RUNNING UPDATES ON THE CONFLICT IN UKRAINE - 16.07.2024
Including geopolitical issues affecting the balance of power in the ongoing end game war to establish our common future, a closely monitored prison planet or tolerance for diverse modes of governance.
THE ROAD TO THE ULTIMATE CONCLUSION OF WORLD WAR III RUNS THROUGH HERE.
*** TRUMP/VANCE TO END UKRAINE WAR-RENEW WAR ON CHINA ***
“Ukraine. What is the truth...?
Why won’t western media tell both sides…?”
VIRTUALLY UNREPORTED ATROCITY IN LUGANSK, 2nd JUNE 2014
A lot has been said about atrocities in the western media claimed to have been perpetrated by the Russians, for example at Bucha and Mariupol among others. These assertions are conveyed on the say so of the Ukrainian authorities. How willing though are western news broadcasters to convey atrocities attributed to the Ukrainians? The following will I think provide the answer.
If anyone wonders if they are receiving accurate coverage of the conflict in Ukraine I would suggest watching the video below of an event which occurred on the 2nd of June 2014 and ask themselves if they recall hearing about it on any mainstream media news channel at the time.
The video is harrowing to watch. The bodies (five women and three men) are real. Yet across western media there was only one single news report that occurred a day later. This was from CNN and occurred only because a CNN team happened to be nearby at the time of the atrocity and so the network could hardly ignore it as all others so obviously did.
The video below shows the unvarnished truth that was not considered newsworthy in western mainstream news.
THE SINGLE WESTERN MSM REPORT ON THE LUGANSK ATROCITY, 3rd JUNE 2014
The video at the CNN link below is the crime scene sanitised by CNN, though played straight with honest reporting on the scene not playing things to Kiev’s tune.
(There was a time early in the war in the Donbass when CNN were not afraid to contradict the Ukrainian regime in Kiev.) Watch, because it's the first and last time you will see this.
5 women and 3 men died, all civilians.
Air attack on pro-Russian separatists in Luhansk kills 8, stuns residents.
COLLECTIVE WEST-UKRAINE <-> RUSSIA
SHAMELESS WESTERN MEDIA IGNORED THIS:
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Trump’s VP pick promises ‘rapid close’ to Ukraine conflict.
The US should switch its focus to China from the hostilities between Moscow and Kiev, JD Vance has said.
Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, and Vice Presidential candidate, JD Vance, at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Donald Trump will bring about a “rapid close” to the Ukraine conflict if reelected as US president in November, the Republican’s newly announced running mate, JD Vance, has said. Vance argued that Washington should shift its focus to China, describing Beijing as the “biggest threat” to the US.
Trump announced Vance as his running mate on Monday at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The Ohio senator’s candidacy was approved later the same day.
If Trump returns as president after the November 5 election, his policy on Ukraine will be “very simple,” Vance told Fox News shortly after being officially nominated.
“Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if Donald Trump had been president. Everybody agrees with it. Even a lot of my Democratic colleagues privately agree with that,” he said.
Vance again accused the administration of US President Joe Biden of lacking a coherent policy on the conflict. “We have now spent $200 billion [on aiding Ukraine]. What is the goal? What are we trying to accomplish? Is there a risk of escalation into a nuclear war? Because there is, when you have a buffoon running foreign policy, and we have got a lot of them right now in Washington, DC,” he said.
“I think what President Trump has promised to do is go in there, negotiate with the Russians and Ukrainians and bring this thing to a rapid close, so that America could focus on the real issue, which is China. That’s the biggest threat,” Vance stressed.
Since the outbreak of the fighting between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022, Trump has repeatedly claimed that the conflict wouldn’t have happened if he had retained the presidency in 2020. He has also vowed to resolve the crisis within 24 hours if he returns to the White House.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier this month that Moscow takes the former US president’s comments “quite seriously.” “I certainly do not know what, exactly, his proposal would be [to end the conflict] and how he plans to achieve that. And that is the key question. But I do not doubt his sincerity and we welcome” the sentiment, Putin stated.
In early June, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky demanded that Trump reveal the details of his peace plan. “I would like to know what it would mean to finish a war fast,” Zelensky told Bloomberg. “If Trump knows how to end this war, he should tell us today, because if there are risks to Ukraine’s independence, and there are risks that we will lose our statehood, we want to be prepared for this,” he argued.
An unnamed senior EU official told Politico on Monday that Trump’s choice of Vance, who is a strong opponent of Washington’s aid for Kiev, is “a disaster for Ukraine.”
Trump’s VP pick promises ‘rapid close’ to Ukraine conflict.
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Lies behind US-backed wars and ‘disgraceful’ Zelensky: Trump’s VP pick on the Ukraine conflict.
Senator JD Vance has repeatedly argued for negotiating an end to the conflict between Kiev and Moscow.
Senator JD Vance, the Ohio Republican nominated to be Donald Trump’s running mate in the November US presidential election, has made his mark on Capitol Hill by lambasting Washington’s open-ended commitment to funding Kiev.
Trump announced his nomination for vice-president on Monday evening, on the first day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
Vance, the best-selling author of ‘Hillbilly Elegy’, elected to the Senate in 2022, is known for seeing US support for Israel, where he remains a hawk, and Ukraine, in very different lights.
“I certainly admire the Ukrainians who are fighting against Russia, but I do not think that it is in America’s interest to continue to fund an effectively never-ending war in Ukraine,” Vance said in May, in a speech at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
In late April, when the Senate approved a $61 billion package of new military aid to Ukraine, Vance invoked his experience in the military to rebuke his colleagues.
“I served my country honorably, and I saw when I went to Iraq that I had been lied to,” he said on the Senate floor, adding that “the promises of the foreign policy establishment of this country were a complete joke.”
US has ‘no viable plan’ for Ukraine
The US insistence on not negotiating with Russia is “absurd” and Vladimir Zelensky’s goal of restoring Ukraine’s 1991 borders is “fantastical,” Vance wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times. He has urged Kiev to hold on until some kind of peace can be brokered by Washington.
Vance argued that the White House’s math on Ukraine just doesn’t add up. President Joe Biden “failed to articulate even basic facts” about the reality on the ground, Vance wrote, and the Biden administration “has no viable plan for the Ukrainians to win this war.”
READ MORE: US has ‘no viable plan’ for Ukraine – senator
“Ukraine’s challenge is not the GOP; it’s math,” the Ohio Republican wrote. “Ukraine needs more soldiers than it can field, even with draconian conscription policies. And it needs more matériel than the United States can provide.”
“The notion that we should prolong a bloody and gruesome war because it’s been good for American business is grotesque. We can and should rebuild our industrial base without shipping its products to a foreign conflict,” he wrote, taking aim at the White House’s argument that funding Kiev was good for the US military industry.
Ukraine is ‘functionally destroyed’
“Everyone with a brain in their head knows that this is going to end with negotiations,” Vance told CNN’s Jake Tapper in April, prior to the Senate vote. “Ukraine is functionally destroyed as a country. The average age of a soldier in their army is 43 – that’s older than me.”
“We need to bring the killing to a stop and that’s what American leadership should be doing, not writing more blank checks to the war,” he concluded.
Russia has ‘distinct interests’
“I’ve never once argued that [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is a kind and friendly person. I’ve argued that he’s a person with distinct interests, and the United States has to respond to that person with distinct interests,” Vance said in February, at the Munich Security Conference.
He also urged European members of NATO to boost their military manufacturing so Washington could focus on China. “We want Europe to be successful, but Europe has got to take a bigger role in its own security. You can’t do that without industry,” he said.
Aid to Kiev is a ‘time bomb’ against Trump
READ MORE: Ukraine aid bill is a Trump impeachment ‘time bomb’ – US senator
Vance has taken aim at the latest US Ukraine aid bill, which was passed in April, arguing that it amounted to a “time bomb” against Trump should the Republican get re-elected.
Noting that funding under the bill would expire “nearly a year into the possible second term of President Trump,” Vance suggested the Democrats could impeach him should he pause or cancel that aid in order to pressure Kiev into negotiating. The bill was “an attempt by the foreign policy blob/Deep State to stop President Trump from pursuing his desired policy.”
Zelensky’s argument is ‘disgraceful’
Last December, Vance accused Vladimir Zelensky of “lecturing” Americans and “demanding” more of their taxpayer dollars. Commenting on a speech given by the Ukrainian leader during a visit to Washington, in which he suggested the US lawmakers opposing the bill were helping Russia, Vance said that “if you want to secure your border first, you are actually a Putin puppet: He said this publicly today.” The Ohio Republican called such behavior “disgraceful” and “grotesque.”
Ukraine as Democrats’ ‘payback’ for 2016
In October, Vance framed the ruling Democrats’ insistence on funding Ukraine as part of their obsession with alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections – conclusively proven to have been an invention of Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
READ MORE: Democrats want to ‘bleed Ukraine dry’ – US senator
“A lot of the anti-Russia obsession on the left has nothing to do with Ukraine. It’s a revenge fantasy over 2016,” Vance wrote on X (formerly Twitter). “They blame Russia for Donald Trump’s election and they’ll bleed Ukraine dry for payback.”
Lies behind US-backed wars and ‘disgraceful’ Zelensky: Trump’s VP pick on the Ukraine conflict.
Where Does Trump Running Mate JD Vance Stand on US Foreign Policy?
Vance has angered anti-Russia hawks in the Republican Party by criticizing the United States' backing of Ukraine, but he takes a more conventional line on support for Israel.
As Washington is abuzz over news of former President Donald Trump's selection of Senator JD Vance (R-OH) as his running mate in the 2024 presidential election, Sputnik takes a look at some of the lawmaker's positions on US foreign policy:
Ukraine
The Ohio Senator has been strongly critical of continued military aid to the Kiev regime, writing in an editorial in The New York Times that “the math on Ukraine doesn’t add up.” Vance claims the US lacks “the capacity to manufacture the amount of weapons Ukraine needs us to supply to win the war.”
The 39-year-old lawmaker also noted the average Ukrainian soldier is older than he is as the Kiev regime struggles to draft enough men to fight the conflict. "Everyone with a brain in their head knows that this is going to end with negotiations," Vance said during a television appearance on CNN, claiming Ukraine lacks the ability to force Moscow out of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics.
Russia
Vance has called plans to seize Russian assets to offset the cost of the Ukraine proxy war “dangerous.” Late last year, he claimed Volodymyr Zelensky should give up claims to newly-Russian territory east of Ukraine and negotiate a deal to end the country’s conflict with Moscow.
These views have put him in conflict with establishment figures in the Republican Party such as Senator Lindsay Graham, who take a strongly anti-Russia position.
Palestine-Israel
The Trump running mate is a staunch supporter of Israel who favors efforts to pursue normalization agreements between Tel Aviv and Arab states. He supports continued aid to the Netanyahu government for its operation in Gaza, which has killed over 38,000, and has claimed the United States’ status as “the largest Christian-majority country in the world” compels the US to support its Middle Eastern ally.
However, he has cautioned against the threat of escalation between the country and its regional foe Iran.
Who is JD Vance?
Ohio Senator JD Vance was elected to Congress during the Republican Party’s “red wave” of 2022.
After graduating from Ohio State University and Yale Law School, Vance worked at Chicago’s Sidley Austin LLP law firm before moving to San Francisco to pursue a career as a Silicon Valley venture capitalist. In 2016 he became a principal in conservative entrepreneur Peter Thiel’s firm Mithril Capital.
Vance’s memoir Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis briefly made him a liberal darling as he reflected on the socioeconomic concerns of rural Appalachia, writing about his family’s background in Kentucky and Middletown, Ohio. The Washington Post declared him the “voice of the Rust Belt” while The New York Times wrote that his account was “one of the six best books to help understand Trump's win” in 2016.
JD Vance was initially highly critical of Donald Trump, calling him “reprehensible” and claiming he was a “never-Trump guy.” Vance changed his views by 2018, claiming Trump “recognizes the frustration that exists” in post-industrial parts of Ohio and other Midwestern US states. He strongly supported Trump’s reelection campaign in 2020 and claimed the real estate magnate lost due to far-reaching voter fraud.
Trump’s selection of Vance as his VP pick provides him with a running mate from a perennial US swing state as the former president seeks to appeal to voters who proved crucial to his 2016 victory in Midwest states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Wisconsin.
Where Does Trump Running Mate JD Vance Stand on US Foreign Policy?
ISRAEL-WEST <-> PALESTINE-IRAN-SYRIA-IRAQ-LEBANON-YEMEN-DPRK
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MULTIPOLARITY - RUSSIA-CHINA / BRICS
Multipolarity = The Post Post-Cold War. The Fact The West Can't Stop (Although It Is Trying).
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VICTORY BELONGS TO RUSSIA: IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME
Each day that passes makes a conclusive Russian victory in the Donbass and beyond more certain. As Russia bolsters her forces, and weaponry, those of Ukraine decrease. Russian forces gain ready access to rest and recuperation as troop numbers increase. The increasingly exhausted and demoralised Ukrainian troops have an ever decreasing prospect of such respite. This situation is likely to bring them to complete breakdown as Russia unleashes the firepower of the more modern and advanced weaponry that is arriving with the newly mobilised Russian troops.
The various Ukrainian offensives are now weak when confronted by the reinforced Russian lines. A few futile efforts achieve quite miserable results before fire reigns down on the Ukrainian troops and they are forced back to their starting positions.
And now, all this being said, we have arrived at the wet, and later, freezing conditions where these pathetic Ukrainian forces will be subject to myriad forms of abject misery with death and injury all around them while they lie sodden or frozen, abandoned to their fate by Kiev.
The pitiable young and old of Ukraine have been frogmarched to their deaths as cannon-fodder while the bestial elites of the collective West urge their "president" to add more to their number there at the gates of Hell and their doom. We must feel for the majority of them as they are not the Nazis we revile, in most part they are decent men, fathers, sons, brothers, husband and uncles, who no doubt saw through the coup of 2014 for what it was. But sadly, their fate seems sealed.
Nothing will stop Russia now. Every factor favours them. Victory will be Russia's. In Donbass and beyond and in due course across the world.
Victory belongs to Russia: It is now only a matter of time.
UPDATES TO BE ADDED HERE AS AND WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE OVER THE NEXT 24 HOURS.
UPDATES TO BE ADDED HERE AS AND WHEN THEY BECOME AVAILABLE OVER THE NEXT 24 HOURS.
WE ARE NEAR THE END IN UKRAINE - BUT HOW MANY MORE ARE STILL TO DIE?
The final days of the conflict in Ukraine have arrived. The stakes are so high however that it is almost certain the western powers will seek one final devastating attack before seeking to negotiate.
There have been quite a few false dawns since February 24th 2022 when Russian armour and manpower crossed the Ukrainian border at multiple points. It is clear now that Putin and his military high command sent in the small force that crossed over with the intent to intimidate Zelensky into coming to his senses and finally implementing what he had signed up to in Minsk. He came very close to doing so in fact. If it was not for the interference in the peace negotiations in Istanbul in March and April 2022 all the signs are it would have been all over then and there.
But interfere Boris Johnson did and not without the acquiescence or command of Joe Biden and others. Putin’s hope to finally see the Minsk process through to a largely peaceful conclusion where a final resolution that suited both sides could be agree, was dashed. Even then Putin didn’t do more than progressively up the ante only to the degree that the Ukrainian regime and its sponsors did so. Apparently he could not bring himself to believe that they were willing to take this as fas as we now see it has come. It took Putin a long time to shed the gloves that kept casualties and damage to infrastructure to a minimum.
Putin does things by the book, by the law books he studied in St. Petersburg. He is a stickler for doing the right thing. However, betrayal does not sit well with him. Zelensky, Merkel, Hollande and Macron all acted a part in Minsk, all seeking to keep the sham peace process going while they readied the Ukrainian military for war. But even so, for Putin the Ukrainian people are dear Slavs, brothers and sisters to the Russian people. It also does not sit at all well with him to have to engage in this internecine strife. He sought a way out both in the initial weeks and then in the weeks that followed again in Minsk then in Istanbul. All to no avail. They would not engage him sincerely in his desire to seek a peaceful end to the years of conflict that began in 2014.
Now, two and a half years later and over half a million dead or injured we are at the place Putin know it would reach due to the unrelenting campaign the entire West had waged against him through the Ukrainian regime and its army. What other course could he have followed? To give up on Russia’s long term security, to allow NATO missiles within five minute range of the greater part of the Russian Federation, to leave tens of thousands of ultranationalists bearing swastika tattoos seeking Russian blood in the Donbass and even perhaps eying Russian lands across the border eventually. To leave Russia in a condition where order could be more easily subverted and chaos fomented from just across the border where the neoconservatives plotted the break up of his country? No. He had only one choice. Resist.
To retreat from where Russia found itself in the spring of 2014 would have been folly. American officials had been among those who foisted an insurrection upon a democratically elected president and government, killing police, burning down government offices and seeking to pursue a many months long perpetual riot. What part did democracy play in this America? Precisely none. The vast majority of Ukrainians had no say in it. Especially not those in central and eastern Ukraine, the Russian-speakers who had voted in that president and that government, almost unanimously. Seek any map of the electoral results in any year before 2014 and you will see the truth of this.
So now it is almost all over. All that death. All that destruction. For what? For a plan concocted by Biden, Johnson and others to deliver Russia two knock-out punches to deliver it out of the league of the great powers. Sanctions and a treasury-draining war. Neither proved an effective means of subversion against Russia and indeed the whole plan has blown back severely into the faces of all its planners. Now, as we approach the inevitable end of a Russian victory, inevitable as the West’s sanctions failed along with its long-planned Ukrainian defenses and weapon deliveries. Yet the West may have one last “trick” up its sleeve. There is talk of one last devastating attack, most likely on Crimea and Kherson with a massive influx of weapons having been secretly supplied.
Any new shock campaign by the Ukrainian regime will have to be devastating indeed if it is to change the calculation for the peace talks that must eventually begin. If it succeeds Russia may have to either revise its bargaining position or else continue to battle against whatever force the Ukrainians have hit it with. The latter is most likely. Russia will never easily give up the goals it has fought so long and hard for, no NATO membership for Ukraine, a neutral barrier between Russia and the western powers, de-militarisation of Ukraine, its de-Nazification and last but not least peace and security for the people of the Donbass and Crimea. The end is coming, that much is sure. But how many more will be added to the death toll before it does so? That remains to be seen and depends completely on those who have been seeking Russia’s end and have been opposing Russia’s vital need for security for ten long years now.
