https://www.buzzsprout.com/1876958/10188174-the-politics-of-war-with-natylie-baldwin

Note: I’ll try to remember in the future not to say “you know” so much. 🙂 Also, to clarify what I was trying to say toward the end about the Donbas republics – they initially wanted autonomy but eventually wanted secession due to the war on them by the Kiev government. – Natylie

Censorship Update

That didn’t take long:  In my post from 2 day ago, I speculated that Russia might, in retaliation for the west’s banning of RT/Sputnik, ban RFE/RL.  The next day Russia’s General Prosecutor announced that RFE/RL was now restricted in the country.

Facebook and Twitter have now both also been restricted.  Furthermore, a law for criminal liability against those “knowingly” spreading misinformation about Russia’s armed forces or military action has been signed by Putin.  A writer for the Moscow Times and Meduza, Alexey Kovalyov, has reported on his Twitter account that he was forced to flee Russia in the dead of night due to: 

 “[R]umors of impending martial law, also state propaganda calling us traitors and the parliament spending about 15 minutes deliberating a new law which effectively criminalizes my work”.

Unfortunately, some aspects of democracy that Russia did have are now apparently being systematically dismantled.  I doubt these will be reversed any time soon, if at all.

Meanwhile, in the Home of the Free and Land of the Brave, the Censorship/Cancel Brigade is now coming for John Mearsheimer.  A letter has been sent by students and faculty to the University of Chicago, where Mearsheimer is a professor, expressing concern for Mearsheimer’s comments on the Russia-Ukraine war and what led up to it as representing “Putinism.”

Update on the Conflict

Reportedly the third round of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine could be held as early as Monday.  Meanwhile, Russia’s circling of its forces around major cities in Ukraine continues. I’m thinking that if the third round of talks doesn’t go the way Russia wants, then it’s going to get very ugly on the ground.

According to Clint Ehrlich’s SITREP for Day 10:

Many analysts are predicting an imminent defeat of the Russian military.

In reality, Russia is on the verge of annihilating the bulk of the Ukrainian army.

The people denying this are gaslighting you.

No, I’m not exaggerating.

This viral thread from a prominent “expert” claims the Russian military is days away from collapsing and suffering the worst defeat in history.

Another, even more popular thread predicts the course of the war from looking at tires.

It’s time for a reality check.

Everyone RTing these threads needs to look at an updated map of the conflict.

What they’ll find is that the bulk of the Ukrainian military has been *encircled* in the East of the country.

That isn’t a fluke. It isn’t an accident.

It’s Russia executing textbook Soviet military doctrine.

Specifically, the doctrine of the “cauldron” – in Russian, «котёл» – the strategic-level encirclement of enemy forces, which are then annihilated.

I previously pointed out that Russia was attempting to encircle the bulk of the Ukrainian military.

But I predicted the UA forces would try to “punch out” to escape.

I argued that effort would fail, since larger cauldrons could be created. It claims that maintenance problems observed on a few vehicles show that Russian forces are doomed.

Yet the Russians didn’t even have to resort to that.

In the open, the Ukrainians are so vulnerable to attack by Russian helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft that they chose to remain in their fortified positions within cities around Kramatorsk.

They didn’t even try to escape.

As a result, the cauldron is now in place. Encirclement is complete.

Russia is creating humanitarian corridors to clear civilians from the area.

It will soon have a free hand to use heavy weapons against the trapped UA defenders.

Specifically, Russian conventional and rocket artillery will inflict massive losses.

They will be augmented with heavy bombing.

The Ukrainians will attempt to hide in requisitioned civilian buildings – and those buildings will be utterly destroyed.

Whatever the casualty ratio is now in the conflict, it’s about to swing far into Russia’s favor.

The bombardment that we will see plays to the strengths of the RU forces.

It will allow them to remain at standoff distances and inflict devastating losses via superior firepower.

So let’s return to the narratives we were debunking.

If Russia’s maintenance is so bad that its vehicles cannot even operate in Ukrainian mud, how did Russia outmaneuver such a huge chunk of the Ukrainian military?

It would be impossible.

To believe that Russia is on the verge of defeat, you have to engage in “bottom up” analysis of the war.

That is, looking at some photos and videos and trying to construct grand narratives.

I prefer a “top down” approach.

That is, I look at maps and objectives.

I infer the side that is winning the war from who is achieving their goals + executing their grand strategy.

The advantage of this approach is objectivity: it’s harder to be misled by out-of-context/non-representative details.

Using my approach, the biggest question mark is why the Russians have not made more progress towards Kiev.

It’s not entirely clear; fierce Ukrainian resistance from their special forces certainly has something to do with it.

But there are other potential explanations.

The most plausible is that Russia wants to maximize the ratio of attackers to defenders when it takes Kiev.

In order to do that, it will need to complete the defeat of the Ukrainian forces in the East, so that its full array of Battalion Tactical Groups is available.

Specifically, Russian forces advancing North towards Kiev may delay their approach until they are joined by the BTGs currently in the South and East of the country.

A “triple pincer” formation would then advance on the Ukrainian capital, with a massive numerical advantage.

The alternative explanations –

that the pluckiness of the Ukrainian defenders has taken Russia by surprise,

that Russia’s logistics are so broken it can’t even operate –

fail to account for Russia’s success in the East of the country.

In medical terms, what I’m making is a *differential diagnosis.*

Yes, Russia’s failure to advance on Kiev could mean its forces are simply overmatched.

But when combined with the other evidence, that isn’t the most likely hypothesis. So don’t get your hopes up.

Russian President Putin commented on Ukraine’s attempts to get the west to institute a no-fly zone over Ukraine:

“We’re hearing now that there is a need to declare a no-fly zone over Ukrainian territory. This can’t be done over Ukrainian territory itself; it can be done only from the territories of some neighboring states. But we’ll view any movement in this direction as involvement in an armed conflict by the country from whose territory threats to our military service members are posed,” Putin said at a meeting with female employees of Russian airlines on Saturday.

“We’ll instantly view them as participants in a military conflict, and then we won’t care what kind of members they are. Excuse me, I mean members of what organizations,” he added.

Putin said he hoped “this is understood and things won’t go as far as that.”

There are reports that the Ukrainian SBU has killed a member of the country’s delegation to last week’s negotiations with Russia.  However, the circumstances of his death are disputed.  According to the Times of Israel:

First, widespread reports in local media and social media throughout the day claimed Denis Kireev, who had been photographed taking part in negotiations in Belarus in recent days, had been killed by Ukrainian security forces during an attempt to arrest him.

Kireev, the reports asserted, had been suspected of treason.

A subsequent Facebook post by Ukraine’s defense ministry confirmed Kireev’s death, but asserted that he was an intelligence operative for Ukraine who died in the line of duty.

RT’s report states that the original announcement of Kireev’s death claimed it happened during an attempt to arrest him, and suggests that Kireev’s supposed ties to Russian intelligence – alleged last month – could have been a part of a political smear campaign:

The first claim about the death of Denis Kireev came from Aleksandr Dubinsky, a controversial MP and journalist. In a post on social media, he claimed Kireev had been killed by agents of the SBU, the Ukrainian security service, during an attempt to arrest him…

… Kireev, who had a background in banking, was photographed sitting at the far right of the negotiating table alongside other Ukrainian officials during the first round of peace talks with Russia on Monday. For some reason, the official list of six representatives that Kiev released to the media did not include his name, so his status during the talks remains unclear.

Last month, Ukrainian TV’s Channel 5 claimed Kireev had been investigated by the SBU for purported connections with Russian intelligence services since at least 2020. It alleged the investigation had been called off because he had personal connections in the agency.

It remains unclear if the report about Kireev aired on the channel, which is owned by former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, was part of a negative publicity campaign conducted against him, however.

Washington Tries to Mend Ties with Venezuela for Oil

Apparently in their consideration of sanctioning Russia’s oil sector, Washington sent a personal high-level delegation to Venezuela to try mend ties with the Maduro government.  According to the New York Times:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted the United States to pay closer attention to President Vladimir V. Putin’s allies in Latin America, which Washington believes could become security threats if the standoff with Russia deepens, according to current and former U.S. officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive policy matters.

As Russia’s economy craters, the U.S. is seizing on an opportunity to advance its agenda among Latin American autocracies that might start seeing Mr. Putin as an increasingly weak ally.

When the U.S. and its allies began considering sanctions on Russian oil and gas exports this month to punish the country for devastation wrought in Ukraine, prominent voices affiliated with both major American political parties pointed to Venezuela as a potential substitute.

We’ll see how that goes.

By Alex Rubinstein & Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone, 3/4/22 (Documentary images available at The Grayzone)

While Western media deploys Volodymyr Zelensky’s Jewish heritage to refute accusations of Nazi influence in Ukraine, the president has ceded to neo-Nazi forces and now depends on them as front line fighters.

Back in October 2019, as the war in eastern Ukraine dragged on, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky traveled to Zolote, a town situated firmly in the “gray zone” of Donbas, where over 14,000 had been killed, mostly on the pro-Russian side. There, the president encountered the hardened veterans of extreme right paramilitary units keeping up the fight against separatists just a few miles away.

Elected on a platform of de-escalation of hostilities with Russia, Zelensky was determined to enforce the so-called Steinmeier Formula conceived by then-German Foreign Minister Walter Steinmeier which called for elections in the Russian-speaking regions of Donetsk and Lugansk.

In a face-to-face confrontation with militants from the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion who had launched a campaign to sabotage the peace initiative called “No to Capitulation,” Zelensky encountered a wall of obstinacy. 

With appeals for disengagement from the frontlines firmly rejected, Zelensky melted down on camera. “I’m the president of this country. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a loser. I came to you and told you: remove the weapons,” Zelensky implored the fighters.

Once video of the stormy confrontation spread across Ukrainian social media channels, Zelensky became the target of an angry backlash.

Andriy Biletsky, the proudly fascist Azov Battalion leader who once pledged to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen”, vowed to bring thousands of fighters to Zolote if Zelensky pressed any further. Meanwhile, a parliamentarian from the party of former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko openly fantasized about Zelensky being blown to bits by a militant’s grenade.

Though Zelensky achieved a minor disengagement, the neo-Nazi paramilitaries escalated their “No Capitulation” campaign. And within months, fighting began to heat up again in Zolote, sparking a new cycle of violations of the Minsk Agreement.

By this point, Azov had been formally incorporated into the Ukrainian military and its street vigilante wing, known as the National Corps, was deployed across the country under the watch of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, and alongside the National Police. In December 2021, Zelensky would be seen delivering a “Hero of Ukraine” award to a leader of the fascistic Right Sector in a ceremony in Ukraine’s parliament.

A full-scale conflict with Russia was approaching, and the distance between Zelensky and the extremist paramilitaries was closing fast.

This February 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukrainian territory on a stated mission to “demilitarize and denazify” the country, US media embarked on a mission of its own: to deny the power of neo-Nazi paramilitaries over the country’s military and political sphere. As the US government-funded National Public Radio insisted, “Putin’s language [about denazification] is offensive and factually wrong.”

In its bid to deflect from the influence of Nazism in contemporary Ukraine, US media has found its most effective PR tool in the figure of Zelensky, a former TV star and comedian from a Jewish background. It is a role the actor-turned-politician has eagerly assumed.

But as we will see, Zelensky has not only ceded ground to the neo-Nazis in his midst, he has entrusted them with a front line role in his country’s war against pro-Russian and Russian forces.

The president’s Jewishness as Western media PR device 

Hours before President Putin’s February 24 speech declaring denazification as the goal of Russian operations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “asked how a people who lost eight million of its citizens fighting Nazis could support Nazism,” according to the BBC.

Raised in a non-religious Jewish family in the Soviet Union during the 1980’s, Zelensky has downplayed his heritage in the past. “The fact that I am Jewish barely makes 20 in my long list of faults,” he joked during a 2019 interview in which he declined to go into further detail about his religious background.

Today, as Russian troops bear down on cities like Mariupol, which is effectively under the control of the Azov Battalion, Zelensky is no longer ashamed to broadcast his Jewishness. “How could I be a Nazi?” he wondered aloud during a public address. For a US media engaged in an all-out information war against Russia, the president’s Jewish background has become an essential public relations tool.

A few examples of the US media’s deployment of Zelensky as a shield against allegations of rampant Nazism in Ukraine are below (see mash-up above for video): 

• PBS NewsHour noted Putin’s comments on denazification with a qualifier: “even though President Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and his great uncles died in the Holocaust.”
• On Fox & Friends, former CIA officer Dan Hoffman declared that “it’s the height of hypocrisy to call the Ukrainian nation to denazify — their president is Jewish after all.”
• On MSNBC, Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner said Putin’s “terminology, outrageous and obnoxious as it is — ‘denazify’ where you’ve got frankly a Jewish president in Mr. Zelensky. This guy [Putin] is on his own kind of personal jihad to restore greater Russia.”
• Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn said on Fox Business she’s “been impressed with President Zelensky and how he has stood up. And for Putin to go out there and say ‘we’re going to denazify’ and Zelensky is Jewish.”
• In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, Gen. John Allen denounced Putin’s use of the term, “de-Nazify” while the newsman and former Israel lobbyist shook his head in disgust. In a separate interview with Blitzer, the so-called “Ukraine whistleblower” and Ukraine-born Alexander Vindman grumbled that the claim is “patently absurd, there’s really no merit… you pointed out that Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish… the Jewish community [is] embraced. It’s central to the country and there is nothing to this Nazi narrative, this fascist narrative. It’s fabricated as a pretext.”

Behind the corporate media spin lies the complex and increasingly close relationship Zelensky’s administration has enjoyed with the neo-Nazi forces invested with key military and political posts by the Ukrainian state, and the power these open fascists have enjoyed since Washington installed a Western-aligned regime through a coup in 2014. 

In fact, Zelensky’s top financial backer, the Ukrainian Jewish oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, has been a key benefactor of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and other extremists militias.

Backed by Zelensky’s top financier, neo-Nazi militants unleash a wave of intimidation

Incorporated into the Ukrainian National Guard, the Azov Battalion is considered the most ideologically zealous and militarily motivated unit fighting pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbass region. 

With Nazi-inspired Wolfsangel insignia on the uniforms of its fighters, who have been photographed with Nazi SS symbols on their helmets, Azov “is known for its association with neo-Nazi ideology…[and] is believed to have participated in training and radicalizing US-based white supremacy organizations,” according to an FBI indictment of several US white nationalists that traveled to Kiev to train with Azov. 

Igor Kolomoisky, a Ukrainian energy baron of Jewish heritage, has been a top funder of Azov since it was formed in 2014. He has also bankrolled private militias like the Dnipro and Aidar Battalions, and has deployed them as a personal thug squad to protect his financial interests.

In 2019, Kolomoisky emerged as the top backer of Zelensky’s presidential bid. Though Zelensky made anti-corruption the signature issue of his campaign, the Pandora Papers exposed him and members of his inner circle stashing large payments from Kolomoisky in a shadowy web of offshore accounts.

When Zelensky took office in May 2019, the Azov Battalion maintained de facto control of the strategic southeastern port city of Mariupol and its surrounding villages. As Open Democracy noted, “Azov has certainly established political control of the streets in Mariupol. To maintain this control, they have to react violently, even if not officially, to any public event which diverges sufficiently from their political agenda.”

Attacks by Azov in Mariupol have included assaults on “feminists and liberals” marching on International Women’s Day among other incidents.

In March 2019, members of the Azov Battalion’s National Corps attacked the home of Viktor Medvedchuk, the leading opposition figure in Ukraine, accusing him of treason for his friendly relations with Vladimir Putin, the godfather of Medvedchuk’s daughter.

Zelensky’s administration escalated the attack on Medvedchuk, shuttering several media outlets he controlled in February 2021 with the open approval of the US State Department, and jailing the opposition leader for treason three months later. Zelensky justified his actions on the grounds that he needed to “fight against the danger of Russian aggression in the information arena.”

Next, in August 2020, Azov’s National Corps opened fire on a bus containing members of Medvedchuk’s party, Patriots for Life, wounding several with rubber-coated steel bullets.

Zelensky failed to rein in neo-Nazis, wound up collaborating with them

Following his failed attempt to demobilize neo-Nazi militants in the town of Zolote in October 2019, Zelensky called the fighters to the table, telling reporters “I met with veterans yesterday. Everyone was there – the National Corps, Azov, and everyone else.”

A few seats away from the Jewish president was Yehven Karas, the leader of the neo-Nazi C14 gang.

During the Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” that ousted Ukraine’s elected president in 2014, C14 activists took over Kiev’s city hall and plastered its walls with neo-Nazi insignia before taking shelter in the Canadian embassy.

As the former youth wing of the ultra-nationalist Svoboda Party, C14 appears to draw its name from the infamous 14 words of US neo-Nazi leader David Lane: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

By offering to carry out acts of spectacular violence on behalf of anyone willing to pay, the hooligans have fostered a cozy relationship with various governing bodies and powerful elites across Ukraine.

A March 2018 report by Reuters stated that “C14 and Kiev’s city government recently signed an agreement allowing C14 to establish a ‘municipal guard’ to patrol the streets,” effectively giving them the sanction of the state to carry out pogroms.

As The Grayzone reported, C14 led raid to “purge” Romani from Kiev’s railway station in collaboration with the Kiev police.

Not only was this activity sanctioned by the Kiev city government, the US government itself saw little problem with it, hosting Bondar at an official US government institution in Kiev where he bragged about the pogroms. C14 continued to receive state funding throughout 2018 for “national-patriotic education.”

Karas has claimed that the Ukrainian Security Serves would “pass on” information regarding pro-separatist rallies “not only [to] us, but also Azov, the Right Sector and so on.”

“In general, deputies of all factions, the National Guard, the Security Service of Ukraine and the Ministry of Internal Affairs work for us. You can joke like that,” Karas said.

Throughout 2019, Zelensky and his administration deepened their ties with ultra-nationalist elements across Ukraine.

After Prime Minister attends neo-Nazi concert, Zelensky honors Right Sector leader

Just days after Zelensky’s meeting with Karas and other neo-Nazi leaders in November 2019, Oleksiy Honcharuk – then the Prime Minister and deputy head of Zelensky’s presidential office – appeared on stage at a neo-Nazi concert organized by C14 figure and accused murderer Andriy Medvedko.

Zelensky’s Minister for Veterans Affairs not only attended the concert, which featured several antisemitic metal bands, she promoted the concert on Facebook.

Also in 2019, Zelensky defended Ukrainian footballer Roman Zolzulya against Spanish fans taunting him as a “Nazi.” Zolzulya had posed beside photos of the World War II-era Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera and openly supported the Azov Battalion. Zelensky responded to the controversy by proclaiming that all of Ukraine backed Zolzulya, describing him as “not only a cool football player but a true patriot.”

In November 2021, one of Ukraine’s most prominent ultra-nationalist militiamen, Dmytro Yarosh, announced that he had been appointed as an advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Yarosh is an avowed follower of the Nazi collaborator Bandera who led Right Sector from 2013 to 2015, vowing to lead the “de-Russification” of Ukraine.

A month later, as war with Russia drew closer, Zelensky awarded Right Sector commander Dmytro Kotsyubaylo the “Hero of Ukraine” commendation. Known as “Da Vinci,” Kosyubaylo keeps a pet wolf in his frontline base, and likes to joke to visiting reporters that his fighters “feed it the bones of Russian-speaking children.”

Ukrainian state-backed neo-Nazi leader flaunts influence on the eve of war with Russia 

On February 5, 2022, only days before full-scale war with Russia erupted, Yevhen Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 delivered a stem-winding public address in Kiev intended to highlight the influence his organization and others like it enjoyed over Ukrainian politics.

“LGBT and foreign embassies say ‘there were not many Nazis at Maidan, maybe about 10 percent of real ideological ones,’” Karas remarked. “If not for those eight percent [of neo-Nazis] the effectiveness [of the Maidan coup] would have dropped by 90 percent.”

The 2014 Maidan “Revolution of Dignity” would have been a “gay parade” if not for the instrumental role of neo-Nazis, he proclaimed.

Karas went on to opine that the West armed Ukrainian ultra-nationalists because “we have fun killing.” He also fantasized about the balkanization of Russia, declaring that it should be broken up into “five different” countries.

“If we get killed…we died fighting a holy war”

When Russian forces entered Ukraine this February 24, encircling the Ukrainian military in the east and driving towards Kiev, President Zelensky announced a national mobilization that included the release of criminals from prison, among them accused murderers wanted in Russia. He also blessed the distribution of arms to average citizens, and their training by battle-hardened paramilitaries like the Azov Battalion.

With fighting underway, Azov’s National Corps gathered hundreds of ordinary civilians, including grandmothers and children, to train in public squares and warehouses from Kharviv to Kiev to Lviv.

On February 27, the official Twitter account of the National Guard of Ukraine posted video of “Azov Fighters” greasing their bullets with pig fat to humiliate Russian Muslim fighters from Chechnya.

A day later, the Azov Battalion’s National Corps announced that the Azov Battalion’s Kharkiv Regional Police would begin using the city’s Regional State Administration building as a defense headquarters. Footage posted to Telegram the following day shows the Azov-occupied building being hit by a Russian airstrike.

Besides authorizing the release of hardcore criminals to join the battle against Russia, Zelensky has ordered all males of fighting age to remain in the country. Azov militants have proceeded to enforce the policy by brutalizing civilians attempting to flee from the fighting around Mariupol.  

According to one Greek resident in Mariupol recently interviewed by a Greek news station, “When you try to leave you run the risk of running into a patrol of the Ukrainian fascists, the Azov Battalion,” he said, adding “they would kill me and are responsible for everything.”

Footage posted online appears to show uniformed members of a fascist Ukrainian militia in Mariupol violently pulling fleeing residents out of their vehicles at gunpoint.

Other video filmed at checkpoints around Mariupol showed Azov fighters shooting and killing civilians attempting to flee.

On March 1, Zelensky replaced the regional administrator of Odessa with Maksym Marchenko, a former commander of the extreme right Aidar Battalion, which has been accused of an array of war crimes in the Donbass region.

Meanwhile, as a massive convoy of Russian armored vehicles bore down on Kiev, Yehven Karas of the neo-Nazi C14 posted a video on YouTube from inside a vehicle presumably transporting fighters.

“If we get killed, it’s fucking great because it means we died fighting a holy war,” Karas exclaimed. ”If we survive, it’s going to be even fucking better! That’s why I don’t see a downside to this, only upside!”