RUNNING UPDATES ON THE CONFLICT IN UKRAINE - 02.01.2025
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 2025 COUNTDOWN TO DONALD TRUMP’S INAUGURATION BEGINS. ANTICIPATION IS GREAT BUT WILL TRUMP’S INTERVENTION IN THE UKRAINE CONFLICT PROVE CRUCIAL?
COLLECTIVE WEST | RUSSIA
ALEXANDER MERCOURIS of THE DURAN: EU Self-Harm Russian Gas Ends. EU No Plan. Russia Breaks Through; Toretsk, Chasov Yar Collapse.
ALEX CHRISTOFOROU of THE DURAN: New Orleans, Las Vegas, Montenegro. Russian gas to EU stops. Regime change Hungary kicks off. IRONIC.
THE DURAN: Ukraine frontline, closing in on the Dnepr (Live) w/ Scott from Kalibrated.
Russian Air Defense Shoots Down Ukrainian Fighter Jet.
Over the past 24 hours, Russian air defense systems have shot down a Ukrainian fighter jet and almost 100 drones, the Ministry of Defense (MoD) stated.
"Air defense systems have downed a Su-27 aircraft of the Ukrainian Air Force, six US-made HIMARS multiple-launch rocket system projectiles and 97 fixed-wing unmanned aerial vehicles," the MoD said.
Aviation, strike drones and artillery strikes hit on energy facilities supplying the Ukrainian defense industry, military airfield infrastructure and enemy personnel and equipment at 146 sites.
Since the start of the military operation, Russian forces have destroyed:
651 aircraft,
283 helicopters,
39,144 drones,
590 air defense missile systems,
20,137 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles,
1,504 multiple-launch rocket system (MLRS) vehicles,
20,134 field artillery and mortar units,
29,701 military vehicles.
Combat work of Russia's Tornado-G MLRS crews in the LPR. - Sputnik International, 1920, 01.01.2025
Other Developments:
Tsentr Battlegroup
Repelled 13 Ukrainian counterattacks.
Eliminated up to 240 Ukrainian military personnel.
Destroyed one infantry fighting vehicle and two armored personnel carriers, including one US-made M113.
Improved tactical positions and inflicted losses on personnel and equipment of two Ukrainian mechanized brigades and two National Guard brigades at various sites in the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Destroyed Turkish-made Kirpi and Ukrainian Kozak armored cars, one motor vehicle, two 152-mm D-20 howitzers and one 122-mm D-30 howitzer.
Sever Battlegroup
Inflicted losses on Ukrainian forces in the Kharkov Region, including motorized infantry and territorial defense brigades.
Killed an injured up to 40 Ukrainian military personnel.
Destroyed one motor vehicle and three 122-mm D-30 howitzers.
Yug Battlegroup
Advanced deeper into Ukrainian defensive lines.
Repelled four Ukrainian counterattacks.
Inflicted up to 210 casualties.
Destroyed one Turkish-made Kirpi armored car, one pickup truck, one 122-mm D-30 howitzer, one US-made 105-mm M119 gun and a radio-electronic warfare station.
Inflicted losses on two mechanized brigades, one motorized infantry brigade and one airmobile brigade in several locations in the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Zapad Battlegroup
Inflicted losses on personnel and equipment of six Ukrainian brigades in Kharkov Region and the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Repelled six Ukrainian counterattacks.
Eliminated over 460 Ukrainian military personnel.
Destroyed three infantry fighting vehicles, four pickup trucks, one 122-mm D-30 howitzer, two Polish-made 155mm Krab self-propelled howitzers, one Bogdana self-propelled howitzer, a Bukovel-AD electronic warfare station and an ammunition depot.
Vostok Battlegroup
Improved tactical positions and inflicted losses on two Ukrainian mechanized brigades and two territorial defense brigades in the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Repelled a Ukrainian counterattack.
Inflicted over 160 casualties.
Destroyed four motor vehicles, one HMMWV armored car, one US-made 155mm M109 Paladin self-propelled howitzer, one 152-mm D-20 howitzer and one 122-mm D-30 howitzer.
Dnepr Battlegroup
Inflicted losses on Ukrainian mechanized and territorial defense brigades in the Dnepropetrovsk and Kherson Regions.
Eliminated up to 90 Ukrainian military personnel.
Destroyed three motor vehicles, three radio-electronic warfare stations and an ammunition depot.
Rolling Into Battle: Russian Soldiers Reportedly Swarm Frontlines on Electric Scooters.
While some people are busy signing petitions to ban e-scooters in cities, Russian soldiers seem to have found a more "practical" use for them - at least if a recent New York Times report is to be believed.
The Russian military has been successfully swarming enemy positions while riding electric scooters aside from using motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs), according to the NYT citing one of the Ukrainian footages.
This allows Russian forces to disperse quickly across the front and avoid one piece of equipment carrying a lot of people, who could be a target for the Kiev regime’s forces.
It is a well-documented fact that Russian soldiers have been using ATVs during combat operations. Russia’s Defense Minister Andrei Belousov announced in July that the military would be trained to drive both them and small lightweight and maneuverable buggies for off-road delivery of ammunition and supplies, and for evacuating the wounded.
Besides ATVs, Russian companies have also been supplying the combat zone with electric bikes and snow and swamp-going vehicles.
The relentless pace of Russian attacks has led to a “buckling of the lines” in eastern Ukraine, especially in the Donbass region, the NYT admitted. It added that the Russian military has been steadily advancing towards Krasnoarmeysk, a vital rail hub for Ukraine.
Kiev’s tenuous position on the battlefront, a drastic manpower shortage, and plummeting morale all place it at a disadvantage ahead of the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, the outlet noted, pointing out that the president-elect had vowed to end the Ukraine conflict after his inauguration.
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Putin calls for AI alliance with China.
Beijing has developed some of the world’s most advanced artificial intelligence technology.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has instructed the government and Sberbank, the country’s largest bank and a tech innovator, to team up with China to further develop artificial intelligence.
The directive, issued after an AI-themed conference in December, tasks Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Sberbank CEO Herman Gref with spearheading the initiative. A progress report is expected by April 2025.
The partnership aims to tap into China’s AI expertise, which is recognized as being among the world’s most advanced. Sberbank, a leader in developing AI in Russia, has looked to China as a key inspiration for many of its projects. Alexander Vedyakhin, the bank’s first deputy chairman, recently credited China’s AI breakthroughs with shaping Sberbank’s own ambitions.
China has heavily invested in AI, aiming to become the global leader by 2030, according to its ‘New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan’ launched in 2017. Beijing has rapidly implemented AI across various sectors, including manufacturing, healthcare, and transportation, and leads in AI patent applications, particularly in generative AI technologies. Between 2014 and 2023, Chinese entities filed over 38,000 generative AI patents, accounting for approximately 70% of such filings worldwide.
Read more: ‘Godfather of AI’ issues new warning to humanity
Chinese researchers have significantly increased their contributions to AI literature. China surpassed the US in terms of total number of AI-related journal citations already in 2020.
During the December conference, Putin also emphasized the need to increase efforts to develop AI domestically. He’s called for expanded AI use in schools to improve student counseling and learning, as well as support for local governments to integrate AI into public administration.
The Russian president announced that AI had helped slash robberies by 10.5 times and home burglaries by 34.5 times. In December 2024, the country introduced its first AI textbooks for students in grades 5-9. These textbooks provide an introduction to AI, detailing how it works, how specialists interact with it, and how it is applied across various industries. “Russia must become a world leader not only in terms of creating, but also adopting and integrating artificial intelligence in all spheres of our life without exception,” he said.
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EUROPE | BRITAIN
‘We, the brave British, now building concentration camps’: How liberation movements in Africa were labelled ‘terrorist’.
Western colonizers for years depicted themselves as saviors protecting locals from ‘satanic and barbaric terrorists’ who were actually fighting for their freedom
by Maxwell Boamah Amofa, research officer at the West Africa Transitional Justice Center (WATJ) and Coordinator for International Partnerships for African Development (IPAD)
FILE PHOTO. British policemen hold men from the village of Kariobangi at gunpoint while their huts are searched for evidence that they participated in the Mau Mau Rebellion of 1952. © Getty Images/Bettmann
For centuries, African countries fought for freedom from the shackles of colonialism, from being forced on slave boats across the Atlantic to the West Indies to cultivate sugarcane and tobacco for the European economy, from being forcefully conscripted to fight for colonial powers in world wars or being put in cages in human zoos, whether in the Jardin d’Acclimatation in France, The Tervuren Park in Belgium, or far away in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in the United States.
READ MORE: Colonial ghosts: The hidden hands behind Africa’s shadow conflicts
To legitimize their stranglehold on African countries, the colonizers resorted to labelling African freedom fighters as terrorists under the concept of rule of law, which in practice was rule by oppressive colonial laws.
The imprisonment of Nelson Mandela serves as a stark reminder of this strategy.
Despite his efforts to liberate South Africa from the oppressive apartheid regime, which was deeply rooted in colonial policies of the Dutch and British, he was imprisoned for allegedly engaging in terrorist activities. He remained on the United States terrorist list until 2008, long after he had been honored with Nobel Peace prize in 1993 for his efforts in dismantling the apartheid system and ushering South Africa into a period of peace.
“Interpret the gospel in the way it will be the best to protect your interests”
This labelling strategy dates back to the dawn of European colonialism when they portrayed the doctrine of discovery as a universal legal principle to “civilize” what they described as dark and primitive continent by occupying African lands and imposing their values on the people under the veil of Christianity. In practice, Christianity was frequently used as a pretext to loot the resources of the people. As King Leopold in his letter to the missionaries in 1883 admitted:
“You will go certainly to evangelize, but your evangelization must inspire above all Belgium interests. Your principal objective in our mission in the Congo is never to teach the n****rs to know God, this they know already. They speak and submit to a Mungu, one Nzambi, one Nzakomba, and what else I don’t know. They know that to kill, to sleep with someone else’s wife, to lie and to insult is bad. Have courage to admit it; you are not going to teach them what they know already. Your essential role is to facilitate the task of administrators and industrials, which means you will go to interpret the gospel in the way it will be the best to protect your interests in that part of the world. For these things, you have to keep watch on disinteresting our savages from the richness that is plenty [in their underground]”.
FILE PHOTO. King Leopold II of Belgium, late 19th-early 20th century. © Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images
Therefore, whether it was the ‘French mission civilisatrice’ (civilizing mission), ‘La missione civilizzatrice’ (civilizing mission) of the Italians, the ‘Portuguese Lusotropicalism’ or the ‘white man’s burden’, a term used to justify British and the United States imperial policies against the black race, the intention was the same: to create ‘a narrative of moral duty’ to protect the dignity of the people in the countries they wanted to colonize.
Reminiscing Nazi Germany strategy in Africa?
The first half of the 20th century saw colonial powers fortifying their grounds in African territories. However, one major problem they faced was fierce resistance from people whose economic and social settings were tied to their indigenous lands and were unwilling to let them go, such as the Kikuyu people of Kenya.
In the 1950s, the Kikuyu people and other Kenyans whose lands were occupied by the British colonial forces formed an armed resistance movement against the colonial power to protect their lands from occupation. In response, the British launched what was described as operation Anvil to protect their interest. As part of their operation, they instituted ‘concentration camps’ where allegedly hundreds of thousands of Kenyans were forced into labor. Rape and sexual abuse of women, starvation, flogging, murder of inmates and death were commonplace in these camps.
FILE PHOTO. Mau Mau suspects in a prison camp in Kenya in 1952. © Stroud/Express/Getty Images
British writer and broadcaster Nicholas Rankin, who experienced the situation, recalls:
“What I could not conceive, as I sat on the floor of my father’s study in my shorts and shirt and Bata sandals was that we, the brave British, were now building concentration camps”.
Torture practices in these camps were so cruel that the colony’s attorney General Eric Griffith-Jones described it as “distressingly reminiscent of conditions in Nazi Germany”.
During the Mau Mau struggle for freedom, it is estimated that over a million people were put in detention camps, with 13,000 Kenyans brutally massacred and about 1,000 people hanged by the British colonial force, while only 32 British had lost their lives in the struggle by 1954.
The myth behind ‘protecting human dignity’
In Kenya, despite their atrocities, the colonizers insisted that the Mau Mau resistance force were the terrorists, murdering British nationals, and that the operation of the colonizer was a civilizing mission by agents of the civilized world.
READ MORE: Britain’s ‘common’ wealth: How London ensures that Africa never prospers
As the New York Times put it in 1952,
“It is inevitable in our time that the white missionary should be tied to a hated imperialism. In turning on the missionary, the rebellion rejects the Christianity which the missionary brought. In Africa, this does not seem to mean falling back on atheism or agnosticism; it means a return to paganism, to the leopard man, to ritual murders, to primitive magic and terror, that is how Mau Mau works”.
This criticism could also be viewed as a direct response to the African people who had begun to grow increasingly skeptical about the role of colonial application of Christian principles in protecting what they described as ‘human dignity’. Africans began to see the hypocrisy of the colonial Christian administration because many of these missionaries were serving as home guards for the colonial government, fighting actively against the Kenyan people or using brutal methods to acquire information from the Mau Mau detainees while working in the detention camps.
FILE PHOTO. Members of the Kikuyu tribe held in a prison camp in Kenya. The British authorities held a blanket suspicion that members of the tribe were part of the Mau Mau terrorist rebellion on 3rd December 1952. © Stroud/Express/Getty Images
“Fanatical, bestial, satanic, savage, barbaric, degraded and merciless”
In 1952, the media, particularly newspapers which had extensive reach, were used to spotlight the narrative of the colonial powers, and they did so by banning African media that did not align with the interest of the colonial government under the guise of a so-called state of emergency.
If framing involves accentuating certain aspects of perceived reality to garner support, the British press provided a perfect atmosphere for this, because their actions allowed the colonial government to control information dissemination based on two major narratives: the superiority of the European military machinery and the depiction of white supremacist colonizers as saviors of the African people from those fighting for freedom, but labelled as terrorists, such as the Mau Mau.
The British press wrote about “heroic whites being slaughtered by fanatical, bestial, satanic, savage, barbaric, degraded and merciless Mau Mau terrorists”.
FILE PHOTO. Prisoners are building a dam as part of the government's 'rehabilitation' programme for Mau Mau prisoners in Kenya. © Bristol Archives/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
This sense of nationalist rhetoric was necessary for the colonial administration as it sought to rally support back home and create divisions among colonies; between those who supported the liberation struggle and the people who believed the ‘colonial saviors’ as part of the British divide and conquer policy, a strategy that became popular among the colonial powers after the Berlin conference of 1884/1885.
Weaponizing the terrorist label in the 21st century
The terrorist label has been used against several African leaders that wanted to liberate themselves from the firm grip of colonialism, such as Muammar Gaddafi, who they referred to as the “Mad dog of the Middle East”. A title that was given to the Libyan leader whose effort, like Kwame Nkrumah’s, to unite the African countries under the Gold Dinar currency threatened the vested interests of those who wanted to exploit African resources and maintain their global hegemony. President Reagan of the United States was the first to use this title: “We know that this mad dog of the Middle East has a goal of a world revolution, Muslim fundamentalist revolution, which is targeted on many of his own Arab compatriots”.
READ MORE: Brutally murdered 13 years ago, this leader is only growing more beloved
Gaddafi’s effort to unite the African countries was subsequently overshadowed by this narrative, depicting him as a terrorist against his own people.
Whether the Mad Dog of the Middle East, The Juntas of Sahel States or the Butcher of Syria, such labels have been an essential part of colonial policies for two major reasons. In Africa, it ensured that Africans would not unite against the main threat, which was the imperialist powers, but instead channel their energies to their fellow Africans fighting for freedom as threats and, secondly, it ensured that the colonizers gained support from the international community.
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SEBASTIAN SAS: The EU Has Decided That CHEAP Energy Is BAD!
Russia Reveals Real Culprits Behind Gas Flow Blockade Through Ukraine.
Moscow considers Washington and Kiev to be responsible for a halt in Russian gas flow to Europe through Ukraine, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.
"The responsibility for the termination of Russian gas supplies lies entirely with the United States, the puppet regime in Kiev and the authorities of the European states, which sacrificed the well-being of their citizens for the sake of supporting the American economy financially," she said in a statement.
Ukraine stopped Russian gas transit for geopolitical reasons. The main beneficiary of the changes in the European energy market is the United States, Zakharova added.
"The cessation of supplies of competitive and environmentally friendly Russian energy not only weakens Europe's economic potential but also has the most negative impact on the standard of living of European citizens," the spokeswoman argued.
European Energy Crisis Fears Rekindled as Ukraine Blocks Gas From Russia.
Supplies of Russian gas via Ukraine ended at 8:00 a.m. Moscow time (05:00 GMT) on January 1, according to a contractual document on gas transit between Gazprom and Naftogaz. The Kiev regime had repeatedly stated it had no intention to extend the transit agreement.
Fears of a new energy crisis have been rekindled in Europe with the end of Russian gas supply through Ukraine.
The winding down of cheap and reliable Russian gas transit will fuel energy costs, inflationary pressures, and the cost-of-living crisis, experts cited by Xinhua have warned.
"If there is a crisis in energy supply, Europe will be the most affected and this will weaken its economic power even more," Croatian political analyst Robert Frank noted.
The cessation of Russian gas transit “will likely intensify cost pressures for Slovenian industries, and by extension, raise consumer prices," stressed Joze P. Damijan, professor of economics at the University of Ljubljana.
Europe still hasn’t recovered from its shortsighted move to drastically cut its dependence on Russian gas, which had triggered a massive spike in inflation and economic slowdown. Gazprom ended gas transit through Ukraine on January 1 following the expiration of the five-year contract with Naftogaz.
The Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline had transported about 15.5 billion cubic meters of gas last year, accounting for approximately 4.5% of the total gas consumption in the EU, according to Gazprom. Moldova and four EU countries – Slovakia, Austria, Italy, and the Czech Republic – received Russian gas via this route.
Balkan Stream, fed by the Turkish Stream pipeline, now remains the only source of Russian pipeline gas for Europe. It delivers gas to Romania, Greece, North Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Hungary.
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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.
THE 2025 COUNTDOWN TO DONALD TRUMP’S INAUGURATION BEGINS. ANTICIPATION IS GREAT BUT WILL TRUMP’S INTERVENTION IN THE UKRAINE CONFLICT PROVE CRUCIAL?
