Not sure what to make of this. – Natylie

By Allison Quinn, Yahoo News, 4/17/24

The tragicomic tale of a down-on-his-luck Texan who reinvented himself as a renegade war hero in a fake Russian republic took an unexpected turn this week when he was allegedly abducted by Russian troops—after apparently being accused of being a CIA spy.

Russell Bentley, also known as “Texas,” is perhaps the last person one would expect to have pulled off cunning spycraft for the nearly 10 years he’s been living among Russian fighters in Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk region. A Dallas native with a conviction on drug charges back home, Bentley briefly seized international headlines back in 2014 when he was spotted in a cowboy hat with Russian fighters and spewing Kremlin propaganda about “Nazis” in Ukraine. He obtained Russian citizenship in 2020 after remodeling himself as a combat-vet-turned-“journalist” for Kremlin-controlled media.

News of his disappearance earlier this month largely went under the radar until his wife, Lyudmila Bentley, went public Tuesday with claims he’d been snatched and taken hostage by Russian troops.

“Russell was brutally detained on April 8,” Lyudmila Bentley wrote in a statement on Telegram. “I CALL ON EVERYONE to do EVERYTHING POSSIBLE to save my husband, our ‘Texas,’” she said, describing him as a “friend of Donbass and Russia.”

“Perhaps, there is not much time,” she said.

Russian propagandists have claimed Bentley vanished after approaching the site of recent shelling or mortar strikes, and one independent Russian news site said he’d been taking pictures of the damaged buildings. That detail led to a flurry of conspiracy theories about Bentley potentially being a mole.

On Wednesday, Bentley’s friends sought to quash those rumors, with his self-proclaimed “brother-in-arms,” identified only as Vasily, releasing a video appealing to Bentley’s captors to free him and noting that he was only trying to show the world what is happening in the region.

Bentley’s wife also acknowledged rumors that he had been “filming something on his phone.” After finding Bentley’s phone smashed, she wrote, she was able to check it later, saying, “I didn’t find ANY PHOTOS or VIDEOS.”

Graham Phillips, another Westerner who linked up with Russian forces in eastern Ukraine and knew Bentley, issued his own statement Wednesday noting that “a small but active part of the Russian community is already writing against Texas, such as that he was an ‘American spy,’ etc.”

Bizarrely, after writing that such claims are “nonsense” and unfair since Bentley isn’t around to defend himself, Phillips himself went on to subtly trash the Texan native for filming military activity, calling it “illegal and suspicious” to do so.

But, he said, “I am hoping for the best, that our Texas is alive and well.”

Intellinews, 3/31/24

Patriotism in Russia is at an all-time high, according to a recent poll conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (VTsIOM) published on March 29.

An overwhelming majority (94%) of Russians identify themselves as “patriots of the country.” The figure includes 62% who declare their patriotism as absolute, marking a significant uptick of 10 percentage points from a similar poll a year earlier.

According to the report, the surge in patriotic sentiment has been unprecedented, tracing its origins back to the autumn of 2014 following Russia’s annexation of the Crimea, which was widely welcomed by the Russian public.

Since then, the proportion of “absolute” patriots has substantially overtaken those who consider their patriotism to be moderate, with 48% in the former category and 36% in the latter.

“The level of patriotism among Russians is higher than ever: today, 94% of our fellow citizens consider themselves patriots, including 62% who are absolute patriots, an all-time high since data began to be collected,” VTsIOM said in its report, cited by TASS.

The survey revealed respondents made a deep connection between patriotism and familial bonds, a sense of belonging, and cherished moments with loved ones. The concept of “homeland” (rodinina) extends beyond Russia’s mere geographical confines and also encapsulating concepts like “haven of safety” and “joy.”

The participants of the survey articulated their love for Russia as a blend of pride, defence, contribution to its development and a profound understanding of its rich history and culture.

“You know someone loves their country if they try to be a decent, responsible, honest and loyal person,” the report says.

In a parallel survey and in the wake of President Vladimir Putin’s recent landslide results in the presidential elections, polls reveal that the respondents continue to place substantial trust and confidence in the president, with figures oscillating between 81% and 84%, according to VTsIOM.

“When asked about their trust in Putin, 84% of respondents answered positively, marking a marginal increase of 1 percentage point since March 10. Furthermore, a similar percentage of the population, 84%, affirm their belief in Putin’s effective leadership as the head of state,” VTsIOM said.

Putin declared a sweeping victory in the country’s presidential election on March 15-17, taking an unbelievable 87% of the vote on a record turnout.

However, the pollster found a slight dip in trust towards Putin, with 80.7% of participants expressing a positive outlook, a decrease of 0.3 percentage points in a poll of 1,600 adult residents conducted between March 18 and 24, in the midst of which Russia was struck by a brutal terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall shopping mall on March 22 that saw over 140 people die. Nevertheless, the president’s approval rating remains steady at 78.9%, VTsIOM said.

The government under Putin also received mixed reviews, with a 58% approval rating for the government’s job performance, down 3 percentage points from the previous survey a month earlier. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin’s approval stood at 56%, reflecting a 3 percentage point decrease.

The poll found that the ruling United Russia party enjoyed a 52% support level, witnessing a slight increase of 1 percentage point. Other parties, including the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) and the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), saw minor fluctuations in their support levels.

Individual party leaders received varied levels of trust, with KPRF’s Gennady Zyuganov and A Just Russia-For Truth’s Sergey Mironov seeing increases in trust levels, while New People’s Alexey Nechayev experienced a decline.

By Brendan Cole, Newsweek, 4/15/24

Vladimir Putin has ordered his prime minister to create a shipbuilding plan for the next decade within two months, after one of his officials lamented how western sanctions had hampered a large civic fleet from being built.

Western-led sanctions imposed since Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine have included cutting the supply of foreign technology crucial for Russia’s military as well as its industry and manufacturing sectors.

Head of Russia’s Fisheries Agency, Ilya Shestakov, told Putin last week that only 22 out 105 fishing vessels planned in a state program had been built so far because sanctions had choked the supply of “actively used” western technologies.

The Central Research Institute “Kurs”, said that 84 percent of Russian ships under construction at the end of last year might not be delivered and 28 out of 49 vessels scheduled for delivery in the coming year needed redesigning, Russian government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported.

While an order published on the Kremlin website on April 10 does not directly mention western sanctions, it says a plan must ensure the financial and technical competitiveness of vessels built at Russian shipyards, “including measures to ensure the development and production of the most significant ship components.”

The plan must pay special attention to the construction of ships that “export deliveries of Russian products” until 2035.

Read full article here.

Stefan Korshak, Kyiv Post, 3/27/24

Not all claims made by SBU head Vasyl Malyuk could be confirmed independently. Reportedly, one Ukrainian collaborating with the Kremlin lost body parts to an anti-tank mine. – Kyiv Post

An assassination campaign “possibly” run by Ukraine’s national spy agency, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), has killed more than a dozen Ukrainian citizens collaborating with the Kremlin in Russian-occupied territory, the agency’s senior officer, Lt. Gen. Vasyl Malyuk, said in Monday evening televised comments.

Speaking in an hour-long interview with the national broadcaster ICTV, Malyuk said secret operators since Russia’s February 2022 full-scale invasion have targeted “very many” individuals responsible for war crimes and attacks against Ukrainian citizens and operated deep behind “enemy” lines, including in Russia.

Kyiv Post could not independently confirm Malyuk’s claims in the interview or elsewhere related to these alleged operations.

Malyuk claimed that the assassination campaign, run through networks of secret agents and clandestine operatives, has prioritized Ukrainian nationals collaborating with Kremlin occupation authorities to arrest and torture other Ukrainians, but that formally, Kyiv cannot take responsibility for the killings and attempted killings.

“Officially, we will not admit to this,” he said. “But at the same time, I can offer some details.”

Following the interview, a Moscow court issued a warrant for Malyuk’s arrest on Tuesday on suspicion of participating in “terrorist acts” in violation of Russian Federation law.

In the interview, Malyuk offered details of multiple Ukraine state-sponsored killings and of purported internal Ukrainian government processes authorizing them.

Malyuk claimed the process goes as follows: Before planning and executing an assassination, SBU leadership cooperates with national-level law enforcement and intelligence agencies to identify the target and confirm he or she was responsible for wartime activities calculated to kill or injure Ukrainians. He said that civilian authorities give any sanction to the SBU to assassinate only after due deliberation of intelligence.

Malyuk said Ukraine-born Vladlen Tatarsky, a Kremlin propagandist and media personality, was targeted because of his military service fighting against the Ukrainian military in 2014-16, and continued high-profile calls for elimination of Ukrainians as a nation, by state-sponsored genocide, if necessary, up to his death. An explosive-filled statuette killed Tatarsky in a St. Petersburg café on April 2, 2023. Operatives duped an intermediary, a young woman, into handing the statue to Tatarsky, Malyuk said.

The SBU would not take credit for the execution but Tatarsky deserved it because of repeated abuse of Ukrainian prisoners of war for Kremlin propaganda, he said. The woman with the statue, Darya Trepova, was sentenced to 27 years imprisonment in a Moscow court on Jan. 25. She said she was tricked into giving Tatarsky the explosives-filled statue.

Vasyl Malyuk, head of Ukraine’s national spy agency the SBU, poses with a service dog. Image published by the rn.ua news agency on 21 Feb. 2024.

Former Ukrainian parliament member Illia Kyva, an outspoken critic of Ukrainian independence and a fugitive from Kyiv authorities following Russia’s main force invasion of Ukraine, was shot dead by an assassin in a village west of Moscow, on Dec. 6, 2023. Kyva had been convicted of treason and was continuing anti-Ukrainian activities in cooperation with Russia’s national spy agency the FSB, and was executed by a pair of 9mm pistol shots at close range by a skilled assassin, Malyuk said. 

Ukrainian citizen Zakhar Prelepin, a senior police official in a “separatist” government supported by the Kremlin in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk region, was “a target” because he had served at the top levels of Ukrainian law enforcement before turning coat, and went on to call publicly for the murder of Ukrainians and a systematic police effort to carry out the killings, Mayuk claimed.

Prelepin survived the Sep. 16, 2022 detonation of an anti-tank mine killing several other police gathered at a country house in the Luhansk region, but severe injuries to his midsection destroyed his genitalia and left “this proved war criminal” an invalid, Malyuk claimed. Some media at the time reported Prelipin died in the attack.

An 800-gram NATO-standard C-4 explosive charge was used to blow up the office of the Prosecutor General of the Luhansk occupation authority “LPR,” following Gorenko’s active prosecution of Ukrainian citizens for Kremlin officials running the region, and obtaining execution sentences against Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, Malyuk said. Some media at the time reported an anti-armor rocket had been fired through Gorenko’s office window.

Igor Kornet, the senior LPR police officer, was likewise severely injured and left an immobile invalid following a bomb blast on May 15, 2023 hitting a Luhansk barber shop. Kornet visited the establishment once a week, Malyuk claimed.

The number of targeted killings against such officials collaborating with invading Russian troops is substantial and more are likely to take place, he said.

Malyuk said one of the highest-profile assassination attempts was against Russian political philosopher and close Vladimir Putin ally Aleksandr Dugin. It failed when the Kremlin propagandist switched cars with his daughter on Aug. 20, 2022, who was killed in a bomb rigged by agents, he said.

Aside from assassinations and intelligence collection, Malyuk said, SBU operators are running an ongoing campaign targeting Russian oil refineries using long-range kamikaze drones. The attacks began in earnest in early 2024 have hit all 15 oil refineries in European Russia and in some 10 weeks of attacks cut Russian national petroleum product production by 12 percent, and forced the Kremlin to declare a total ban on gasoline exports effective March 1, the intelligence agency head said.

Operators from the Ukrainian military are assisting in the oil refinery attacks inside Russia, Malyuk said.

Ukrainian military planners believe Kyiv is currently capable of attacking and destroying the strategically critical Kerch bridge connecting Russian-occupied Crimea with the Russian Federation. Railroad transport capacity of the bridge, severely damaged in a spectacular Oct. 8, 2022 truck bomb attack, has never been fully repaired, preventing movement by military freight cars and making the link a lower-priority target, Malyuk said.

“When they [Russian repair workers] fix the carrying capacity, that’s when we will send them, so to say, another ‘greeting card,’” he said.

SBU operator observes a kamikaze Sea Baby robot boat similar to ones used by Ukraine’s national spy agency in high seas attacks against warships belonging to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. According to SBU director Vasyl Malyuk, SBU-operated attack boats have hit and damaged at least 11 major Russian warships. Official SBU photograph, undated.

An SBU-led campaign to attack the Russian Navy with kamikaze robot boats carrying explosives, launched in early 2023, has hit 11 Black Sea Fleet (BSF) warships operating in the central and western Black Sea, and forced Moscow to shift surviving vessels out of the major naval base Sevastopol to bases on the Russian coast, Malyuk said. SBU strikes can reach the new bases and will continue, he added.

By Scott Ritter, Consortium News, 4/15/24

I’ve been writing about Iran for more than two decades. In 2005, I made a trip to Iran to ascertain the “ground truth” about that nation, a truth which I then incorporated into a book, Target Iran, laying out the U.S.-Israeli collaboration to craft a justification for a military attack on Iran designed to bring down its theocratic government.

I followed this book up with another, Dealbreaker, in 2018, which brought this U.S.-Israeli effort up to date.

Back in November 2006, in an address to Columbia University’s School of International Relations, I underscored that the United States would never abandon my “good friend” Israel until, of course, we did. What could precipitate such an action, I asked?

I noted that Israel was a nation drunk of hubris and power, and unless the United States could find a way to remove the keys from the ignition of the bus Israel was navigating toward the abyss, we would not join Israel in its lemming-like suicidal journey.

The next year, in 2007, during an address to the American Jewish Committee, I pointed out that my criticism of Israel (which many in the audience took strong umbrage against) came from a place of concern for Israel’s future.

I underscored the reality that I had spent the better part of a decade trying to protect Israel from Iraqi missiles, both during my service in Desert Storm, where I played a role in the counter-SCUD missile campaign, and as a United Nations weapons inspector, where I worked with Israeli intelligence to make sure Iraq’s SCUD missiles were eliminated.

“The last thing I want to see,” I told the crowd, “is a scenario where Iranian missiles were impacting on the soil of Israel. But unless Israel changes course, this is the inevitable outcome of a policy driven more by arrogance than common sense.”

On Monday night, early Tuesday morning, April 13-14, my concerns were played out live before an international audience — Iranian missiles rained down on Israel, and there was nothing Israel could do to stop them.

As had been the case a little more than 33 years prior, when Iraqi SCUD missiles overcame U.S. and Israeli Patriot missile defenses to strike Israel dozens of times over the course of a month and a half, Iranian missiles, integrated into a plan of attack which was designed to overwhelm Israeli missile defense systems, struck designated targets inside Israel with impunity.

Despite having employed an extensive integrated anti-missile defense system comprised of the so-called “Iron Dome” system, U.S.-made Patriot missile batteries, and the Arrow and David’s Sling missile interceptors, along with U.S., British, and Israeli aircraft, and U.S. and French shipborne anti-missile defenses, well over a dozen Iranian missiles struck heavily-protected Israeli airfields and air defense installations.

The Iranians hit at least two runways, taking them out of service, and at least five warehouse-type structures (this from satellite imagery taken after the attack.)

Iran gave Israel a five-hour advance warning to move high value items (F-35s). Moreover, Iran did not attack barracks, headquarters, or targets that would produce casualties.

The damage may have been minor, but the message is clear — Iran can hit any target it wants to, at any time.

Israel Had Hit Iranian Territory

Iranian consulate in Damascus after it was hit with an Israeli airstrike on April 1. (Unknown/Rajannews.com/Wikimedia.com)

The Iranian missile attack on Israel did not come out of the blue, so to speak, but rather was retaliation for an April 1 Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate building, in Damascus, Syria, that killed several senior Iranian military commanders.

While Israel has carried out attacks against Iranian personnel inside Syria in the past, the April 1 strike differed by not only killing very senior Iranian personnel, but by striking what was legally speaking sovereign Iranian territory — the Iranian consulate.

From an Iranian perspective, the attack on the consulate was a redline which, if not retaliated against, would erase any notion of deterrence, opening the door for even more brazen Israeli military action, up to and including direct attacks on Iran.

Weighing against retaliation, however, were a complex web of interwoven policy objectives which would probably be mooted by the kind of large-scale conflict between Israel and Iran that could be precipitated by any meaningful Iranian retaliatory strike on Israel.

First and foremost, Iran has been engaged in a strategic policy premised on a pivot away from Europe and the United States, and toward Russia, China, and the Eurasian landmass.

This shift has been driven by Iran’s frustration over the U.S.-driven policy of economic sanctions, and the inability and/or unwillingness on the part of the collective West to find a path forward that would see these sanctions lifted.

The failure of the Iranian nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA) to produce the kind of economic opportunities that had been promised at its signing has been a major driver behind this Iranian eastward pivot.

In its stead, Iran has joined both the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the BRICS forum and has directed its diplomatic energies into seeing Iran thoroughly and productively integrated into both groups.

A general war with Israel would play havoc on these efforts.

Secondly, but no less important in the overall geopolitical equation for Iran, is the ongoing conflict in Gaza. This is a game-changing event, where Israel is facing strategic defeat at the hands of Hamas and its regional allies, including the Iranian-led axis of resistance.

For the first time ever, the issue of Palestinian statehood has been taken up by a global audience.

This cause is further facilitated by the fact that the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, formed from a political coalition which is vehemently opposed to any notion of Palestinian statehood, finds itself in danger of collapse as a direct result of the consequences accrued from the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent failure of Israel to defeat Hamas militarily or politically.

Israel is likewise hampered by the actions of Hezbollah, which has held Israel in check along its northern border with Lebanon, and non-state actors such as the pro-Iranian Iraqi militias and the Houthi of Yemen which have attacked Israel directly and, in the case of the Houthi, indirectly, shutting down critical sea lines of communication which have the result of strangling the Israeli economy.

But it is Israel that has done the most damage to itself, carrying out a genocidal policy of retribution against the civilian population of Gaza. The Israeli actions in Gaza are the living manifestation of the very hubris and power-driven policies I warned about back in 2006-2007.

Then, I said that the U.S. would not be willing to be a passenger in a policy bus driven by Israel that would take us off the cliff of an unwinnable war with Iran.

Through its criminal behavior toward the Palestinian civilians in Gaza, Israel has lost the support of much of the world, putting the United States in a position where it will see its already-tarnished reputation irreparably damaged, at a time when the world is transitioning from a period of American-dominated singularity to a BRICS-driven multipolarity, and the U.S. needs to retain as much clout in the so-called “global south” as possible.

A Sea-Change Moment

Biden with Netanyahu in Tel Aviv on Oct. 18, 2023. (The White House/Wikimedia Commons) 

The U.S. has tried — unsuccessfully — to take the keys out of the ignition of Netanyahu’s suicide bus ride.

Faced with extreme reticence on the part of the Israeli government when it comes to altering its policy on Hamas and Gaza, the administration of President Joe Biden has begun to distance itself from the policies of Netanyahu and has put Israel on notice that there would be consequences for its refusal to alter its actions in Gaza to take U.S. concerns into account.  

Any Iranian retaliation against Israel would need to navigate these extremely complicated policy waters, enabling Iran to impose a viable deterrence posture designed to prevent future Israeli attacks while making sure that neither its policy objectives regarding a geopolitical pivot to the east, nor the elevation of the cause of Palestinian statehood on the global stage, were sidetracked.

The Iranian attack on Israel appears to have successfully maneuvered through these rocky policy shoals. It did so first and foremost by keeping the United States out of the fight. Yes, the United States participated in the defense of Israel, helping shoot down scores of Iranian drones and missiles.

This engagement was to the benefit of Iran, since it only reinforced the fact that there was no combination of missile defense capability that could, in the end, prevent Iranian missiles from hitting their designated targets.

The targets Iran struck — two air bases in the Negev desert from which aircraft used in the April 1 attack on the Iranian consulate had been launched, along with several Israeli air defense sites — were directly related to the points Iran was trying to make in establishing the scope and scale of its deterrence policy.

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First, that the Iranian actions were justified under Article 51 of the U.N. Charter — Iran retaliated against those targets in Israel directly related to the Israeli attack on Iran, and second, that Israeli air defense sites were vulnerable to Iranian attack.

The combined impact of these two factors is that all of Israel was vulnerable to being struck by Iran at any time, and that there was nothing Israel or its allies could do to stop such an attack.

This message resonated not only in the halls of power in Tel Aviv, but also in Washington, DC, where U.S. policy makers were confronted with the uncomfortable truth that if the U.S. were to act in concert with Israel to either participate in or facilitate an Israeli retaliation, then U.S. military facilities throughout the Middle East would be subjected to Iranian attacks that the U.S. would be powerless to stop.

This is why the Iranians placed so much emphasis on keeping the U.S. out of the conflict, and why the Biden administration was so anxious to make sure that both Iran and Israel understood that the U.S. would not participate in any Israeli retaliatory strike against Iran.

The “Missiles of April” represent a sea-change moment in Middle Eastern geopolitics — the establishment of Iranian deterrence that impacts both Israel and the United States.

While emotions in Tel Aviv, especially among the more radical conservatives of the Israeli government, run high, and the threat of an Israeli retaliation against Iran cannot be completely discounted, the fact is the underlying policy objective of Netanyahu over the course of the past 30-plus years, namely to drag the U.S. into a war with Iran, has been put into checkmate by Iran.

Moreover, Iran has been able to accomplish this without either disrupting its strategic pivot to the east or undermining the cause of Palestinian statehood. “Operation True Promise,” as Iran named its retaliatory attack on Israel, will go down in history as one of the most important military victories in the history of modern Iran, keeping in mind that war is but an extension of politics by other means.

The fact that Iran has established a credible deterrence posture without disrupting major policy goals and objectives is the very definition of victory.

Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.

This is from the author’s Substack page.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.