­tle pet dog. Nor­we­gian secret ser­vices were involved with us in oper­a­tions in North Viet­nam before the war was declared. Nor­way has always been ter­rif­ic. Very com­pe­tent sea­men. They have the best PT (Patrol Tor­pe­do) boats in the world. They have the most advanced PT boats after World War II and they were used by us, by the Amer­i­can CIA and the Amer­i­can Seals to run covert oper­a­tions in North Viet­nam. So, we’ve had a long rela­tion­ship. But don’t for­get it’s a bor­der that’s 1400 miles from Oslo all the way to the North Pole where they meet Rus­sia. And we have put prob­a­bly hun­dreds of mil­lions into Norway—it’s more in the last decade. We’ve built an amaz­ing syn­thet­ic aper­ture radar—the most advanced radar that can mon­i­tor up and near the Arc­tic Cir­cle.

    There’s Kola Penin­su­la on the oth­er side of it about 220 miles as the bird flies where there is one of the largest Russ­ian mis­sile sites. And we mon­i­tor that with the radar. There was a shut­down of a Nor­we­gian sub­ma­rine base that was used in World War II. We rebuilt it, way up north. This is way up north in Nor­way. Swe­den is very close to the bor­der there. And we built a new sub­ma­rine-base, state of the art. There’s a major Nor­we­gian air base and navy base we’ve also put mon­ey into and have share facil­i­ties with. So, they’ve become our boys, our pets. And they were very impor­tant. We couldn’t have done this oper­a­tion with­out them.

    It was the Nor­we­gian ships that did drop the min­ers off. And so, it’s just a rela­tion­ship that’s very secure and nobody talks about it. Most of the exer­cis­ing was done near Nor­way in the water­ways of the Baltic nar­row area where there’s a major island, and at var­i­ous times the pipelines were in a twelve miles lim­it of waters of both Den­mark and Swe­den. And I think both of those coun­tries have not been very straight­for­ward about what they know, and what they knew all along. I’ve writ­ten about it because I don’t have a piece of paper say­ing that. But two and two usu­al­ly is four. Even if nobody counts.

    If nobody’s count­ing, it’s noth­ing. There’s all this clown game going about inves­ti­gat­ing the bot­tom of the sea because of a rusty pipe. I mean, it’s all very sil­ly.
    ...

    It’s a com­pli­cat­ed mul­ti-lay­ered coverup on one lev­el. But as these two arti­cles make clear, it’s less a coverup and more an exer­cise in col­lec­tive denial of an open secret. If no one looks at the corpse even­tu­al­ly it will just rot away. But not entire­ly. There’s still a skele­ton. Which is why the next phase of the coverup will pre­sum­ably be less about avoid­ing look­ing at the corpse and more about find­ing a vat of acid to dump it in. Either that or we all just play “don’t look at the skele­ton” for­ev­er. Both plau­si­ble sce­nar­ios at this point, unlike a real inves­ti­ga­tion.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 4, 2023, 3:40 pm
  32. We just got a rather inter­est­ing fol­low up report, of sorts, on the leaked doc­u­ments show­ing active UK schem­ing to blow up the Kerch Bridge: The jour­nal­ist who report­ed on that sto­ry, Kit Klaren­berg of The Gray­zone, was just detained and inter­ro­gat­ed by a group of UK counter-ter­ror­ism police upon his arrival at London’s Luton air­port on sus­pi­cions of work­ing as a Russ­ian agent. Yep. It sounds like the ‘inves­ti­ga­tion’ is still ongo­ing.

    But it does­n’t sound like the Kerch Bridge plot was the only sto­ry Klaren­berg’s inter­roga­tors were inter­est­ed in. Recall how Klaren­berg was also one of the first to report on the CIA recruit­ment of the 9/11 hijack­ers. Klaren­berg was appar­ent­ly asked about that report­ing and his thoughts on 9/11 con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries. They then engaged in a kind of philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion about the nature of jour­nal­ism, with one police offi­cer telling Klaren­berg, “Your work might be inter­est­ing to the pub­lic, “but it’s not in the pub­lic inter­est,” while insist­ing that a jour­nal­ist could be fur­ther­ing the inter­ests of a hos­tile state actor in report­ing on nation­al secu­ri­ty issues.

    So it appears that the UK gov­ern­ment has decid­ed to take a tru­ly baf­fling posi­tion of kind-of-sort-of accus­ing jour­nal­ists who report on high­ly embar­rass­ing sto­ries of not just being Russ­ian assets but tak­ing the posi­tion that such report­ing is inher­ent­ly wrong because it is in the inter­est of hos­tile state actors. Which is like a recipe for not just make Klaren­berg into a jour­nal­is­tic mar­tyr but only fur­ther­ing inter­na­tion­al inter­est in these sto­ries. The Kerch Bridge plot sto­ry had just kind of died down by now. But at this point we real­ly have to won­der what else is under that rock thanks to the heavy hands of the UK counter-ter­ror­ism police:

    The Gray­zone

    British police detain jour­nal­ist Kit Klaren­berg, inter­ro­gate him about The Gray­zone

    Max Blu­men­thal
    May 30, 2023

    British counter-ter­ror police detained jour­nal­ist Kit Klaren­berg upon his arrival at London’s Luton air­port and sub­ject­ed him to an extend­ed inter­ro­ga­tion about his polit­i­cal views and report­ing for The Gray­zone.

    As soon as jour­nal­ist Kit Klaren­berg land­ed in his home coun­try of Britain on May 17, 2023, six anony­mous plain­clothes counter-ter­ror offi­cers detained him. They quick­ly escort­ed him to a back room, where they grilled him for over five hours about his report­ing for this out­let. They also inquired about his per­son­al opin­ion on every­thing from the cur­rent British polit­i­cal lead­er­ship to Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine.

    At one point, Klarenberg’s inter­roga­tors demand­ed to know whether The Gray­zone had a spe­cial arrange­ment with Russia’s Fed­er­al Secu­ri­ty Bureau (FSB) to pub­lish hacked mate­r­i­al.

    Dur­ing Klarenberg’s deten­tion, police seized the journalist’s elec­tron­ic devices and SD cards, fin­ger­print­ed him, took DNA swabs, and pho­tographed him inten­sive­ly. They threat­ened to arrest him if he did not com­ply.

    Klarenberg’s inter­ro­ga­tion appears to be London’s way of retal­i­at­ing for the journalist’s block­buster reports expos­ing major British and US intel­li­gence intrigues. In the past year alone, Klaren­berg revealed how a cabal of Tory nation­al secu­ri­ty hard­lin­ers vio­lat­ed the Offi­cial Secrets Act to exploit Brex­it and install Boris John­son as prime min­is­ter. In Octo­ber 2022, he earned inter­na­tion­al head­lines with his exposé of British plans to bomb the Kerch Bridge con­nect­ing Crimea to the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion. Then came his report on the CIA’s recruit­ment of two 9/11 hijack­ers this April, a viral sen­sa­tion that gen­er­at­ed mas­sive social media atten­tion.

    Among Klarenberg’s most con­se­quen­tial exposés was his June 2022 report unmask­ing British jour­nal­ist Paul Mason as a UK secu­ri­ty state col­lab­o­ra­tor hell­bent on destroy­ing The Gray­zone and oth­er media out­lets, aca­d­e­mics, and activists crit­i­cal of NATO’s role in Ukraine.

    Because Klarenberg’s report­ing on Mason relied heav­i­ly on leaked emails, Mason false­ly accused him of “assist­ing a Russ­ian state-backed hack-and-leak dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign.” Mason has also report­ed the leak of his emails to the British police.

    Emma Bri­ant, a self-styled dis­in­for­ma­tion expert who par­tic­i­pat­ed in Mason’s cam­paign to sab­o­tage NATO crit­ics, dis­patched lawyers to demand Klaren­berg remove all of his arti­cles that men­tion her from the inter­net. The lawyer let­ters also threat­ened cost­ly super injunc­tions to pre­vent fur­ther report­ing, and chal­lenged the “authen­tic­i­ty” of the emails’ con­tent.

    The cease-and-desist let­ters addi­tion­al­ly lev­eled false and defam­a­to­ry alle­ga­tions against Klaren­berg, includ­ing that he was per­son­al­ly involved in hack­ing her email and Twit­ter account.

    This is absolute­ly out­ra­geous cen­sor­ship of my friends and col­leagues and par­tic­u­lar­ly sin­is­ter giv­en I and @TheGrayzoneNews received for­mal cease and desist orders from @Shoosmiths last week act­ing on behalf of Emma Bri­ant. https://t.co/BDgYGSEJur pic.twitter.com/GTttZXbDLN— Kit Klaren­berg (@KitKlarenberg) June 13, 2022

    Did the bogus and obvi­ous­ly mali­cious com­plaints by Paul Mason or Emma Bri­ant prompt the UK police to detain and inves­ti­gate Klaren­berg?

    Klarenberg’s reports con­tain nei­ther false­hoods nor any­thing approach­ing “dis­in­for­ma­tion,” which is pre­cise­ly why intel­li­gence-linked fig­ures like Mason are so frus­trat­ed by their exis­tence. Despite Mason and Briant’s alle­ga­tions, there is not even hard evi­dence that Russ­ian hack­ers were the source of the leaks.

    While report­ing on leaked mate­r­i­al, Klaren­berg engaged in the same jour­nal­is­tic prac­tice that the West’s most promi­nent lega­cy news­pa­pers, from The New York Times to The Wash­ing­ton Post, depend on to break news them­selves. In fact, Thomas Rid, a self-styled dis­in­for­ma­tion expert and pro­fes­sor of Strate­gic Stud­ies at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, has stat­ed that jour­nal­ists “should not shy away” from cov­er­ing the leaks first report­ed by Klaren­berg.

    It there­fore appears that British author­i­ties did not detain Klaren­berg for any legal breach­es, but because he report­ed fac­tu­al sto­ries that exposed the nation­al secu­ri­ty state’s own vio­la­tions of both domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al law, as well as the malign plots of its media lack­eys.

    Inter­ro­gat­ed under Counter-Ter­ror pro­vi­sions, grilled about non-exis­tent Russ­ian ties

    Jour­nal­ist Kit Klaren­berg arrived in the UK on May 17 from Bel­grade, Ser­bia, where he lives. He was plan­ning to vis­it friends and fam­i­ly, but first, he would have to pass through an obsta­cle course British police laid before him.

    As soon as his flight land­ed at Luton Air­port, the pilot announced that bor­der police were “just around the cor­ner,” and asked all pas­sen­gers to pre­pare their pass­ports. The police were wait­ing for Klaren­berg at the bot­tom of the stairs lead­ing pas­sen­gers from the plane to the tar­mac. They imme­di­ate­ly led him to a back room and informed him of his deten­tion under Sched­ule Three, Sec­tion Four of the 2019 Counter-Ter­ror­ism and Bor­der Act.

    Six plain­clothes offi­cers sur­round­ed Klaren­berg and explained he faced arrest if he refused to answer their ques­tions and hand over his per­son­al elec­tron­ics. They refused to tell him their names and offered call signs instead.

    “I’d been expect­ing some­thing like this since a police inter­view request arrived last sum­mer,” Klaren­berg told The Gray­zone, refer­ring to a com­mu­nique he received from a senior British detec­tive on July 27, 2022. The email request­ed Klaren­berg report to a sta­tion to be ques­tioned about alle­ga­tions by an unnamed com­plainant of “offences under the com­put­er mis­use act.”

    [see screen­shot of email]

    Klaren­berg was noti­fied in Sep­tem­ber of 2022 (see below) that the police inves­ti­ga­tion had been closed, how­ev­er.

    [see screen­shot of email]

    Back in the inter­ro­ga­tion room at Luton, Klaren­berg was asked which pass­ports he held in his pos­ses­sion. “They seemed sur­prised that I only had a British pass­port with me,” he recalled. The police then grilled him about whether he owned for­eign prop­er­ty, which coun­tries he had vis­it­ed, and why. He was com­pelled to pro­vide his address in Bel­grade, dis­close how much he paid for rent, and bizarrely, whether his ener­gy costs were includ­ed. The offi­cers then demand­ed to know why Klaren­berg lived in Ser­bia.

    From there, police inter­roga­tors homed in on Klarenberg’s work with The Gray­zone. “They asked which pub­li­ca­tions I wrote for, and I told them I wrote for many,” he said. “One even remarked they’d nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly heard of ‘Mint­Press Zone.’ Their over­whelm­ing, if not exclu­sive, inter­est was in The Gray­zone.”

    The offi­cers asked Klaren­berg about arti­cles includ­ing his report on the CIA’s recruit­ment of would-be 9/11 hijack­ers, as well as his thoughts on 9/11 con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

    Then came a bliz­zard of ques­tions relat­ing to The Gray­zone: How much was Klaren­berg paid by this pub­li­ca­tion, how often, and into which bank account? Who owned the site? How much con­tact did he have with Max Blu­men­thal, the author of this arti­cle and edi­tor of The Gray­zone? Had he met Blu­men­thal in per­son?

    The counter-ter­ror offi­cers then rat­tled off a series of unfound­ed ques­tions relat­ed to Rus­sia: Does The Gray­zone have an agree­ment of any kind with Russia’s Fed­er­al Secu­ri­ty Bureau (FSB) to pub­lish hacked mate­r­i­al? Has Klaren­berg know­ing­ly been in con­tact with any FSB oper­a­tives? Is he in touch with cur­rent or for­mer per­son­nel of Russ­ian state media? Who owns The Gray­zone and is it spon­sored by Rus­sia?

    (As has been pub­licly stat­ed many times, The Gray­zone is a ful­ly inde­pen­dent out­let found­ed by me, Max Blu­men­thal. Unlike many of our adver­saries, this out­let does not accept fund­ing or sup­port from any state, includ­ing Rus­sia.)

    At this point, the offi­cers took Klarenberg’s bank cards out of the room for an extend­ed peri­od. They also seized his cam­era mem­o­ry cards and sims, demand­ing he pro­vide pin codes to open them. “What was done with my bank cards, I do not know,” he remarked. “The same for the SDs – what they got off these old and bare­ly used cards was unclear.”

    Next, Klarenberg’s inter­roga­tors asked if he had any jour­nal­is­tic mate­ri­als on hand, request­ing that he “warn” them about the con­tents and where they were locat­ed so they did not hoover it up “by acci­dent.”

    He won­dered if the ques­tion was a pub­lic rela­tions stunt devised in response to the media out­cry this April over the British counter-ter­ror­ism police’s deten­tion of Ernest More, a French pub­lish­er held and ques­tioned about his views on Emmanuel Macron’s wide­ly despised pen­sion reforms. There was also the chance they want­ed him to lead them to sen­si­tive con­tent he had or was plan­ning to cov­er.

    Klarenberg’s police inter­roga­tors dis­played intense inter­est in whether he belonged to any press orga­ni­za­tions, and if he held a press card or any pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions. They then probed his career tra­jec­to­ry, ask­ing how he entered the world of polit­i­cal jour­nal­ism and about per­ceived employ­ment “gaps” in Klarenberg’s pro­fes­sion­al record.

    He was repeat­ed­ly grilled on his jour­ney from cov­er­ing finan­cial issues a decade ago to polit­i­cal and nation­al secu­ri­ty report­ing. “The police pro­fessed con­fu­sion at the tran­si­tion,” despite Klaren­berg explain­ing that he stud­ied pol­i­tics in uni­ver­si­ty. “The offi­cers repeat­ed­ly returned to this point, they clear­ly felt this didn’t make sense,” he recount­ed. “Were they prob­ing whether I’d been ‘recruit­ed’ at some point, or had been a ‘sleep­er agent’ all along?”

    ...

    An extend­ed philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion about jour­nal­ism and the pub­lic inter­est fol­lowed. “Your work might be inter­est­ing to the pub­lic,” an offi­cer told Klaren­berg, “but it’s not in the pub­lic inter­est.” He insist­ed that a jour­nal­ist could be fur­ther­ing the inter­ests of a hos­tile state actor in report­ing on nation­al secu­ri­ty issues.

    “I tried to explain that if mate­r­i­al can be authen­ti­cat­ed, then the mate­r­i­al is the source. We are not cit­ing claims from a human source that pro­vid­ed the mate­r­i­al, we are report­ing on pro­vid­ed source mate­r­i­al in a fac­tu­al way,” Klaren­berg said.

    After five hours, the counter-ter­ror police seemed to have run out of ques­tions. They had, by this point, seized all Klarenberg’s elec­tron­ic devices, forced him to pro­vide unlock codes for his phone and tablet, tak­en his SD cards, and combed through thou­sands of his per­son­al pho­tos. “Pity who­ev­er drew the short straw and had to stare at length at thou­sands of shots of bru­tal­ist archi­tec­ture across the world I’ve tak­en over the years,” he remarked.

    Author­i­ties also fin­ger­print­ed Klaren­berg, sub­ject­ed him to DNA swabs, and repeat­ed­ly pho­tographed him. “As long as your prints have nev­er been found on an IED in Afghanistan, we delete this data in six months,” one cop with a North­ern Irish accent claimed.

    A week after releas­ing Klaren­berg from deten­tion, police returned his tablet with mask­ing tape over its cam­eras, along with two mem­o­ry cards. The police kept one old SD card, most­ly con­tain­ing music, on the grounds it may be “rel­e­vant to crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.”

    He remains under inves­ti­ga­tion by the British state at the time of pub­li­ca­tion.

    [see image of com­mu­ni­ca­tion indi­cat­ing Klaren­berg is still under inveast­i­ga­tion]

    ———-

    “British police detain jour­nal­ist Kit Klaren­berg, inter­ro­gate him about The Gray­zone” by Max Blu­men­thal; The Gray­zone; 05/30/2023

    “Klarenberg’s inter­ro­ga­tion appears to be London’s way of retal­i­at­ing for the journalist’s block­buster reports expos­ing major British and US intel­li­gence intrigues. In the past year alone, Klaren­berg revealed how a cabal of Tory nation­al secu­ri­ty hard­lin­ers vio­lat­ed the Offi­cial Secrets Act to exploit Brex­it and install Boris John­son as prime min­is­ter. In Octo­ber 2022, he earned inter­na­tion­al head­lines with his exposé of British plans to bomb the Kerch Bridge con­nect­ing Crimea to the Russ­ian Fed­er­a­tion. Then came his report on the CIA’s recruit­ment of two 9/11 hijack­ers this April, a viral sen­sa­tion that gen­er­at­ed mas­sive social media atten­tion.”

    It’s been one damn­ing report from Kit Klaren­berg after anoth­er over the last year. The kind of damn­ing reports that undoubt­ed­ly infu­ri­at­ed the UK nation­al secu­ri­ty state. It’s not a sur­prise UK author­i­ties would have Klaren­berg on their radar. But it’s still kind of shock­ing how this went down. Why the heavy-hand­ed treat­ment that is almost guar­an­teed to ele­vate Klaren­berg’s pro­file and make him into a mar­tyr? Espe­cial­ly since this move only appears to implic­it­ly val­i­date the verac­i­ty of his report­ing that was based heav­i­ly on leaked doc­u­ments. This is basi­cal­ly an admis­sion that those doc­u­ments were authen­tic, hence the offi­cial out­rage.

    It’s almost as if UK author­i­ties are hop­ing to put Klaren­berg into a sim­i­lar kind of legal predica­ment that Julian Assange found him­self in, where the crime isn’t the report­ing but instead his role in the hacks. So it’s worth recall­ing that, in the case of the report­ing on Paul Mason and the var­i­ous schemes to blow up the Kerch bridge, those leaked doc­u­ments were report­ed­ly pro­vid­ed by an anony­mous source. There was nev­er any indi­ca­tion in the report­ing that Klaren­berg or The Gray­zone played any role in leaks. Nor was there any indi­ca­tion on the nation­al­i­ty of the source. In oth­er words, there’s no actu­al evi­dence to assume Russ­ian hack­ers were involved at all.

    There’s also no indi­ca­tion that these doc­u­ments were part of some mas­sive Snow­den-style mass doc­u­ment dump, where the jour­nal­ist is giv­en a trove of infor­ma­tion and tasked with decid­ing what to report on. These sto­ries don’t appear to be sourced from that kind of mega-leak. Instead, it’s just old fash­ioned report­ing. That’s what Klaren­berg appears to be charged with. Which might explain all the addi­tion­al accu­sa­tions about being a Russ­ian asset. The base­line charges — report­ing on leaked doc­u­ments — aren’t any­thing they could actu­al­ly charge him for:

    ...
    Among Klarenberg’s most con­se­quen­tial exposés was his June 2022 report unmask­ing British jour­nal­ist Paul Mason as a UK secu­ri­ty state col­lab­o­ra­tor hell­bent on destroy­ing The Gray­zone and oth­er media out­lets, aca­d­e­mics, and activists crit­i­cal of NATO’s role in Ukraine.

    Because Klarenberg’s report­ing on Mason relied heav­i­ly on leaked emails, Mason false­ly accused him of “assist­ing a Russ­ian state-backed hack-and-leak dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paign.” Mason has also report­ed the leak of his emails to the British police.

    Emma Bri­ant, a self-styled dis­in­for­ma­tion expert who par­tic­i­pat­ed in Mason’s cam­paign to sab­o­tage NATO crit­ics, dis­patched lawyers to demand Klaren­berg remove all of his arti­cles that men­tion her from the inter­net. The lawyer let­ters also threat­ened cost­ly super injunc­tions to pre­vent fur­ther report­ing, and chal­lenged the “authen­tic­i­ty” of the emails’ con­tent.

    The cease-and-desist let­ters addi­tion­al­ly lev­eled false and defam­a­to­ry alle­ga­tions against Klaren­berg, includ­ing that he was per­son­al­ly involved in hack­ing her email and Twit­ter account.

    This is absolute­ly out­ra­geous cen­sor­ship of my friends and col­leagues and par­tic­u­lar­ly sin­is­ter giv­en I and @TheGrayzoneNews received for­mal cease and desist orders from @Shoosmiths last week act­ing on behalf of Emma Bri­ant. https://t.co/BDgYGSEJur pic.twitter.com/GTttZXbDLN— Kit Klaren­berg (@KitKlarenberg) June 13, 2022

    Did the bogus and obvi­ous­ly mali­cious com­plaints by Paul Mason or Emma Bri­ant prompt the UK police to detain and inves­ti­gate Klaren­berg?

    ...

    A week after releas­ing Klaren­berg from deten­tion, police returned his tablet with mask­ing tape over its cam­eras, along with two mem­o­ry cards. The police kept one old SD card, most­ly con­tain­ing music, on the grounds it may be “rel­e­vant to crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings.”

    He remains under inves­ti­ga­tion by the British state at the time of pub­li­ca­tion.
    ...

    And, again, note that there’s nev­er actu­al­ly been any evi­dence that the var­i­ous leaks Klaren­berg’s report­ing was based on came from Russ­ian hack­ers at all:

    ...
    Klarenberg’s reports con­tain nei­ther false­hoods nor any­thing approach­ing “dis­in­for­ma­tion,” which is pre­cise­ly why intel­li­gence-linked fig­ures like Mason are so frus­trat­ed by their exis­tence. Despite Mason and Briant’s alle­ga­tions, there is not even hard evi­dence that Russ­ian hack­ers were the source of the leaks.

    While report­ing on leaked mate­r­i­al, Klaren­berg engaged in the same jour­nal­is­tic prac­tice that the West’s most promi­nent lega­cy news­pa­pers, from The New York Times to The Wash­ing­ton Post, depend on to break news them­selves. In fact, Thomas Rid, a self-styled dis­in­for­ma­tion expert and pro­fes­sor of Strate­gic Stud­ies at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, has stat­ed that jour­nal­ists “should not shy away” from cov­er­ing the leaks first report­ed by Klaren­berg.

    It there­fore appears that British author­i­ties did not detain Klaren­berg for any legal breach­es, but because he report­ed fac­tu­al sto­ries that exposed the nation­al secu­ri­ty state’s own vio­la­tions of both domes­tic and inter­na­tion­al law, as well as the malign plots of its media lack­eys.
    ...

    Also note this inter­est­ing detail: Klaren­berg was told in Sep­tem­ber of 2002 that a UK inves­ti­ga­tion already opened on him last year had been closed. Keep in mind that his explo­sive report­ing on the Kerch bridge plots or the CIA recruit­ment of the 9/11 hijack­ers took place after that. You have to won­der if the case real­ly was closed and then reopened or if Klaren­berg was basi­cal­ly lured under a false sense of hav­ing been cleared:

    ...
    “I’d been expect­ing some­thing like this since a police inter­view request arrived last sum­mer,” Klaren­berg told The Gray­zone, refer­ring to a com­mu­nique he received from a senior British detec­tive on July 27, 2022. The email request­ed Klaren­berg report to a sta­tion to be ques­tioned about alle­ga­tions by an unnamed com­plainant of “offences under the com­put­er mis­use act.”

    [see screen­shot of email]

    Klaren­berg was noti­fied in Sep­tem­ber of 2022 (see below) that the police inves­ti­ga­tion had been closed, how­ev­er.

    [see screen­shot of email]
    ...

    And then we get to one of the more inter­est­ing details in this report. The kind of detail that rais­es a host of dis­turb­ing ques­tions: dur­ing the inter­ro­ga­tion, Klaren­berg was asked about his report­ing on the CIA’s recruit­ment of the 9/11 hijack­ers along with his thoughts on ‘9/11 con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries’. They then engage in a philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion about jour­nal­ism where Klaren­berg was report­ed told that, “Your work might be inter­est­ing to the pub­lic, but it’s not in the pub­lic inter­est,” and that a jour­nal­ist could be fur­ther­ing the inter­ests of a hos­tile state actor in report­ing on nation­al secu­ri­ty issues.

    It’s the kind of com­men­tary from these offi­cers that rais­es the ques­tion: so what are their views on, for exam­ple, the CIA’s recruit­ment of 9/11 hijack­ers and the still unre­solved role these intel­li­gence oper­a­tions played in enabling those attacks? Do they not have strong views on these top­ics? Are they of the opin­ion that such scan­dals should be out­side the domain of pub­lic dis­cus­sion and just sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly swept under the rug? Do these UK police offi­cers — who are pre­sum­ably work­ing some sort of counter-intel­li­gence roles — just blind­ly endorse all actions of the nation­al secu­ri­ty state? If so, that’s a pro­found­ly dis­turb­ing view held by peo­ple in such posi­tions. But is that real­ly their view? It can’t pos­si­bly be that blind­ly stu­pid. So what are their views on the ongo­ing coverup of the CIA’s recruit­ment of the 9/11 hijack­ers? It’s part of what makes this inter­ro­ga­tion of Kit Klaren­berg so fas­ci­nat­ing: it just screams ‘OFFICIAL COVERUP IN ACTION!’, not just on the sto­ry of Kerch bridge plots but even the ongo­ing 9/11 offi­cial coverups. It’s hard to imag­ine that was their intent when they decid­ed to inter­ro­gate Klaren­berg but it was an obvi­ous pos­si­ble result:

    ...
    Back in the inter­ro­ga­tion room at Luton, Klaren­berg was asked which pass­ports he held in his pos­ses­sion. “They seemed sur­prised that I only had a British pass­port with me,” he recalled. The police then grilled him about whether he owned for­eign prop­er­ty, which coun­tries he had vis­it­ed, and why. He was com­pelled to pro­vide his address in Bel­grade, dis­close how much he paid for rent, and bizarrely, whether his ener­gy costs were includ­ed. The offi­cers then demand­ed to know why Klaren­berg lived in Ser­bia.

    From there, police inter­roga­tors homed in on Klarenberg’s work with The Gray­zone. “They asked which pub­li­ca­tions I wrote for, and I told them I wrote for many,” he said. “One even remarked they’d nev­er pre­vi­ous­ly heard of ‘Mint­Press Zone.’ Their over­whelm­ing, if not exclu­sive, inter­est was in The Gray­zone.”

    The offi­cers asked Klaren­berg about arti­cles includ­ing his report on the CIA’s recruit­ment of would-be 9/11 hijack­ers, as well as his thoughts on 9/11 con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

    ...

    Klarenberg’s police inter­roga­tors dis­played intense inter­est in whether he belonged to any press orga­ni­za­tions, and if he held a press card or any pro­fes­sion­al qual­i­fi­ca­tions. They then probed his career tra­jec­to­ry, ask­ing how he entered the world of polit­i­cal jour­nal­ism and about per­ceived employ­ment “gaps” in Klarenberg’s pro­fes­sion­al record.

    He was repeat­ed­ly grilled on his jour­ney from cov­er­ing finan­cial issues a decade ago to polit­i­cal and nation­al secu­ri­ty report­ing. “The police pro­fessed con­fu­sion at the tran­si­tion,” despite Klaren­berg explain­ing that he stud­ied pol­i­tics in uni­ver­si­ty. “The offi­cers repeat­ed­ly returned to this point, they clear­ly felt this didn’t make sense,” he recount­ed. “Were they prob­ing whether I’d been ‘recruit­ed’ at some point, or had been a ‘sleep­er agent’ all along?”

    ...

    An extend­ed philo­soph­i­cal dis­cus­sion about jour­nal­ism and the pub­lic inter­est fol­lowed. “Your work might be inter­est­ing to the pub­lic,” an offi­cer told Klaren­berg, “but it’s not in the pub­lic inter­est.” He insist­ed that a jour­nal­ist could be fur­ther­ing the inter­ests of a hos­tile state actor in report­ing on nation­al secu­ri­ty issues.

    “I tried to explain that if mate­r­i­al can be authen­ti­cat­ed, then the mate­r­i­al is the source. We are not cit­ing claims from a human source that pro­vid­ed the mate­r­i­al, we are report­ing on pro­vid­ed source mate­r­i­al in a fac­tu­al way,” Klaren­berg said.
    ...

    ‘You bet­ter not report on that scandal...It might help Rus­sia!’ That’s the appar­ent eth­i­cal stan­dard these counter-ter­ror police were express­ing dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion that includ­ed top­ics like the recent rev­e­la­tions around the CIA’s recruit­ment and traf­fick­ing of the 9/11 hijack­ers. Which, again, is the kind of eth­i­cal stan­dard that begs the ques­tion: if that’s the atti­tude of the peo­ple work­ing on these mat­ters, what else is under this rock? What oth­er ter­ror-relat­ed mega-scan­dals are they anx­ious­ly hop­ing to cov­er up? That prob­a­bly was the ques­tion this ‘counter-ter­ror’ oper­a­tion intend­ed to raise, but counter-ter­ror inter­ro­ga­tions designed to intim­i­date the free press tend to have unin­tend­ed con­se­quences.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | May 31, 2023, 3:47 pm
  33. Sto­ries about the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment threat­en­ing jour­nal­ists are sad­ly to be expect­ed at this point giv­en the ongo­ing oper­a­tion of the Myrotvorets ‘kill list’ web­site. Nor are sto­ries about the US gov­ern­men­t’s tol­er­ance of this gov­ern­ment-back jour­nal­ist-intim­i­da­tion pro­gram at all a sur­prise after learn­ing how the Myrotvorets web­site is actu­al­ly host­ed in Lan­g­ley, Vir­ginia, home of the CIA. So per­haps prob­a­bly should­n’t be shocked to learn that FBI has been play­ing the role of Sil­i­con Val­ley inter­me­di­ary between Ukraine’s SBU intel­li­gence ser­vice and Sil­i­con Val­ley social media giants like Twit­ter and Face­book. It’s more or less what we should expect at this point.

    So we should­n’t real­ly be sur­prised to learn that the FBI was hand­ing off lists of social media accounts that the SBU would like to see silenced. Still, giv­en the real­i­ty that the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment oper­ates a gov­ern­ment-backed kill-list web­site that appears to be host­ed in Lan­g­ley, it’s a lit­tle sur­pris­ing to learn that the FBI was­n’t sim­ply request­ing the cen­sor­ship of social media accounts flagged by the SBU but also request­ed that Twit­ter hand the SBU the user reg­is­tra­tion infor­ma­tion that was used to set up those accounts in the first place. It’s rather sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion to hand over to a gov­ern­ment with an active kill list web­site. That’s what was revealed in the fol­low­ing Gray­zone piece below.

    But as we’re also going to see, Lee Fang report­ed on the FBI’s role as SBU-Sil­i­con Val­ley inter­me­di­ary back in April when he attend­ed the RSA Con­fer­ence, in inter­na­tion­al IT secu­ri­ty con­fer­ence, that includ­ed a pan­el dis­cus­sion that includ­ed llia Vitiuk, head of the Depart­ment of Cyber Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty in the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine, along­side Bryan Vorn­dran, the assis­tant direc­tor of the FBI’s Cyber Divi­sion; Alex Kobzanets, an FBI agent with the bureau’s San Fran­cis­co office; and Lau­ra Galante from the Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence. Dur­ing an inter­view, Vitiuk basi­cal­ly came out and admit­ted that he viewed his job as cen­sor­ing any­thing that harms Ukraine, true or not. As he put it, “When peo­ple ask me, ‘How do you dif­fer­en­ti­ate whether it is fake or true?’ Indeed it is very dif­fi­cult in such an infor­ma­tion­al flow,” said Vitiuk. “I say, ‘Every­thing that is against our coun­try, con­sid­er it a fake, even if it’s not.’ Right now, for our vic­to­ry, it is impor­tant to have that kind of under­stand­ing, not to be fooled.”. Who knows why Vitiuk did­n’t self-cen­sor before say­ing the qui­et part out loud, but that’s how he put it.

    So with the much antic­i­pat­ed Ukrain­ian coun­terof­fen­sive just get­ting under­way, and a large spike in vio­lence expect­ed in com­ing months, we should prob­a­bly expect a surge in online cen­sor­ship requests too. Along with a steadi­ly grow­ing Myrotvorets kill-list that will pre­sum­ably include some of the names passed along from the FBI:

    The Gray­zone

    Leaks reveal FBI helps Ukraine cen­sor Twit­ter users and obtain their info

    Aaron Maté
    June 7, 2023

    The FBI aid­ed a Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence effort to ban Twit­ter users and col­lect their data, new leaks show. Twit­ter declined to cen­sor jour­nal­ists tar­get­ed by Ukraine, includ­ing The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté.

    The Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion has aid­ed a Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence effort to cen­sor social media users and obtain their per­son­al infor­ma­tion, leaked emails reveal.

    In March 2022, an FBI Spe­cial Agent sent Twit­ter a list of accounts on behalf of the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine (SBU), Ukraine’s main intel­li­gence agency. The accounts, the FBI wrote, “are sus­pect­ed by the SBU in spread­ing fear and dis­in­for­ma­tion.” In an attached memo, the SBU asked Twit­ter to remove the accounts and hand over their user data.

    The Ukrain­ian government’s FBI-enabled tar­gets extend to mem­bers of the media. The SBU list that the FBI pro­vid­ed to Twit­ter includ­ed my name and Twit­ter pro­file. In its response to the FBI, Twit­ter agreed to review the accounts for “inau­then­tic­i­ty” but raised con­cerns about the inclu­sion of me and oth­er “Amer­i­can and Cana­di­an jour­nal­ists.”

    The FBI’s attempt to ban Twit­ter accounts at the request of Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence is among the most overt requests for cen­sor­ship revealed to date in the Twit­ter Files, a cache of leaked com­mu­ni­ca­tions from the social media giant.

    The FBI’s cen­sor­ship request was relayed in a March 27th, 2022 email from FBI Spe­cial Agent Alek­san­dr Kobzanets, the Assis­tant Legal Attaché at the US Embassy in Kyiv, to two Twit­ter exec­u­tives. Four FBI col­leagues were copied on the exchange.

    “Thank you very much for your time to dis­cuss the assis­tance to Ukraine,” Kobzanets wrote. “I am includ­ing a list of accounts I received over a cou­ple of weeks from the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine. These accounts are sus­pect­ed by the SBU in spread­ing fear and dis­in­for­ma­tion. For your review and con­sid­er­a­tion.”

    [see screen­shot of email]

    The attached doc­u­ment, draft­ed by Ukraine’s SBU, con­tained 163 accounts, includ­ing mine. (The list is num­bered to 175, but some accounts have two cor­re­spond­ing numer­i­cal lines).

    The list­ed Twit­ter pro­files, the SBU alleged, have been “used to dis­sem­i­nate dis­in­for­ma­tion and fake news to inac­cu­rate­ly reflect events in Ukraine, jus­ti­fy war crimes of the Russ­ian author­i­ties on the ter­ri­to­ry of the Ukrain­ian state in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law.”

    In order “to stop Russ­ian aggres­sion on the infor­ma­tion front,” the SBU con­tin­ued, “we kind­ly ask you to take urgent mea­sures to block these Twit­ter accounts and pro­vide us with user data spec­i­fied dur­ing reg­is­tra­tion.”

    The SBU expressed its “grat­i­tude for the exist­ing lev­el of inter­ac­tion.”
    [See memo for­ward­ed by the FBI, where Ukraine’s SBU asks Twit­ter to “block” the list­ed Twit­ter accounts “and pro­vide us with user data spec­i­fied dur­ing reg­is­tra­tion.”]

    If grant­ed, the users on the list would not only have been banned from Twit­ter but had their phone num­ber, date of birth, and email address dis­closed to both the FBI and SBU.

    Read the full list of accounts tar­get­ed by the FBI and SBU here:

    Twit­ter-Diss­in­f_20220327 SBU list

    In response, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s then-Head of Trust and Safe­ty, informed Spe­cial Agent Kobzanets and his FBI col­leagues that Twit­ter would “review the report­ed accounts under our Rules.” But he warned that the list includ­ed “a few accounts of Amer­i­can and Cana­di­an jour­nal­ists (e.g. Aaron Mate).” There­fore, Roth said, Twitter’s review would “focus first and fore­most on iden­ti­fy­ing any poten­tial inau­then­tic­i­ty.”

    Roth then sug­gest­ed that he would be open to sus­pend­ing authen­tic accounts if it could be proven that they have a hid­den tie to a for­eign gov­ern­ment. Jour­nal­ists “who cov­er the con­flict with a pro-Russ­ian stance are unlike­ly to be found in vio­la­tion of our rules absent oth­er con­text that might estab­lish some kind of covert/deceptive asso­ci­a­tion between them and a gov­ern­ment,” Roth wrote. “Any addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion or con­text in those areas is of course wel­come and appre­ci­at­ed.”

    [See email of Twit­ter exec­u­tive Yoel Roth’s response to the FBI’s cen­sor­ship request flags its inclu­sion of jour­nal­ists, “e.g. Aaron Mate.”]

    In his reply, Kobzanets did not direct­ly acknowl­edge Roth’s con­cerns about Ukraine’s FBI-abet­ted effort to cen­sor jour­nal­ists. “Under­stood,” Kobzanets told Roth. “What­ev­er your review deter­mines and action Twit­ter deem[s] is appro­pri­ate.” He also indi­cat­ed that the FBI would not meet Roth’s request for any “con­text” that might estab­lish ties between jour­nal­ists and a for­eign gov­ern­ment: “Unlike­ly there will be any addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion or con­text.”

    Inside Twit­ter, Roth for­ward­ed the FBI request to two col­leagues. “This is the out­put of our meet­ing with the FBI last week,” he wrote. “The list of accounts is a mixed bag – there’s some state media mixed in with a bunch of oth­er stuff – but giv­en the con­text, I think a deep dive here war­rant­ed.” (Roth left Twit­ter in Novem­ber 2022).

    In an email, I asked Spe­cial Agent Kobzanets if he had vet­ted Ukraine’s cen­sor­ship request list before send­ing it to Twit­ter. I also asked Kobzanets if, after being informed by Twitter’s Roth that the FBI was try­ing to cen­sor jour­nal­ists on the SBU’s behalf, whether that had prompt­ed any review or revi­sion of his assis­tance to Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence. Kobzanets did not respond.

    The FBI’s Nation­al Press Office also declined to answer ques­tions. Among sev­er­al queries, I invoked Twitter’s warn­ing that the FBI’s “assis­tance to Ukraine” entailed cen­sor­ing jour­nal­ists, and asked if that has prompt­ed any changes to the bureau’s col­lab­o­ra­tion with Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence.

    “While we appre­ci­ate your inquiry, as a mat­ter of prac­tice we do not con­firm, deny, or oth­er­wise com­ment on spe­cif­ic inter­ac­tions nor con­firm the verac­i­ty of cor­re­spon­dence,” an FBI spokesper­son wrote.

    Read the full FBI-Twit­ter cor­re­spon­dence here:

    FBI-SBU Twit­ter Request

    The FBI offi­cials copied on the Kobzanets’ exchange with Twit­ter include Elvis Chan, an Assis­tant Spe­cial Agent in Charge (ASAC) of the FBI’s San Fran­cis­co field office, where he man­ages its Cyber Branch. Chan was active in the FBI’s con­tacts with Twit­ter when the social media giant’s cen­sor­ship of report­ing on Hunter Biden’s lap­top short­ly before the Novem­ber 2020 elec­tion. (As I recent­ly report­ed, he was also involved in FBI’s deci­sion to forego a direct inspec­tion of the DNC servers and instead rely on the Hillary Clin­ton-fund­ed cyber firm Crowd­Strike in the bureau’s probe of alleged Russ­ian hack­ing in 2016).

    Of the 163 accounts named by the SBU, 34 were sus­pend­ed and 20 no longer exist. The rest remain active.

    Those marked for cen­sor­ship by Ukraine but remain online include Russ­ian politi­cians Gen­nady Zyuganov, a long­time mem­ber of Russia’s Com­mu­nist Par­ty and par­lia­men­tar­i­an who lost to Boris Yeltsin in Russia’s 1996 pres­i­dent elec­tion; Dmit­ry Rogozin, Russia’s for­mer Deputy Prime Min­is­ter; and Sergey Mironov, a Russ­ian politi­cian and par­lia­men­tar­i­an. The list also includes Russ­ian jour­nal­ists Vladimir Solovy­ov, a tele­vi­sion news host; and Mar­gari­ta Simonyan, edi­tor-in-chief of the Russ­ian state-con­trolled net­work RT. Sev­er­al Russ­ian gov­ern­ment agen­cies and media out­lets were also list­ed.

    The Ukrain­ian nation­als tar­get­ed by the SBU’s sup­pres­sion request include Ana­toly Shariy, a video blog­ger and politi­cian who fled Ukraine in 2012 and sub­se­quent­ly received Euro­pean Union asy­lum; and Andriy Port­nov, a Ukrain­ian lawyer and politi­cian who served as a senior offi­cial under Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yanukovych until the latter’s ouster in the Feb­ru­ary 2014 Maid­an coup. (Both Shariy and Portnov’s Twit­ter accounts remain active).

    The dis­clo­sure of a col­lab­o­ra­tion on cen­sor­ship between the FBI and SBU is the lat­est doc­u­ment­ed instance of Ukrain­ian state-tied attempts to tar­get for­eign voic­es. A Ukrain­ian web­site known as Myrotvorets main­tains a list of what it calls “ene­mies of Ukraine.” I was recent­ly added to that list along with The Grayzone’s Anya Parampil, as well as the come­di­an and YouTube host Jim­my Dore. The Myrotvorets data­base was co-found­ed by Anton Gerashchenko, for­mer deputy min­is­ter at the Ukraine’s Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs, where he now serves as an advi­sor.

    Last year, the glob­al tech/media con­fer­ence Web Sum­mit with­drew a speak­ing invi­ta­tion to The Grayzone’s Max Blu­men­thal and I after Ole­na Zelen­s­ka, the wife of Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­sky, demand­ed our can­cel­la­tion. (Anoth­er Gray­zone col­league, Kit Klaren­berg, was recent­ly detained and inter­ro­gat­ed about his jour­nal­ism by British author­i­ties).

    News of the FBI’s work with Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence to cen­sor Twit­ter users also fol­lows report­ing from jour­nal­ist Lee Fang that the FBI has pres­sured Face­book to remove accounts and posts deemed by the SBU to be Russ­ian “dis­in­for­ma­tion.” Accord­ing to Fang, a senior Ukrain­ian offi­cial in reg­u­lar con­tact with the FBI defined “dis­in­for­ma­tion” in such broad terms that it could mean view­points that “sim­ply con­tra­dict the Ukrain­ian government’s nar­ra­tive.”

    ————

    “Leaks reveal FBI helps Ukraine cen­sor Twit­ter users and obtain their info” by Aaron Maté; The Gray­zone; 06/07/2023

    “In order “to stop Russ­ian aggres­sion on the infor­ma­tion front,” the SBU con­tin­ued, “we kind­ly ask you to take urgent mea­sures to block these Twit­ter accounts and pro­vide us with user data spec­i­fied dur­ing reg­is­tra­tion.””

    Why did the SBU request user reg­is­tra­tion data for the Twit­ter accounts of these 163 Twit­ter accounts? And why was the FBI facil­i­tat­ing the han­dover of iden­ti­fy­ing infor­ma­tion on these users? It’s one of the many ques­tions raised by the FBI’s appar­ent role as the SBU’s Sil­i­con Val­ley inter­me­di­ary that appears to have deep­ened sig­nif­i­cant­ly over the past year:

    ...
    In March 2022, an FBI Spe­cial Agent sent Twit­ter a list of accounts on behalf of the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine (SBU), Ukraine’s main intel­li­gence agency. The accounts, the FBI wrote, “are sus­pect­ed by the SBU in spread­ing fear and dis­in­for­ma­tion.” In an attached memo, the SBU asked Twit­ter to remove the accounts and hand over their user data.

    The Ukrain­ian government’s FBI-enabled tar­gets extend to mem­bers of the media. The SBU list that the FBI pro­vid­ed to Twit­ter includ­ed my name and Twit­ter pro­file. In its response to the FBI, Twit­ter agreed to review the accounts for “inau­then­tic­i­ty” but raised con­cerns about the inclu­sion of me and oth­er “Amer­i­can and Cana­di­an jour­nal­ists.”

    The FBI’s attempt to ban Twit­ter accounts at the request of Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence is among the most overt requests for cen­sor­ship revealed to date in the Twit­ter Files, a cache of leaked com­mu­ni­ca­tions from the social media giant.

    The FBI’s cen­sor­ship request was relayed in a March 27th, 2022 email from FBI Spe­cial Agent Alek­san­dr Kobzanets, the Assis­tant Legal Attaché at the US Embassy in Kyiv, to two Twit­ter exec­u­tives. Four FBI col­leagues were copied on the exchange.

    ...

    The attached doc­u­ment, draft­ed by Ukraine’s SBU, con­tained 163 accounts, includ­ing mine. (The list is num­bered to 175, but some accounts have two cor­re­spond­ing numer­i­cal lines).

    The list­ed Twit­ter pro­files, the SBU alleged, have been “used to dis­sem­i­nate dis­in­for­ma­tion and fake news to inac­cu­rate­ly reflect events in Ukraine, jus­ti­fy war crimes of the Russ­ian author­i­ties on the ter­ri­to­ry of the Ukrain­ian state in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law.”

    ...

    Of the 163 accounts named by the SBU, 34 were sus­pend­ed and 20 no longer exist. The rest remain active.
    ...

    But it’s fact that Ukraine’s gov­ern­ment set up and still main­tains the Myrotvorets kill list web­site that cel­e­brates the deaths of its tar­get­ed indi­vid­u­als. How many of these 163 twit­ter users will ulti­mate­ly end up on that list? We’ll just have to wait and see:

    ...
    If grant­ed, the users on the list would not only have been banned from Twit­ter but had their phone num­ber, date of birth, and email address dis­closed to both the FBI and SBU.

    Read the full list of accounts tar­get­ed by the FBI and SBU here:

    Twit­ter-Diss­in­f_20220327 SBU list

    ...

    In his reply, Kobzanets did not direct­ly acknowl­edge Roth’s con­cerns about Ukraine’s FBI-abet­ted effort to cen­sor jour­nal­ists. “Under­stood,” Kobzanets told Roth. “What­ev­er your review deter­mines and action Twit­ter deem[s] is appro­pri­ate.” He also indi­cat­ed that the FBI would not meet Roth’s request for any “con­text” that might estab­lish ties between jour­nal­ists and a for­eign gov­ern­ment: “Unlike­ly there will be any addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion or con­text.”

    ...

    The dis­clo­sure of a col­lab­o­ra­tion on cen­sor­ship between the FBI and SBU is the lat­est doc­u­ment­ed instance of Ukrain­ian state-tied attempts to tar­get for­eign voic­es. A Ukrain­ian web­site known as Myrotvorets main­tains a list of what it calls “ene­mies of Ukraine.” I was recent­ly added to that list along with The Grayzone’s Anya Parampil, as well as the come­di­an and YouTube host Jim­my Dore. The Myrotvorets data­base was co-found­ed by Anton Gerashchenko, for­mer deputy min­is­ter at the Ukraine’s Min­istry of Inter­nal Affairs, where he now serves as an advi­sor.
    ...

    Final­ly, there’s the addi­tion­al con­text pro­vid­ed by Lee Fang’s recent report­ing on how the FBI appears to play a sim­i­lar role at Face­book. And pre­sum­ably the rest of the social media giants. How much user infor­ma­tion is the FBI hand­ing off to a gov­ern­ment known to cre­ate kill lists?

    ...
    News of the FBI’s work with Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence to cen­sor Twit­ter users also fol­lows report­ing from jour­nal­ist Lee Fang that the FBI has pres­sured Face­book to remove accounts and posts deemed by the SBU to be Russ­ian “dis­in­for­ma­tion.” Accord­ing to Fang, a senior Ukrain­ian offi­cial in reg­u­lar con­tact with the FBI defined “dis­in­for­ma­tion” in such broad terms that it could mean view­points that “sim­ply con­tra­dict the Ukrain­ian government’s nar­ra­tive.”
    ...

    As Fang points out, a senior Ukrain­ian offi­cial in reg­u­lar con­tact with the FBI defined “dis­in­for­ma­tion” in such broad terms that it could mean view­points that “sim­ply con­tra­dict the Ukrain­ian government’s nar­ra­tive.” But it’s even worse. That Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment offi­cial, llia Vitiuk, head of the Depart­ment of Cyber Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty in the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine, even admit­ted to call­ing for the cen­sor­ship of real infor­ma­tion when it runs “against our coun­try”. That was the goal Vitiuk open­ly admit­ted while sit­ting along­side FBI agents dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the RSA Con­fer­ence back in April. As he put it dur­ing an inter­view, “When peo­ple ask me, ‘How do you dif­fer­en­ti­ate whether it is fake or true?’ Indeed it is very dif­fi­cult in such an infor­ma­tion­al flow...“I say, ‘Every­thing that is against our coun­try, con­sid­er it a fake, even if it’s not.’ Right now, for our vic­to­ry, it is impor­tant to have that kind of under­stand­ing, not to be fooled.”:

    LeeFang.com

    How The FBI Helps Ukrain­ian Intel­li­gence Hunt ‘Dis­in­for­ma­tion’ On Social Media

    In an inter­view, a senior Ukrain­ian offi­cial defined “dis­in­for­ma­tion” as any news that con­tra­dicts his government’s mes­sage.

    Lee Fang
    Apr 28, 2023

    The Fed­er­al Bureau of Inves­ti­ga­tion pres­sures Face­book to take down alleged Russ­ian “dis­in­for­ma­tion” at the behest of Ukrain­ian intel­li­gence, accord­ing to a senior Ukrain­ian offi­cial who cor­re­sponds reg­u­lar­ly with the FBI. The same offi­cial said that Ukrain­ian author­i­ties define “dis­in­for­ma­tion” broad­ly, flag­ging many social media accounts and posts that he sug­gest­ed may sim­ply con­tra­dict the Ukrain­ian government’s nar­ra­tive.

    “Once we have a trace or evi­dence of dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns via Face­book or oth­er resources that are from the U.S., we pass this infor­ma­tion to the FBI, along with writ­ing direct­ly to Face­book,” said llia Vitiuk, head of the Depart­ment of Cyber Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty in the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine.

    “We asked FBI for sup­port to help us with Meta, to help us with oth­ers, and some­times we get good results with that,” not­ed Vitiuk. “We say, ‘Okay, this was the per­son who was prob­a­bly Rus­si­a’s influ­ence.’ ”

    Vitiuk, in an inter­view, said that he is a pro­po­nent of free speech and under­stands con­cerns around social media cen­sor­ship. But he also admit­ted that he and his col­leagues take a delib­er­ate­ly expan­sive view of what counts as “Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion.”

    “When peo­ple ask me, ‘How do you dif­fer­en­ti­ate whether it is fake or true?’ Indeed it is very dif­fi­cult in such an infor­ma­tion­al flow,” said Vitiuk. “I say, ‘Every­thing that is against our coun­try, con­sid­er it a fake, even if it’s not.’ Right now, for our vic­to­ry, it is impor­tant to have that kind of under­stand­ing, not to be fooled.”

    In recent weeks, Vitiuk said, Russ­ian forces have used var­i­ous forms of dis­in­for­ma­tion to man­u­fac­ture fake ten­sion between Pres­i­dent Volodymyr Zelen­skyy and Valerii Zaluzh­nyi, the four-star gen­er­al who serves as com­man­der-in-chief of Ukraine’s mil­i­tary.

    Indeed, recent reports have focused on the rela­tion­ship between the two Ukrain­ian lead­ers. The Ger­man news­pa­per Bild report­ed that Zelen­skyy and Zaluzh­nyi had argued regard­ing tac­tics deployed in the bat­tle over Bakhmut. Vitiuk said that any notion of con­flict between Zelen­skyy and his mil­i­tary chief, how­ev­er, is false.

    “They try to cre­ate prob­lems in Ukraine, and they try to sow the seeds of mis­un­der­stand­ing between Ukraine and our part­ners that sup­port us,” said Vitiuk.

    Vitiuk, a senior offi­cial in Ukraine’s domes­tic intel­li­gence agency, spoke to me this week at the RSA Con­ven­tion in San Fran­cis­co, an annu­al gath­er­ing that brings togeth­er a col­lec­tion of cyber secu­ri­ty firms, law enforce­ment, and tech­nol­o­gy giants.

    The FBI has elicit­ed scruti­ny of late for the influ­ence it exer­cis­es over at Twit­ter, Face­book, and oth­er social media plat­forms. A series of reports and con­gres­sion­al hear­ings delved into the agency’s role in shap­ing con­tent mod­er­a­tion deci­sions relat­ed to the 2020 elec­tion.

    Evi­dence of FBI pres­sure on social media com­pa­nies comes at a time when those com­pa­nies are already tak­ing proac­tive steps to hunt down alleged for­eign pro­pa­gan­da and fab­ri­cat­ed mate­ri­als. Since Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine began in Feb. 2022, social media com­pa­nies have been on the alert for hack and leak oper­a­tions, fake per­sonas, and oth­er online tricks that might be used by Moscow to sway pub­lic opin­ion around the con­flict. But crit­ics charge that in the dri­ve to label and remove con­tent plant­ed by the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, Face­book and oth­er tech firms sup­press inde­pen­dent report­ing and dis­sent­ing views about the war.

    Last week, for instance, Face­book applied lim­it­ed shar­ing penal­ties and a “false infor­ma­tion” label to links con­tain­ing jour­nal­ist Sey­mour Her­sh’s Sub­stack sto­ry alleg­ing NATO involve­ment in the destruc­tion of the Nord Stream pipeline, accord­ing to Michael Shel­len­berg­er, a writer who exten­sive­ly cov­ers social media cen­sor­ship. After pub­lic out­cry, Face­book mod­i­fied the label to “par­tial­ly false.”

    It is unclear how much of social media com­pa­nies’ heavy-hand­ed approach to con­tent mod­er­a­tion is a direct response to gov­ern­ment goad­ing.

    But there is enough of a pat­tern of the FBI and oth­er nation­al secu­ri­ty agen­cies lean­ing on tech com­pa­nies to sug­gest that these tech firms may pre­emp­tive­ly adopt cen­so­ri­ous prac­tices to avoid the dis­ap­proval of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. In Octo­ber, based on leaked doc­u­ments from the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, I report­ed on gov­ern­ment plans to lean more heav­i­ly on social media plat­forms to take down “dis­in­for­ma­tion” relat­ed to “the nature of U.S. sup­port to Ukraine.”

    Emails revealed through the Twit­ter Files fur­ther show a num­ber of FBI agents in reg­u­lar cor­re­spon­dence with Twit­ter exec­u­tives, press­ing for the detec­tion and removal of Russ­ian con­tent. In one exchange revealed by jour­nal­ist Matt Taib­bi, Elvis Chan, a spe­cial agent assigned to the San Fran­cis­co FBI field office, expressed frus­tra­tion that Twit­ter offi­cials had “not observed much recent activ­i­ty from offi­cial pro­pa­gan­da actors on your plat­form.” Chan was part of the FBI team that had week­ly meet­ings with Twit­ter to warn about Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion lead­ing up to the 2020 elec­tion. Fol­low­ing repeat­ed warn­ings from the FBI about a poten­tial Russ­ian influ­ence oper­a­tion, Twit­ter banned links to a New York Post sto­ry about the con­tents of the Hunter Biden lap­top in the weeks before the elec­tion.

    The extent to which U.S. mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence shapes domes­tic social media con­ver­sa­tions about the Ukraine-Rus­sia war is still unclear. This week, researcher Jack Poul­son revealed a pre­sen­ta­tion from U.S. Army Cyber Com­mand short­ly after the inva­sion began, in which Lt. Colonel David Beskow ref­er­enced work to defend NATO’s “brand” across social media plat­forms.

    ...

    Vitiuk said he did not know about Facebook’s recent throt­tling of the Hersh arti­cle. But he cit­ed the well-pub­li­cized forgery of the so-called Dis­cord Leaks, in which pro-Russ­ian voic­es on the plat­form Telegram had manip­u­lat­ed one of the leaked mil­i­tary doc­u­ments to false­ly claim high­er Ukrain­ian and low­er Russ­ian casu­al­ty lev­els dur­ing the war, as a promi­nent exam­ple of dis­in­for­ma­tion.

    Dur­ing the RSA con­ven­tion, Vitiuk spoke on a pan­el along­side Bryan Vorn­dran, the assis­tant direc­tor of the FBI’s Cyber Divi­sion; Alex Kobzanets, an FBI agent with the bureau’s San Fran­cis­co office; and Lau­ra Galante from the Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence.

    Dur­ing the pan­el, Vitiuk thanked the Ukrain­ian government’s many pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tor allies in the Unit­ed States, includ­ing Man­di­ant, Cis­co, Crowd­Strike, Clearview, Google, Ama­zon, and Star­link, among oth­ers. Cyber secu­ri­ty sup­port from Amer­i­can part­ners has helped thwart Russ­ian cyber attacks on civil­ian and mil­i­tary infra­struc­ture and have been a “psy­cho­log­i­cal game chang­er,” Vitiuk said. He empha­sized that the FBI has been his agency’s “top part­ner.”

    The war effort has also taught the FBI new lessons in pri­vate-pub­lic part­ner­ships, accord­ing to Kobzanets. “I don’t know how many times we’ve called the CEOs here in San Fran­cis­co to dri­ve to their office on a Sun­day after­noon and real­ly engage with our Ukrain­ian part­ners,” he said.

    After rous­ing clos­ing remarks from Vitiuk, sev­er­al FBI agents in the audi­ence, includ­ing Elvis Chan, stood for applause.

    ...

    ———–

    “How The FBI Helps Ukrain­ian Intel­li­gence Hunt ‘Dis­in­for­ma­tion’ On Social Media” by Lee Fang; LeeFang.com; 04/28/2023

    “Dur­ing the RSA con­ven­tion, Vitiuk spoke on a pan­el along­side Bryan Vorn­dran, the assis­tant direc­tor of the FBI’s Cyber Divi­sion; Alex Kobzanets, an FBI agent with the bureau’s San Fran­cis­co office; and Lau­ra Galante from the Office of the Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence.”

    It’s not a secret arrange­ment. On the con­trary, we find llia Vitiuk, head of the Depart­ment of Cyber Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty in the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine set­ting along­side FBI agents dur­ing a pan­el dis­cus­sion at the RSA con­ven­tion. Nor is Vitiuk shy about the nature of the cen­sor­ship cam­paign he’s wag­ing. He just straight up comes out and admits to request­ing the cen­sor­ship of every­thing that is “against our coun­try”, fake or not:

    ...
    “Once we have a trace or evi­dence of dis­in­for­ma­tion cam­paigns via Face­book or oth­er resources that are from the U.S., we pass this infor­ma­tion to the FBI, along with writ­ing direct­ly to Face­book,” said llia Vitiuk, head of the Depart­ment of Cyber Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty in the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine.

    ...

    Vitiuk, in an inter­view, said that he is a pro­po­nent of free speech and under­stands con­cerns around social media cen­sor­ship. But he also admit­ted that he and his col­leagues take a delib­er­ate­ly expan­sive view of what counts as “Russ­ian dis­in­for­ma­tion.”

    “When peo­ple ask me, ‘How do you dif­fer­en­ti­ate whether it is fake or true?’ Indeed it is very dif­fi­cult in such an infor­ma­tion­al flow,” said Vitiuk. “I say, ‘Every­thing that is against our coun­try, con­sid­er it a fake, even if it’s not.’ Right now, for our vic­to­ry, it is impor­tant to have that kind of under­stand­ing, not to be fooled.”

    ...

    Evi­dence of FBI pres­sure on social media com­pa­nies comes at a time when those com­pa­nies are already tak­ing proac­tive steps to hunt down alleged for­eign pro­pa­gan­da and fab­ri­cat­ed mate­ri­als. Since Russia’s inva­sion of Ukraine began in Feb. 2022, social media com­pa­nies have been on the alert for hack and leak oper­a­tions, fake per­sonas, and oth­er online tricks that might be used by Moscow to sway pub­lic opin­ion around the con­flict. But crit­ics charge that in the dri­ve to label and remove con­tent plant­ed by the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment, Face­book and oth­er tech firms sup­press inde­pen­dent report­ing and dis­sent­ing views about the war.
    ...

    Also note how Face­book appears to be more than will­ing to go along with label­ing Sey­mour Her­sh’s report on the bomb­ing of the Nord Stream pipelines as “false infor­ma­tion”, before pub­lic out­cry led to a “par­tial­ly false” rela­bel­ing. And while we saw above that Twit­ter only par­tial­ly played along with these requests, note the per­ni­cious effect these kinds of repeat­ed cen­sor­ship requests will like­ly have over time: these com­pa­nies are going to just start pre­emp­tive­ly adopt these cen­sor­ship mea­sures as a means of cur­ry­ing gov­ern­ment approval:

    ...
    Last week, for instance, Face­book applied lim­it­ed shar­ing penal­ties and a “false infor­ma­tion” label to links con­tain­ing jour­nal­ist Sey­mour Her­sh’s Sub­stack sto­ry alleg­ing NATO involve­ment in the destruc­tion of the Nord Stream pipeline, accord­ing to Michael Shel­len­berg­er, a writer who exten­sive­ly cov­ers social media cen­sor­ship. After pub­lic out­cry, Face­book mod­i­fied the label to “par­tial­ly false.”

    It is unclear how much of social media com­pa­nies’ heavy-hand­ed approach to con­tent mod­er­a­tion is a direct response to gov­ern­ment goad­ing.

    But there is enough of a pat­tern of the FBI and oth­er nation­al secu­ri­ty agen­cies lean­ing on tech com­pa­nies to sug­gest that these tech firms may pre­emp­tive­ly adopt cen­so­ri­ous prac­tices to avoid the dis­ap­proval of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. In Octo­ber, based on leaked doc­u­ments from the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty, I report­ed on gov­ern­ment plans to lean more heav­i­ly on social media plat­forms to take down “dis­in­for­ma­tion” relat­ed to “the nature of U.S. sup­port to Ukraine.”
    ...

    You have to won­der how many requests there have been just in the past few days for social media cen­sor­ship of the NY Times report alleg­ing the US had detailed knowl­edge of a Ukrain­ian plan to attack the Nord Stream pipelines. Then again, it’s not like there’s been much inter­est in that ongo­ing mys­tery. Sure, there’s the occa­sion­al update, but for the most part the main­stream media has already dropped the sto­ry. These updates are like the prover­bial tree fall in the woods with no one around. It points towards one of the dark­est aspects of this US-backed Ukrain­ian cen­sor­ship arrange­ment: it’s not clear what this cen­sor­ship arrange­ment is actu­al­ly accom­plish­ing giv­en the per­va­sive self-cen­sor­ship on any­thing involv­ing Ukraine that already abounds.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 9, 2023, 4:09 pm
  34. It’s Nord Stream bomb­ing update time again. And in keep­ing with the over­all theme of this sto­ry, we’re get­ting greater clar­i­ty on the sto­ry. Clar­i­ty in the sense that it’s becom­ing increas­ing­ly clear that the attacks will even­tu­al­ly offi­cial­ly be attrib­uted to ‘Ukraine’, but with­out any spe­cif­ic Ukraini­ans tak­ing the blame.

    It’s a nar­ra­tive we’ve seen build­ing for months now. We got the ‘Ukrain­ian Rent­ed Yacht’ sto­ry back in March, fol­lowed by Ger­man reports claim­ing to have iden­ti­fied the boat used in the attack, the Androm­e­da. But it did­n’t take long from ques­tions to be raised by that nar­ra­tive, with reports that law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tors were skep­ti­cal that the boat was the only ves­sel used in the attack and sug­ges­tions that it might be a decoy. Sey­mour Hersh dou­bled down on his report­ing about a US/Norwegian plot and basi­cal­ly assert­ed that he sus­pect­ed the media knew they were involved in a cov­er up.

    So here’s the lat­est pair of updates relat­ed to that ‘Ukrain­ian yacht’ nar­ra­tive. As we’re going to see, the updates appear to con­tin­ue to push the ‘Ukraini­ans rent­ed a boat’ sce­nario, but it’s not longer just an inde­pen­dent group of ‘Ukrain­ian patri­ots’ who are the sus­pects. We’re now told that Dutch intel­li­gence learned about a Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment plan to bomb one of the Nord Stream pipelines back in June of 2022. This orig­i­nal plan involved Ukrain­ian spe­cial forces per­son­nel rent­ing a sub­mersible and a boat to attack the pipelines. The Dutch intel­li­gence agency informed the CIA that those involved report­ed direct­ly to Gen. Valery Zaluzh­ny, Ukraine’s high­est-rank­ing mil­i­tary offi­cer, but with the caveat that Ukraine had already recon­sid­ered and can­celed the oper­a­tion.

    We are told that US offi­cials now believe that the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment did not abort but instead delayed the plans and poten­tial­ly assigned a dif­fer­ent group to car­ry out the attack. We are also told the CIA could­n’t cor­rob­o­rate the Dutch warn­ings, but nonethe­less passed the intel­li­gence on to the Ger­man gov­ern­ment and then dis­cussed the plan with Ukrain­ian offi­cials. Impor­tant­ly, we are now told that the CIA object­ed to the planned attack and warned the Ukraini­ans against it. So at this point, the sto­ry we’re get­ting is that the US and EU gov­ern­ments knew about a Ukrain­ian plot to bomb the Nord Stream pipelines months before it hap­pened and even warned Ukraine against it. In oth­er words, there was an known per­pe­tra­tor for the attacks the moment the bomb­ings did take place a few months lat­er and every­one just played dumb­ed.

    And while we appear to be get­ting a clear­er pic­ture of who knew what when, it’s hard not to notice that this sto­ry that is slow­ly emerg­ing from one new report after anoth­er is still VERY dif­fer­ent from Sey­mour Her­sh’s report­ing that frames the oper­a­tion as exclu­sive­ly a US and Nor­we­gian oper­a­tion using divers who man­u­al­ly plant­ed the explo­sives. What’s going on here? And that brings us to anoth­er very inter­est­ing detail in this lat­est set of rev­e­la­tions about the Dutch intel­li­gence tip off to the CIA: These details were orig­i­nal­ly leaked via Jack Teix­eira’s Dis­cord leaks. Leaks that tran­spired for over a year on mul­ti­ple Dis­cord chat groups, but were ulti­mate­ly brought to light by a dif­fer­ent group of ‘pro-Russ­ian’ online actors seem­ing­ly led by a recent­ly-dis­charged mem­ber of the US Navy, Sarah Bils, who served in an intel­li­gence role before her dis­charge. Intel­li­gence reports on the Dutch warn­ings cir­cu­lat­ing in this Dis­cord group and then hand­ed off to reporters. That’s what we learned just last week in a Wash­ing­ton Post report that’s like a pre­lude to the yes­ter­day’s New York Times report.

    Inter­est­ing­ly, when we look at that Wash­ing­ton Post report­ing on what Teix­eira leaked, there’s no indi­ca­tion that the CIA warned the Ukraini­ans against the oper­a­tion. That detail is instead part of the new report­ing on this sto­ry from the NY Times. And what is the evi­dence we are giv­en show­ing that the CIA warned the Ukraini­ans off of this oper­a­tion? Well, we are told by unnamed US offi­cials that that’s what the CIA told the Ukraini­ans last sum­mer. That’s it.

    So a seem­ing­ly uncon­trolled leak of insid­er infor­ma­tion his the news last week and now we’re get­ting assur­ances that the CIA def­i­nite­ly did­n’t like what it was hear­ing. What does that tell us about the verac­i­ty of the duel­ing nar­ra­tives we’re get­ting from Sey­mour Hersh — who insists it was a US and Nor­we­gian oper­a­tion that used deep sea divers — com­pared to this evolv­ing sto­ry about a quixot­ic Ukrain­ian-run oper­a­tion? Well, it’s worth not­ing where these nar­ra­tives are align­ing: recall how Her­sh’s report­ed claimed in ini­tial plan was to plant the explo­sive using deep sea divers dur­ing the NATO BALTOPS naval exer­cise in June 2022, but Pres­i­dent Biden want­ed the option to set the explo­sions off at a lat­er date which is what hap­pened. And accord­ing to new­ly leaked Dis­cord doc­u­ments, the orig­i­nal Ukrain­ian plan was to have Ukrain­ian spe­cial forces rent a boat and a sub­mersible which would be used to plant the explo­sives dur­ing the BALTOPS excer­cis­es. In oper­a­tion that was even­tu­al­ly run in Sep­tem­ber, Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tors believe they used divers. So accord­ing to Hersh, the mines were plant­ed dur­ing the BALTOPS exer­cis­es by the US and Nor­way and only trig­gered in Sep­tem­ber. But accord­ing to the leaked Dis­cord doc­u­ments, the Ukraini­ans planned on plant­i­ng the mines dur­ing the BALTOPS exer­cis­es but scrapped those plans and did it lat­er in Sep­tem­ber using the rent­ed boat. Those are the duel­ing nar­ra­tives at this point.

    Ok, first, here’s a NY Times piece about the Dutch intel­li­gence warn­ings to the CIA about a Ukrain­ian plot that was orig­i­nal­ly planned for the BALTOPS exer­cis­es but alleged­ly got pushed back to Sep­tem­ber. And as we’re told by unnamed US offi­cials, the CIA “rein­forced its objec­tion to any such oper­a­tion”:

    The New York Times

    C.I.A. Told Ukraine Last Sum­mer It Should Not Attack Nord Stream Pipelines

    Dutch intel­li­gence offi­cials shared infor­ma­tion with the C.I.A. in June 2022 that they had learned the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary had been plan­ning an oper­a­tion using divers to blow up one of the pipelines.

    By Julian E. Barnes and Michael Schwirtz
    Report­ing from Wash­ing­ton
    June 13, 2023

    The Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency told Ukrain­ian offi­cials last sum­mer that it had learned of what it thought was an abort­ed plot by the Ukraini­ans to attack the Nord Stream pipelines, and the agency rein­forced its objec­tion to any such oper­a­tion, U.S. offi­cials said.

    In June 2022, Dutch intel­li­gence offi­cials shared infor­ma­tion with the C.I.A. that they had learned the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary had been plan­ning an oper­a­tion using divers to blow up one of the pipelines, accord­ing to U.S. and Euro­pean offi­cials. But the orig­i­nal tip by the Dutch, accord­ing to U.S. offi­cials, was that Ukraine had already recon­sid­ered and can­celed the oper­a­tion.

    In real­i­ty, Amer­i­can offi­cials now believe, the oper­a­tion was not abort­ed but delayed, poten­tial­ly with a dif­fer­ent Ukraine-aligned group car­ry­ing out the attack.

    ...

    But Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tors lat­er learned that a group of Ukraini­ans had rent­ed a boat, loaded it with explo­sives and attacked the pipeline. Amer­i­can intel­li­gence agen­cies now believe the oper­a­tion was car­ried out at least with the loose direc­tion of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, but they do not know who exact­ly planned the oper­a­tion.

    The infor­ma­tion about the C.I.A. warn­ing to Ukraine, and that it was Dutch intel­li­gence offi­cials who pro­vid­ed the orig­i­nal intel­li­gence, was ear­li­er report­ed by the Ger­man news out­let Die Zeit and NOS, the Dutch nation­al broad­cast­er.

    It is unclear which U.S. offi­cial deliv­ered the mes­sage about the pipeline attack to Ukraine. It was not deliv­ered by senior lev­el offi­cials, how­ev­er, because the Unit­ed States already believed that Kyiv had recon­sid­ered the wis­dom of the attack, accord­ing to the Amer­i­can offi­cials. It was also not clear how the Ukraini­ans respond­ed to the Amer­i­cans’ mes­sage.

    The orig­i­nal warn­ing col­lect­ed by Dutch intel­li­gence includ­ed details sim­i­lar to the final oper­a­tion, but it also dif­fered in some key respects, accord­ing to the Euro­pean offi­cial. The orig­i­nal intel­li­gence said Ukraine intend­ed to attack Nord Stream 1, where­as the actu­al attack was against both the old­er pipelines and the just-com­plet­ed set, known as Nord Stream 2.

    Dutch intel­li­gence also report­ed that the plan would involve using fake Eston­ian pass­ports, the Euro­pean offi­cial said. At least some mem­bers of the group that Euro­pean inves­ti­ga­tors believe car­ried out the attack used fake Bul­gar­i­an pass­ports.

    The orig­i­nal plan also involved using Ukrain­ian spe­cial forces per­son­nel to rent a sub­mersible and a boat to attack the pipelines, near a spot pop­u­lar with divers, the Euro­pean offi­cial said.

    The C.I.A. was not able to cor­rob­o­rate the infor­ma­tion the Dutch pro­vid­ed them last sum­mer but nev­er­the­less warned the Ger­man gov­ern­ment that the pipelines could be attacked and then dis­cussed the mat­ter with Ukrain­ian offi­cials.

    The U.S. gov­ern­ment has declined to com­ment on the Nord Stream attack, and Amer­i­can offi­cials have declined to com­ment on reports of Ukrain­ian involve­ment in the attacks. They say they are wait­ing for the results of the Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tion and oth­er Euro­pean inquiries.

    Some offi­cials have wor­ried that Ukrain­ian involve­ment would weak­en sup­port for the war among Ger­mans, who have swal­lowed high ener­gy prices dur­ing the con­flict. While it is still pos­si­ble that fur­ther rev­e­la­tions could shift pub­lic opin­ion in Ger­many, for now Berlin has con­tin­ued to increase its mil­i­tary aid to Kyiv and had pro­vid­ed many of the tanks being used in the ongo­ing Ukrain­ian coun­terof­fen­sive.

    ———–

    “C.I.A. Told Ukraine Last Sum­mer It Should Not Attack Nord Stream Pipelines” By Julian E. Barnes and Michael Schwirtz; The New York Times; 06/13/2023

    “In June 2022, Dutch intel­li­gence offi­cials shared infor­ma­tion with the C.I.A. that they had learned the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary had been plan­ning an oper­a­tion using divers to blow up one of the pipelines, accord­ing to U.S. and Euro­pean offi­cials. But the orig­i­nal tip by the Dutch, accord­ing to U.S. offi­cials, was that Ukraine had already recon­sid­ered and can­celed the oper­a­tion.

    Dutch intel­li­gence sent the CIA the tip, but with the assur­ances that the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment had already can­celed the plan. A plan that appar­ent­ly involved Ukrain­ian spe­cial forces rent­ing a boat and a sub­mersible:

    ...
    The orig­i­nal warn­ing col­lect­ed by Dutch intel­li­gence includ­ed details sim­i­lar to the final oper­a­tion, but it also dif­fered in some key respects, accord­ing to the Euro­pean offi­cial. The orig­i­nal intel­li­gence said Ukraine intend­ed to attack Nord Stream 1, where­as the actu­al attack was against both the old­er pipelines and the just-com­plet­ed set, known as Nord Stream 2.

    Dutch intel­li­gence also report­ed that the plan would involve using fake Eston­ian pass­ports, the Euro­pean offi­cial said. At least some mem­bers of the group that Euro­pean inves­ti­ga­tors believe car­ried out the attack used fake Bul­gar­i­an pass­ports.

    The orig­i­nal plan also involved using Ukrain­ian spe­cial forces per­son­nel to rent a sub­mersible and a boat to attack the pipelines, near a spot pop­u­lar with divers, the Euro­pean offi­cial said.
    ...

    So what is the evi­dence that the CIA warned Ukraine against such an attack? We are told this now, by US offi­cials. It’s not the most com­pelling evi­dence:

    ...
    The Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency told Ukrain­ian offi­cials last sum­mer that it had learned of what it thought was an abort­ed plot by the Ukraini­ans to attack the Nord Stream pipelines, and the agency rein­forced its objec­tion to any such oper­a­tion, U.S. offi­cials said.
    ...

    And we’re also told that, while US intel­li­gence has now con­clud­ed that the oper­a­tion was car­ried out with the “loose direc­tion of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment,” they don’t know who actu­al­ly planned it. In oth­er words, this scan­dal isn’t actu­al­ly going to affect any­one and, at best, will even­tu­al­ly be blamed on a rel­a­tive­ly low-lev­el Ukrain­ian indi­vid­ual while every­one else involved claims igno­rance of the entire affair

    ...
    In real­i­ty, Amer­i­can offi­cials now believe, the oper­a­tion was not abort­ed but delayed, poten­tial­ly with a dif­fer­ent Ukraine-aligned group car­ry­ing out the attack.

    ...

    But Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tors lat­er learned that a group of Ukraini­ans had rent­ed a boat, loaded it with explo­sives and attacked the pipeline. Amer­i­can intel­li­gence agen­cies now believe the oper­a­tion was car­ried out at least with the loose direc­tion of the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment, but they do not know who exact­ly planned the oper­a­tion.

    ...

    It is unclear which U.S. offi­cial deliv­ered the mes­sage about the pipeline attack to Ukraine. It was not deliv­ered by senior lev­el offi­cials, how­ev­er, because the Unit­ed States already believed that Kyiv had recon­sid­ered the wis­dom of the attack, accord­ing to the Amer­i­can offi­cials. It was also not clear how the Ukraini­ans respond­ed to the Amer­i­cans’ mes­sage.

    ...

    The C.I.A. was not able to cor­rob­o­rate the infor­ma­tion the Dutch pro­vid­ed them last sum­mer but nev­er­the­less warned the Ger­man gov­ern­ment that the pipelines could be attacked and then dis­cussed the mat­ter with Ukrain­ian offi­cials.
    ...

    Of course, keep in mind that the asser­tion that the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty does­n’t know who exact­ly planned in oper­a­tion inside the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment is based on the claims were were get­ting in reports from back in March. And yet, when we look at the doc­u­ments that the cur­rent reports are based on, they indi­cate that Dutch intel­li­gence made clear that the would-be attack­ers report­ed direct­ly to Gen. Valery Zaluzh­ny, Ukraine’s high­est-rank­ing mil­i­tary offi­cer. That was one of the fas­ci­nat­ing details we got to learn last week in the ini­tial report­ing on how US intel­li­gence had the detailed attack plan leaked to it by “a Euro­pean intel­li­gence agency” (the Dutch) back in June of 2022. Reports that ulti­mate­ly came from Jack Teix­eira’s Dis­cord leaks. It’s an intrigu­ing aspect of this lat­est update about how US intel­li­gence knew what was com­ing: these details were leaked to reporters by shady sources in the intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty but instead giv­en to reporters by mem­bers of Teix­eira’s Dis­cord group. In oth­er words, there’s pre­sum­ably been a lot less con­trol over the shap­ing of this par­tic­u­lar side of the evolv­ing Nord Stream nar­ra­tive:

    The Wash­ing­ton Post

    U.S. had intel­li­gence of detailed Ukrain­ian plan to attack Nord Stream pipeline

    THE DISCORD LEAKS | The CIA learned last June, via a Euro­pean spy agency, that a six-per­son team of Ukrain­ian spe­cial oper­a­tions forces intend­ed to sab­o­tage the Rus­sia-to-Ger­many nat­ur­al gas project

    By Shane Har­ris and Souad Mekhen­net
    June 6, 2023 at 10:52 a.m. EDT

    Three months before sabo­teurs bombed the Nord Stream nat­ur­al gas pipeline, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion learned from a close ally that the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary had planned a covert attack on the under­sea net­work, using a small team of divers who report­ed direct­ly to the com­man­der in chief of the Ukrain­ian armed forces.

    Details about the plan, which have not been pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, were col­lect­ed by a Euro­pean intel­li­gence ser­vice and shared with the CIA in June 2022. They pro­vide some of the most spe­cif­ic evi­dence to date link­ing the gov­ern­ment of Ukraine to the even­tu­al attack in the Baltic Sea, which U.S. and West­ern offi­cials have called a brazen and dan­ger­ous act of sab­o­tage on Europe’s ener­gy infra­struc­ture.

    The Euro­pean intel­li­gence report was shared on the chat plat­form Dis­cord, alleged­ly by Air Nation­al Guard mem­ber Jack Teix­eira. The Wash­ing­ton Post obtained a copy from one of Teixeira’s online friends.

    The intel­li­gence report was based on infor­ma­tion obtained from an indi­vid­ual in Ukraine. The source’s infor­ma­tion could not imme­di­ate­ly be cor­rob­o­rat­ed, but the CIA shared the report with Ger­many and oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries last June, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple offi­cials famil­iar with the mat­ter, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss sen­si­tive intel­li­gence oper­a­tions and diplo­mat­ic dis­cus­sions.

    The high­ly spe­cif­ic details, which include num­bers of oper­a­tives and meth­ods of attack, show that for near­ly a year, West­ern allies have had a basis to sus­pect Kyiv in the sab­o­tage. That assess­ment has only strength­ened in recent months as Ger­man law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tors uncov­ered evi­dence about the bomb­ing that bears strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties to what the Euro­pean ser­vice said Ukraine was plan­ning.

    Offi­cials in mul­ti­ple coun­tries con­firmed that the intel­li­gence sum­ma­ry post­ed on Dis­cord accu­rate­ly stat­ed what the Euro­pean ser­vice told the CIA. The Post agreed to with­hold the name of the Euro­pean coun­try as well as some aspects of the sus­pect­ed plan at the request of gov­ern­ment offi­cials, who said expos­ing the infor­ma­tion would threat­en sources and oper­a­tions.

    ...

    On Sept. 26, three under­wa­ter explo­sions caused mas­sive leaks on the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, leav­ing only one of the four gas links in the net­work intact. Some Biden admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials ini­tial­ly sug­gest­ed that Rus­sia was to blame for what Pres­i­dent Biden called “a delib­er­ate act of sab­o­tage,” promis­ing that the Unit­ed States would work with its allies “to get to the bot­tom of exact­ly what ... hap­pened.” With win­ter approach­ing, it appeared the Krem­lin might have intend­ed to stran­gle the flow of ener­gy, an act of “black­mail,” some lead­ers said, designed to intim­i­date Euro­pean coun­tries into with­draw­ing their finan­cial and mil­i­tary sup­port for Ukraine, and refrain­ing from fur­ther sanc­tions.

    Biden admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials now pri­vate­ly con­cede there is no evi­dence that con­clu­sive­ly points to Moscow’s involve­ment. But pub­licly they have deflect­ed ques­tions about who might be respon­si­ble. Euro­pean offi­cials in sev­er­al coun­tries have qui­et­ly sug­gest­ed that Ukraine was behind the attack but have resist­ed pub­licly say­ing so over fears that blam­ing Kyiv could frac­ture the alliance against Rus­sia. At gath­er­ings of Euro­pean and NATO pol­i­cy­mak­ers, offi­cials have set­tled into a rhythm; as one senior Euro­pean diplo­mat said recent­ly, “Don’t talk about Nord Stream.”

    The Euro­pean intel­li­gence made clear that the would-be attack­ers were not rogue oper­a­tives. All those involved report­ed direct­ly to Gen. Valery Zaluzh­ny, Ukraine’s high­est-rank­ing mil­i­tary offi­cer, who was put in charge so that the nation’s pres­i­dent, Volodymyr Zelen­sky, wouldn’t know about the oper­a­tion, the intel­li­gence report said.

    Keep­ing Zelen­sky out of the loop would have giv­en the Ukrain­ian leader a plau­si­ble way to deny involve­ment in an auda­cious attack on civil­ian infra­struc­ture that could ignite pub­lic out­rage and jeop­ar­dize West­ern sup­port for Ukraine — par­tic­u­lar­ly in Ger­many, which before the war got half its nat­ur­al gas from Rus­sia and had long cham­pi­oned the Nord Stream project in the face of oppo­si­tion from oth­er Euro­pean allies.

    While Gazprom, the Russ­ian state-owned gas con­glom­er­ate, owns 51 per­cent of Nord Stream, West­ern ener­gy com­pa­nies, includ­ing from Ger­many, France and the Nether­lands, are part­ners and invest­ed bil­lions in the pipelines. Ukraine had long com­plained that Nord Stream would allow Rus­sia to bypass Ukrain­ian pipes, depriv­ing Kyiv of huge tran­sit rev­enue.

    The intel­li­gence sum­ma­ry says that the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary oper­a­tion was “put on hold,” for rea­sons that remain unclear. The Ukraini­ans had planned to attack the pipeline on the heels of a major allied naval exer­cise, known as BALTOPS, that ran from June 5 to 17, 2022, accord­ing to the report.

    But accord­ing to Ger­man law enforce­ment offi­cials inves­ti­gat­ing September’s Nord Stream bomb­ing, key details emerg­ing of that oper­a­tion line up with the ear­li­er plot.

    For instance, the Ukrain­ian indi­vid­ual who informed the Euro­pean intel­li­gence ser­vice in June said that six mem­bers of Ukraine’s spe­cial oper­a­tions forces using false iden­ti­ties intend­ed to rent a boat and, using a sub­mersible vehi­cle, dive to the floor of the Baltic Sea and then dam­age or destroy the pipeline and escape unde­tect­ed. In addi­tion to oxy­gen, the team planned to bring heli­um, which is rec­om­mend­ed for espe­cial­ly deep dives.

    Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tors now believe that six indi­vid­u­als using fake pass­ports rent­ed a sail­ing yacht in Sep­tem­ber, embarked from Ger­many and plant­ed explo­sives that sev­ered the pipelines, accord­ing to offi­cials famil­iar with that inves­ti­ga­tion. They believe the oper­a­tives were skilled divers, giv­en that the explo­sives were plant­ed at a depth of about 240 feet, in the range that experts say heli­um would be help­ful for main­tain­ing men­tal focus.

    Inves­ti­ga­tors have matched explo­sive residue found on the pipeline to traces found inside the cab­in of the yacht, called Androm­e­da. And they have linked Ukrain­ian indi­vid­u­als to the rental of the boat via an appar­ent front com­pa­ny in Poland. Inves­ti­ga­tors also sus­pect that at least one indi­vid­ual who serves in the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary was involved in the sab­o­tage oper­a­tion.

    A col­lab­o­ra­tion of Ger­man media orga­ni­za­tions pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed the sus­pect­ed involve­ment of the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary ser­vice mem­ber.

    The June plot dif­fers from the Sep­tem­ber attack in some respects. The Euro­pean intel­li­gence report notes that the Ukrain­ian oper­a­tives planned to attack the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, but it makes no men­tion of Nord Stream 2, a new­er line. The intel­li­gence report also says that the sabo­teurs would embark from a dif­fer­ent loca­tion in Europe, not Warnemünde, a Ger­man port town on the Baltic, where the Androm­e­da was rent­ed.

    The CIA ini­tial­ly ques­tioned the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the infor­ma­tion, in part because the source in Ukraine who pro­vid­ed the details had not yet estab­lished a track record of pro­duc­ing reli­able infor­ma­tion, accord­ing to offi­cials famil­iar with the mat­ter. The Euro­pean ser­vice, a trust­ed U.S. part­ner, felt that the source was reli­able.

    But despite any reser­va­tions the CIA might have had, the agency com­mu­ni­cat­ed the June intel­li­gence to coun­ter­parts in Ger­many and oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries, offi­cials said. The Euro­pean ser­vice also shared it with Ger­many, one per­son said. Ger­man intel­li­gence per­son­nel briefed law­mak­ers in Berlin in late June before they left for their sum­mer break, accord­ing to an offi­cial with knowl­edge of the closed-door pre­sen­ta­tion.

    Offi­cials famil­iar with the Euro­pean report con­ced­ed that it is pos­si­ble that the sus­pect­ed Ukrain­ian plot­ters might have been apprised that the intel­li­gence was shared with sev­er­al coun­tries and that they may have changed some ele­ments of the plan.

    But the report from the Euro­pean intel­li­gence ser­vice isn’t the only piece of evi­dence point­ing to Kyiv’s role in the pipeline bomb­ing.

    The Post pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed that gov­ern­ments inves­ti­gat­ing the explo­sions uncov­ered com­mu­ni­ca­tions that showed pro-Ukrain­ian indi­vid­u­als or enti­ties dis­cussed the pos­si­bil­i­ty of car­ry­ing out an attack on the Nord Stream pipelines. Those con­ver­sa­tions took place before the attack, but were only dis­cov­ered in its after­math, when spy agen­cies scoured data for pos­si­ble clues, a senior West­ern secu­ri­ty offi­cial said.

    Despite waiv­ing Trump-era sanc­tions on the Rus­sia-to-Ger­many nat­ur­al gas pipeline as an attempt to mend fences with Berlin, the Biden admin­is­tra­tion had long har­bored con­cerns about Nord Stream and did not shed tears over its Sep­tem­ber demise.

    After months of pres­sure from Wash­ing­ton, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment halt­ed final autho­riza­tion of Nord Stream 2 just days before Russ­ian forces invad­ed Ukraine in Feb­ru­ary 2022, sur­pris­ing many U.S. and Euro­pean offi­cials who had wor­ried that Berlin would find Rus­sia too impor­tant an ener­gy source to sev­er ties. At the time of the attack, the pipeline was intact and had already been pumped full with 300 mil­lion cubic meters of nat­ur­al gas to ready it for oper­a­tions.

    Near­ly a month before the rup­ture, the Russ­ian ener­gy giant Gazprom stopped flows on Nord Stream 1, hours after the Group of Sev­en indus­tri­al­ized nations announced a forth­com­ing price cap on Russ­ian oil, a move intend­ed to put a dent in the Kremlin’s trea­sury.

    ...

    While U.S. intel­li­gence offi­cials were ini­tial­ly skep­ti­cal of the Euro­pean report­ing, they have long been con­cerned about aggres­sive oper­a­tions by Ukraine that could esca­late the war into a direct con­flict between Rus­sia and the Unit­ed States and its NATO allies.

    In Feb­ru­ary of this year, on the eve of the war’s first anniver­sary, Ukraine’s mil­i­tary intel­li­gence agency agreed, “at Washington’s request,” to post­pone planned strikes on Moscow, accord­ing to anoth­er intel­li­gence doc­u­ment leaked on Dis­cord. That inci­dent illus­trat­ed a broad­er ten­sion that has exist­ed through­out the war: Ukraine, eager to bring the fight to Russia’s home turf, is some­times restrained by the Unit­ed States.

    Offi­cials in Wash­ing­ton and Europe have admon­ished Ukraine for attacks out­side its ter­ri­to­ry that they felt went too far. After a car bomb near Moscow in August killed Daria Dug­i­na, in an attack that appeared intend­ed for her father — a promi­nent Russ­ian nation­al­ist whose writ­ing had helped shape a Krem­lin nar­ra­tive about Ukraine — West­ern offi­cials said they made clear to Zelen­sky that they held oper­a­tives in his gov­ern­ment respon­si­ble. The attack was seen as provoca­tive and risked a severe Russ­ian response, offi­cials said.

    Ukraine has per­sist­ed with strikes inside Rus­sia, includ­ing drone strikes on an air­field and on tar­gets in Moscow that U.S. offi­cials have linked to Kyiv.

    ————

    “U.S. had intel­li­gence of detailed Ukrain­ian plan to attack Nord Stream pipeline” By Shane Har­ris and Souad Mekhen­net; The Wash­ing­ton Post; 06/06/2023

    “The Euro­pean intel­li­gence report was shared on the chat plat­form Dis­cord, alleged­ly by Air Nation­al Guard mem­ber Jack Teix­eira. The Wash­ing­ton Post obtained a copy from one of Teixeira’s online friends.

    There was­n’t a lot of con­trol over whether or not these details even­tu­al­ly came out. Because they were already float­ing around thanks to Jack Teix­eira’s tor­rent of leaked doc­u­ments. Which rais­es the inter­est­ing ques­tion of how long exact­ly that’s been the case. It rais­es the inter­est­ing ques­tion of how long did it take fol­low­ing the bomb­ings for Teix­eira to find this intel­li­gence report and post it to the Dis­cord chat groups?

    ...
    Details about the plan, which have not been pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed, were col­lect­ed by a Euro­pean intel­li­gence ser­vice and shared with the CIA in June 2022. They pro­vide some of the most spe­cif­ic evi­dence to date link­ing the gov­ern­ment of Ukraine to the even­tu­al attack in the Baltic Sea, which U.S. and West­ern offi­cials have called a brazen and dan­ger­ous act of sab­o­tage on Europe’s ener­gy infra­struc­ture.

    ...

    The intel­li­gence report was based on infor­ma­tion obtained from an indi­vid­ual in Ukraine. The source’s infor­ma­tion could not imme­di­ate­ly be cor­rob­o­rat­ed, but the CIA shared the report with Ger­many and oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries last June, accord­ing to mul­ti­ple offi­cials famil­iar with the mat­ter, who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to dis­cuss sen­si­tive intel­li­gence oper­a­tions and diplo­mat­ic dis­cus­sions.

    The high­ly spe­cif­ic details, which include num­bers of oper­a­tives and meth­ods of attack, show that for near­ly a year, West­ern allies have had a basis to sus­pect Kyiv in the sab­o­tage. That assess­ment has only strength­ened in recent months as Ger­man law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tors uncov­ered evi­dence about the bomb­ing that bears strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties to what the Euro­pean ser­vice said Ukraine was plan­ning.

    ...

    Offi­cials in mul­ti­ple coun­tries con­firmed that the intel­li­gence sum­ma­ry post­ed on Dis­cord accu­rate­ly stat­ed what the Euro­pean ser­vice told the CIA. The Post agreed to with­hold the name of the Euro­pean coun­try as well as some aspects of the sus­pect­ed plan at the request of gov­ern­ment offi­cials, who said expos­ing the infor­ma­tion would threat­en sources and oper­a­tions.
    ...

    And note how, while we are told in the above arti­cle that US intel­li­gence does­n’t know who inside the Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment actu­al­ly approved the attack, these leaked doc­u­ments indi­cate that Dutch intel­li­gence con­clud­ed all involved report­ed direct­ly to Gen. Valery Zaluzh­ny, Ukraine’s high­est-rank­ing mil­i­tary offi­cer:

    ...
    Biden admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials now pri­vate­ly con­cede there is no evi­dence that con­clu­sive­ly points to Moscow’s involve­ment. But pub­licly they have deflect­ed ques­tions about who might be respon­si­ble. Euro­pean offi­cials in sev­er­al coun­tries have qui­et­ly sug­gest­ed that Ukraine was behind the attack but have resist­ed pub­licly say­ing so over fears that blam­ing Kyiv could frac­ture the alliance against Rus­sia. At gath­er­ings of Euro­pean and NATO pol­i­cy­mak­ers, offi­cials have set­tled into a rhythm; as one senior Euro­pean diplo­mat said recent­ly, “Don’t talk about Nord Stream.”

    The Euro­pean intel­li­gence made clear that the would-be attack­ers were not rogue oper­a­tives. All those involved report­ed direct­ly to Gen. Valery Zaluzh­ny, Ukraine’s high­est-rank­ing mil­i­tary offi­cer, who was put in charge so that the nation’s pres­i­dent, Volodymyr Zelen­sky, wouldn’t know about the oper­a­tion, the intel­li­gence report said.
    ...

    Also note how this ver­sion of this does align with Sey­mour Her­sh’s report­ing in some inter­est­ing ways. Recall what Hersh described as one of the points of ten­sion between Pres­i­dent Biden and the US intel­li­gence com­mu­ni­ty when this plot was being exe­cut­ed: ini­tial­ly, the plan was to place the bombs on the pipeline in June of 2022 dur­ing the BALTOPS Naval war games, and then blow them up soon after­wards. But Biden got cold feet and want­ed to instead put them on a timer that could be set off at a lat­er date. This was done, but with con­cerns that the longer they wait­ed the high­er the odds of the sonar trig­ger­ing mech­a­nism not work­ing. And in the leaked Dis­cord doc­u­ments we’re see­ing indi­ca­tions that the BALTOPS was the planned orig­i­nal cov­er. Using a rent­ed sub­mersible was the orig­i­nal plan, but Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tors now believe skilled divers were used. So between the orig­i­nal BALTOPS plan­ning and the even­tu­al use of divers, as opposed to sub­mersibles, does align with Her­sh’s report­ing:

    ...
    The intel­li­gence sum­ma­ry says that the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary oper­a­tion was “put on hold,” for rea­sons that remain unclear. The Ukraini­ans had planned to attack the pipeline on the heels of a major allied naval exer­cise, known as BALTOPS, that ran from June 5 to 17, 2022, accord­ing to the report.

    But accord­ing to Ger­man law enforce­ment offi­cials inves­ti­gat­ing September’s Nord Stream bomb­ing, key details emerg­ing of that oper­a­tion line up with the ear­li­er plot.

    For instance, the Ukrain­ian indi­vid­ual who informed the Euro­pean intel­li­gence ser­vice in June said that six mem­bers of Ukraine’s spe­cial oper­a­tions forces using false iden­ti­ties intend­ed to rent a boat and, using a sub­mersible vehi­cle, dive to the floor of the Baltic Sea and then dam­age or destroy the pipeline and escape unde­tect­ed. In addi­tion to oxy­gen, the team planned to bring heli­um, which is rec­om­mend­ed for espe­cial­ly deep dives.

    Ger­man inves­ti­ga­tors now believe that six indi­vid­u­als using fake pass­ports rent­ed a sail­ing yacht in Sep­tem­ber, embarked from Ger­many and plant­ed explo­sives that sev­ered the pipelines, accord­ing to offi­cials famil­iar with that inves­ti­ga­tion. They believe the oper­a­tives were skilled divers, giv­en that the explo­sives were plant­ed at a depth of about 240 feet, in the range that experts say heli­um would be help­ful for main­tain­ing men­tal focus.
    ...

    Final­ly, note how the Ukrain­ian source for this Dutch intel­li­gence report was appar­ent­ly assessed by the CIA to have rather ques­tion­able cred­i­bil­i­ty. It’s a reminder that we are deal­ing with leaked reports of intel­li­gence passed along between intel­li­gence agen­cies, which is an envi­ron­ment ripe for myth mak­ing and the cre­ation of cov­er sto­ries. Includ­ing inter-gov­ern­men­tal myth-mak­ing. In oth­er words, if the US and Nor­way did indeed have their own plans to bomb the pipeline, hav­ing a Ukrain­ian asset put out a sto­ry like this to Dutch intel­li­gence would be one way of estab­lish­ing the desired myths:

    ...
    Inves­ti­ga­tors have matched explo­sive residue found on the pipeline to traces found inside the cab­in of the yacht, called Androm­e­da. And they have linked Ukrain­ian indi­vid­u­als to the rental of the boat via an appar­ent front com­pa­ny in Poland. Inves­ti­ga­tors also sus­pect that at least one indi­vid­ual who serves in the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary was involved in the sab­o­tage oper­a­tion.

    A col­lab­o­ra­tion of Ger­man media orga­ni­za­tions pre­vi­ous­ly report­ed the sus­pect­ed involve­ment of the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary ser­vice mem­ber.

    The June plot dif­fers from the Sep­tem­ber attack in some respects. The Euro­pean intel­li­gence report notes that the Ukrain­ian oper­a­tives planned to attack the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, but it makes no men­tion of Nord Stream 2, a new­er line. The intel­li­gence report also says that the sabo­teurs would embark from a dif­fer­ent loca­tion in Europe, not Warnemünde, a Ger­man port town on the Baltic, where the Androm­e­da was rent­ed.

    The CIA ini­tial­ly ques­tioned the cred­i­bil­i­ty of the infor­ma­tion, in part because the source in Ukraine who pro­vid­ed the details had not yet estab­lished a track record of pro­duc­ing reli­able infor­ma­tion, accord­ing to offi­cials famil­iar with the mat­ter. The Euro­pean ser­vice, a trust­ed U.S. part­ner, felt that the source was reli­able.

    But despite any reser­va­tions the CIA might have had, the agency com­mu­ni­cat­ed the June intel­li­gence to coun­ter­parts in Ger­many and oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries, offi­cials said. The Euro­pean ser­vice also shared it with Ger­many, one per­son said. Ger­man intel­li­gence per­son­nel briefed law­mak­ers in Berlin in late June before they left for their sum­mer break, accord­ing to an offi­cial with knowl­edge of the closed-door pre­sen­ta­tion.

    Offi­cials famil­iar with the Euro­pean report con­ced­ed that it is pos­si­ble that the sus­pect­ed Ukrain­ian plot­ters might have been apprised that the intel­li­gence was shared with sev­er­al coun­tries and that they may have changed some ele­ments of the plan.
    ...

    And, again, notice what we don’t see any indi­ca­tion of at all in this report: signs that the CIA told the Ukraini­ans NOT to car­ry out the attack or were in any way alarmed by the plans. That detail only seemed to emerge in this week’s NY Times report­ing on the sto­ry.

    So we’ll see how this sto­ry evolves next. And while it’s hard to pre­dict what the next twist in this sto­ry will be, it’s not hard to imag­ine that the long-term sto­ry we are lurch­ing towards is one where every­one knew what was hap­pen­ing and opposed it, but also no one knows who actu­al­ly did it or who is ulti­mate­ly respon­si­ble.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | June 14, 2023, 4:31 pm

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