by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The defeat of the Russian army in war discredits, not the soldiers who fought and died, but the commander-in-chief and the generals who were in command. Defeat on the battlefield also destroys Russian military honour as a political force in the country, just as its opposite, victory on the battlefield,  threatens the civilian commander-in-chief with his replacement by a soldier hero. 

To protect himself from his triumphant,  and also from his disgruntled officers, the commander-in-chief may make his generals scapegoats for the defeat.  Joseph Stalin had begun shooting  scapegoat officers before the German invasion of June 21, 1941, and then accelerated his purge  in the weeks which followed.   In 1946, in the aftermath of the Red Army’s victory over Germany, Stalin neutralized Marshal Georgiy Zhukov (for the second time), stripping him of his command powers and sending him into internal exile, all for purely political reasons. Stalin had allowed Zhukov to lead the victory parade in Red Square but only after Stalin had tried himself and failed to stay in the saddle of the white horse.  Stalin’s jealousy of Zhukov’s domestic popularity was compounded by his (not unreasonable) fear of a military putsch and of the Caligula Cure.

For most Russians – and this has been a consistent finding of public opinion polling by the independent Levada Centre of Moscow – the President’s popularity, public trust,  and approval of his performance run about 10 points ahead of the Russian trust in the Army. However, the two support each other on the upswing in the polls when there are victories to celebrate;  and then on the downswing when there are defeats, rising casualties, and war fatigue across the countryside. Between 2022 and now, for example, Russian approval of Putin has risen to the 80% level; for the Army approval has also risen to about 70%. 

It is the conclusion of the Kremlin and of the General Staff, therefore, that they should either hang together or if not, they will hang each other. 

Having opposed but obeyed Putin’s orders forbidding them to fire on Israeli aircraft attacking  Syria, or on Turkish ground operations in and around Idlib,  Moscow sources believe the General Staff have now told Putin much more than the refrain, he’s heard many times before, “We told you so”. This time the General Staff assessment of the invasion of Syria, refusal of the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) to fight, and the replacement of the Assad regime in Damascus is that grave damage has been done to the protective alliances which Russia has been promoting in Africa,  the Americas, China,  and North Korea. 

“We just have to accept that Iran and Russia have been comprehensively defeated in their non-fight, “a well-informed Moscow source says. “It is the worst defeat of Russia by the Turks in history. If Putin goes on now to make significant concessions in an Istanbul II negotiation with [President Donald] Trump, that will be the cherry on top of the Turkish halva. We are thinking this;  no one is saying it.  In the end,  a defeat in Ukraine is all we care about. If Putin fails to deliver that, then he has a much bigger problem than the one he has just retreated from. Yes, this is a huge dishonour for us,  but nothing is served by talking of it. Still, the situation can be redeemed in the Ukraine. This means the complete and comprehensive defeat of the enemy there.”

A non-Russian military source says the Russians he knows are “in denial. The Turks can now say we have them where we want them. This means the Israelis and the Americans can say the same. That means leverage above and beyond the Levant, in Africa, Asia and no less in Ukraine. What do the Russians have to offer their African or Asian friends now?  Do they say — we’ll be there for you, of course, until the end – we mean your end. Of course, when the  going gets tough, and potentially that means fighting the Americans or one of its proxy armies, the Russians now show they will blame their  unwillingness to fight on their friends’ refusal to do what the Russians advise;  their military incompetence; their corruption; or their racial inferiority  compared to Russians.”

(more…)

by Editor - Wednesday, December 11th, 2024
No Comments »

by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

When former president Dmitry Medvedev (leading image, left), deputy head of the Security Council; the Russian military bloggers; and the GRU’s favoured journalist are as silent on Russian military action in Syria as they are at the moment, the signal they are sending is unmistakeably loud. 

It is the sound of recriminations for President Vladimir Putin (centre); for the commanders of Russia’s forces in Syria;   for General Valery Gerasimov (right), head of the General Staff, the GRU, and the Defense Ministry – all for having failed to detect, warn, or act on the Turkish, Israeli and American preparation of the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces for their drive to Damascus to replace Bashar al-Assad,  and allowing the Israeli Air Force (IAF) to stop Hezbollah from reinforcing its units in Syria from Lebanon, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps from flying reinforcements from Iran. 

“Yes,” says a well-informed Moscow source, “what we see in Syria is the sum of the worst misjudgements and mistakes the Russians made in the Ukraine. This is the Kremlin for one hundred percent. But in the Ukraine there has been learning from the mistakes and recovery. I don’t believe the defeat in Syria will lead to Putin making more concessions to Washington on Ukraine. On the contrary, I believe it hardens the positions on the Ukraine and releases the General Staff to wage strategic war with the US.”

There is a line of thinking in the General Staff, hinted in reporting by Russian military bloggers, which has proposed to preserve the bases at Tartus and Khmeimim, and establish a defence in depth between the north-south D35 road  and the sea. This territory is west of the M5 highway linking Aleppo, Hama, Homs and Damascus, all of which HTS have captured.  This roughly approximates the territory known in the Ottoman Empire until 1914 as the sanjak of Latakia. 

A reliable military source says “the Russians would need to hold the north-south M53, D35, and D34 highways. This would give [Syrian Special Forces Commander General Suhayl]  Hassan the capacity to maintain the defence all along this new border. This means retaking Masyaf, an important road junction west of Hama, and also Rabu.” 

Hassan was last reported to have been headed for Latakia; there is no sign that he and his forces are capable of fight.  

Assad and his family have arrived in Moscow with family members, the state news agency Tass has reported. Tass added the hint that negotiations are under way for evacuation of the bases. “Russian officials are in touch with representatives of armed Syrian opposition, whose leaders have guaranteed security of Russian military bases and diplomatic missions on the Syrian territory.”  

The tactical and operational difficulties are insurmountable, another Russian source believes. He acknowledges there is no sign of the political will for the fight at the Kremlin. There are more signs, the source adds,  that the order has been given to negotiate with the Turks a safe-passage agreement for full withdrawal from the country of all Russians.  

Local reports are currently indicating that HTS and Turkish forces have moved west of the M5 highway to take Jebla, a town six kilometres from Khmeimim. If true, this indicates that the fight-back option has run out of opportunity on the ground, and will in the Kremlin.  

The only senior Russian official to break the silence has been Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. He was speaking in Doha on Saturday, December 7, before the fall of Damascus and the flight of  Assad. The HTS operation was understood in advance, Lavrov admitted. It had been “carefully and long planned and is an attempt to change the situation on the ground, to change the balance of power. We will oppose this in every possible way, support the legitimate Syrian authorities and at the same time actively promote the need to resume dialogue with the opposition, as required by UN Security Council Resolution 2254.”  

Lavrov also acknowledged the strategic scale of the defeat Russia has suffered. “Nothing goes smoothly in world diplomacy, but the events which we are witnessing today, they are clearly geared to undermine everything we have been doing during those years.”

(more…)

by Editor - Sunday, December 8th, 2024
No Comments »

by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), General Charles Brown (lead image, right), has just revealed by press leak that he and the chief of the Russian General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, had talked by telephone last week, on November 27, and agreed not to disclose the contents of their  call. If that was the point of agreement the two generals reached, Gerasimov has honoured it. Brown has just now decided to break his word. 

“At the request of General Gerasimov, General Brown agreed to not proactively announce the call,” the New York Times has reported Brown’s spokesman saying “after he was approached by a reporter about the call”. The newspaper omitted to say that Brown had leaked information about the call in advance, in order to prepare reporters to publish the exchange.   

As an exchange of positions between the two generals, the Russian assessment is that once again the American side proves that nothing it says in private,  agrees to in public, or signs on paper can be trusted. Sources say in Moscow that Gerasimov and the General Staff will dictate the terms for the end of the Ukraine war “proactively”; that is,  when the battlefield is ready, and there is nothing left for Brown to fight or leak.

(more…)

by Editor - Thursday, December 5th, 2024
No Comments »

by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

There has never been a transition between US presidential administrations which has been so replete with new Washington-directed violence across the world. That’s to say, the escalation of wars already under way and the instigation of new ones to the furthest limits of the US empire’s reach.

As the Pentagon war-gaming of the Reagan Administration proved in secret, neither escalation of conventional war nor escalation to nuclear war can be controlled when Americans are running the game. That’s because Americans always think they have firepower superiority (aka shock and awe).   

That this superiority has been defeated since 2022 with the destruction of every US weapon and operation plan on the Ukrainian battlefield has spurred the projection of Washington’s denial – that’s Freudian denial  — to every other untested battlefield.

Across the Pacific this US escalation now extends from the martial law attempt in South Korea  to coup attempts in Bolivia and Venezuela, the threat of trade war against Mexico, and forcing Canada to submit, as Donald Trump has just told Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, to “becom[ing] the 51st state and Trudeau could become its governor.” .   

Australia, the rich rear base of the US, is under orders to spend more on US arms and bases for US and Japanese forces to fight land, sea, air, and space war against China; for less low-cost raw materials to China, for more tributary payment to the US.

In the Caucasus the US is aiming at escalation to war with Russia in Armenia and Georgia; in the Balkans against Serbia; on the Black Sea and Danube region, Moldova and Romania. Nuclear war stocking has begun in Greece, Germany, Spain, and Poland.  In the Middle East, the escalation has already reached genocide for the Palestinians and the demolition of Lebanon.  The partition of Syria has resumed. Escalation against Iran is now closer to nuclear exchange than ever before.

This campaign of politics by means of war and war by political means is now existential for both the outgoing and incoming US presidents, and for each of the countries which are their targets. Submission, and the readiness to pay the US demand for billions of dollars in economic and military costs,  have become a display of ambition and fear on Roman imperial scale – of the example of the Roman senators ready to kowtow to Incitatus (“Full Speed”), Caligula’s race horse. The Swiss-Serbian geopolitician Slobodan Despot has recently explained this:

“If [European Commission President] Ursula von der Leyen appointed her pony as the European Union’s Foreign Minister, do you think anyone would object? And that the brave animal would be less competent in this position than Mr. Borrell [EU Foreign Minister] or Ms. Kallas [EU Vice President]?… What if by chance Caligula had really appointed his equine senator? Without blinking, the senators would have treated him with all the respect due to his rank. These people were probably no dumber than the satraps of today, but they were not driven by their own reason, or even by their well-understood interests. They were spurred on by fear and by its proactive counterpart, sickly ambition.”  

Like the Roman senators and the legion commanders of Caligula’s time (37-41 AD), the fear today is of US-directed political, economic, and physical elimination, as has been tested in Beirut, Damascus, Baghdad, Teheran, and in Slovakia on Prime Minister Robert Fico.

For resistance to Caligula’s horse in Washington, President Vladimir Putin has demonstrated signal success. He has also introduced several innovations in counterforce weaponry against the US and its allies from which they have no effective protection, With Kinzhal, Oreshnik and other weapons named but not yet launched by the Russian side, US escalation without counterforce protection or defence of city grids and civilian populations is irrational. The Incitatus Precedent can work only when the emperor is mad and his subjects are in abject fear or mad ambition or both at once.

The outcome of that in first-century Rome was the Caligula Cure – elimination by force.

In the Third Rome these days,  there remains a group of high, very high officials who have reason to be afraid of the Incitatus Precedent and the Caligula Cure. They and their oligarch allies have also believed, and for more than twenty years invested in their safe-haven stable beyond the emperor’s reach.

Their names aren’t important to identify; they are well-known. What is important to know for now is what they believe, and especially what they hope the incoming Trump Administration can be persuaded and bribed to do, at least toward themselves.

Vzglyad, the government-financed internet publication in Moscow, is their mouth organ. Yesterday, there appeared in Vzglyad an essay explaining what they are thinking. Their idea, according to the publication, is composed of three options for Russian strategy.   

In translating this verbatim into English, illustrations, map inserts, captions, and URL references have been added to assist the reader. As translator I express no opinion, neither strategic, military, Freudian, nor veterinary.

(more…)

by Editor - Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024
No Comments »

by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

After Yulia Skripal has testified through her doctor that she was attacked with a poison spray in a restaurant minutes before she and her father, Sergei Skripal, collapsed on March 4, 2018, the British Government hearings on what happened have attempted to suppress her evidence.  

Yesterday, December 2, the hearings ended with a statement by Jack Holborn, a lawyer paid by the Home Office to say he represents the Skripals,  and to claim they agree to the suppression of their own evidence.  “Sergei and Yulia Skripal are grateful to this Inquiry for its work,” Holborn said. “Thank you.”  Page 158

The retired judge who has directed the  hearings, Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley – lead image), let slip in his closing statement that he understands the Skripals are dead or incommunicado in prison because he omitted to thank them for their participation.  “I am grateful,” Hughes said, “to all the Core Participants and chiefly, of course, to those most closely connected to the events, namely Dawn Sturgess’ family, who have coped, if I may say so, admirably with what must have been at times extremely difficult evidence to listen to.”

Only the Skripals were closer to the events than the Sturgess family or the ambulance crews,  police, intelligence agents, doctors, and government officials who have been called to testify on their oaths. But Hughes ruled on September 23 that the Skripals were not allowed to testify either in the open hearing room, behind closed doors, or by remote internet link.    

Hughes’s expression of his gratitude to everyone associated with the Novichok narrative except for the Skripals means he is burying them.

(more…)

by Editor - Tuesday, December 3rd, 2024
No Comments »

by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The Novichok show trial ended its public hearings last week in London with the revelation that it will not name the chemical constituents of the poison used in the attempted killing of Sergei and Yulia Skripal on March 4, 2018, and in the cause of death of Dawn Sturgess on June 30, 2018.

By doing this, by keeping the chemical formula combination of the poison a state secret, independent British toxicologists say there is no evidence that a Russian-made Novichok was used; and that, instead,  a British or US-made Novichok was readily available in 2018,  and this was as likely to have been the killer weapon.  

Revealed earlier in the hearings by a doctor at Yulia Skripal’s bedside four days after the attack,  Skripal believed she and her father had been hit by a poison spray as they ate lunch at a restaurant just before they collapsed outside.  Skripal’s evidence pointed to a British operation to assassinate Sergei Skripal before he escaped back to Moscow, and then cover up by planting fabricated Russian clues at the crime scenes, and in the blood test reports of the victims.

Weapon, crime scene, victim pathology, killer identification, motive – all faked.

The toxicology experts point out that in 2018 scientists working on this type of organophosphate poison had revealed synthesis, production, testing and stocking of A232 and A234 Novichok in the US Army’s chemical warfare centre, known by its location as the Edgewood Arsenal;  and at its British counterpart and partner, the UK Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (DSTL), known as Porton Down. The Iranian military establishment had also done the same by 2016.   After the Skripal case in 2018, military chemists in South Korea   and the Czech Republic  revealed how they had produced and tested their own formulas for Novichok.

By openly publishing their Novichok chemistry, the Americans, Iranians, South Koreans, and Czechs have proved that making, detecting and naming Novichok is a transparent process, not difficult to verify forensically in a criminal investigation or court.  This, British scientists now say, means that the refusal of government officials and the Sturgess Inquiry judge, Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley, lead image, right), to name the Novichok alleged to have been the Russian murder weapon, is evidence of a scheme of British fabrication and coverup.

Mark Allen (lead image, left) of the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) was the last witness to testify before Hughes at the Inquiry’s public hearings. As head of defence and intelligence, he was also the official in charge of coordinating the intelligence and military units involved in the attack on the Skripals; and then in the police and media coverup employed to pin the crime on the Russian military intelligence agency GRU, and on President Vladimir Putin.

Allen’s testimony on November 28 identified as his direct superior Sir Mark Sedwill,  the national security advisor reporting to then-Prime Minister Theresa May and then-Foreign Minister Boris Johnson.

“As SRO [Senior Responsible Owner] for Russia,” Allen said, “when we’re dealing with Russia strategy, the Government strategy towards Russia, I bring together all government departments, including representatives of the agencies as well, to ensure that we’re all essentially using all of our levers, all of our information, all of our understanding is pointing in the same direction and we’re being coherent.  Then where there are situations where something unexpected arises, what you might call a crisis of some sort, then I will also chair that sort of grouping to work out what our collective response should be.”

“I act, not as the Foreign Office’s DG [director-general], but as the government’s senior official.  Page 17 Asked to substantiate public statements at the time by May, Johnson and Sedwill that only Russia could have made and used the Novichok weapon, Allen was unable.

“… it is safe to say that any modern chemical  laboratory is capable of synthesising Novichok.  In contrast to what you have said about it being a state — really only something that can be done at the state level.  Is there anything that you can add to this debate, Mr Allen?  A. I don’t think that is a view that is shared in the scientific community, or in the OPCW.”   Page 41.

This was a lie; Hughes let it go unchallenged.  

“LORD HUGHES:  As far as you know, is it something which has been asserted either by Mr Mirzayanov  or by the other publications of American, Czech, Italian, et cetera, researchers?

“A [Allen]: I haven’t read those in detail, sir, so I couldn’t say.

“LORD HUGHES:  All right, thank you.”   Page 41.

“What’s in a name like Novichok? Why the coverup?” responds an independent British chemist and expert on organophosphates. “If the full molecular readout was exposed publicly from the blood sampling of the Skripals and Sturgess — also later of [Alexei] Navalny   — then it would be obvious that some constituents are missing. And because they are missing from the name or the reported chemical formula, then identification of Novichok cannot be made. All we are left with is an assumption covered up and concealed in secret. The scientific name for that is a lie.”

(more…)

by Editor - Monday, December 2nd, 2024
No Comments »

by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The damage assessments of yesterday’s November 28 electric war strikes against targets across the Ukraine spell the countrywide collapse of electricity supply before January 20, when the new Trump Administration will take office.

By then, the Russian General Staff will have deprived Keith Kellogg, the retired US Army general newly appointed to serve as Trump’s negotiator for end-of-war terms, of the options he has publicly declared for himself, and also for Trump, in their war to make America great again in Europe.

“The Mayor of Kiev told us this is genocide,” Kellogg said in interview with Fox News.    “Now we are right on the cusp…This is going to be a fight to the end… Again, as I said, I think it’s a fight to the finish…Why this is important geo-strategically is that if we [US] can —  if the Ukrainians can defeat Russia in the field, and evict them from the Donbass or the Crimea, Putin falls. It changes Europe for a generation to come…So one of these two sides is going to win. I don’t think there’s going to be anything to negotiate.”

Kellogg said this in February 2023, after he had returned from a sponsored trip to Kiev and to the eastern region of the country. Subsequently, he was paid to write an end-of-war strategy paper for Trump to use during the last months of the election campaign this year.  This focused on attacking the Biden Administration for weakening the US and the NATO allies on the battlefield, and also in Europe. Trump’s “geo-strategic” priority remained, Kellogg wrote, to prevent “Ukraine fatigue among the Europeans, threatening to leave the United States, once again, as the primary defence contributor to Europe and further straining America’s ability to maintain its own critical defence stockpiles.”

Negotiating to prevent the US from losing its military dominance in Europe, and to conserve the forces and weapon supplies “needed in other conflicts, especially if China invades Taiwan” are Kellogg’s running orders from Trump.  

Russian sources say that reviving the Reagan Administration’s “Star Wars” weapons systems to combat Russia’s Kinzhal and Oreshnik missile advantage is the unstated “geo-strategic” priority, not only of Kellogg but of others in the Trump administration.  They believe Elon Musk will lobby the president to make himself “chief US rocketeer to get a trillion-dollar contract to build missiles to counter us. But if they want a new arms race, they are already trailing. They will lose in space what they’ve already lost on the ground.”

According to a US veteran of the Afghanistan War, the career military experience Kellogg brings to his new job is “losing, not winning on the battlefield. He’s a typical empire enforcer. The last time Kellogg fought a competent military force, it was the Vietnamese, and Kellogg lost. For Trump to pick a man whose military victories are the invasion of Panama, the defeat of Iraq in  Gulf War-1,  and running a nuclear war bunker with Paul Wolfowitz during 9/11, tells you that it’s lights-out in the minds of both the soldier and his commander.”

(more…)

by Editor - Friday, November 29th, 2024
No Comments »

by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

In remarks to Russian journalists on Thursday evening, President Vladimir Putin confirmed that missile and drone strikes against the Ukraine’s military infrastructure and the electricity grid  carried out on Thursday,  and also earlier in the week, are the retaliation the Defense Ministry foreshadowed  for the November 23-25 ATACMS strikes on Kursk.

Detailed target and damage reports by Russian military bloggers published between noon and 13:00 Moscow time, indicate that strikes by Kalibr and Kh-101 missiles, drones, and other weapons hit targets across the country’s electricity system, including the western regions of Rivne, Khmelnitsky, Volyn, and Vynnitsa. Power blackouts in the Ukraine were reported to be widespread from the line of combat in the east to the Polish border in the west, with up to eleven hours of power outage in Kiev where the temperature has dropped below freezing.   

President Putin followed in remarks to Russian reporters at the conclusion of his two-day meetings in Astana, Kazakhstan, in a session posted by the Kremlin at 17:15. Asked several questions about the use of the Oreshnik missile in Russian retaliation for the ATACMS strikes on Kursk on November 23 and 25, Putin quipped that it is being saved for a rainy day.

“It would be futile to target a minor objective with a hypersonic missile; that’s like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut. However, we will utilise our entire arsenal against significant targets. As I have previously mentioned, we do not rule out the combat employment of Oreshnik on military-industrial facilities or command centres, including those in Kiev.”  

The earlier ATACMS attacks, Putin said, “received a response today. Our Armed Forces have been executing retaliatory strikes over the past couple of days. Today, there was a comprehensive operation: 90 missiles were deployed alongside 100 unmanned strike vehicles. Seventeen targets within Ukraine were struck, encompassing military, military-industrial, and auxiliary facilities which support the armed forces and industrial defence enterprises. I wish to reiterate once more: we will certainly respond to such acts of aggression against the Russian Federation. The timing, methods, and weapons employed will be determined by the General Staff of the Ministry of Defense, as each target necessitates a specific approach and appropriate weaponry.”

Asked again about Oreshnik, “do you think these strikes on the [Kiev decision-making] centres are also possible with Oreshnik because nothing else seems to be able to get it?” Putin replied: “You know, in Soviet times there was that joke about weather forecasts. ‘The forecast is: Everything is possible today during the day.’ ”  

The president was followed on Thursday evening, Moscow time, by a detailed Defense Ministry bulletin announcing  “in response to the strikes of the Kiev regime in the depths of the territory of Russia, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation during this week carried out strikes on the locations of the systems of long-range western weapons of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”  Details of the targets followed, including US and French military personnel reported killed while directing Ukrainian missile operations in bunkers at Kharkov and Odessa.

(more…)

by Editor - Thursday, November 28th, 2024
No Comments »

by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

On Tuesday afternoon, November 26, the Russian Defense Ministry issued an unusual bulletin revealing that since the Oreshnik strike on November 21, the US had launched two ATACMS  attacks across the Ukrainian border on Russian military targets in the Kursk region. The first of these on an S-400 air defence unit on November 23 had not been disclosed before. Both the November 23 and November 25 ATACMS strikes, totalling 13 missiles in all, had been partially intercepted. Russian casualties were suffered, including several fatalities.

The Defense Ministry also telegraphed its punch. “Retaliatory actions are being prepared,” the bulletin concluded.

Earlier that same morning, November 26, the airspace around the Oreshnik launch site at Kapustin Yar — east of Volgograd in the north of Astrakhan region — was identified for closure to civilian flights by an international notice to airmen (NOTAM). The notice said the no-flight zone would start at 04:00 on Thursday, November 27, and continue until 20:00 on Saturday, November 30.  Kapustin Yar was the launch pad for the first Oreshnik strike on the Yuzhmash plant at Dniepropetrovsk on November 21.   

The flight distance for that Russian missile from launch to target was 800 kilometers.  If a second Oreshnik strike is being prepared at Kapustin Yar, the range to US and Ukrainian military bunkers at Kiev is within 1,100 kms; to the comparable military targets in Lvov, 1,600 kms; to the US-Ukrainian base at Rzeszów, on the Polish side of the border, 1,750 kms.  The Oreshnik can strike targets at up to 5,000 kms, making it an “intermediate range”, not an “intercontinental range” missile.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, November 27, President Vladimir Putin arrived in Astana, Kazakhastan, for two days of talks.  He is due to return from Kazakhstan on the evening of Thursday, November 28.

Once the president is in Moscow, he will be in position to order, direct, and follow a retaliation strike by the General Staff against US and Ukrainian targets. If the strike flies at Oreshnik speed of Mach 10 to Mach 12, the operation will run from 5 to 9 minutes. If a 30-minute advance warning is sent to the US, and if a civilian evacuation warning is also issued, as Putin has foreshadowed,  then one hour on Friday or Saturday will be what Putin has called the “danger zone”.

“In case of an escalation of aggressive actions,” Putin has said, “we will respond decisively and in mirror-like manner…It goes without saying that when choosing, if necessary and as a retaliatory measure, targets to be hit by systems such as Oreshnik on Ukrainian territory, we will in advance suggest that civilians and citizens of friendly countries residing in those areas leave danger zones. We will do so for humanitarian reasons, openly and publicly, without fear of counter-moves coming from the enemy, who will also be receiving this information.”  

The Defense Ministry has now confirmed the escalation by the US on November 23 and 25.  Putin will decide his retaliation before Saturday evening.  

Led by Chris Cook on Gorilla Radio, listen to the discussion of what is about to happen, and of the Trump officials to whom the Kremlin and the General Staff are sending their message.

(more…)

by Editor - Wednesday, November 27th, 2024
No Comments »

by John Helmer, Moscow 
  @bears_with

The story the British government began telling in March 2018 on the road to the war, which the British and their allies are now losing in the Ukraine,  is that Russian assassins, on a mission approved by President Vladimir Putin,   tried to kill Sergei and Yulia Skripal with a poison weapon they left behind.

As story-telling goes, this one has been extraordinarily successful. Much more successful than the Anglo-American war against Russia.  Most British people, all United Kingdom media reporters,  and about one-quarter of the black cab drivers of London believe the story.

This large group of people are being persuaded by a retired Court of Appeal judge named Anthony Hughes (titled Lord Hughes of Ombersley) not to notice that between the allegation of an unwitnessed attempt at murder by poison sprayed on a door handle on March 4, 2018, and the allegation of a death by poison sprayed from a perfume bottle on June 30, 2018, there is a gap of more than four months in time, and of almost fifteen kilometres in space.

The question for the judge is an obvious one: how did the murder weapon get from the one crime scene to the other without the murderer’s movement, presence or action; without leaving a single circumstantial clue;  and without causing collateral damage, let alone poisonous contamination of anyone over such a long interval.  

In testimony to answer this question this week in a London meeting hall made up like a court, Hughes listened to the chief investigator of the crimes at the Metropolitan Police repeatedly admit he didn’t  know how to explain the gap.

In ten accompanying evidence exhibits,  Hughes also accepted that the only way the sole witness called to explain the gap could do so was to coach him through ten separate police interviews, eight of them in just three weeks following the death of Dawn Sturgess, his girlfriend. The witness Charles Rowley, according to his police record, is a criminal with multiple heroin possession convictions, a suspect in dealing Class A drugs,   and a drug addict on methadone prescription. Para 31. Rowley was also on the press record as hustler for a million-pound payout.  

Rowley, the judge was told by the police, was classified by the MET as a Section 18 witness.  That is to say, according to the exhibit of the police “Witness Interview Strategy – Charlie Rowley”, dated July 12, 2018, he was a witness “whose quality of evidence is likely to be diminished by reason of fear or distress”.  

Hughes made a record of accepting as admissible Rowley’s changing and contradictory explanations of how he came by the poison weapon. The judge also accepted as admissible the MET’s acknowledgement that they don’t know with confidence how the poison weapon had gone from one place to the other. Their confidence was so low, the chief MET investigator told the judge, “we have not managed to secure sufficient  evidence yet to present to the CPS [Crown Prosecution Service], sir, that allows  them to charge with any offences linked to Dawn and  Charlie’s poisoning,”  — Page 6.

Hughes’s counsel replied: “Yes, thank you.  Moving on just a little bit.” .

The policeman, Commander Dominic Murphy, also said: “I don’t think we will ever actually know and the reality is there are of course several hypotheses for where the Novichok could have been and where Charlie could have found it”; “I think it’s worth acknowledging, sir, that there are of course many possibilities still for where the Novichok would have been and how Charlie found it”; “I don’t think we can discount the box being anywhere during those periods, no. We cannot evidence where the box was from 4 March right through to the point at which it was in Muggleton Road [Dawn Sturgess’s home]”; “I should say as the SIO [Senior Investigating Officer] for Operation Caterva I have seen no information or evidence to suggest that this is the case, but yes, of course it absolutely remains a possibility.”

“Thank you,” Hughes said.

Hughes tried telling the policeman how to say what he wasn’t sure he saw. “He [Rowley] is coming from the direction of the bins. What is he carrying, do you think? A [Murphy]. I would imagine items he has recovered during the process. LORD HUGHES: Well, don’t imagine, Mr Murphy, come on. What does it look like?”    The judge was so angry with the police officer, he stripped him of his commander rank.

In the Anglo-American jurisprudence of murder trials, when the judge coaches the witness in front of the jury, the defence lawyer rises and objects.  He then asks for the jury to be excused while he demands the judge retract, recuse himself, or dismiss the charges because the prosecution has failed to present a case to answer.  Hughes, however, is following the orders of the British Government, not English law.  The orders are to fabricate the appearance of the case which the prosecution cannot make, in order to “identify, so far as consistent with section 2 of the Inquiries Act 2005, where responsibility for the death   lies.”   

Russian weapon, Russian crime, Russian culprits, Russian responsibility – those are the Hughes orders.

(more…)

by Editor - Tuesday, November 26th, 2024
No Comments »