RUNNING UPDATES ON THE CONFLICT IN UKRAINE - 15.05.2023
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.
Please note:
THERE WILL BE A LATE VIDEO LISTING ON 16th MAY.
OUR NORMAL LISTING SHOULD RESUME FOR THE 17th.
(We will be in various locations in Southern India for the next nine days. This will result in variations to the timing of updates and quite possibly their total absence on some days. Our apologies for this alteration to and possible loss of daily updates.)
*** WILL UKRAINE’S EXPECTED OFFENSIVE FAIL TO ARRIVE? ***
…………
“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.
…………
Lead feature:
ALEXANDER MERCOURIS of THE DURAN
Russian Advances, Ukr Attacks Slacken; DU Shells Khmelnitsky Explosion, Erdogan Set for Reelection.
THE DURAN
Erdogan one step closer to re-election. Regime change will not end with elections.
GEORGE GALLOWAY
DIAMONDS AREN’T FOREVER
SCOTT RITTER
Ukraine/Russia Counter Offensive?
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO - RAY MCGOVERN (EX-CIA)
In Ukraine Bakhmut Still up for Grabs.
CGTN
Russia: All Bakhmut attacks have been repelled.
COLONEL DOUGLAS MACGREGOR
🤕 Ukraine's Elusive Victory And Struggle In The Face Of Relentless Conflict ⚔️- Douglas Macgregor.
🗣️You Got to Stand Up and Tell the Truth! 📣 - Douglas Macgregor's Call to Action
SEYMOUR HERSH
🛢️ Volodymyr Zelenskyy Fuels The War With Russian Diesel - Seymour Hersh.
A huge "mushroom" appeared in Khmelnytskyi after the Russian missile strike.
TFIGLOBAL
Germany, the final hurdle to a Russia-Ukraine ceasefire.
GARLAND NIXON
THE NEOCON SANCTIONS WAR ON RUSSIA HAS BEEN LOST.
HINDUSTAN TIMES
Russia's fiery assault forces Ukrainian Army retreat in Bakhmut; Putin's men destroy Western arms.
Ukraine losing support in Europe? Majority of Germans oppose Kyiv's NATO membership - poll.
Biden succumbs to pressure from China, Russia? Makes a big announcement on chemical weapons.
GEORGE GALLOWAY
EXPLOSIVE! - MOATS Episode 238.
JACKSON HINKLE
Warpigs win again.
MINTPRESS NEWS
Ben Norton On The Inevitable De-dollarization Of The Global Economy.
RACHEL BLEVINS
LIFE UPDATE: Moving Back To Being Based in The U.S. After A Year in Moscow.
KIM IVERSEN
No Freedom of the Press in Biden's White House.
CYRUS JANNSEN
Russian Sanctions are Now Destroying the US Dollar! Watch Out!
U.S. TOUR OF DUTY
Scenes from the Evolution: Caleb Maupin on McCarthyism.
DUE DISSIDENCE
Majority Report's CRINGE Tara Reade Take, Elon's New Twitter CEO, Anis Shivani's Case for RFK Jr.
BREAKING POINTS
Vice News Headed For BANKRUPTCY.
FIRSTPOST
Turkey Election 2023 LIVE: Will Erdogan Survive the Biggest Poll-Test?
SINO SPHERE
BRICS JUST SHOCKED Everyone With This! | Fall Of American Dominance.
ASIAN QUICKTAKE
ASEAN Announce FULL USE of Local Currency to Replace US Dollar Settlement.
INVESTOPADS
You Won't Believe What China Just Did To The Dollar - Gerald Celente.
TECH REVOLUTION
Saudi Arabia JUST SHOCKED The World With Their NEW Oil Currency | DUMPS The Dollars.
iChongqing
"Chongqing bounces back: A city that never gives up" | Alex In The City.
SABRINA IN CHINA
China is a far better place to live than the US. They won't admit it, though.
LENA PETROVA
🔴 Demand For Gold Is Surging As BRICS Central Banks Stockpile Record Amounts of Gold.
LIU SIVAYA
THE WEST CONDEMNS ITSELF: Gives Ukraine Russian money frozen by sanctions | liusivaya. (In Spanish.)
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
PROFESSOR JOHN J MEARSHEIMER: CHINA WILLING TO GO TO WAR.
Article published by Russia Today (RT) - 15th May 2023:
Zelensky plotted attacks deep inside Russia – WaPo.
The Ukrainian leader reportedly wanted to “occupy” Russian cities to gain leverage over Moscow.
Despite public assurance that he would limit military action to his own country's 1991 borders, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky formed plans to conduct attacks deep inside Russia and suggested that Kiev “destroy” the industry of Hungary, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, citing leaked Pentagon documents.
Citing US intelligence reports recently published on a gaming server, the Post described how Zelensky suggested at a meeting in January that his troops “conduct strikes in Russia,” while moving across the border to “occupy unspecified Russian border cities” in order to “give Kiev leverage in talks with Moscow.”
Less than two months later, the Ukraine-based Russian Volunteer Corps launched a cross-border raid that left two civilians dead in Russia’s Bryansk Region. A member of the group told Western media that Kiev had approved the attack, and further assaults have taken place since.
With Ukraine’s Western backers reluctant until recently to provide him with long-range missiles for fear he would use them against targets within Russia, Zelensky suggested to his top military commander, General Valery Zaluzhny, that he use drones to “attack unspecified deployment locations in Rostov” in February, the Post reported.
Prior to and after the alleged meeting, Ukrainian forces used drones to attack infrastructure in Rostov Region, which borders the formerly Ukrainian territory of Lugansk.
In a meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Svridenko in February, Zelensky reportedly suggested that Ukraine “blow up” the Druzhba oil pipeline, which transports Russian oil to Hungary. According to the US report cited by the Post, Zelensky suggested that “Ukraine should just blow up the pipeline and destroy…Hungarian [Prime Minister] Viktor Orban’s industry, which is based heavily on Russian oil.”
American spies listening to his meeting with Svridenko concluded that Zelensky was issuing “hyperbolic, meaningless threats.” Nevertheless, the Druzhba pipeline has come under attack on several occasions since the meeting, most recently when it was hit by drone-dropped explosives on Wednesday.
The Post’s article corroborates a CNN report last month claiming that US spies have been intercepting Zelensky’s communications.
Contacted by the newspaper, Zelensky dismissed the incidents described in the report as “fantasies,” and claimed that “no one in our country has given orders for offensives or strikes on Russian territory.”
This is plainly not the case. Apart from the above mentioned Bryansk raids and Rostov drone strikes, the Russian regions of Belgorod and Kursk have been shelled by Kiev’s forces in recent months, Moscow has blamed Ukrainian terrorists for bombing the Crimean Bridge and attempting to assassinate President Vladimir Putin, and one of Ukraine’s top intelligence chiefs has taken credit for the assassination of several Russian public figures.
Such acts of terrorism, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement earlier this month, will “not be left unanswered.”
MAPPING/ANALYSIS CHANNELS
* Updates will be added here as and when they become available.
MILITARY SUMMARY UPDATE
Patriots At Work | Wagner Approached Domino. Military Summary And Analysis 2023.05.16
NWE WAR REPORTS UPDATE
No update posted so far today
DEFENSE POLITICS ASIA UPDATE
No update posted so far today
DPA WAR UPDATE
No update posted so far today
THETI MAPPING UPDATE
No update posted so far today
BALKAN MAPPING UPDATE
No update posted so far today
FREE RUSSIA UPDATE
No update posted so far today
THE RUSSIAN PERSPECTIVE UPDATE
No update posted so far today
PROJECT GREAT UPDATE
No update posted so far today
MILITARY AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS UPDATE
No update posted so far today
RYBAR UPDATE
No update posted so far today
M MAPPING UPDATE
No update posted so far today
HISTORY OF MAKUS UPDATE
No update posted so far today
WEEB UNION UPDATE
No update posted so far today
Detailed situation reports can be found on a daily basis concerning events in Ukraine over the past 24 hours at the ‘A SKEPTIC’ Substack account:
Link to 'A SKEPTIC' Substack channel.
***
SUPPORTING SCOTT RITTER
I've been listening to Scott Ritter describe how things are for him and I suspect have been for him for quite some time now.
He has been doing a LOT of unpaid work with a great many interview requests coming in that he has been ready and willing to agree to. But the work where receives some pay for have suffered due to this, being left until the wee small hours of the night to complete work on.
Scott, I think you will agree, has been one of the most influential voices out there on Russia and Ukraine.
I was moved by Scott's words to take an annual subscription to his Substack account that he runs in coordination with his colleague on 'U.S. Tour of Duty', Jeff Norman. This is the main way that Scott recommends to help him with finances with which to upgrade his delivery of comment on Russia and Ukraine, via a better microphone etc. and perhaps the creation of a recording studio in his basement to create a more professional and impressive look. To invest in these things he would like to be sure that this has a viable financial future.
Would you also like to help by subscribing at one of the various levels to Scott's Substack account? I hope so. If so the link is here:
Below you'll find the edited part of the video where Scott talks of his commitments to get the facts out on events in Ukraine and of the finances that would come in handy to enhance their delivery:
***
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
UKRAINE: THINKING WITHIN THE WESTERN GEOPOLITICAL BOX
How much sense does it have to ignore objective reality and to instead embrace a subjective wish list of concepts creating boundaries outside of which you cannot think or speak?
This for me is the self-created miasma of myopia that western political and media elites have created for themselves.
Conceiving Putin as Hitler and the Russian military as the new Nazis is all very well and effectively shores up massive support in the western world among those who retain belief in their elites despite all historical reasons not to. But what happens when objective, on the ground, reality is completely lost sight of and a massive consensus based on the desired reality rather than the actual reality permeates and dominates pervasively?
Waging any kind of war brings with it the obvious and natural use of the information weapon, the creative distortion of reality that serves to bolster support and potentially weaken enemy morale. My contention here however is that this can only be sustained while that enemy shows any sign of being beaten.
There lies the rub.
Russia is winning.
On the economic front Russia has taken each and every blow aimed at it and has survived. More than that and much to the chagrin of western leaders it has adapted its systems to ensure they are further strengthened and made impermeable to future attacks from the West. We can add many features of the new reality which demonstrate beyond any question that Russia will ultimately be greatly strengthened, not weakened by western aggression toward it.
A fundamental miscalculation has been arrived at in the West that failed to acknowledge the reaction of much of the world to its many regime change wars of recent years. Nations attempting to build their economies and the politicians charged with doing this across the global south can surely only be doubtful regarding whether such actions can bring the stability they need. Quite on the contrary such upheavals are much more likely to bring them worse conditions and all, apparently, for the sake of the self-interests of the West.
The western political elites have found much to their dismay that those they relied upon in the global south to support them and condemn Russia are not doing so. Exacerbating this factor is a further economic factor, that Russia has many of the vital resources and products they can hardly do without. This leaves the West increasingly isolated, not Russia. In fact the prestige and respect along with its power of influence is rising, not falling.
Meanwhile a mass propaganda (or if you like an information) campaign has been mounted to promote the western view, its agenda, narratives and talking points. This has sought to create a black and white scenario absent any reference to the past whereby the West and their allies/proxies are wholly right and Russia and its allies are wholly wrong.
This is where subjective wish list fantasy conflicts with objective, on the ground, reality.
Many pejorative things, in fact a plethora of these arrows of propaganda and viewpoint manipulation are created on a daily basis about Russia and its campaign in Ukraine, all attempting to build a certain picture that it is hoped will achieve certain aims. These comprise bolstering Ukrainian morale, shoring up to the max all opinionating that casts Putin as a vengeful, out of control demon facing imminent defeat by the plucky, infinitely brave Ukrainians who are defying all odds as a David defeating an evil Goliath and creating an overall momentum that it is hoped will lead to Russia being weakened, defeated and withdrawing from Ukraine.
The wish list, wishful-thinking fantasy had its merits and achieved an enormous groundswell of support along with an acceptance that almost unlimited funds needed at home should instead be sent to Ukraine. However, with Russia winning on all fronts this consensus is beginning to fall apart and some rowing back on the expenditure via weaponry and financial gifts to Ukraine is now in evidence.
Everyone in the West is used to the endless series of TV and movie creations where the villain always loses in the end after seemingly unstoppable progress doing his or her evil deeds. The hero always prevails against all odds to slay whatever story line “dragon” is involved. Reality is suspended. But life is not like that. However, in certain circumstances and especially when the full might and weight of political and media volume wishes it, a similar suspension of reality can be achieved in real life as opposed to within some Hollywood fiction.
So has it been with Ukraine. And so it was with several regime change wars conducted previously, most infamously against Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. The demon must be depicted as totally black. Now of course virtually no historical leader has been totally white, unimpeded by egotistic vices, moral failings or dubious ethical values in thought or deed. But those who are conceived as vital subjects for elimination by western powers have universally been depicted as being as black as night (or whatever other analogy you prefer).
Putin was not supposed to survive. This was not the movie being envisaged. Russia was meant to descend screaming to a state of abject penury whereupon all those aspects of its governance would be overturned. The western “heroes” were then to march in to save the day and rescue every princess from every dragon’s clutches or fiery jaws.
The movie projector has gone rogue. What is being increasingly seen on the screen of elite western minds is not at all what they wished for and they are having huge problems in negotiating ways to deal with this fat, with the realities they are being exposed to.
What to do?
How can all those PR realities now be negated after their careful creation? How can the expectations that everything will come right at the end of the “movie” be adjusted significantly enough to allow those things which must now be done to be done? How much lying will be exposed destroying reputations across the board with the attendant humiliation this will entail?
Western political elites WILL find ways to fudge reality and avoid the maximum humiliation that should come their way. They showed this in the aftermath of many previous inadvisable adventures they involved themselves in such as that over Iraq and its non-existent WMD. But make no mistake. There WILL be a heavy price to pay over the Ukraine debacle and the reputation of the West, already hugely damaged by the reckless regime change wars of the past will, in my estimation, be dealt a terminal blow in regard to it creating a unipolar world where it is supremely dominant.
That is arguably, ultimately the greatest and most sought for reality that will be exposed as a totally unattainable fantasy and which the global south along with Russia and China will increasingly point to as the last great delusion held by an economically dying western world.