North Korea, Russia Join Forces against Ukraine

“I came, I promised to support your war, I left.” That paraphrase of Kim Jong Un’s visit with Russian president Vladimir Putin this week describes their bonhomie. Afraid of an air attack, the North Korean leader spent at least 40 hours on his luxury train, traveling about 37 mph from Pyongyang to the Vostochny Space Center before returning to safety. 

The massive green armored train is equipped with attack weapons and a helicopter for escape. Kim has used it for seven international trips, four of them to China, since he gained power in 2011. His father, Kim Jong Il, died on the train while on a “field guidance” visit. Nicknamed the “Moving Fortress,” the train has bulletproof windows and reinforced walls and floors to protect against explosives.

In a five-hour meeting with Putin, Kim promised “full and unconditional support” for him, apparently ignoring U.S. warnings not to arm Putin for his Ukrainian invasion. Putin wants Kim’s aging ammunition and rockets for Soviet-era weapons; Kim wants Russian help in developing military reconnaissance satellites to enhance his nuclear-capable missiles. After a failed second attempt last month to launch a military spy satellite, North Korea plans another try next month. From an examination of the debris, South Korea concluded the satellite’s technology is not sufficiently advanced to conduct space-based reconnaissance.

Buying arms from or providing rocket technology to North Korea violates international sanctions previously supported by Russia and increase Russian isolation, begun 19 months ago with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Hours before Kim’s meeting with Putin, North Korea fired two more ballistic missiles into waters off its East Coast outside the country’s economic zones, continuing distraction by Russia’s war to build his weapons’ development.

Last year, Russia used up to 11 million shells in Ukraine and plans to fire another seven million rounds this year. Putin’s officials claim that its relationship with North Korea isn’t an obstacle to Russia’s permanent membership on the UN Security Council. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov indicated that Russia would continue to block continued sanctions resolution against North Korea, one of five countries declining to condemn Russia’s invasion and supporting Russia’s illegal takeover of Ukraine. Kim called it a “sacred struggle to defend its state sovereignty.”  

According to hacked documents, Russia is recruiting over 100 male Cuban mercenaries for his war for “a one-time cash payment in the amount of 195,000 rubles,” about $2,000. Monthly payment would start at “204,000 rubles per month,” depending on rank, accompanied by spousal and family benefits. The hacked Russian officer didn’t deny his recruiting Cubans but responded to questions from Intercept with expletives and denouncing NATO and declaring “Russia will win.”  

Ukraine reported it retook control of four gas drilling platforms in the northern Black Sea, near the Crimean Peninsula. Russia had taken over the Boyko Towers in 2015, soon after it illegally annexed Crimea. Platforms command valuable hydrocarbon resources and are used for deployment, helicopter landing sites, and long-range missile systems positioning. Ukraine has been fighting for control of the northern Black Sea. Last year, Russia’s control of the platforms and Snake Island were seen as part of its threat to Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. Since then, Ukrainian drones and commandos launched raids on the northwestern Crimea, even planting a Ukrainian flat at a radar base on the Tarkankut Peninsula to mark Independence Day on August 24.

This overview of the Russian invasion depicts it as a disaster from the beginning when 180,000 soldiers attacked five axes of advance, counting the axis toward Kherson oblast and advance toward Zaporizhzhia oblast in the south as separate ones. Advances toward Kyiv (Axis 1) failed and toward Kharkiv (Axis 2) was halted. Attempts to push through Ukraine’s fortified lines in Donbas (Axis 3) couldn’t move any line of defense. Only the southern ones succeeded by capturing Melitopol, Kherson, and Mariupol. Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, the highest ranking soldier, then deployed troops to eastern Ukraine in an attempt to encircle Ukraine’s best brigades, a faltering plan that forced Gerasimov to scale down the size and number of forces.

Russian gains in summer of 2022 were minimal with massive cost to its soldiers and equipment. By September 22, 2022, Ukraine liberated three vital rail hubs before trapping Russian forces in northern Kherson oblast and destroying two bridges supplying Russian occupation. The losses led Putin to appoint Colonel General Sergei Surovikin in charge. He withdrew troops from Kherson, abandoning equipment and ammunition that Ukraine could use, and refocused on the Donbas where Russia suffered more massive losses while Ukraine occupied the high ground. By November last year, Russia gained ground in isolated areas but failed to break Ukrainian resistance.

The West increased its supply of modern air defense systems, but Surovikin built layered defensive lines to prepare for Ukraine’s counteroffensive, anticipating Russian weakness. He assumed he could grind down Ukrainian forces, but Putin replaced him in January with Gerasimov. For the next six months, Russia faced costly and unsuccessful military engagements. One of them was capturing the city of Bakhmut, almost no gain to Russia. Under leader Yevgeny Prigozhin, the effective Wagner mercenaries, rebelled, partly against Gerasimov. He stayed and the Wagner troops, Gerasimov’s most successful tactical asset, were exiled to Belarus. Surovikin, accused of helping the rebellion, was assigned to a backwater post for disgraced generals.

Gerasimov abandoned Surovikin’s defense-in-depth strategy: instead of defending Russian gains with well-placed defensive lines, he moved reserves intended to plug potential breeches to the front lines. Another Gerasimov mistake was putting the vast majority of his landmines in the first line of defense, making his success only temporary. Gerasimov consistently overestimated Russian military capabilities and underestimated those of Ukraine.

This week, Ukrainian missiles hit a shipyard in Russia-annexed Crimea, also destroying a fuel tank and injuring 24 people. Two Russian navy ships were engulfed in flames, and a large Russian landing ship and a submarine were damaged beyond repair. The facility not only builds ships and submarines for the Black Sea Fleet but also repairs them. Some of this week’s explosions and other events, including Russia’s shortage of diesel fuel, is here. 

Unable to make transactions in U.S. dollars, Russia has severely limited its trade. Billions of its oil sale profits are trapped in Indian banks, and other commodities such as gold and wheat require the U.S. dollars. An attempt to switch to the Chinese yuan and Indian rupee has backfired because of India’s restrictions preventing the transfer of rupees to Russian rubles, as much as $39 billion, because of Russia’s unstable financial situation. Russia’s only current option is to spend the billions in India or invest it there, but India is selling very little to Russia.  

Despite Russia’s embargo on grain ships leaving Ukraine, “ghost ships” have taken their place, transporting grain from occupied eastern Ukraine via the sanctioned Port of Sevastopol in Crimea, using the Kerch Strait with ship-to-ship transfers. Several of these were shown on ship monitoring services, but that went dark for at least one ship on June 16. A tracker found a ship matching the missing one being loaded outside a grain terminal, but it disappeared a few days later, reappearing in Turkey and moving on to Iran. Investigations by several media groups found grain being exported in at least ten ships although Russia denied it with Syria as a destination.

Once again, the Kremlin’s party and candidates won a highly controlled election in Russia-occupied Ukraine by a large majority for the second time. The atmosphere was silent. In Russia, the Kremlin also won with several leading opposition figures sentenced to long-prison terms.

In a happy ending, Yampil the bear, rescued from a zoo in the Donetsky region after Russians killed about 200 animals, will find a home at Five Sisters Zoo in Scotland. The Asian black bear was found hiding in the wreckage, his caretakers long gone, a year ago. Emaciated from lack of food, he had been concussed from a shell exploding nearby and seemed close to death. Volunteers who discovered him named him Yampil after the village where he was found put him into a truck and drove him to safety. Veterinarian Romain Pizzi called him a gentle giant with a calm, cautious personality and “big sort of Mickey-Mouse ears.”

Yampil the village was liberated from Russian occupation in late September 2022 in a Ukrainian counteroffensive capturing key cities in the region. The bear was first taken to a Polish zoo and then to a Belgian wildlife rehabilitation center which had previously sent brown bears to the Five Sisters Zoo. Pizzi was concerned about Yampil’s mental health but found him resilient. The zoo will finish the bear’s enclosure in early 2024 where he may live for another 20 years. (Above, left: Yampil in his temporary Belgian home.)  

Five Sisters Zoo is raising £200,000 for Yampil’s new habitat. Ten percent of each donation goes to his temporary home at Natuur Hulp Centrum. Opened in 2005 between Edinburgh and Glasglow, Five Sisters Zoo has over 180 different species from around the world.

Politics’ News Keeps Oozing Out

Despite a 72-hour cease-fire extension to allow people to escape, Sudan’s capital experiences heavy fighting. After a 24-hour journey, an evacuation convoy of about 300 U.S. citizens on over a dozen buses has reached the coast at Port Sudan from Khartoum under the protection of armed drones deployed by the Pentagon. 

A drone strike may have caused the gigantic fire at a fuel storage facility and refinery in Sevastopol, the Crimean city occupied by Russia. The day before, Russia’s strike on the Ukrainian city of Uman by cruise missiles from Russian aircraft in the Caspian Sea killed 23 civilians, including children, and more civilians were killed in Dnipro. Uman is considered a holy city for Orthodox Judaism, a site for Hasidic pilgrimage for over 200 years. Ukraine intercepted 21 of the 23 missiles. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will be added to the list of people who are above the law. A GOP bill will exempt DeSantis from public records laws; he will be able to hide information about his travel, people at the governor’s mansion, and donations to state political committees by extending deadlines for reports about fundraising. In court cases, DeSantis has claimed “executive privilege” to block the release of records and to keep staff from testifying, an advantage only for presidents. 

Chief Justice John Roberts stated that Supreme Court justices should control their own ethics issues, but their behavior indicates they aren’t qualified. Elite law firms paid his wife, Jane Roberts, over $10 million in seven years with hundreds of thousands of dollars from a firm arguing a case in the high court. Most of her placements with law firms, however, are confidential. On his disclosure forms, Roberts does not release information about who is paying his wife.

Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas failed to recuse themselves from cases involved with those who enriched them—failing to be specific about the largess—and Samuel Alito was wooed with free meals and vacation locations by an evangelical activist coordinating an influence campaign for the court to overturn women’s reproductive rights. Justice Antonin Scalia died in 2016 on an expenses-paid trip with a secretive hunting society at a luxury Texas ranch.

Unlike judges in lower courts, Supreme Court justices are exempt from the Judicial Conference’s rigorous Code of Conduct; Roberts calls it a “starting point.” Supreme Court is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act or the oversight of the Office on Government Ethics. It has no internal ethics committee and no inspector general.

After years of questioning the conduct of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, new information reveals serious omissions in research about him when he was a candidate. In 2018, a Senate report released by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) provided the unfounded and unverified claim that one of his accusers was “likely” mistaken in alleging that Kavanaugh had exposed himself to her at a dormitory party, blaming another Yale student. The accusation came from a Colorado attorney member of the Federalist Society supporting Kavanaugh and friend of the judiciary committee’s lead counsel at that time. The young man picked by the attorney who allegedly exposed himself instead of Kavanaugh was a high school senior at the time, not a Yale student, and had never been contacted by any GOP staffers for the report. He said:

“These people can say what they want, and there are no consequences, ever.”

In a never-before-heard recording, another Yale graduate said he witnessed Kavanaugh expose himself at a party. Previously he tried to anonymously tell the FBI during the confirmation process that he saw Kavanaugh’s friends push the future justice’s penis into the hand of a female classmate at a party. In another situation, Kavanaugh had allegedly tried to push his penis into the mouth of a young woman almost passed out on the floor from drinking. Republican committee members were aware of the witness’s wish to testify to the FBI, but he was not interviewed by the committee’s investigators.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (R-RI) is expected to release a report of the FBI’s shabby handling of the Kavanaugh investigation by the end of the year. Roberts refused to testify at a Senate judiciary hearing on Tuesday, May 2, regarding potential reforms to ethics rules. Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) cited “a steady stream of revelations regarding justices falling short of the ethical standards.”

According to several sources, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) obtained passing votes for his shady debt ceiling bill by telling Republicans to ignore the provisions of the measure because it would never become law. Instead, they should focus on its symbolic victory proving to President Joe Biden that GOP could unite around votes.

Two conservative states failed to ban abortion, each by one vote. The Nebraska bill in the unicameral legislature was to stop abortions after the sixth week of pregnancy, and South Carolina would have prevented them at conception. Six Republicans helped block motions with the chamber’s five women filibustering the proposal. One Republican senator compared the bill to Margaret Atwood’s novel The Handmaid’s Tale, in which women are considered state property. An 80-year-old Republican in Nebraska abstained because six weeks is not long enough for a woman to know that she is pregnant. Nebraska currently bans abortion after the 20^th week. 

Citing bigger expenses, WinRed, a website for GOP donations intends to add a $.30 fee for every donation on top of the 3.94 percent it already charges. During the 2022 election, the 31.2 million donations on WinRed were valued at almost $1.2 billion, and the 2024 election could double that number. The company could make almost an additional $20 million, reducing GOP campaign monies. WinRed complained that GOP donations were down and multiple investigations were expensive.

A judge issued a restraining order against a reporter in Arizona when she rang the doorbell of Sen. Wendy Rogers’ home to ask about her residency. Rogers may not be living in the district where she is elected. The judge refused the request to keep the reporter out of the state senate. In her second term, Rogers is an Oath Keeper, election denier, and QAnon promoter who also has faced accusations of antisemitism. Rogers defended Alex Jones who claimed the massacre of small children at Sandy Hook a hoax. Last year, most of her GOP colleagues voted to censure her for comments such as seeing her political enemies hanged.

The Federal Aviation Administation indefinitely grounded SpaceX after the Starship blew up four minutes after takeoff. The failure caused blackened structures and a huge crater in the ground at the launch pad, and dust and debris spread out, striking at least one vehicle. Heat and the force of the firing rocket engines caused the pad’s concrete structure to fracture after gasses expelled from the engines entered cracks at a high pressure, further eroding the pad. Dirt from under the pad cast massive quantities of dust for several miles away.

People in Port Isabel, five miles away from the launch, had broken windows, shaken buildings, and dust raining down. The particulates can cause respiratory problems and other health problems. In addition, five to eight of the 33 Raptor engines didn’t fire at different times during the ascent. One cause could have been debris from the pad’s destruction may have damaged them, especially the rocket nozzles.

The destruction of the launch pad was unanticipated. CEO Elon Musk suggested using a water-cooled steel plate to disperse the heat, but it wasn’t ready in time. Engineers assumed the pad could survive one launch, and they went ahead.

In another revelation about Elon Musk’s companies, a new report shows that Twitter complies with government requests to censor material far more often than before Musk purchased the company. In the first six months of his control, Twitter’s compliance for censorship demands rose to 80 percent from about 50 percent, especially in India where the right-wing government insisted on the removal of unflattering media portrayals about the governing party. Turkey provided the most requests to Twitter to suppress dissent which have been largely fulfilled.

Lawyers for Jack Teixeira, the airman who leaked hundreds of classified Pentagon documents, want him released into the custody of his father with a $20,000 bond. Prosecutors pointed out that he could be a flight risk, especially because his knowledge could be valuable to a foreign governments. Prosecutors also said that Teixeira had destroyed evidence in the case and has a history of making violent threats online.  

Teixeira was suspended in high school for violent threats, planned to participate in a public shooting from an SUV.  Six months ago, he said he would “kill a ton of people” with the goal of “culling the weak minded.” He also kept an arsenal of handguns and rifles in his room along with a gas mask. The judge scoffed when Teixeira’s lawyer claimed his client is only accused of sharing the information with a small group on the internet.

Two leaders of the Massachusetts Air National Guard unit where Teixieia was stationed have been suspended during the investigation, temporarily losing access to classified systems and information.

A family in Cleveland (TX)  asked their neighbor to stop firing his AR-15 rifle in his yard at 11:30 pm so their baby could sleep. He went to their house and murdered five of them ages 8 to 31 with the gun. Five others were injured, three of them in the hospital. The shooter is still at large with the rifle. The U.S. has had at least 174 mass shootings in the first 128 days of 2023. That’s freedom in the United States.

For people who think studying punctuation has no value…

Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine after 428 Days

With problems surrounding his invasion of Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin has fired his deputy defense minister for war logistics, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev, after only seven months. Nicknamed “The Butcher of Mariupol,” Mizintsev ordered the bombing of a theater sheltering hundreds of families and a maternity hospital a year ago. Over three hundred Ukrainians were killed. He continued with his brutality and indiscriminate bombing of Mariupol, likely giving orders to bomb a maternity hospital a year ago.  

Ukraine is still trying to keep the city of Bakhmut, and 100 kamikaze drones were sent to their military. Subscribers of the Blyskavka online media raised almost $282,000 for the purchase of a total of 500 drones. They can destroy vehicles, people, and other military objects as the operator controls the aircraft from a safe distance.

New and existing Ukrainian troops have been training on new systems and tactics for the spring counteroffensive. A variety of new tanks are rolling into the country along with armored transports, anti-craft guns, artillery, and support vehicles. Troops are being trained in a variety of countries: in Germany, the U.S. is currently training 2,500, and another 8,000 have already completed their training. Sixty-five are starting their training on the Patriot missile defense systems.

Russia attacked Kyiv for the first time since March 9, firing over a dozen cruise missiles at the capital and other parts of Ukraine. Eleven missiles and two drones over Kyiv were intercepted; fragments of them damaged power lines and a road.

Exhausted Russian troops and disorganized and fragmented deployments are keeping the invaders from defending critical parts of their front line. The troops are now operating in seven areas: Kupiansk, Luhansk region, Bakhmut, Avdiivka-Donetsk, the western part of Donetsk Oblast/eastern part of Zaporizhzhia Oblast, the western part of the Zaporizhzhia region, and Kherson Oblast, conducting active offensive operations in the first five sectors. They are all below full strength.

Russia is suffering about 30 percent fewer daily casualties, probably because it ended its winter offensive which largely failed. Troops may also be preparing for Ukraine’s counteroffensive.

Russia is on the defensive in Crimea after Ukrainian maritime drones attacked the Sevastopol harbor. Although none of the surface vessels armed with explosives penetrated the harbor, but Russia plans to increase its already defense of six layers of nets and booms across the harbor in addition to the patrol boats, helicopter patrols, anti-diver dolphins, and gun emplacements. Sevastopol is the Russian Navy’s main base in Crimea where major warships are posted.

Last October, Ukrainian drones hit several ships although they didn’t do lasting damage. Because Ukrainian drones penetrated the inner harbor a month ago, Russia added two more layers of floating nets on the outer side of the harbor entrance. In addition, a row of six large pontoon barges were anchored just inside the entrance to extend the harbor wall and narrow the entrance. Ukrainian troops have also advanced across the Dnipro River north of Crimea.

A Russian military plane on a training flight caught fire and crashed into a lake in northwestern Russia bordering Finland. Ejected from the plane, the pilots survived. The fire started during takeoff, according to an eyewitness. On the Kola peninsula, the large military presence of Russian military bases houses the world’s largest concentration of nuclear weapons.

A week earlier a Russian plane crashed at Belgorod near the Ukrainian border. The pilot jumped out of the cockpit but later died. In Belgorod, over 3,000 people were evacuated after the discovery of an undetonated explosive two days after Russia accidentally a bomb on the city, damaging houses and injuring several people. The undetonated explosive may have come from that accident which left a crater about 60 feet wide close to the city center. Last October, a Russian fighter jet killed 13 people when it crashed in the Russian city of Yeysk, just north of Ukraine’s second largest city, Kharkiv.  

Russia is sending “invisible” T-14 tanks into Ukraine after the UK said using the “poor condition” fleet was a “high risk” for the nation. With a remotely-controlled turret to protect the tank’s crew, it is further off the ground to protect the crew from mines, supposedly fitted with extra protection on their flanks, and designed to explode outwards. On the highway, the vehicles have a maximum speed of 50 mph. A logistic problem is the tank is larger and heavier than other Russian tanks. The production of 2,300 tanks, first unveiled in 2015, won’t be completed until 2025.

As president of the UN Security Council, the Kremlin sent Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov to preside over a session on the virtues of peace and diplomacy. Western diplomats accused Russia of hypocrisy during the full-day session, and Russia denounced its adversaries, accusing the West of causing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. and European members of the Council did not send their own foreign ministers to the meeting. António Guterres, the U.N. secretary general, warned that the multilateral global system was “under greater strain than at any time since the creation of the United Nations” and cautioned that the tensions between major powers increased the risk of conflict. Lavrov also said the world was at a “possibly even more dangerous threshold” than it was during the Cold War. Olof Skoop, the European Union’s ambassador to the UN, said:

“By organizing this debate, Russia is trying to portray itself as a defender of the U.N. Charter and multilateralism. Everywhere you look, Russia is in contempt.”

In an unusual unity, Security Council members officially condemned the fighting in Sudan and called for an immediate cease-fire with a return to political dialog. Russia has already used its time to explain its kidnapping of Ukrainian children as protection for them and accuse Western countries of irresponsibility on arms control by sending weapons to Ukraine. Maria Lvoya-Belova, a top person in overseeing the transfers of the kidnapped children briefed the meeting remotely; the International Criminal Court has arrest warrants for both her and Putin. Britain and the U.S. refused to permit a broadcast of the event on its official website in a rare case of blocking an airing.

Russia’s leadership of the Security Council ends in a few days. Switzerland will lead the Council in May.

The far-right in the U.S. is promoting the lie that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was staged. No matter that tens of thousands of Ukrainians have been murdered, tens of millions are displaced, and homes and other buildings in the country have suffered billions in damage. A video promoting disinformation shows what conspiracy theorists claim are “fake bodies” in body bags. Images came from a climate change in Austria a month before Russia invaded Ukraine. A tweet sharing the video was viewed over 3.9 million times by last February and “liked” over 45,000 times.

From Catturd, one of Elon Musk’s favorite tweeters, came a message questioning the war’s reality because he hadn’t seen any footage from the war front. Michael Flynn endorsed the false claims, writing, “I double dare anyone to say he’s wrong.” The tweet was viewed over 10.4 million times although Twitter’s fact-checking community attached a note to the past about the availability of “footage and analysis of the Russian war on Ukraine from multiple media sources.” These are just two of falsehoods on social media about a deadly war from Russian assets in the U.S.

A Russian parliament member said that states in the U.S. were welcome to be considered for part of the Russian Federation. According to Russian propaganda, some states have polled for secession from the 50 states, for example 80 percent of New Hampshire residents. Supposedly “most of Oregon wants to leave Oregon,” but the “most” is land mass, not population. The voting was also on social networks, thus not official. According to Cynthia Nicoletti, professor of law at the University Virginia School of Law, state secession is unconstitutional as “established by our Civil War and by the Supreme Court in the 1869 case Texas v. White. Article I, section 10 of the Constitution also prohibits states from entering into alliances, treaties, or confederations. “

The far-right movement in the U.S. to eliminate any support for Ukraine can end up promoting China’s military aggression in Asia, and possibly in the world. The West’s and Ukraine’s resistance to Russia shows China that a use of force against Taiwan would be a problem. The U.S. needs to convince China that it is back to being a world leader after the previous administration took the side of Russia in altercations.

Russian Invasion of Ukraine – Day 174

According to Ukraine, one of its elite military unit caused the huge explosions at a Russian ammunition storage site on August 16, 2022, the 174th day of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine may also have been behind strikes in northern Crimea destroying an important railway hub for supplying Russian troops and equipment to occupied Melitopol as well as a military air base. Blasts in Melitopol, south of Zaporizhzhia on the coast, have also knocked out pro-Russian television broadcasts spreading propaganda and controlling war news which had replaced Ukrainian media sources. Another explosion also took out an electricity substation about 125 miles from the front line. Until recently, Crimeans suffered few consequences from Russia’s war, but the strikes are unnerving them.

Last month, a senior Russian official threatened “Judgment Day” if Ukraine attacked Crimea, possibly an impetus for the series of attacks on the Russian-occupied Ukrainian peninsula illegally seized in 2014. Putin calls Crimea a “sacred place” and Russia’s “holy land.” Last week, beachgoers ran for cover after blasts at a Russian air base, and a July 31 makeshift drone attack on Sevastopol forced Russia to cancel its Navy Day celebrations.

With his annexation of Crimea, Putin gained the reputation of a great leader resurrecting Russia as a great power, and he cited the Ukrainian land as an existential security threat, warning of a war between Russia and NATO from a Western-supported effort to take Crimea from him. His launch of the invasion on February 24, 2022 moved north from Crimea in capturing a large area in southern Ukraine, including the Kherson region. Crimea is the location for air and logistics support to Russian forces in Kherson and neighboring Zaporizhzhia region, home to an endangered nuclear power plant. Ukraine countered with an offensive, limiting Russia’s abilities to group his forces.

With a temperate climate and expansive beaches, the critical staging ground for Russia’s invasion is tied to Russia with a bridge and serves as homeport for the country’s Black Sea Fleet, making the peninsula a vital link to Russia’s military supply chain for tens of thousands of soldiers in southern Ukraine. Crimea is the location for air and logistics support to Russian forces in Kherson and neighboring Zaporizhzhia region, home to an endangered nuclear power plant. The peninsula also has two main rail links for moving heavy Russian military equipment, air bases to attack Ukrainian positions, and a launching ground for long-range Russian missiles.

Catherine the Great declared Crimea part of Russia in 1783, and Soviet Ruler Nikita S. Krushchev gave it to Ukraine in 1954 when Ukraine was a Soviet republic. Russia lost its “jewel” with the collapse of the Soviet Union. Putin promised to not further divide Ukraine in 2014 but broke his promise eight years later when he started the current war.

Russian troops remain at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, continuing the dangers of nuclear safety and security. The UN wants to support an inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), but a Russian diplomat claimed that any mission going through Ukraine’s capital was too dangerous. Inspectors cannot go unless both Ukraine and Russia agree. The Ukrainian company overseeing the nation’s nuclear plants reported that Russian forces targeted a nearby fire station responsible for extinguishing blazes at the facility in the event of an emergency. An accident at the plant would require evacuation of over 400,000 people. 

The Russian invasion is vastly reducing Ukraine’s population. In the eastern Donbas region where artillery fire continues in a battle for control, the population has dropped from 1.67 million to about 220,000 civilians with more being evacuated. Almost all the vital infrastructure has been destroyed, eliminating power and heat.

Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, as many as 80,000 Russian troops have been wounded or killed during fighting, according to the Pentagon. It was estimated by Western officials that about 150,000 Russian troops were stationed near Ukraine’s border at the start of the war. Russia has found a way to avoid the European Union ban for propaganda and misinformation (aka falsehoods) on RT and Sputnik as diplomats are spreading the lies.  

Putin is blaming the U.S. for turning Ukrainians into “cannon fodder” because of the U.S. continued support for the invaded country. At a security conference, he spoke to military officials from Africa, Asia, and Latin America and repeated his claim that troops were sent to Ukraine to keep it from being an “anti-Russia” bulwark. Putin said that the U.S. behaves exactly the same way as when it tries “to fuel conflicts in Asia, Africa and Latin America” and compared their actions to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) visit to Taiwan. He said:

“It was part of a deliberate and conscious U.S. strategy intended to destabilize the situation and create chaos in the region and the entire world, a blatant demonstration of disrespect for another country’ sovereignty and its own international obligations.”

Survivors of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine say the mercenaries in the Wagner Group are kidnapping male children as young as 11 years old from their families, putting some of them at work in gold and diamond mines controlled by the mercenaries. Soldiers beat up family members trying to stop them, breaking their hands if they don’t let go. Russians need workers in their gold mines in the Central African Republic (CAR) after massacres killed scores to hundreds of artisan mine workers mostly from Sudan and Chad between March 13 and May 24. The children are less likely to disobey Russians and the migrant miners and are not as greedy. Russia wants the gold and diamonds to survive problems from the sanctions after the invasion.

CAR has one of the world’s largest child labor rates with a 50 percent increase in the number of children in the diamond mines when the 2020 COVID lockdown closed schools. The country’s Mining Code prevents children employed in mining, but Russians control the CAR security apparatus. The owner of Concord Management, Yevgeny Prigozhin, is a close friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin. His children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, also created the plan that “violently” took thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia for forced adoptions “from the Luhansk and Donetsk regions” of Ukraine.

According to reports, Ukrainian artillery has struck Wagner’s headquarters in eastern Ukraine after a Russian journalist gave its secret location. A photo on Telegram posted by Sergei Sreda, now removed, showed five people in military uniform with the street sign of Popasna, Luhansk.

After lengthy planning, a UN-chartered ship with 23,000 metric tons of Ukrainian left a Black Sea port for Ethiopia, one of five countries considered at risk of starvation. On August 5, three ships left port with 58,000 metric tons of corn. Before the war, Ukraine supplied about 45 million metric tons of grain a year to the world market, according to the U.N. Roughly 20 million tons of grain have been stuck in Ukrainian silos since the beginning of the war.

Ukraine’s grain exports are down 46 percent at 2.65 million tons thus far in the 2022-23 season. The loss of land to Russian forces and lower grain yields will cut grain harvest to 50 million tons compared to 86 million tons last year. Last year, grain exports were up 8.5 percent to 48.5 million tons before Russia invaded the country on February 24. Brokered by the UN and Turkey, a deal between Moscow and Kyiv opened three Black Sea ports at the end of July, hopefully allowing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian grain to buyers. Thus far in 2022-23, Ukraine has exported 1.75 million tons of corn, 658,000 tons of wheat, and 226,000 tons of barley.

Putin is also reaching out to North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un to deepen the two countries relationship, and Kim seems amenable. He said the friendship was forged in World War II with the victory over Japan. Putin bragged about Russian weapons and said, “We are ready to offer allies and partners the most modern types of weapons from small arms to armoured vehicles and artillery, combat aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles.” In July, North Korea was one of the few countries officially recognizing the two Russian-backed separatist “people’s republics,” Donetsk and Luhansk, in eastern Ukraine after Russia signed a decree declaring them as independent. At that time, Ukraine cut off diplomatic ties with North Korea. Many North Korea’s Russian-designed weapons are old, from the Soviet era, but its missiles are similar to Russian ones.

Last year, President Joe Biden spent months trying to persuade other countries that Putin was planning an invasion of Ukraine. No one believed him because it was not a “rational” thing to do. Even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky because his own intelligence was riddle with Russian moles. Not until the actual attack on February 24, 2022, did Western leaders understand that the word “rational” doesn’t fit Putin. He sent troops he had massed at the border into Ukraine to massacre Ukrainians and destroy their land. For months, however, French President Emmanuel Macron still believed that he could persuade Putin to leave Ukraine. Almost six months later, the Western world understands they were wrong and Biden was right. The details of their mistakes is in this remarkable report.

Russia Invades Ukraine: Day 60

The best news today for Ukraine was Emmanuel Macron’s win over Marine Le Pen for France’s president, possibly by 16 points. The far-right, anti-NATO, anti-EU Le Pen has praised Adolf Hitler and admired Russian President Vladimir Putin although she toned down her rhetoric during her campaign. Le Pen owes over $10 million to Russian banks close to Putin and almost that much to the autocratic Hungary.

Orthodox Easter, the holiest holiday in Ukraine, saw no abatement in Russia shelling throughout south and east Ukraine. refused both a cease-fire and humanitarian corridors for the religious holiday, and services were moved to morning.

Violating the Geneva Convention, Russia plans to forcibly conscript civilians from the partly occupied regions of Kherson and Zapoizhzhia like Putin did in Russian-occupied Crimea and Donbas regions. Special monitoring mission staff members of the Vienna-based Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have also been detained in eastern Ukraine after the organization evacuated almost 500 international mission members.

A spokesperson for the UN high commissioner for human rights said humanitarian law seems to be “tossed aside,” with “a horror story of violations perpetrated against civilians.” In one form of Russia’s vicious murders, forensic doctors found tiny metal arrows, fléchettes, in civilians buried in Bucha’s mass graves from shells fired by Russian artillery, an anti-personnel weapon widely used during the first world war. Each shell holds up to 8,000 fléchettes about 1.5 inches long that arc and bend into a hook on impact with the body. The four fins at the rear cause a second wound.

Satellite images show Russians hiding their “barbaric” war crimes by burying civilian bodies killed by shelling in new mass graves. Russian trucks take corpses from the streets of Mariupol. 12 miles away, and transport them to Manhush, a nearby village. Bodies of as many as 9,000 Ukrainian civilians are thrown into 100-foot-wide trenches.

The UN office reported 114 attacks on medical facilities “although the actual figure is likely to be considerably higher.” Spokesperson Ravina Shamdansi said:

“We estimate that at least 3,000 civilians have died because they couldn’t get medical care and because of the stress on their health amid the hostilities. This includes being forced by Russian armed forces to stay in basements or not being allowed to leave their homes for days or weeks.”

Mariupol, vital to Russia’s path to the Crimea and the Sea of Azov, is mostly rubble, over two-thirds of its 400,000 residents gone—evacuated, forcibly taken to Russia, or dead. Pleased by seeing the horrors, Putin told Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu on television, “The work of the armed forces to liberate Mariupol has been a success. Congratulations.” A few thousand people, including children, remain in the basements and tunnels of the four-square-mile steel plant along the coastline, imprisoned until they die of illness, starvation, or thirst.

Mariupol native and computer programmer Dmitry Cherepanov created Mariupol Life, a site to help people search for their missing loved ones, listing names, addresses, birth dates, and, if possible, last-known locations of missing individuals and photographs.

Putin desperately wants a win by Victory Day on May 9, celebrating the Soviet Union’s defeat of the Germans in World War II. Taking Mariupol gives him both a land bridge and a “success” for his propaganda—the first Ukrainian city to fall since he began his invasion. Seizing Mariupol gives Putin control of the Ukrainian coast on the Sea of Azov, blocking maritime trade “vital for the Ukrainian economy.” Mariupol’s metal industry accounted for one-third of Ukraine’s steel production in 2019.

According to Russian commander Rustam Minnekayev, Putin doesn’t plan to stop with taking over Ukraine. Minnekayev said that Russia wants “full control” of eastern and southern Ukraine as a path to taking over neighboring Moldova and perhaps beyond. Part of the plan is to take over Transnistria, a narrow, land-locked areas between Ukraine and Moldova. Capturing Odesa would give Putin far more control over the Black Sea.

Putin has said the invasion will continue until “full completion” but doesn’t define the term. Earlier, he claimed he didn’t plan to permanently occupy Ukrainian cities; now he’s intent on regime change. Putin also reneged on his claim that he wouldn’t continue shelling Mariupol. Yet he still maintains the “special military operation” is for national security and denies any atrocities or indiscriminate shelling.

In his “second phase” of invasion, Putin concentrates on severing the Donbas region, in eastern Ukraine, from the rest of Ukraine to create puppet Russian republics. Although Putin faces the same low morale from his troops, Russians may find the terrain easier—broad plains instead of streets and buildings for concealing Ukrainians and easier use of tanks and large missile systems. Donbas’ border with Russia allows easier supply lines than further inside Ukraine, and soldiers are more familiar with the territory. Residents were more sympathetic to Russia: before the war, 30 percent of them wanted to join Russia, and another ten percent wanted independence.

The new commander strategizes a pincer movement to crush Ukrainians in the east, moving south from the Kharkiv area and north from the coast near Mariupol before Russians move west. As always, Russians pound Ukrainians with heavy firepower. About 70 to 80 combat battalions, about 400 soldiers each, will try to execute a “double encirclement” of Ukrainian forces like Hannibal defeated the Roman army in 216 B.C. Or the Battle of Stalingrad when the Red Army broke through German lines in the decisive battle on the Eastern front. The German army called the tactic kesselschlacht, or “cauldron battle”; Russians want to make eastern Ukraine into a deadly cauldron.

The industrial heritage of Donbas of both heavy mining and steel-producing capacity and large coal reserves makes it desirable for Putin. The 2015 Minsk peace deal would have given the two eastern regions autonomy to regain Ukraine’s border with Russia, but Putin refused because he wanted to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty. Putin formally recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk republics three days before the invasion; Mariupol was one of the last urban areas in Donetsk not under his control. He is moving onto Izyum on the western border of Donbas before heading to occupy Popasna, between the two republics, move onto Izyum on the western border of Donbas. Last week, the Russians took Kreminna and called the remaining residents “hostages.”

Since the beginning of the invasion, Ukrainians have located and destroyed at least 31 Russian command and communication posts, killing ten or more generals, two of them in the attack on a command post near Russian-occupied Kherson in southern Ukraine that also critically wounded another general. Russians have a large supply of generals, but the casualties temporarily confuse units and make them vulnerable to a swift attack.

Ukraine now has more tanks in Ukraine than Russia does, partly because of contributions from the West but also from the capture of 212 functioning Russian tanks. Russia captured only 73 Ukrainian tanks. The Czech Republica donated many Soviet-era tanks and other war equipment. Russia lost about 3,000 armored vehicles in the 60 days of invasion but only half in combat. When vehicles run out of fuel or are abandoned, “it’s finder’s keepers for these farmers,” Ukrainian military expert Yuri Zbanatski said.

Two months ago, Putin thought “phase one” of the invasion would be an easy win. Russia suffers from the same problems as then—poorly maintained vehicles and Ukraine rapidly acquiring more tanks and heavy, longer-range artillery. Sympathy in Donbas for Russians may also wane as bombs drop on homes in the area.

Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman said sanctions are part of the reason that Russia hasn’t reached its goals. The U.S. placed sanctions this past week on the privately owned commercial bank Transkapitalbank (TKB) offering clients such as banks in China and the Middle East the ability to conduct their transactions through their own Internet-based banking system. This alternative to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) network allowed customers to process otherwise sanctioned U.S. dollar payments. The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control also targets companies in Russia’s virtual currency mining industry, including Bitriver, the third largest in the world. In addition, Russian-affiliated ships are no longer permitted to enter American ports.

Sanctioned Russian oligarchs and their families are also starting to die. Two cases this week in Spain and Russia “appear” to be murder-suicide: Sergey Protosenya was top manager of Russia’s energy giant Novatek, and Vladislav Avaev was a Gazprombank executive. Last month, billionaire Vasily Melnikov, his wife, and his sons were found dead. Russia’s largest single chemical plant, the Dmitrievsky Chemical Plant, went up in flames, and a fire broke out at the primary analytical center for Roscosmos, the Russian space program. Days earlier, a fire broke out at a research facility connected to both the Russian Ministry of Defense and Roscosmos and the design of Iskander missiles.

Sixty days after Putin promised Russian soldiers they would overcome Ukraine in a matter of hours, their casualties pile up, and Kremlin’s senior insiders are worried. Open criticism is not accepted, but high-ranking government and state-run business leaders look at the invasion as a catastrophic mistake as growing isolation and economic disaster will set the country back for years. They also worry about whether Putin will use his nuclear weapons if his “holy war” continues to fail. Putin continues his propaganda of winning, but empty grocery shelves, like this photo of Russian shelving for sanitary napkins, tell a different story.

Russia claims a successful launch of “Satan II,” the RS-28 Sarmat nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missile to bull through the U.S. missile defense systems. More nuclear rattling.

Russian Danger Accelerates

The possibility of war caused by Russia invading Ukraine hourly grows more possible. Today, Russian president Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine after he recognized the independence of two eastern Ukrainian regions, Donetsk and Luhansk, with separatist populations. Putin called his move a “peacekeeping” effort, but both his actions are provocations with a pretext to invade Ukraine, destroying a cease-fire agreement from 2015.

Putin claims “Ukraine has never had its own authentic statehood”: the region he declared independent has heavy mining and steel-producing capacity as well as big coal reserves. He also claims that the people of the region want to be a part of Russia, but separatists control only one-third of the areas, about 6,500 square miles. Mass protests in 2014 overturned the pro-Kremlin president of Ukraine, and Russia invaded and illegally annexed Ukraine’s peninsula, Crimea, on the bottom of Ukraine. Kremlin-supported separatists then took over the eastern industrial areas of Donetsk and Luhansk on the Russian border, seizing government buildings and proclaiming “people’s republics.” They declared independence from Ukraine, likely using Russian troops and weapons. Since 2014, fighting in the area has taken 14,000 lives, and over two million people fled the area. About 2.3 million and 1.5 million people, respectively, remain in the areas.

Russia and Ukraine agreed on the Minsk peace deal in 2015, brokered by France and Germany to stop the conflict between Ukraine and its Russian-supported separatists. Ukraine agreed to give Donetsk and Luhansk special status and certain autonomy to regain Ukrainian control of its border with Russia. With almost 200,000 soldiers along its border with Ukraine, Russia claims territory beyond their agreement with Ukraine, in regions controlled by the Ukrainian army. Separatist leaders called for civilian evacuation to Russia; over 60,000 evacuees were in Russia by today.

Putin declared Ukraine is operated by a “puppet regime” which the U.S. and the West controls. “They are a part of our culture,” he asserted, and threatened Ukraine for removing some Soviet-era statues. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called Putin’s actions a violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, probably a unilateral withdrawal from the Minsk agreements to end war in the Donbas area.

Biden followed up yesterday’s call with Putin by blocking U.S. investment and trade in the Ukrainian breakaway regions and sanctions who operates in those areas. Press Secretary Jen Psaki stated:

“We have anticipated a move like this from Russia and are ready to respond immediately. To be clear: these measures are separate from and would be in addition to the swift and severe economic measures we have been preparing in coordination with Allies and partners should Russia further invade Ukraine.”

Biden also talked with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. They talked about how to continue their coordinated response. The U.S. congressional delegation to the Munich Security Conference pledged to “work toward” emergency legislation that “will best support our NATO allies and the people of Ukraine, and support freedom and safety around the world.” Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) led the bipartisan group. Zelensky plans a relocation to Lviv, 50 miles from the Polish border in west Ukraine.

Before Putin took these aggressive actions, Biden had agreed to meet with him “in principle” if Russia did not invade Ukraine. Russia didn’t rule it out, but U.S. intelligence found that Russian military officials were ordered to proceed with an invasion. Last Friday Biden had declared that Putin already determined an invasion of Ukraine. Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he would meet Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Geneva on Thursday; Blinken said the meeting would not happen if Russia invades Ukraine.

Putin’s massive military drills along Ukraine’s borders, rescheduled from this coming October, were to end Sunday, but Russia extended the ones in Belarus, a Russian ally, to Ukraine’s north. The Belarus Defense Ministry reported Russian troops, as many as 30,000 and the most since the end of the Cold War, may stay there indefinitely until NATO forces pull back from countries near Russia and Belarus. Shellings in residential Ukraine, cease-fire violations, have accelerated in false-flag operations as an excuse for Russian invasion.

The U.S. notified Michelle Bachelet, UN high commissioner for human rights in Geneva about a Russian list of Ukrainian citizens to be killed or sent to detention camps after its invasion and occupation. These are people opposed to Russian actions—journalists, anti-corruption activists, ethnic and religious minority members, LGBTQ people, and dissidents from Russia and Belarus living in Ukraine.

Russia could invade one of three ways: one huge attack, bites to dismantle Ukraine, or a python-style squeeze. The last could use the Russian troops in Belarus and save moving tanks into Ukraine. A single blow, believed most likely by U.S. military and intelligence official, could be the biggest and most violent war for European territory since the 1945 Nazi surrender.

The crisis is expected to create havoc for Russian, Ukrainian, and wider global stock markets on Tuesday, after Vladimir Putin upped the ante in a crisis the West fears could unleash a major war. Russians and Ukrainians have already lost tens of billions of dollars in assets, beginning a worse disaster. Ruble value dropped 3.3 percent. Moscow’s dollar-denominated RTX index stock markets plunged 13.2 percent, and the ruble-based MOEX lost 10.5 percent. Current tensions also caused higher oil prices, over three percent. West Texas Intermediate is up to about $94 a barrel, and the global Brent benchmark is about $96 after flat prices last week.

The current situation parallels that of the 1930s when conservatives supported Hitler. In 1938, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, a conservative, permitted Adolf Hitler to annex part of Czechoslovakia to “protect” ethnic Germans there with Hitler’s promise of peace. Chamberlain kept his policy of “appeasement” for another year until Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia.  

Under the leadership of Fox network host Tucker Carlson, formerly fringe and now leading Republicans believe Putin’s disinformation and favor him, once again trailing after Deposed Donald Trump (DDT). Every night Tucker sings his praise of Putin, and far-right GOP congressional members typically use Russian talking points in communications and hearings. Carlson is so pleasing to Russians that he is featured on the country’s state-TV. “[Putin] just wants to keep his western borders secure,” Carlson asserted. As for Ukraine, “it’s run by a dictator who’s friends with everyone in Washington.” All lies but Russians are ecstatic.

On his website Bulwark, Republican Charlie Sykes wrote about “the ultimate stooges,” quoting Fiona Hill, former senior director for Europe and Russia at the National Security Council.

Carlson pulled in former Democratic representative and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard who has moved far right. She echoed Carlson’s Ukrainian dictator lies by falsely claiming Zelensky is anti-democracy when he “arrests political opposition, throws them in jail, shuts down TV stations that are critical to him.”

Fox “stooge” Maria Bartiromo, a “conspiracy maven formerly known as the ‘money honey,’” insists the possible Russia invasion was created to distract from Hillary Clinton and “from what she did.” She linked Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, to Clinton as her former campaign senior policy adviser. Bartiromo falsely accuses Sullivan of “peddling this Russia collusion lie.”

Laura Ingraham, part of the Fox conspiracy team, claims that Biden uses Russia to get the media “off the raging crime, raging COVID, raging inflation story.”

Columnist A.J. Delgado, formerly caught up in a scandal when she became pregnant by DDT’s aide Jason Miller who gave her an abortion pill without telling her, came out with huge support for Russia and Vladimir Putin:

“If Putin wants to throw some cold water on American expansionism and interventionism, for whatever reason, that’s a good thing. We’re overly aggressive sometimes and NEED another bully on the world stage, to check our worst impulses.”

“Why am I supposed to despise Putin so much? Does he have firing squads? (Nope. Meanwhile, Castro did you and you Dems spent DECADES ‘both sides”ing him.) Does Russia have freedom of movement, free enterprise, etc? Yes. Are women stoned? No. Are dogs tortured for festivals? No.”

Other right-wing commentators beat the same drums: Sohrab Ahmari smearing Ukrainians as anti-Semitic fascists, ignoring the anti-Semitic fascist Russians and Candace Owens wanting the U.S. to invade Canada to protect the trucker convoy.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) lied about Ukraine being Hillary Clinton’s top donor for her campaign. Foreign governments cannot legally donate to U.S. candidates. The list of Clinton donors, none of them from Ukraine. 

Former never-Trumper but now faithful MAGA Ohioan JD Vance, working hard to be elected to the Senate, said, “I don’t really care what happened to Ukraine one way or another.”

GOP Rep. Paul Gosar wrote the U.S. shouldn’t go to Ukraine after “we just lost Afghanistan to sandal-wearing goat herders.” He also opposed Ukraine joining NATO before denigrating the organization.

Chuck Todd, self-identified Democrat and host of Meet the Press, joined Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in presenting false Russian talking points that Democrats and Biden are responsible for Russia’s imminent invasion of Ukraine.

Other Republicans criticized Biden: Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) joined other Republicans to evacuate Americans from Ukraine if they don’t voluntarily leave on their own, and Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) says Biden should do something instead of just talking. Both moves would incite Putin to action.

Like DDT and his far-right followers, Putin wants to break up NATO, keep dictators in power, remove democracy, and centralize power with Republicans, achieved by causing the nation to fail. Luckily for the world, DDT is no longer in the White House.

Additional information from scholar Heather Cox Richardson. 

Ukraine – Follow the Money

The media flavor of the month is Ukraine. Everyone has an opinion about what we should do with the country, but most people don’t know anything about the country and its issues. GOP members vary taking military action to free Ukraine weeks ago, as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and only 8 percent of CPAC attendees want, to a position that would “secure and guarantee American safety at home and abroad.” Sen. Paul Rand (R-KY) is a strict isolationist, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) wants a fight against “totalitarianism,” and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) wobbles somewhere in between. The only thing that the GOP members agree on is that President Obama is wrong, no matter what he does.

Those vilifying President Obama for not taking action need to look back prior to Election Day 2008 about anyone criticizing the president’s approach toward foreign conflict when this was described as “traitor” and “fifth columnist.” They were accused of “treason,”  and characterizing the president as weak or inept was to encourage enemies to act aggressively against the United States.  Ed Koch wrote:

“Democrats and some Republicans in Congress are seeking to humble, embarrass and, if they can, destroy the President and the prestige of his position as the Commander-in-Chief who is responsible for the safety of our military forces and the nation’s defenses. By doing so, they are adding to the dangers that face our nation.”

Today the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved legislation to help Ukraine and sanction Russia. If the entire Senate doesn’t pass the bill tomorrow, it must wait until after the senators return from another recess and after Crimea votes on whether to leave Ukraine for Russia. The bill, supposedly paid for by cuts in Army and Air Force procurement, would pay $315 million to Russia and Russia’s gas company and lend Ukraine an additional $1 billion that the House has already approved.  

The basis of most conservatives’ attitudes in the United States is that Russia is a bad country and whatever it does is bad unless it’s persecuting LGBT people. There is, however, another perspective about Ukraine. In describing Ukraine’s revolution, Robert Parry wrote about the “neo-Nazis running four ministries running four ministries including the Ministry of Defense.” Although Parry is no fan of Russia, he wrote that, unlike Ukraine, it at least has “a functioning economy.”

In Ukraine, ten “oligarchs” (in the United States we call them billionaires) are buying up media outlets and politicians while almost everyone else in the country faces austerity through great reductions in pensions and already inadequate social services. Continuing political issues there will surely encourage the “rise of right-wing extremists who espouse not only the goal of expelling ethnic Russians from Ukraine but Jews and other peoples considered not pure Ukrainian.” None of this information appears in U.S. media, but a BBC Newsnight entitled “Neo-Nazi threat in new Ukraine” gives more information.

President Viktor Yanukovych signed an agreement on February 21 to relinquish much of his power, hold early elections, and order police to withdraw. European nations co-signed the agreement and then did nothing while neo-Nazi militias overran government buildings, forcing officials to flee the country. The U.S. didn’t complain when they violated Ukraine’s constitution, but the U.S. perceives Crimea’s vote to secede as criminal.

Crimea wants to stay with Russia because most of the people are Russian and many speak Russian, but the U.S. opposes that action. Yet the U.S. supported the separation of 15 nations from the Soviet Union in 1991 and the separation of Czechoslovakia into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993. That same decade, U.S. facilitated the ethnic divisions of Yugoslavia and bombed Serbia to give Kosovo independence. The U.S. helped oil-rich South Sudan split from Sudan in 2011. Strategists may say that Crimea and Ukraine are far different from all these, but all secessions are unique.

The question that the U.S. doesn’t address is whether the regions of Crimea and eastern Ukraine should be able to vote on a separation. Part of Ukraine goes with Russia, giving Russians more security from the neo-Nazis’ ethnic cleansing. The rest of Ukraine can vote whether to join the European Union.

Russia is threatening to cut off natural gas to Ukraine as it has done before. The European Union also gets 20 percent of its fuel source from Russia through pipelines that cross Ukraine, and that country gets 70 to 80 percent of its natural gas from Russia. This situation makes the U.S. fat-cats gleefully rub their hands together as they consider the potential of Russia going up against Ukraine. It’s 2003 all over again when the U.S. went into Iraq to take over its oil fields.

Politicians are demanding that the U.S. sell its “surplus” natural gas to Europe and Ukraine as well as remove any controls on fracking in the U.S. Rand Paul wants to drill ” in every possible conceivable place” and send all the U.S. energy resources overseas. Rep. Ted Poe (R-TX) introduced a bill in the House requiring the Department of Energy to approve and expedite permits to ship U.S. natural gas to Ukraine and other countries, and Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) introduced a similar measure in the Senate.

Expanding the exports of natural gas would largely benefit only the wealthy and the corporations because they are the ones who make a decision about where to send their product. Asia pays more than Europe, and there is no impetus to shift the direction of the shipping. The expansion of producing and exporting natural gas would only increase the rate at which resources in the U.S. are depleted and the destruction to the environment. Another problem is the lack of existing infrastructure to send natural gas to Europe. And the third is that the need for this product is seasonal, making the idea undesirable for corporations only interested in profit.

Secretary of State John Kerry’s accusation that Vladimir Putin is violating international law by sending Russian troops into Crimea flies in the face of reason. Ukraine’s president was democratically elected, and the neo-Nazis attacked the country. As for invasions, the United States is guilty of this multiple times, including Afghanistan and Iraq a little more than a decade ago. This invasion ended up killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and left their country a bitterly divided mess. Currently the Obama administration is blowing up people in other nations though the use of drones.

Since World War II, the list of countries where the United States have overthrown democratically-elected leaders includes Mossadegh in Iran in 1953, Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954, Allende in Chile in 1973, Aristide in Haiti twice, Chavez in Venezuela briefly in 2002, Zelaya in Honduras in 2009, Morsi in Egypt in 2013, and now Yanukovych in Ukraine in 2014. Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela is getting nervous in case the U.S. turns its effort for “democracy” on him. And now the right-wing in the U.S. wants this nation to toss out another democratically-elected leader. 

United States agents have indulged in murder and torture, and the government has a history of training and working with fascists, dictators, drug lords, and terrorists in places including Afghanistan, Albania, Argentina, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, China, Colombia, Cuba, El Salvador, France, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Iraq, Korea, Laos, Libya, Mexico, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Panama, The Philippines, Syria, Uruguay, Yugoslavia, and Zaire. And that’s just since 1944. It’s hard for the United States to take the high ground with Russia when one considers the country’s history.

The United States employs a foreign policy, including with Ukraine, is follow-the-money. The Congress is buying into the philosophy. It is willingly sending money to a foreign country while refusing  to help desperate people within its own borders, and it providing big energy companies with everything they want. This investment will be paid back many-fold in the future with corporate campaign donations.