RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectatorworld.com/topic/will-battlefield-stalemate-end-ukraine/

The simplest description of the war in Ukraine is this: stalemate, accompanied by constant, deadly bombardment.

For the Ukrainians, that bombardment is aimed at the Russian military. For the Russians, it is aimed mostly at civilian targets, a deliberate strategy that is also a war crime. Russian artillery shells, cluster bombs and cruise missiles are killing tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians and destroying their homes, schools and businesses. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s counterattack is imposing huge, irreplaceable losses on Russia’s army, killing soldiers, destroying their equipment and liquidating incompetent military leaders who come to the front to untangle the mess.

Russia’s initial war plan failed, abysmally. That plan was to seize Kyiv swiftly (expecting to be welcomed), decapitate the Zelensky regime and install a puppet government. Not only did they fail to seize the capital city, their brutal, unprovoked attack fostered a nationalist resistance so intense that neither the Russian army nor a puppet regime will ever be able to pacify the country. In fact, they don’t have the soldiers to take cities in house-to-house fighting (which takes about ten attackers for each defensive fighter), much less to hold those cities. Other than that, the plan is going just great.

https://gatesofvienna.net/2022/03/ukraine-field-test-of-the-great-reset/

Recommended by Janet Levy.

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from the Austrian weekly Der Wochenblick:

In the shadow of war: Ukraine as the Great Reset laboratory of the global tech elite

While a very real conflict is raging in Ukraine, naturally no spotlight falls on the digital distribution battles. The advocates of radical world restructuring and total surveillance have long recognized the potential of the Eastern European country. With the strong participation of President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine would not only be a Mecca for US bio-weapons laboratories, but also pave the way for digital networking, the Metaverse and the transparent citizen. The lynchpin is the digital ID app “DiiA”, an abbreviation for “The State and I”.

Zelensky’s social credit system

The journey takes us back to 2019. Zelensky had only been a few months in office, and founded a “Ministry for Digital Transformation”. Its most important task was to create a platform for the “state on a smartphone”, the DiiA app finally rolled out in February of 2020. Since then everything has been going fast: more than 50 applications, proofs and official channels are now running via the app: driver’s license, Covid vaccination pass, student card, starting a business, insurance, social benefits. A French tech portal writes: “A model that we only knew from China with its social credit system.” By the way: “ID Austria” is supposed to go in this direction in the final phase.

https://quillette.com/2022/03/19/putins-russian-and-pushkins-russia/

When Paolo Nori’s series of lectures on Dostoevsky at the University of Milano-Bicocca was canceled “to avoid any controversy … during a time of strong tensions” related to the Ukraine invasion, he replied: “I realize what is happening in Ukraine is horrible, and I feel like crying just thinking about it. But what is happening in Italy is ridiculous … Not only is being a living Russian wrong in Italy but also being a dead Russian.”

It isn’t only in Italy. In the Netherlands, an exhibit of avant-garde Russian art was canceled, as was a Stravinsky concert in Belgium and a Tchaikovsky performance in Britain. Even the board of the International Cat Federation (Fédération Internationale Féline, or FIFé) banned from its exhibitions not only Russian cat breeders but also cats bred in Russia. Here in the United States, Columbia University Press, having renounced Russian financing, is drastically curtailing its series of Russian classics in translation.

But as Dutch Russian expert Michel Krielaars observed, “there is Putin’s Russia and there is Pushkin’s Russia,” and the two could not differ more. In our frenzied rush to “cancel” everything Russian, we may throw away a literary tradition that displays an especially deep understanding of moral questions in all their depth and complexity. Who should grasp the nature of evil better than those who suffered so much under tsarist tyranny and then still more under the totalitarian regime that replaced it?

A character in one of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s novels asks: “hasn’t it always been understood … that a major writer in our country … is a sort of second government?” If the regime represented political power, the writer embodied moral power. The very phrase “Russian writer” designated not just someone who produces literary works but someone who, like the ancient Hebrew prophets, acts as the people’s conscience.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2022/03/zelenskys-holocaust-denial-should-be-red-line-jews-daniel-greenfield/

Ukraine’s leader Zelensky had previously exploited and lied about the Holocaust, but not as much as he did in his attack on Israel.

First, Zelensky appropriated the Holocaust by falsely claiming that Putin’s invasion is another genocide. It’s wrong, but it’s far from genocide.

“That is why I want to remind you of the words of a great woman from Kyiv, whom you know very well. The words of Golda Meir. They are very famous, everyone has heard of them. Apparently, every Jew. Many, many Ukrainians as well. And certainly no less, Russians: “We intend to remain alive. Our neighbors want to see us dead. This is not a question that leaves much room for compromise.”

The Jews actually faced genocide at the hands of the Nazis and the Ukrainians. They face genocide again at the hands of Ukraine’s Iranian trading partners.

No one who hasn’t completely bought into the insane propaganda believes that Putin is about to kill millions of Ukrainians, to march men, women and children into pits and machine gun them, as the Nazis and Ukrainians did to the Jews at Babi Yar.

https://asiatimes.com/2022/03/chinese-missiles-can-likely-sink-us-carriers-report/

A March 8 Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on China’s naval capabilities cites the view of top US commanders that China’s arsenal of anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) can hit moving targets, effectively closing an area a thousand miles from China’s coast to the American Navy.

The report states: “A December 3, 2020, press report stated that Admiral Philip Davidson, the commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, ‘confirmed, for the first time from the US government side, that China’s People’s Liberation Army has successfully tested an anti-ship ballistic missile against a moving ship.’ China reportedly is also developing hypersonic glide vehicles that, if incorporated into Chinese ASBMs, could make Chinese ASBMs more difficult to intercept.”

Some of the assessments by senior US flag officers have been cited before, but the CRS report gives them additional weight in the context of an overall assessment of Chinese capabilities.

If Chinese missiles can effectively clear the coast of American vessels to a distance of 1,500 kilometers or more, the United States has no effective way of defending Taiwan against a prospective Chinese armed landing.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18337/iran-turkey-fake-peace

What, then, revived Iran’s covert operations in Turkey? For Iran, the “good Turkey” was the one in constant bickering with the West and Israel. The “bad” one is claiming to seek reconciliation with Israel, the Gulf states and Egypt.

Iran’s mullahs are notoriously good at poisoning peace and stability, at home and in their own neighborhood as well as in distant lands, such as Cuba and Venezuela. After a short pause, the long arm of the mullahs is back to Turkey. Twelve (foiled) plots in such a short time is a “message.”

Iran is trying to sabotage the Abraham Accords and their positive transformations in the region by means of subversion in Turkey against Israeli nationals. The Iranians are also vehemently trying to discourage Turkey from reconciling with the Gulf states, Israel and Egypt….

When the UAE moved to normalize relations with Israel, Turkey threatened to downgrade diplomatic ties with Abu Dhabi; and Turkey has been at odds with Egypt since 2013. These frictions have placed Turkey on the side of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, while on the other side are the Gulf states, Israel and Egypt.

Totally isolated and facing a punishing economic crisis, Erdoğan apparently decided to look as if he were changing course and reconcile with Israel and the Gulf states. The effort shows that Erdoğan was on the wrong course to begin with: He apparently thought Turkey’s enemies were Israel and Sunni Arabs while now he should see that the real enemy is Shia Islam, in the form of Iran’s theocracy.

Finally, there is a lesson to Westerners who seem blind to Turkey and Iran. These rogue states are still plotting acts of terror on NATO soil. What more do they have to do for the international community to hold them to account?

The lesson for governments is: Ignore Erdoğan’s threats. Do not keep overestimating him or Turkey’s clout. Keep isolating him to keep him from doing further harm. Isolate him to soften his rigidity on refusing the EastMed pipeline. In other words, if you want to avoid more Turkish damage in the neighborhood, do more to isolate Turkey than you have done in the past decade. And one more thing: The Mediterranean alliance should remain monolithic and, above all, ignore Erdoğan’s threats.

Yair Geller, 75, an Israeli businessman who owns an advanced technologies and engineering company in Turkey, CNC İleri Teknoloji, did not know that his residence in Istanbul was long under surveillance by a cell of assassins operated by the Iranian regime. The assassins did not know that they were long under surveillance by MIT, Turkey’s national intelligence agency.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18336/putin-war-the-next-phase

Most wars are aimed at replacing a status quo regarded as undesirable by one or both adversaries, with a new one acceptable by the winning side and tolerable by the loser.

So far, the European Union and NATO have opted for what amounts to knee-jerk reaction to show that they are doing something without deciding what it is they are actually facing.

Seizing the assets of the oligarchs makes good news copy. But it is doubtful that it will sway Putin away from his adversarial trajectory. In any case, if the oligarchs’ assets were produced by corruption if not actual theft, why did Western democracies welcome them as legitimate “investment”? And, if they were legit to start with, why seize them when the Western legal system excludes guilt by association?

Both the EU and NATO would do well to try and de-couple Putin and the Russian people through information, public diplomacy, and carefully targeted sanctions.

As it heads for its second month, like other wars in history, the war in Ukraine seems to be finding the rhythm and tempo that determines its cruising speed at least for some time.