By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with
Never mind the bang and whimper with which the pietistical Anglo-American Harvard alumnus and Tory snob Tom Eliot ended his 1925 poem, “The Hollow Men”. Whatever he could have known and didn’t then, can’t answer the question now: How will this war in Europe end?
Last week the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov answered by drawing a geographic line three hundred kilometres westward and southwestward from the Russian border, including Donetsk, Lugansk, Sevastopol, Kaliningrad, Brest and Hrodna (Belarus). That is, the direct line of fire by the artillery, rocket, or missile batteries which the US and the NATO allies are installing.
“Now the geography is different,” Lavrov said. “It is more than the DPR [Donetsk People’s Republic], the LPR [Lugansk People’s Republic], but also the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and a number of other areas. This process continues, consistently and persistently. It will continue as long as the West, in its impotent rage, desperate to aggravate the situation as much as possible, continues to flood Ukraine with more and more long-range weapons. Take the HIMARS [High Mobility Artillery Rocket System]. Defence Minister Alexey Reznikov [Kiev] boasts that they have already received 300-kilometre ammunition. This means our geographic objectives will move even further from the current line. We cannot allow the part of Ukraine that Vladimir Zelensky, or whoever replaces him, will control to have weapons that pose a direct threat to our territory or to the republics that have declared their independence and want to determine their own future.”
Will this line extend to Lvov in western Ukraine, or somewhere between Dniepropetrovsk, Kiev, and the Polish border, Lavrov was asked. The answer will not be given by diplomatic negotiations, he replied. “There is a solution to this problem. The military know this.”
What the deuce? Gorilla Radio’s Chris Cook asks the question and Gorilla Radio broadcasts the answers.
To follow the distances the war is being fought across unfamiliar geography, here are the US and NATO firing points on the map:
MAP OF US-NATO BASES WEST OF THE UKRAINE WITHIN 300 KMS OF RUSSIAN AND BELARUS BORDERS, AS OF 2020
Source: https://www.gisreportsonline.com/
Redzikowo, in the northwest of Poland, where the US has based nuclear-armed Aegis missiles, is 278 kilometres by dog-legged highway to Kaliningrad. By direct missile flight it is less than 230 kms.
The distance from Deveselu, in the southwest of Romania, where the US has based nuclear-armed Aegis missiles, to Odessa is about 350 kms as the missile flies; to Sevastopol, Crimea, the flight distance is 453 kms:
Source: https://www.distance.to/
Listen to the discussion by clicking on the Gorilla Radio link, commencing at Min 29:43:
Gorilla Radio is broadcast every Thursday on CFUV 101.9 FM from the University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. The radio station can be heard here . The Gorilla Radio transcripts are also published on the blog. For Chris Cook’s broadcast archive, click to open.
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