With the coming US-NATO dangerous war games in the Black Sea it seemed like a good idea to post this study by the right-wing Heritage Foundation. This should give us all a clear idea of what Washington and Brussels are up to in the region.
Neo-Con study: Why a New Black Sea Strategy is in the U.S. Interest
Related:
Either this narrative about weapon stockpiles, being depleted, is part of the information war or Russia is demilitarizing NATO!?!
U.S. and NATO scramble to arm Ukraine and refill their own arsenals
In Ukraine, the kind of European war thought inconceivable is chewing up the modest stockpiles of artillery, ammunition and air defenses of what some in NATO call Europe’s “bonsai armies,” after the tiny Japanese trees. Even the mighty United States has only limited stocks of the weapons the Ukrainians want and need, and Washington is unwilling to divert key weapons from delicate regions like Taiwan and Korea, where China and North Korea are constantly testing the limits.
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So the West is scrambling to find increasingly scarce Soviet-era equipment and ammunition that Ukraine can use now, including S-300 air defense missiles, T-72 tanks and especially Soviet-caliber artillery shells
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There are even discussions about NATO investing in old factories in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Bulgaria to restart the manufacturing of Soviet-caliber 152-mm and 122-mm shells for Ukraine’s still largely Soviet-era artillery armory.
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The European Union has approved €3.1 billion ($3.2 billion) to repay member states for what they provide to Ukraine, but that fund, the [ironically-named] European Peace Facility, is nearly 90 percent depleted.
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Smaller countries have exhausted their potential, another NATO official said, with 20 of its 30 members “pretty tapped out.” But the remaining 10 can still provide more, he suggested, especially larger allies. That would include France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands.
NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, has advised the alliance — including, pointedly, Germany — that NATO guidelines requiring members to keep stockpiles should not be a pretext to limit arms exports to Ukraine. But it is also true that Germany and France, like the United States, want to calibrate the weapons Ukraine gets, to prevent escalation and direct attacks on Russia.
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Washington is also looking at older, cheaper alternatives like giving Ukraine anti-tank TOW missiles, which are in plentiful supply, instead of Javelins, and Hawk surface-to-air missiles instead of newer versions. But officials are increasingly pushing Ukraine to be more efficient and not, for example, fire a missile that costs $150,000 at a drone that costs $20,000.
Russian ‘collaborators’ rounded up as Ukraine reasserts control over tense, divided region
This was originally posted in The Times, but it’s behind a paywall. You can see the short video, that accompanied the piece, here. It’s obviously a whitewashed version for Western audiences.
[In Nikolaev (Mykolaiv)]:
It has not been possible to substantiate the mayor’s claims, or reach the funeral director Oleksandr Sahadiak, a father of one in his early forties, who has now been held without charge for weeks.
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Dozens of suspected collaborators have been arrested since the war began, according to two local officials. Some of them did it for the money — at times as little as £20. Others did it for ideological reasons; rooted in nostalgia for the lost days of their youth in the Soviet Union.
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This month a 72-year-old woman in Mykolaiv was sentenced to 15 years in prison for collaborating with the Russian security services — renting an apartment where she held supplies for their saboteur groups. She also shared co-ordinates of Ukrainian soldiers and strategic objects that helped the Kremlin’s forces target their fire.
“A lot of people were killed because of this,” said a person close to the case, who did not want to be named.
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Yet some people also recall the rich cultural life at the time — concerts, plays, the ballet. They remember going on holiday across the Soviet Union, how everyone had a job, and how there was less of a gap between rich and poor.
“It was a very good life then,” said Lyudmila, 74, who asked that her real name not be used. After independence, she said: “It was very difficult, everything was privatised, people were very poor.” Young people today “don’t know about the Soviet heroes”.
Lyudmila, and others like her, say they have never felt part of an independent Ukrainian state. They spend their days glued to Russian television, which tells them that Nazi Ukrainians and their Nato allies were preparing to destroy Russia, and had to be stopped. [Where’s the lie?!]
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“We need to get rid of this Soviet Union nostalgia, we need to get rid of these ‘brother’ feelings [with Russia],” said Senkevych, the mayor, who like most others in the city grew up in a Russian-speaking family. [How does he propose to do so?!]
The head of the funeral services was a special case. When the war began, the mayor claimed, Sahadiak was overheard repeating pro-Russian talking points to his colleagues. This caught the attention of the Ukrainian intelligence services, who began a secret investigation.
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Several of Sahadiak’s colleagues said that he gave no outward indication of pro-Russian views and had worked tirelessly arranging the military funerals of soldiers in the region. He lent the diggers used to excavate graves to troops digging defensive lines around the city – and offered to operate them himself.
“He was the best director we had here. He made it profitable, and he didn’t steal money,” said one of his colleagues, who did not want to be named. “I was so surprised when he was arrested. And now I’m really scared. His family are being bullied online, and people wrote really terrible things about us here in the municipal office, like that we should be killed and we are separatists. Everyone here has guns, and some stupid guy with a grenade can just come by and throw it in our office.”
Previously:
Flash : the Ukrainian Nazis have started to persecute civilians in Kherson
On 8 October 2022, at around 6am, a terrorist attack (most likely carried out by Ukraine) damaged part of the Crimean Bridge and killed five people. Unsurprisingly, several Ukrainian officials celebrated the news, pointing an accusing finger at Ukraine themselves, and its nature as a terrorist state.
The terrorist attack on the Crimean bridge must lead Russia to step up its military operation against Ukraine – Donbass Insider
A truck bomb exploded “just as a train loaded with fuel was travelling nearby”, three people reportedly killed with two cars underwater. An unnamed source claims that the Security Service of Ukraine is behind the terrorist attack. On the 6th, UK’s Evening Standard reported that “US officials say reclaiming Crimea is now within its grasp”.
More pictures and videos at SouthFront
Russia’s Anti-Terrorism Committee: explosion of truck occurs on Kerch Bridge in Crimea (original)
Related:
Video: Impact of Crimea Bridge Attack & Ukraine’s Next Likely Offensive
Video: Crimean Chief Aksyonovs statement (Telegram)
From SouthFront’s Telegram: “Video of the truck that allegedly blew up on the Crimean bridge. It was checked at the traffic police checkpoint, but apparently nothing suspicious was found.”
Putin was informed about the emergency on the Crimean bridge
Some notes from Colonel Cassad
A senior Ukrainian military official did not deny that Ukrainian forces were behind the attack but would not confirm it.
New York Times
Disgusting reactions:
“This is how you understand who we are dealing with.” – In Kiev, the joy of sabotage
Read More »U.S.-trained Ukrainian soldiers sank two Russian ships in June, according to Bill LaPlante, the Pentagon’s top acquisitions official. The incident came just two months after Washington gave Ukraine intelligence that helped it sink the Moskva, then Russia’s most powerful warship in the Black Sea.
US military trained Ukrainians days before they sank two Russian ships
by Clara Weiss, WSWS, Aug 13 2022
Anton Gerashenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian minister of internal affairs, claimed on Thursday that 60 pilots and technicians had been killed and 100 people wounded in a series of explosions at a Russian Saki air base on the Black Sea Crimean Peninsula on Tuesday. Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, the air base has housed the Russian 43rd Independent Naval Assault Air Squadron.
Ukraine claims 60 dead, 100 wounded, in blasts on Crimea as satellite images show destroyed Russian aircraft
Related:
Does Ukraine Have A Stash Of Domestically Developed Ballistic Missiles?
Video via Made in Ukraine
Pentagon acknowledges sending anti-radar missiles to Ukraine; they are already in use
Colin Kahl, the under secretary of defense for policy, said at a press briefing that the US had sent “a number” of the missiles without specifying how many the US has provided or when they were sent. Kahl did not explicitly say what type of anti-radiation missile was sent.
A defense official told CNN the type of missile sent was the AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missile (HARM).
The geniuses (not) at the National Security Council want to goad Russia into direct attacks on U.S. forces or interests. That would give the U.S. an excuse to further escalate the war in Ukraine into an open confrontation. It would also diverts the attention away from domestic problems.
U.S. Pushes Fake Stories To Goad Russia Into Escalation
H/T: THE NEW DARK AGE
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 