No. 9July 31, 2023

Situation in Ukraine Continues to Deteriorate

Dangerous Signs that Poland Seeks to Occupy Western Ukraine

The director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, Sergei Naryshkin, expressed concerns at a meeting held July 21 with permanent members of the Russian Security Council, that Poland is seriously considering deploying armed forces into Ukraine.

Naryshkin noted: “[T]he Polish authorities are getting more intent on taking the western parts of Ukraine under control by deploying their troops there. There are plans to present this measure as the fulfillment of allied obligations within the Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian security initiative, the so-called Lublin Triangle. We see that plans also call for significantly increasing the number of personnel of the combined Lithuanian-Polish-Ukrainian brigade, which operates under the auspices of this so-called Lublin Triangle. We believe that it is necessary to keep a close eye on these dangerous plans of the Polish authorities.”

Russian President Putin responded, “I cannot refrain from commenting on what has just been said and on media reports that have come out about plans to establish some sort of the so-called Polish-Lithuanian-Ukrainian unit. This is not about a group of mercenaries — there are plenty of them there and they are being destroyed — but about a well-organized, equipped regular military unit to be used for operations in Ukraine, including to allegedly ensure the security of today’s Western Ukraine — actually, to call things by their true name, for the subsequent occupation of these territories. The outlook is clear: in the event Polish forces enter, say, Lvov or other Ukrainian territories, they will stay there, and they will stay there for good.” […]

“Today we see that the regime in Kiev is ready to go to any length to save its treacherous hide and to prolong its existence. They do not care for the people of Ukraine or Ukrainian sovereignty or national interests. […] The Polish authorities, who are nurturing their revanchist ambitions, hide the truth from their people. The truth is that the Ukrainian cannon fodder is no longer enough for the West. That is why it is planning to use other expendables — Poles, Lithuanians and everyone else they do not care about. I can tell you that this is an extremely dangerous game, and the authors of such plans should think about the consequences.”

The meeting of the Russian Security Council was followed by a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko in St. Petersburg on July 23, 2023. They consider that the planning under consideration by Poland in particular, with the collaboration of Lithuania and Ukraine itself, for deployment of armed forces into western Ukraine, would become a permanent occupation and realization of aims of the most reactionary sections of the Polish ruling elite for expansionism and restoration of the Polish empire.

Lukashenko is reported to have said; “This is unacceptable to us. The alienation of western Ukraine, the dismemberment of Ukraine and the transfer of its lands to Poland are unacceptable. Should people in Western Ukraine ask us then we will provide support to them. I ask you [Putin] to discuss and think about this issue. Naturally, I would like you to support us in this regard. If the need of such support arises, if Western Ukraine asks us for help, then we will provide assistance and support to people in western Ukraine. If this happens, we will support them in every possible way.”

Putin did not respond publicly but did speak at some length on Polish revanchism which is in neither Ukraine nor Russia’s interests and will do great harm to Europe as well.

Russian politicians have been quoted saying clearly that any options the U.S. and NATO are considering are fraught with danger. The plan to have Poland (with Lithuania and support from Zelensky) occupy western Ukraine; the plan to freeze the conflict (and then have Ukraine join NATO); the plan to defeat Russia on the ground — these are all pipe dreams floated to convince the naive that the U.S. and NATO have any intention other than fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian standing, they say.

Canada Joins Vain Efforts to Sustain U.S./NATO Proxy War in Ukraine Against Russia

Edmonton action against NATO Summit in Vilnius, July 11. 2023

According to the Globe and Mail, Canada is participating in establishing a repair centre in Poland to refurbish damaged military equipment that NATO has supplied to Ukraine. The repair centre will be built near Rzeszow, which is roughly 100 kilometres from Ukraine’s border.

Canadian government officials deny any “intent to have a large Canadian presence” at the repair centre. Polish officials suggest otherwise. Rzeszow Mayor Konrad Fijolek told the Polish paper Gazeta Wyborcza on June 13 that NATO will station a permanent base near the city, with U.S., UK, and Canadian troops deployed there on a permanent basis.

Rzeszow is a logistics hub for moving NATO military equipment into Ukraine. There are some 1,700 U.S. soldiers and U.S Patriot missile air systems stationed at the airport there. In addition to Canada, U.S. and UK construction and manning of the repair centre, Germany also announced that it has agreed with the Polish government on repair centres for Leopard 2 tanks used in Ukraine. The facilities are expected to be created in Gliwice and Poznan.

Ukraine could not continue to play the role of serving as the proxy for the U.S. and NATO to conduct their war against Russia without huge infusions of cash to keep the Kyiv government afloat. The latest such infusion came on July 26. The state budget of Ukraine received U.S.$1.5 billion in concessional financing, provided under the guarantee of the Government of Japan through the World Bank Trust Fund facility. Since the start of the U.S./NATO proxy war, the EU has provided substantial financial assistance through a Macro-Financial Assistance (MFA) instrument. Through several MFA packages adopted in the course of 2022, 25.2 billion euros was committed covering the period to the end of 2023. Until now, 16.2 billion euros have been disbursed.

In June 2023, the Commission proposed to establish a Ukraine Facility as a framework to provide financial support (grants, loans and guarantees) for the period 2024-2027. In 2023 alone the U.S. allocated more than $45 billion to keep Ukraine afloat: $13.37 billion to sustain the Kyiv government operations; $9.3 billion is intended for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative to provide training, equipment, weapons, logistics support, supplies and services, salaries and stipends, sustainment, and intelligence support to Ukraine’s military; $14.5 billion for military equipment transfers. Of this latter amount, $11.88 billion will actually go to replenish U.S. stocks of equipment sent to Ukraine through Presidential drawdown authority.

Canada has committed more than $8 billion to Ukraine since Russia’s 2022 special military operation began, including over $1.5 billion in military aid. NATO needs to keep Ukraine afloat in order to have a figurehead to prosecute its proxy war against Russia. It is clear Ukraine will never financially recover.

Meanwhile, Ukraine media report that the parliament approved two bills on July 27 extending martial law and general mobilization for another 90 days. Both measures have been prolonged several times since the start of the full-scale war. President Volodymyr Zelensky first declared martial law on February 24, 2022, at the start of the Russian special military operation. The new legislation extends martial law from the current August 18 expiry date until November 15. Under martial law, elections are cancelled and Ukrainian men aged 18 to 60, with some exceptions, are not allowed to leave the country because they may be called up for military service.

Ukrainian “Counter-Offensive” Is Without Traction

The New York Times and other media sources doing propaganda for waging the proxy war in Ukraine for as long as it takes to defeat Russia are saying that Ukraine had begun the main thrust of its so-called counteroffensive. As usual it is all up beat and positive messaging despite the huge losses Ukraine is suffering — losses which the same propaganda sources had to acknowledge only weeks ago. One such source, Politico.eu, recently wrote: “The push this week may be the start of the first real breakthrough for Ukrainian forces so far in the counteroffensive.” Top Pentagon officials acknowledged that the counteroffensive is going slower than some had hoped, but said Kyiv is biding its time. The Pentagon and pro NATO propaganda sources paint a fantasy world claiming Ukraine is only conducting “probing actions” looking for weak spots in Russian defences, while holding its best-trained forces in reserve for its “major counter offensive.”

Kyiv Post on July 27 confirmed earlier Russian reports that Ukraine has renewed the “major offensive” begun at the beginning of June, but scaled back after massive losses. In the last week of July, Russian sources announced the Ukraine major offensive had been renewed across the line of contact, again with devastating results for Ukraine. Russian President Putin reported: “I can tell you without any exaggeration that our soldiers and officers have demonstrated mass heroism on a vast scale. The enemy used armoured machinery in large numbers by sending 50 pieces of military hardware into battle. Of them, 39 units of equipment, including 26 tanks and 13 armoured personnel carriers, have been destroyed. The personnel of the units I mentioned earlier destroyed 60 per cent of them, while our combat pilots destroyed the other 40 per cent.”

Retired U.S. military analyst with extensive experience Scott Ritter rejects the Pentagon/NATO narrative that Ukraine to date has only engaged in “probing actions”. He writes that NATO picked its two best-trained and best equipped Ukrainian brigades for the launch of Ukraine’s offensive on June 8 both of which had been trained by the U.S. in combined arms tactics and tasked with employing full force along the line of contact. The Ukrainian soldiers were deliberately misled to believe that the Russian troops assigned to these two units would run away or surrender at the first sign of serious fighting.

Ritter says NATO put the blame for the failed offensive squarely on the shoulders of Ukrainian officers saying they failed to employ properly the tactics they had been taught in at the U.S. military base and training installation in Grafenwoehr, Germany. “A leaked German intelligence report highlighted the shift by Ukraine away from massed armor attacks to smaller infantry-driven assaults as representing a total departure from the combined arms operations taught by NATO. What the German report failed to address is the reality that NATO tried to take operational art that requires months, if not years, to master, and squeeze it into training that lasted only a few weeks.”

Nothing has changed in the intervening month and weeks that will change the outcome of a renewed “major offensive” by Ukrainian forces, Ritter says. They still do not have air superiority or artillery and missile capacity to suppress Russian forces and give themselves any hope of success. In fact it is quite the opposite and so long as Russian forces control the airspace and have massive artillery superiority, not to mention well fortified defensive lines, Ukraine attempting to implement NATO’s demand to show results, is suicidal, he says.

Unless Ukraine demonstrates a will and ability to prevail against Russia, the “west” will have no choice but to begin seeking “a diplomatic off-ramp” from the war. Such a negotiated settlement could compel Ukraine into accepting the loss of territory currently claimed by Russia as part of the conditions, something that is anathema to the Zelensky government, he says.

Hands Off DPRK! U.S. Out of Asia Pacific!

U.S. Nuclear Armed Sub Sent to Threaten Democratic People’s Republic of Korea

Demonstration in Seoul for Peace, July 23, 2023, on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the armistice in the Korean war.

A U.S. strategic nuclear ballistic missile submarine – the USS Kentucky – provided a recent display in the southeastern city of Busan, south Korea, of provocation and outright threat of complete annihilation against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). The USS Kentucky carries some 20 Trident-II D5 ballistic missiles, each armed with multiple nuclear warheads that have a range of 12,000 kilmetres. Its presence follows recent overflights by B-52 strategic bombers and spy flights which flagrantly violated DPRK sovereign air space.

South Korean President Yoon made the threat clear. Referencing the inaugural meeting of the Nuclear Consultative Group, July 18, Yoon said that the presence of the USS Kentucky was calculated to put the DPRK on notice and that the U.S. has the capability to militarily “end its regime.”

The DPRK issued a statement on July 17 concerning the seriousness of the situation, with the U.S. and its puppet regime in the south openly talking about the prospect of nuclear war. “The present situation on the Korean Peninsula has reached such a phase that the possibility of an actual armed conflict and even the outbreak of a nuclear war is debated, going far beyond the phase of acute confrontation between the DPRK and the U.S. created in 2017.”

The statement, issued by the vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Kim Yo Jong, pointed out that the U.S. is solely responsible for the serious situation on the Korean Peninsula. She said the DPRK is not fooled by U.S. protestations that it is for “negotiations” without preconditions, the DPRK is wise to the whole gambit of U.S. tricks. The reality before the DPRK, the statement points out, is not dialogue, as repeatedly touted by the U.S. like an automated teller machine, “but the nuclear strategic bomber flying near the DPRK regardless of time, the air espionage of the U.S. violating our territorial sovereignty, the convocation of the ‘Nuclear Consultative Group’ openly discussing the use of nukes against the DPRK, and the entry of a U.S. strategic nuclear submarine into the waters of the Korean Peninsula for the first time in 40-odd years. The U.S. should know that its bolstered extended deterrence system and excessively extended military alliance system – a threatening entity – will only make the DPRK go farther away from the negotiating table desired by it.”

“The most appropriate way for ensuring peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula,” the statement said, “is to deter the U.S. high-handed and arbitrary practices in the position of might and with sufficient exercise of power, rather than solving the problem with the gangster-like Americans in a friendly manner.”

Addressing a special committee of the U.S. Congress whose focus is China and the Communist Party of China, the assistant secretary of defence for Indo-Pacific security affairs said on July 20 that the Department of Defense (DOD) is clear-eyed about the challenge to the international rules-based order from the People’s Republic of China. “China is the only country in the world with the will […] and increasingly the capability to refashion the international order in ways they would deeply undermine vital U.S. interests,” he told the committee. He said that the DOD has put in place strategies, doctrines, policies and resources to counter China and “these efforts are starting to deliver in meaningful ways. […] The department is investing in critical capabilities to maintain deterrence and prevail as necessary in this decade and beyond.”

“These investments strengthen our warfighting advantages, exploit adversary vulnerabilities and address critical operational challenges in the Indo-Pacific,” he said. “They provide capabilities that will serve to strengthen our combat credible deterrent by ensuring we can prevail.”

Ang Bayan, the official news organ of the Communist Party of the Philippines, reveals how these U.S. war preparations are affecting that country. With “the arrival of thousands of American troops, with their gigantic warships, warplanes, cannons and various weapons, the lack of true independence of the Philippines and the lowly treatment of the country as a large U.S. military base” is becoming even more apparent.

The Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), is lopsided in favour of the U.S., providing rent-free accommodations within Philippine Armed Forces military camps for exclusive U.S. military use. Under EDCA agreements, Ang Bayan notes, the Philippines is being used by the U.S. as a port, airport, for crude oil storage, personnel accommodation, and for storage of weapons, vehicles and other war equipment. The U.S. military has absolute control over these locations until they are “no longer needed by the United States.”

The U.S. is also granted the right to use public land and facilities such as roads, ports and airports at any time; to set up military communications systems and to use Philippine water, electricity and other utilities at an equivalent or lower price than the average Filipino has to pay. American soldiers enjoy special legal status and are exempt from being held accountable for criminal acts under the criminal or civil laws of the Philippines during their stay in the country.

This year, at least 500 war games – military exercises that prepare for war – will be conducted by the U.S. in the Philippines. “That means that every day of the year there are American soldiers in the Philippines to incite war.” The Balikatan exercise in April was one such example. The largest war games ever in the Philippines, more than 12,000 American troops swarmed northern Luzon as a threat to China. Ang Bayan writes that “joint exercises” are used to ensure that the U.S. can control the Philippine Armed Forces (what the U.S. calls “interoperability”) should war break out. Pushing the “modernization” of the Philippine Armed Forces means pushing the country to buy tens of billions of pesos in surplus, used or obsolete U.S. weapons.

The U.S. is constantly increasing its military forces in East Asia, from Southeast Asia to the Pacific Islands, including India, while encouraging and pressuring its military allies (Japan, Australia, the United Kingdom and others) to join naval operations in the South China Sea under the guise of “freedom of navigation.” For the U.S. and its geopolitical and military strategy, the Philippines is an important base because of its proximity to China. As for China, the presence of U.S. military forces in the Philippines is viewed as a threat to its security.

The U.S. conducted joint naval war exercises with Canada in the Taiwan Strait early in June, and is set to conduct joint military activities with the armed forces of Australia, Japan and other countries in and around the West Philippine Sea in the coming months. Over the past years, the U.S. has been goading its allies in NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) and AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, U.S.) security pact to deploy its naval warships and hold “joint patrols” with the U.S. under its overall strategy of containing China’s growing economic and military strength, and building military fortifications within what it calls the “first island chain” surrounding China.