RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://asiatimes.com/2022/10/were-nord-stream-explosions-really-a-military-accident/

The Baltic Sea’s floor is littered with WWII-era munitions and weapons.

On September 27, two explosions severely damaged Russia’s Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines near the Danish island of Bornholm, setting off wild speculation about possible sabotage.

Another two breaks in the pipeline, a tad to the north in Sweden’s Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), were later identified but no explosions were reported.  According to news sources citing Danish officials, each explosion was equivalent to 500 kilograms of TNT, the size of very large anti-shipping mines.

Not only the US Navy (together with its NATO allies) but also the Russian Navy conduct naval exercises in the Baltic Sea and many believe either the Russians or Americans are clandestinely responsible for the two blasts. Predictably enough, the two sides have blamed each other in loud and emphatic terms – without corroborating or credible evidence.

Unmentioned amid the incendiary speculation is the explosive condition of the Baltic seabed, which is loaded with dumped artillery shells, chemical weapons including Tabun nerve gas and mines. Under an agreement reached at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, Britain and the Soviet Union dumped approximately 69,000 tons of Germany’s chemical weapons stockpile into the Baltic Sea in 1947-48.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18950/russia-ally-nuclear-iran

As one of the signatories of the original Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the flawed nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, Russia, as well as China, will ultimately have a say in any new agreement that emerges from the Vienna talks.

Rather than seeking to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Beijing and Moscow are more interested in forming an alliance with Iran to counter what they denounce as America’s unilateralism, and thwarting “draconian” US sanctions.

Given Moscow’s open hostility towards the West, it is abundantly clear that the Kremlin wants to exploit the weakness of the Biden administration to ensure the negotiations provide an even more unsatisfactory deal than the one signed off by Barack Obama in 2015, one that completely fails to address the very real threat Iran’s nuclear weapons will pose to the wider world.

From Moscow’s perspective, having a nuclear-armed Iran, one that is Russia’s ally, will greatly enhance its ability to challenge the West.

In return, Iran has formed a new “axis of evil” with Moscow, providing it with weaponry, such as sophisticated drones, to support its war effort in Ukraine, while at the time providing assistance to Tehran to evade the effects of Western sanctions.

While these two despotic regimes seem determined to forge an ever closer alliance, however, their objectives are completely at odds with the demands of their respective citizens, whose primary concern is securing their freedom, not supporting the military aspirations of the ruling elites.

There is growing concern in Washington that US President Joe Biden is preparing to sign a new deal with Tehran once the midterm elections have been concluded, and that his officials are prepared to sign a far weaker version of the deal than that originally agreed to in 2015.

That would be a grave miscalculation on the part of the Biden administration.

This should be the moment when the US and its allies are intensifying the pressure on both Iran and Moscow, not capitulating to their interests with a weak nuclear deal which will only encourage them to indulge in further acts of aggression against the West and its allies.

The nationwide anti-government protests sweeping Russia and Iran demonstrate that, despite the efforts of these two rogue regimes to increase the level of military cooperation between Moscow and Tehran, the overwhelming demand of the majority of ordinary Russians and Iranians is freedom from dictatorial rule.

https://amgreatness.com/2022/10/02/pushing-the-envelopes-in-ukraine/

For all the dramatic late-summer Ukrainian success, we are witnessing yet another deadlock in the war—one that supposedly will be resolved by escalations on all sides.  

Mutually Exclusive Agendas 

A rebooted Ukraine is clamoring for more offensive arms. It claims it can win the war, with victory now giddily defined as sending every Russian back home in disgrace.  

Russia is screaming threats about using nuclear weapons—though how Vladimir Putin would use them remains in dispute. Putin is ominously no longer qualifying his Strangelovian threat with the adjective tactical, as he calls up 300,000 more troops.  

An addled and non-compos mentis Joe Biden only nominally remains the leader of the West. He initially refused to send offensive arms to Ukraine, and then offered to evacuate President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But now Biden 2.0 has blasted Putin as a killer, someone equivalent to the domestic semi-fascists he blasted in his Phantom of the Opera hate speech.  

Biden has called for Putin’s removal. But until Putin’s demise, he wants still more sanctions against Russia. Yet it is hard to distinguish who is more detached from reality—Biden, suffering from cognitive decline as he talks to dead people and shakes the hands of ghosts, or a physically ailing and paranoid Putin. Meanwhile American Vice President Kamala Harris is rambling about a mythical American alliance with lunatic North Korea and the need to disperse federal help to storm-ravaged Florida on the basis of race. 

The United States is sinking knee-deep into recession. Once again it is hit with spiraling fuel prices. No matter: Biden promises to borrow still more billions of dollars for Ukrainian aid as he drains the last drops of the strategic petroleum reserve that he inherited almost full. 

Biden is on record that there will not be a negotiated end to the war. He instead believes, to paraphrase Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, that the proxy disaster must serve the permanent weakening of Russia, the deserved humiliation of Putin, and his removal from office.

So how does it all end, or will it all end, with so many mutually exclusive and escalating agendas? 

The Ukrainians survived the initial Russian effort to decapitate their government and absorb Western Ukraine. Months later they are still frantically trying to push Russians back to, and even well beyond, their areas of control prior to February 23.  

Ukraine’s ultimate hopes seem threefold: (1) reestablishing their pre-2014 borders, (2) finding permanent collective security within the West, formally through NATO to acquire future deterrence from the Russian war machine, and (3) weakening the economic and social fabric of Russia itself to the point that it is no longer a superpower capable of such aggression. Translated that means Ukraine wishes to be a permanent proxy of the West, which will pledge its own strategic security on behalf of Zelenskyy’s agendas. 

Russia Has Other Plans 

As for the Russians, their idea of dissecting Ukraine by incorporating its eastern half and then gradually wearing down, whether economically or militarily, Western Ukraine, for now has failed.  

But Vladimir Putin is not entirely foolish. He has pivoted by redefining victory as institutionalizing and declaring as “Russian” the disputed borderlands, and soon Crimea, that he grabbed in 2014. To fight there, he will allege, is to go on the offensive inside Russia. He believes his misadventure in a year or two will still be seen as worth the terrible costs to the Russian people and the thousands of Russian and Ukrainian dead—if he can brag that he still insidiously continues to reclaim lost lands of the Russian Empire.