On May 13, Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III spoke with Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoygu for the first time since February 18. Secretary Austin urged an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine and emphasized the importance of maintaining lines of communication.
Austin initiated the call and the U.S. is seeking a ceasefire in Ukraine!!!
Are we not told that the Ukraine is winning the war? That it will soon push the Russian forces back over the border? The operation to ‘weaken Russia’, which Austin had publicly announced two weeks ago, does not seem to go that well.
Told ya so!
Gonzalo Lira thinks that the call points to a soon coming collapse of the Ukrainian forces. Let us hope that this is indeed the case because it seems to be the only chance that the war will end soon.
The Ukraine is losing up to 15,000 men per month to the war. The total Ukrainian casualties, dead and wounded, are likely already at 50,000. The weapons the U.S. and others provide, are not sufficient to sustain the war. The Ukraine has only 3 days reserves of diesel and gasoline left. The main parts of its forces are immobile and are getting surrounded by Russian forces. Their situation is hopeless.
The Pentagon of course knows this all and that is why Austin initiated the call and asked for a ceasefire.
The Russia side will not agree to a ceasefire. At least not unless the ‘west’ offers to take back some of the 6,400 sanction measures it has initiated against Russia.
There are recently a number of other issues that also go in favor of Russia:
The economic outlook for Russia is good. It will have a record wheat harvest. Its internal measures to compensate for the results of sanctions are working. Counter sanctions Russia has now initiated against its enemies are starting to become effective.
Hungary has blocked European sanctions against Russian oil.
Turkey is slowing down if not prohibiting the entry of Kurd friendly Sweden and Norway into NATO.
The U.S. weapon deliveries to Ukraine will stop on May 19 unless Congress passes authority for new ones.
Senator Rand Paul has held up the required bill with the quite reasonable demand to have a inspector general scrutinize where the $40 billion ‘for Ukraine’ will be going. The Democrats will certainly dislike that.
European natural gas prices have also jumped after the Ukraine blocked the flow from Russia through one of the pipelines and while the flow through the Yamal pipeline in Poland has been stopped due to Russian counter sanctions.
Le Mondehas verified and published a video that shows a Ukrainian ‘volunteer battalion’, led by a known criminal, torturing Russian prisoners of war.
Russia has published new material about the U.S. military biological ‘research’ in Ukraine. Other countries will also have questions about these activities.
The British Ministry of Defense claims that Russia lost a significant amount of material and men in an attempt to cross the Seversky Donets river. However the aerial pictures published by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry show that about half of the destroyed vehicles are BMP-1 with the original small one man turret and the stubby 73 mm gun. Russia is said to no longer have these. All its active service BMP-1 are said to have been upgraded and now have different turrets with 30 mm machine cannons with longer rifles. There must have been a larger battle over the crossing with probably both sides taking heavy losses.
Moreover the fighting is now on the western side of the river. The Russian forces thus must have crossed the river in significant numbers.
If you want to know how the war is going in Ukraine, you only needed to take note of one piece of “news” today–Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called his Russian counterpart:
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin spoke with his Russian counterpart for the first time since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Pentagon announced on Friday.
The call lasted approximately an hour and was at the request of Austin, who used the first call between the two in 84 days to urge Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to implement an “immediate ceasefire,” according to a brief readout of the call. The two last spoke on February 18, a week before Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine.
CNN
If Russia was losing or completely stuck in Ukraine, one would expect that Sergei Shoigu would be the guy calling Austin and begging for mercy. Well, that is not what happened. It was Austin that placed the call, apparently unconcerned about his recent public call to weaken Russia. Why would Austin urge Shoigu to implement an “immediate ceasefire” if Russia was getting its ass kicked? Russia getting whipped by Ukraine is exactly what Austin has called for. Remember?
“We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine. . .”
If Russia is on the ropes, why call off the beating? You call off the fight when it’s your guy getting pummeled. The Russian offensive in the Donbass has ramped up significantly in the last week and it is carving up entrenched Ukrainian units with no hope of being reinforced or rescued by a counter-offensive.
I want to show you a false battle map that is representative of the disinformation being fed to a gullible audience in America and Europe. This map was published by a goofy chick, Ashley Cornell, who betrays her ignorance of the military situation and failed to fact check the wild claims from “war expert” Justin Bronk:
Let me highlight the lies for you. Start with Snake Island:
Russia suffers losses trying to secure the island after a series of Ukrainian attacks.
WRONG!! The Ukrainians tried and failed to take the tiny rock on the even of the Liberation Day celebrations in Russia on 9 May. Ukraine lost big–the death of more than 60 Ukrainian marines and members of elite AFU units, four fixed wing combat aircraft, 10 helicopters, 3 boats and 30 unmanned aerial vehicles. The Russians knew the attack was coming and were lying in wait. They apparently put some bait on the barren rock–some sophisticated missiles–to attract the Ukrainians. It worked.
Heavy bombardment continues at Azovstal as last defenders hold out.
DELIBERATELY MISLEADING. Yes, bombs and missiles continue to rain down on those parts of the Azovstal steel plant where a shrinking number of Azov battalion fanatics hunker down and send out video pleas for rescue. The a few of the wives of the men trapped in the bowels of Azovstal are now on social media begging for someone to save their guys. Here is one of the ladies, who previously posted a photo of her in her combat pose. The second image–she’s weeping for her man–showed up this week.
BEFORENOW
The situation in Mariupol is returning to normal and Russia controls the city. The Russians are restoring electrical and water services and providing food to the population.
Ukrainian counter-attack reaches Russian border and threatens to break Donbas supply line.
LIE–The Ukrainians have not reached the Russian border and at least one Russian Battalion Tactical Group has crossed the Severs Donetsk river and are expanding their position south toward Kharkiv. But this is a sideshow. The area is isolated and there is only one significant road running from Kharkiv to Belgorod in Russia.
DOUBLE LIE–There is zero threat to the “DONBAS SUPPLY LINE.” Those lines are south and east of Kharkiv. Just look at the map–the Donbas with the city of Luhansk is prominently displayed. Kharkiv is 230 miles northwest of Luhansk.
The map does get two things right–the Russia has taken Avdiivka and has surrounded Ukrainian troops at Severodonetsk. It is because of the progress Russia is making in the Donetsk that Lloyd Austin called Sergei Shoigu to beg for some mercy. I suspect that General Shoigu told Austin, идите стучите по песку (which is Russian for “go pound sand.” {Ed: Larry’s Russian isn’t that good})
One more observation regarding the supposed defeat of the Russians north of Kharkiv on the border of Russia. The people writing on this cannot even get their facts straight about the size of a Russian Battalion Tactical Group aka BTG. Here are three different “experts” with their numbers:
Each Russian Battalion (BTG) tactical group has around 700-900 soldiers (Justin Bronk)
According to the DOD on 18 April there are almost a dozen BTGs in Mariupol. As each BTG has about 200 infantry, then 11 x 200 gives us 2,200 infantry. (Christopher Lawrence, Dupuy Institute)
A Russian battalion tactical group consists of about 1,000 troops. (Associated Press)
The western media has been crowing about the mighty Ukrainians wiping out a Russian BTG. Yet no photos of Russian medical units recovering the dead and wounded from the battle site have been published on Ukrainian or Russian sites. But let us assume the claim is true–the Ukrainians reportedly ambushed and defeated one BTG. It is meaningless as far as the progress of the Russian war effort is concerned. If the Russians were concerned about the battle over a pontoon bridge they would have deployed fixed wing and rotary wing support aircraft armed with rockets and delivered an artillery barrage on the attacking Ukrainians. That apparently did not happen either.
I am not privy to Russian war plans. But I do know that Russia would be rushing reinforcements to the area if this was an important battle. They are not. Even more telling is you are not seeing video and photos of a Ukrainian horde pouring over the Russian border. This looks to me like one more failed attempt reminiscent of Weekend at Bernie’s–propping up a Ukrainian corpse and pretending it is alive.
This week the European Union is expected to announce a complete import ban on Russian oil. Hungary, in its first real act of defiance, is threatening to veto this; Germany, after some hemming and hawing, has finally decided it can survive such a ban.
Assuming Hungary’s objections are eventually overcome, at first blush this looks like yet another energy “own goal” by the people obsessed with soccer. The U.S. has already issued this ban.
Because European industry is heavily dependent on Russian oil and gas, the conventional wisdom is that the EU Commission is just petulant and incompetent.
Are they petulant? Yes. Incompetent? Possibly? But only if you think in conventional terms of doing the right thing for their people. What is clear to any serious observer of EU politics is that they are not interested in what their people have to say or want.
Theirs is an agenda which will brook no opposition, even if it means destroying its own economy to bring a rival to its knees.
That said, I sincerely doubt there will be a “buyers embargo” on natural gas because there is no viable substitute for it.
Hungary is using the need for unanimous consent within the European Council to block any ‘gas ban’ in any new economic sanctions package. There are at least three other countries which are happy Hungary is willing to suffer Brussels’ wrath.
But banning Russian oil, on the other hand, is different.
So, it is interesting that Hungary would do this, given they import no oil from Russia. {Ed. this is wrong, Hungary imports 65% of its oil through the Druzhba pipeline} This veto was predicted by me the morning after the Hungarians overwhelmingly rejected George Soros’s anti-Viktor Orban coalition and handed it an ignominious defeat.
Hungary, on the other hand, has energy independence from Brussels by having contracted directly with Gazprom for natural gas via Turkstream’s train that goes into Serbia and Hungary. This should give you some context as to why the EU is trying to sanction Serbia and cut off the flows of that pipeline where it crosses EU territory in Bulgaria.
With a fiscally, monetarily (they are not on the euro) and energy independent Hungary there is little argument for them staying in the EU if Brussels is going to treat them as second class members. Orban and his government have been resolute in their refusal to get involved in the Russia/Ukraine conflict even though there has been serious pressure applied by NATO.
It is almost as if Orban and the Hungarians are now daring the EU to advance Article 7 procedures to kick them out. The problem with that is, if they do, it would begin the fracturing of the EU.
So, what is more likely to happen now is Hungary will use this veto to get the EU to back off on the ‘rule-of-law’ violations which are justifying cutting off Hungary from its EU budget distributions. The horse trade here should be obvious.
Because Brussels and their behind-the-scenes backers absolutely want this ban on Russian oil as much as the U.S. and the UK want it. It is part of their long-term strategy to bleed Russia out, after turning Ukraine into Afghanistan 2.0.
And it is in the differences between the oil industry and the natural gas industry where they think they can achieve this goal.
Of Pipes and Populi
In both the oil and gas industries, pressurizing a well is, for the most part, a one-way process. You dig a well and pull the oil and/or gas out. It produces until the well is depleted. You replace the well’s natural decay in production by drilling a new well.
But even if there is a big demand shock to the downside, rarely an issue in the oil industry in the aggregate, then those wells keep producing. The market is temporarily glutted with oil, the price drops and old wells are not replaced until such time as supply-and-demand balance is restored.
Oil futures curves get constructed by traders to anticipate these effects on prices. And for normal volatility of oil demand, these curves should be reasonably predictable.
Unfortunately, we are living through a time where the most powerful people in the world (at least in their minds) are openly trying to destroy the petroleum market for their own purposes and agenda. They are actively working to make oil and gas prices volatile to the point of destroying investment in the industry.
They make no bones about this. Oil is the bane of the planet!
I call these people The Davos Crowd (for a description of them see my podcast, Episodes 75, 76, and 77 for the background information). They are the unelected oligarchs, bankers, hereditary power and newly Made Men (in the mafia sense) who gather at Davos, Switzerland, every year to decide on the future of humanity.
And it is their agenda, using Climate Change and international threats like biowarfare and terrorism as their justifications for a massive expansion of the surveillance state and their control over all things, but especially money.
Russia’s massive natural resource pile and sovereigntist-minded government stands wholly in the way of that. If you believe otherwise, you have been gaslit by Davos propaganda. I urge you to put away childish things, some rabbit holes are just holes, not warrens.
Back to the oil industry. Capping either a gas or oil well is dangerous because there is no guarantee it can be re-opened. Wells can be damaged and the oil/gas they contain lost without drilling a new one.
With gas you can just “flare it off” by burning the excess if your storage is full, rather than capping the well and wait for demand to return. With oil, on the other hand, you cannot really do that. You have to store the stuff somewhere. From all accounts so far, Russia’s oil storage capacity is already full, if not overflowing.
The oil industry in general is not geared for massive long-term storage due to supply/demand shocks because there is literally no need for it. What expands is the capacity to move oil around to consume it, not store it in big tanks hoping someone will buy it.
The industry has all the spare capacity it needs to coordinate supply and demand within pretty tight tolerances. It is not “just in time” delivery tight, but it is not capable of absorbing a 20% demand shock.
And this is where the West thinks it has a big lever to use against Russia right now. By all accounts, Europe is one of Russia’s biggest oil customers, with the port at Rotterdam taking in and refining as much as 1.4 million barrels per day before the war.
Believe it or not, The Washington Post had a decent article breaking down where Russia’s exports go. Of the approximately 7.2 million barrels per day Russia exports to the world, 4.8 million go to countries, most of them in Europe, that say they no longer want to buy it from there.
Lack of storage capacity should not be a big deal if Russia exported most of the oil to Europe by ship, which it does. According to a recent report by Transport & Environment, an NGO which is wholly geared to convincing Europe to get off Russian energy, the Druzhba pipeline only supplies around 10% of Russian oil to the European market.
This is a paltry 250,000 barrels per day. The U.S. embargo is more dangerous to the Russian economy, where in 2021 the U.S., having to replace barrels sanctioned from Venezuela by former President Trump, imported an average of 600,000 barrels per day.
Those imports began drying up in 2022, well before Russia invaded Ukraine, so chalk that up as another data point that this war between the West and Russia was planned well in advance of the actual start date back in late February.
The point is that the talking point going around the press today is that Russia does not have the storage capacity to deal with a European embargo and as such will have to cut production. Estimates of production cuts from Russia are around 1.8 million barrels per day, while the West is hoping for 3 million.
Similar to what Trump did in 2018 against Iran, the shock-and-awe campaign of sanctions froze many oil trading firms in their tracks, not knowing what the future would hold, and refused to do business with Russia for fear of running afoul of sanctions.
From Shell to Glencore to Trafigura, Russian oil tenders have become persona non grata and it created a complete mess of their trading books and the commodities-trading industry as a whole, as Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Pozsar’s note from last month described.
Because of this financial dislocation in what should be a boring, brain-dead stable industry—trading the most important commodity in the world with the biggest infrastructure to service it—chaos ensued.
The collective West, following Davos’s game plan, is hoping for even more.
Pozsar’s conclusion was that all these firms will either need a bailout at some point (with possible nationalization the price they pay) or be allowed to go bankrupt to serve the plan of radically overhauling the global energy economy away from petroleum of Davos.
At the same time, they would put a major dent in Russia’s economic prospects. Viewed that way, this is a kind of Evil Mastermind Two-fer.
But, if backing up the pipeline oil is not that big a hit to Russia’s production, what is the EU trying to accomplish here?
By disrupting the routes oil normally takes around the world, there is now a structural shortage of tankers to move oil demanded. Since many of those barrels, more than 2 million per day, now must go on much longer voyages.
Instead of the coffee and cake run from St. Petersburg to Rotterdam, those same ships now, at a minimum, must go to storage facilities in the Bahamas and the Caribbean, if not all the way to China or India, their final destination.
Read Pozsar’s post, or the ZeroHedge article linked above, to get a sense of the scale of the disruption.
This supply shock within the tanker market and the downstream effects of the added costs to the voyages, it is hoped, will create a cascading back-up within the Russian oil industry, forcing the forecasted production hits.
This will, in turn, eat into its positive trade balance which is “fueling Putin’s war machine.” It will also present the opportunity for Russia’s competitors to come in and steal market share from them.
Through this mechanism and efforts in the West to change Europe’s energy usage, the long-term effect is to destroy Russia’s ability to continue the war by starving it of needed capital.
Davos Rhymes with Thanos
The U.S. is happy to push Europe to this point and many commentators are happy to end the conversation there: Pick your epithet, but the line is the “Empire of Lies” or “Zone A” or whomever, feels their hegemony is threatened and they are bullying everyone, especially Europe, into their preferred strategy.
But I think that story is more of the “Made for TV” version than it is an accurate representation of reality.
It leaves out the larger goal structure of the people behind this mess in the first place. Rather than be captives of a hyper-belligerent U.S., the EU nations are absolutely willing partners in this.
Davos’s Great Reset strategy is built on the same mistakes about resource scarcity that Thomas Malthus made back in the early 19th century. Theirs is an economic model which does not believe people respond in real time to incentives, pro and con, which moderate their behavior. Rather, they see humans as a virus unleashed upon the world that needs to be controlled.
The entire Great Reset can be boiled down to the same argument the villain in the Marvel films, Thanos, made about having to kill off half the life in the Universe to make things “sustainable.”
And the power center of this type of thinking is not in the U.S. and the U.S. Empire. We are the hyper-capitalists growing the virus in our Petri dish of individualism.
No, this thinking comes squarely out of European critiques of capitalism. To be reductionist it is just Marxism warmed over and given a fresh gloss of rhetorical paint—sustainability, stakeholder capitalism, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), shared purpose, etc.
The proof that the EU is just as happy with war in Ukraine as neoconservative forces in the U.S. and UK is evident in their unwillingness to end the war through diplomacy.
But Europeans are the ones who will suffer the most from this strategy.
Bad Scripts Beget Bad Policy
If EU leadership, owned by Davos, were acting on average Europeans’ behalf, they would be using the obvious costs of cutting Europe off from Russian energy to tell the US and U.K. to go scratch.
It does not matter that this is not good for German industry or the German people in the long run. Russian energy is by far the cheapest solution for them, making their labor the most competitive it can be.
Instead, after helping manufacture the crisis in Ukraine, they now uphold the notion that it is a moral imperative for Germans to suffer without food, heat and other basic necessities of a supposed advanced first-world society to defeat the evil Russians.
In the years leading up to this conflict they would have worked to implement the Minsk Accords. They would have lifted the economic sanctions on Russia and come to an agreement about Crimea and the Donbas politically, and let the U.S. and the UK twist in the wind.
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron did the opposite. They blew smoke up Putin’s ass while running the clock out until Macron was re-elected and Merkel could exit the scene, leaving a weak Davos-approved coalition to blame the collapse on.
Deepened trade between Russia and the EU would have eventually ground out the animosity and the U.S.’s insistence on arming Ukraine would have become an albatross politically while Europe would be staring at a potential renaissance, instead of an economic black hole.
France and Germany would not have betrayed their own attempts at diplomacy.
This, I believe, is much closer to the real story of the conflict, which serves a far larger purpose clearly stated by the architects of our misery than the simplistic framework of just blaming the U.S. for everything.
The idea that Europe fears a Russian invasion of Poland or even Germany, which necessitates NATO’s expansion to its border in the Donbas, is ludicrous. Russia’s military is not built along these lines nor is its performance in Ukraine evidence it is capable of such an operation.
What is unfolding now is a script that was written a long time ago. The war by the West against Russia has long been in the planning stages.
The Russians understand this better than many are willing to accept. Their leadership, Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, have articulated this very clearly at every stage of the war to date.
They are under no illusions about where the West and Davos are willing to take this conflict, which is why they have made serious threats about striking out at the real “decision centers” who give the Ukrainian Armed Forces their marching orders.
These are warnings not to our politicians, but to us. This is where things lead.
They have asked for a parting of the ways, peaceably, between East and West, but that is not part of the agenda. Like classic narcissists with the burning need to control everything, Russia and the rest of Asia will not be allowed to walk away from Davos and their Eurocrat quislings, because they are the righteous saviors of humanity.
And we are just, at best, “the help” and at worst an inconvenience.
The bigger Davos plan of destroying the old global order to Build it Back Better, where they own everything and you will own nothing and like it or else, is the script.
They are now committed to this plan. It does not matter now whether it will work or not. This is what we have to realize in all of our analyses. Do the Russians and their friends in Asia and across the Global South have the means and the tools to come out on top? Possibly.
But the bigger question is whether or not this conflict escalates to the point where winning is an irrelevant concept. When you see a bloc as powerful as the European Union willing to commit acts of domestic vandalism this big—and blaming the victim of their unbridled aggression—it tells you we are far past the point of rational settlement.
Sputnik (formerly the Voice of Russia and RIA Novosti, naming derived from Russian Спутник) is a Russian state-owned news agency, news website platform and radio broadcast service. It was established by the Russian government-owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya on 10 November 2014. With headquarters in Moscow, Sputnik claims to have regional editorial offices in Washington, D.C., Cairo, Beijing, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Montevideo and Rio de Janeiro. Sputnik describes itself as being focused on global politics and economics and aims for an international audience.
Put another way – “Voice of America”, Russian edition
Caveat emptor.
Dem Party Leaders, Pfizer, Moderna Involved in US Biological Activities in Ukraine: Russian MoD
The Russian military began reporting on the extent of US military biological activities in Ukraine in March, citing seized documents and other materials on the study of a range of potentially deadly bioweapon agents, including diseases which can be spread naturally using local geography, flora and fauna, and target certain ethnic groups.
Senior Democratic Party politicians are the chief “ideologists” of America’s illegal operations in biolabs operating throughout Ukraine, and have involved major multinational biotech companies in their activities, Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Radiation, Chemical, and Biological Defence Troops, has indicated.
Speaking at a briefing in Moscow on Wednesday and citing an MoD analysis of documentary evidence, the RCB Troops chief said the profits US politicians earn for the private biotech sector helps to pay for their re-election via campaign donations.
According to Kirillov, the US executive branch has also worked to create a “legislative framework to finance military biological research directly from the federal budget”, and with funds of non-government organisations underwritten by the state and controlled by the leadership of the Democratic Party, including charitable foundations affiliated with the Clinton family, the Rockerfellers, George Soros, and Hunter Biden.
Major global pharmaceutical companies have become involved in these shady “public-private” partnership schemes, including Pfizer, Moderna, Merck, and Pentagon-affiliated biotech firm Gilead, Kirillov said.
“US specialists are working [in Ukraine] on the testing of new medicines, bypassing international safety standards. As a result, Western companies seriously reduce the costs of research programmes and gain significant competitive advantages”, the officer said.
Slide from Russian MoD presentation showing scheme of US biological activities in Ukraine. Center rectangle shows senior Democratic Party officials, listed as “ideologists” central to the programmes. Top left square shows “Organizers,” including various US agencies and government departments. Bottom left square shows “Sponsors”, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Clinton Foundation, Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and his investment fund, CRDF Global, the Rockerfeller Foundation, Ecohealth Alliance and Pilot Growth. Bottom right square shows Ukraine-based agencies and institutions, including the US Embassy and Pentagon contractors Black&Veatch, Metabiota, Skymount Medical and others. Top right square shows “Pharmaceutical Companies” that carry out research in Ukraine, including Pfizer, Battelle, Gilead, Dynport Vaccine, AbbVie, Parexel, Eli Lilly & Co., Merc and Moderna.
Ukrainian state structures are also involved in the US-funded and organised military biological activities in their country, Kirillov said, with Kiev’s main job being “to conceal illegal activities, conduct field and clinical trials and provide the necessary biomaterial”.
In 2020, Kirillov said, an attempt was made to infect the residents of the settlement of Stepovoye in the Lugansk People’s Republic with a multi-drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis using counterfeit banknotes contaminated with the disease’s causative agent and spread among local youth.
Excerpt From Lugansk People’s Republic Ministry of Health report on the discovery of tuberculosis-spreading pathogenic organisms discovered by the republic’s health services.
Additionally, the RCB Troops chief said that his agency has received information detailing the Pentagon’s experiments on Ukrainian nationals at Psychiatric Hospital No. 1 in the village of Strelechie, Kharkov region, with the research targeting male patients aged 40-60 with a high stage of physical exhaustion, and overseen by a US national.
The Russian military operation in Ukraine has stopped the spread of US military activities in Ukraine, and halted these “criminal experiments” on its civilian population, Kirillov stressed.
In the case of the research taking place at the Kharkov mental hospital, Western specialists were evacuated in January 2022, and the equipment and pharmaceutical preparations involved relocated to western Ukraine, he said.
Polish specialists have also been working with Ukraine’s biolabs, Kirillov said, citing documents detailing the work of the Polish Institute of Veterinary Medicine and the US’ Battelle Memorial Institute – a Pentagon contractor – on research assessing epidemiological threats and the spread of the rabies virus in Ukraine.
“In addition, documentary evidence has been obtained about Poland’s funding of Lvov Medical University, which includes a participant in US military biological projects – the Institute of Epidemiology and Hygiene. Since 2002, this organisation has been implementing a retraining programme for specialists with experience working with dual-use materials and technologies”, the officer said.
Excerpt from document detailing cooperation between the Polish Institute of Veterinary Medicine, The Battelle Memorial Institute and their Ukrainian counterparts in the study of rabies.
The German military has also been involved in research in Ukraine, Kirillov said, citing documents indicating that the Bundeswehr’s Institute of Microbiology had taken some 3,500 blood serum samples from 25 Ukrainian regions back to Germany between 2016 and 2019. The officer said the Institute’s as yet unidentified interest in these biomaterials “raises questions about the goals [being] pursued” by the German Armed Forces.
Excerpt from Ukrainian language document on cooperation between the Virological Reference Laboratory of the Public Health Center of the Ukrainian Ministry of Health and Germany’s Bernhard Nocht Institute for Tropical Medicine.
The complete, Ukrainian-language document can be found in RTF format here.
According to the MoD’s information, along with the Munich-based Institute of Microbiology, the Berlin-based Robert Koch Institute, the Loffler Institute in Greifswald, and the Nocht Institute of Tropical Medicine in Hamburg are also participating in biological research activities in Ukraine.
Screenshot of German military biological defence programme slide show presentation listing Ukraine as “partner nation.”
An RCB Troops investigation of samples from a veterinary laboratory in Mariupol has concluded that it also may have been involved in the broader US-led biological research activities, Kirillov said, pointing to the presence of pathogens uncharacteristic of veterinary diseases, such as typhoid fever, paratyphoid fever, and gas gangrene at the lab. Part of the lab’s collection of samples was destroyed on 25 February, but due to the rush, some of it has been preserved intact, and is now being analysed by Russia.
“To ensure safety and safe storage, Russian specialists exported 124 strains and have organised their study”, Kirillov said.
Excerpt From Ukrainian Ministry of Health document listing samples of microorganisms held at the Donetsk Regional Center for Disease Control and Prevention of the Ukrainian Ministry of Health in Mariupol.
The complete batch of documents can be found here.
The officer also revealed that Russian specialists have carried out work “directly in two biological laboratories in Mariupol”, and that “evidence has been obtained of the emergency destruction of documents confirming their work with the US military. A preliminary analysis of the surviving documentation indicates that Mariupol was used as a regional centre for the collection and certification of the cholera pathogen”, with the samples sent to the Centre for Public Health in Kiev, which transferred the materials on to the United States.
Kirillov stressed that the information that continues to be gathered and analysed by the Russian MoD casts doubt on assurances by US specialists that Ukraine does not have the capability to develop and produce bioweapons, and that the US itself has not “found” any evidence of biological weapons in Ukraine.
WMD Provocations Possible
The RCB Troops chief also indicated that Moscow has intelligence related to the preparation of possible provocations involving weapons of mass destruction in Ukraine to accuse the Russian military of using such arms along a “Syrian-style” scenario, in which the necessary evidence is fabricated and the “perpetrators” are appointed ahead of time.
Excerpt from March 2022 letter by Ukrainian EU Mission Head Vsevolod Chentsov requesting special protective equipment to protect against “Russian military forces” using “unconventional weapons against Ukrainian citizens.”
One piece of evidence suggesting the high likelihood of such provocations taking place is Kiev’s request in a letter to European Union officials for personal protective equipment that provides protection against toxic chemicals and biological agents, Kirillov said.
The supply of organophosphate toxicity medications to Ukraine is also a concern for the Russian military, the officer noted, pointing out that in the first months of 2022, over 220,000 ampoules of atropine, as well as medicines for treatment and disinfection following a chemical attack, have been delivered to Ukraine by the United States.
Letter from Mayor of Kiev Vitaliy Klitschko to “International Charity Organizations” dated 20 March 2022 requesting a range of equipment to protect against WMD attack.
Additionally, Kirillov said, 10 more drones equipped with 30-litre containers and spraying equipment were found in the town of Kakhovka, Kherson region in late April, on top of three others with similar equipment found in the Kherson region in March.
Kirillov’s RCB Troops have spent over two months investigating and reporting on the US-sponsored military biological activities taking place at 30 separate facilities across Ukraine going back to at least 2005.
Western officials and media have largely dismissed the information provided as a “conspiracy theory”, notwithstanding Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s admission at a Senate hearing in March that “biological research facilities” do in fact exist in the Eastern European country and that the US was “working with” the Ukrainians to ensure that these materials “do not fall into the hands of Russian forces”. Investigations by the few Western outlets that have conducted their own research have confirmed individual details of the Russian MoD’s allegations – such as Hunter Biden’s role in securing millions of dollars in funding for a US contractor working in Ukraine.
Growing up in a working class part of New York, a young physicist like me will quickly find his way to Nobel Laureate Richard Feynmann. He was one of our role models.
One of the greats – and yet, he kept his accent. Proudly. Didn’t try to acquire Brahmin affectations.
Wolfgang Paul and Hans Bethe commented he spoke like a “bum.”
Feynman was heavily influenced by his father, who encouraged him to ask questions to challenge orthodox thinking, and who was always ready to teach Feynman something new.
One of the many great quotes from Feynman:
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.”
Keep Feynman’s advice in mind and let’s look at Ukraine.
Our elites tell us Putin is a modern-day Hitler — and he must be stopped before his divisions march across Europe just as we replay the Munich double-cross over and over and over again.
Or, Putin’s a madman attempting to resurrect the late Soviet Union.
And given the US endless psyops campaign, our elites can’t avoid hitting their own product and believing it.
They declare the Russian invasion a failure because Russian forces did not try to seize what NATO generals would try to seize.
Instead, Russia artillery and air strikes continue to pulverize AFU units in the east while destroying supply chains and NATO weapons as soon as US weapons cross the border.
No surprise Ukraine goes through a week’s supplies in a day. What’s not bombed is stolen and disappears into the black market – this is Ukraine, a kleptocracy run by oligarchs who own the president (Zelensky and Biden). They pay Biden’s crack-addicted son, and Biden gives them $40 billion.
Nice work if you can get it.
Every night, our talking head retired military officers appear on CNN, MSNBC, and the major networks to pronouce Russia has been defeated.
Consider the map I posted above. It’s a 1918 map of Taurida Governate.
Take a close look at it — note the borders.
Then, consider a map of the current battle lines.
You can see Crimea below the occupied territory of what was once Taurida Governate. Note the border with Donetsk.
Russia’s 49th Combined Arms Army out of Crimea has gone up to the historic border of Taurida … and then just stopped.
What’s Taurida?
Taurida was a historical governorate of the Russian Empire. It included the Crimean Peninsula and the mainland between the lower Dnieper River and the coasts of the Black Sea and Sea of Azov.
In 1783 (4 years before the US Constitution created the United States), the Khanate of Crimea was annexed by Catherine the Great’s Russia. Soon after this the Taurida Oblast (Taurida Province was established. During the reign of Paul I the oblast was abolished, but soon (in 1802) re-established as a governorate (guberniya). It was a part of the Russian Empire until the Russian Revolution of 1918.
Then it became part of the Soviet Empire.
Crimea and Taurida’s connection with Russis is older than the United States.
The governorate’s centre was the city of Simferopol. The province was named after the ancient Greek name of Crimea – Taurida.
During the Second World War the Crimean peninsula was invaded by Nazi Germany and Romanian troops in summer 1941 across the Isthmus of Perekop. Following the capture of Sevastopol on July 4, 1942, Crimea was occupied until German and Romanian forces were expelled in an offensive by Soviet forces ending in May 1944. The Nazis murdered around 40,000 Crimean Jews.
On June 25, 1946, Taurida was downgraded to the Crimean Oblast, and the Crimean Tatars were deported for alleged collaboration with the Nazi forces. A total of more than 230,000 people – about a fifth of the total population of the Crimean Peninsula at that time – were deported, mainly to Uzbekistan. 14,300 Greeks, 12,075 Bulgarians, and about 10,000 Armenians were also expelled.
On February 19, 1954, the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR issued a decree on the transfer of the Crimean region of the RSFSR to the Ukrainian SSR. This Supreme Soviet Decree states that this transfer was motivated by “the commonality of the economy, the proximity, and close economic and cultural relations between the Crimean region and the Ukrainian SSR”.
At that time no vote or referendum took place, and Crimean population had no say in the transfer (also typical of other Soviet border changes).
And so, because the Soviets decided in 1954 to make Crimea a part of Ukraine, Crimea and Taurida were considered part of Ukraine when the Soviet Union ended some 50 years later.
After the US-backed Maidan Coup in 2014, Russia invaded Crimea and organized a referendum. The results favored rejoining Russia. Probably honestly won. Maybe not.
Anyway, here we are today with the balance of Taurida now in Russian hands.
In this “special military operation”, Russia forces in Crimea quickly pushed back AFU forces in Taurida, … and then just stopped.
In the news today, Russia is reestablishing municipal governments throughout Taurida, including replacing Ukrainian automobile license plates with Russian license plates.
While the war continues in the east where Russian forces are driving final blows on AFU forces in Donetsk, life seems to be returning to normal in Taurida.
A Russian normal.
While DC Elites believe the rapidly degrading AFU halted the Russians on the traditional border of Taurida, on that Kherson front, it appears it appears Russia simply stopped.
Feyman’s advice was spot on. Easy to assume your enemy thinks as you assume he thinks.
The first principle of war is to be honest with yourself – to know you enemy – to not make the easy assumptions because that’s what you would do.
Russia does not think like America.
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself – and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.”
Tuberville made the comments during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing with Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines and the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lt. Gen. Scott Berrier.
Tuberville told Haines and Berrier the US is risking escalating the war by bragging about intelligence sharing with Ukraine. In recent weeks, US officials claimed to the media that US intelligence has helped Ukrainian forces shoot down a plane carrying Russian troops, kill Russian generals, and sink a Russian warship.
“You know, we’re kind of poking the bear here … We’re bragging about it. Even President Biden said today, ‘Wait a minute. We got to cut back on this,’” Tuberville said. Biden reportedly told senior US officials that the leaks to the media on intelligence-sharing must stop.
Tuberville warned the US is also risking provoking Moscow by sending high-level officials to Kyiv. “We do not want to take that step forward to where we get a lot of our men and women involved in this. It looks like to me that we’re taking way too many chances of sending people over there for a photo op,” he said.
The senator said he favored supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia but warned there was no turning back if things escalated into a direct conflict between Washington and Moscow. “There’s a point of no return here if we cross that line,” he said.
While the US has sent billions in arms to Ukraine, restarted training Ukrainian troops, and expanded intelligence sharing, US officials still deny the idea that Washington is engaged in a proxy war against Moscow. When pressed by Tuberville, Haines said that Russia believes it’s fighting a war against both Ukraine and the West.
“Russia has historically believed that they are in a conflict, in effect, with NATO and the United States on a variety of issues,” Haines said. When asked directly if Russia believes it’s fighting the US, Haines said, “In a sense, their perception.”
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Fellow Russian citizens,
Dear veterans,
Comrade soldiers and seamen, sergeants and sergeant majors, midshipmen and warrant officers,
Comrade officers, generals and admirals,
I congratulate you on the Day of Great Victory!
The defence of our Motherland when its destiny was at stake has always been sacred. It was the feeling of true patriotism that Minin and Pozharsky’s militia stood up for the Fatherland, soldiers went on the offensive at the Borodino Field and fought the enemy outside Moscow and Leningrad, Kiev and Minsk, Stalingrad and Kursk, Sevastopol and Kharkov.
Today, as in the past, you are fighting for our people in Donbass, for the security of our Motherland, for Russia.
May 9, 1945 has been enshrined in world history forever as a triumph of the united Soviet people, its cohesion and spiritual power, an unparalleled feat on the front lines and on the home front.
Victory Day is intimately dear to all of us. There is no family in Russia that was not burnt by the Great Patriotic War. Its memory never fades. On this day, children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the heroes march in an endless flow of the Immortal Regiment. They carry photos of their family members, the fallen soldiers who remained young forever, and the veterans who are already gone.
We take pride in the unconquered courageous generation of the victors, we are proud of being their successors, and it is our duty to preserve the memory of those who defeated Nazism and entrusted us with being vigilant and doing everything to thwart the horror of another global war.
Therefore, despite all controversies in international relations, Russia has always advocated the establishment of an equal and indivisible security system which is critically needed for the entire international community.
Last December we proposed signing a treaty on security guarantees. Russia urged the West to hold an honest dialogue in search for meaningful and compromising solutions, and to take account of each other’s interests. All in vain. NATO countries did not want to heed us, which means they had totally different plans. And we saw it.
Another punitive operation in Donbass, an invasion of our historic lands, including Crimea, was openly in the making. Kiev declared that it could attain nuclear weapons. The NATO bloc launched an active military build-up on the territories adjacent to us.
Thus, an absolutely unacceptable threat to us was steadily being created right on our borders. There was every indication that a clash with neo-Nazis and Banderites backed by the United States and their minions was unavoidable.
Let me repeat, we saw the military infrastructure being built up, hundreds of foreign advisors starting work, and regular supplies of cutting-edge weaponry being delivered from NATO countries. The threat grew every day.
Russia launched a pre-emptive strike at the aggression. It was a forced, timely and the only correct decision. A decision by a sovereign, strong and independent country.
The United States began claiming their exceptionalism, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, thus denigrating not just the entire world but also their satellites, who have to pretend not to see anything, and to obediently put up with it.
But we are a different country. Russia has a different character. We will never give up our love for our Motherland, our faith and traditional values, our ancestors’ customs and respect for all peoples and cultures.
Meanwhile, the West seems to be set to cancel these millennia-old values. Such moral degradation underlies the cynical falsifications of World War II history, escalating Russophobia, praising traitors, mocking their victims’ memory and crossing out the courage of those who won the Victory through suffering.
We are aware that US veterans who wanted to come to the parade in Moscow were actually forbidden to do so. But I want them to know: We are proud of your deeds and your contribution to our common Victory.
We honour all soldiers of the allied armies – the Americans, the English, the French, Resistance fighters, brave soldiers and partisans in China – all those who defeated Nazism and militarism.
Comrades,
Donbass militia alongside with the Russian Army are fighting on their land today, where princes Svyatoslav and Vladimir Monomakh’s retainers, solders under the command of Rumyantsev and Potemkin, Suvorov and Brusilov crushed their enemies, where Great Patriotic War heroes Nikolai Vatutin, Sidor Kovpak and Lyudmila Pavlichenko stood to the end.
I am addressing our Armed Forces and Donbass militia. You are fighting for our Motherland, its future, so that nobody forgets the lessons of World War II, so that there is no place in the world for torturers, death squads and Nazis.
Today, we bow our heads to the sacred memory of all those who lost their lives in the Great Patriotic War, the memories of the sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, grandfathers, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends.
We bow our heads to the memory of the Odessa martyrs who were burned alive in the House of Trade Unions in May 2014, to the memory of the old people, women and children of Donbass who were killed in atrocious and barbaric shelling by neo-Nazis. We bow our heads to our fighting comrades who died a brave death in the righteous battle – for Russia.
I declare a minute of silence.
(A minute of silence.)
The loss of each officer and soldier is painful for all of us and an irretrievable loss for the families and friends. The government, regional authorities, enterprises and public organisations will do everything to wrap such families in care and help them. Special support will be given to the children of the killed and wounded comrades-in-arms. The Presidential Executive Order to this effect was signed today.
I wish a speedy recovery to the wounded soldiers and officers, and I thank doctors, paramedics, nurses and staff of military hospitals for their selfless work. Our deepest gratitude goes to you for saving each life, oftentimes sparing no thought for yourselves under shelling on the frontlines.
Comrades,
Soldiers and officers from many regions of our enormous Motherland, including those who arrived straight from Donbass, from the combat area, are standing now shoulder-to-shoulder here, on Red Square.
We remember how Russia’s enemies tried to use international terrorist gangs against us, how they tried to seed inter-ethnic and religious strife so as to weaken us from within and divide us. They failed completely.
Today, our warriors of different ethnicities are fighting together, shielding each other from bullets and shrapnel like brothers.
This is where the power of Russia lies, a great invincible power of our united multi-ethnic nation.
You are defending today what your fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought for. The wellbeing and security of their Motherland was their top priority in life. Loyalty to our Fatherland is the main value and a reliable foundation of Russia’s independence for us, their successors, too.
Those who crushed Nazism during the Great Patriotic War showed us an example of heroism for all ages. This is the generation of victors, and we will always look up to them.
Econophysics2020 
