Category Archives: Russia

The Wagner Putsch

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Events are unfolding so quickly in Russia (Belarus has brokered a deal to let Prigozhin escape the country with his skin intact, while his forces stand down) that the following take on the situation is already out of date. Nevertheless, it’s still worth a read.

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from the pro-Russian German-language site Anti-Spiegel:

Wagner putsch

Putin’s speech to the nation: “This is treason”

The Wagner group under Prigozhin has launched a coup attempt in Russia. Putin gave a speech to the nation in the morning.

The Wagner Group has launched a coup attempt in Russia. With thousands of soldiers, tanks and vehicles, the group has taken control of Rostov and a column is on its way towards Moscow. In the morning, President Putin delivered a speech to the nation, which I translated for information.

Start of translation:

I appeal to the citizens of Russia, to the members of the armed forces, law enforcement and intelligence services, to the soldiers and commanders who are now fighting in their positions, repelling the enemy’s attacks and doing it heroically — I know this, because I have talked to the commanders of all sections again this evening. I also address those who, through deceit or threats, were lured into this criminal adventure and pushed down the path of the most serious crime, armed insurrection.

Today, Russia is fighting a hard battle for its future, repelling the aggression of the neo-Nazis and their string-pullers. Practically the entire military, economic and information machinery of the West is directed against us. We fight for the life and security of our people, for our sovereignty and independence. For the right to be and to remain Russia — a state with a thousand-year history.

This struggle, in which the fate of our people will be decided, requires the unity of all forces, unity, consolidation and responsibility. Now everything that weakens us, every kind of discord that our enemies outside can and will use to undermine us from within must be pushed aside.

And that’s why actions that split our unity are a de facto turning away from our people, from our comrades who are now fighting on the front lines. This is a stab in the back of our country and our people.

This is exactly the kind of blow that was inflicted on Russia in 1917 when the country fought in World War I. Victory has been stolen from the country. Intrigues, squabbles, political machinations behind the backs of the army and the people led to the greatest upheaval, the defeat of the army and the collapse of the state, the loss of vast territories. The result was the tragedy of the Civil War.

Russians killed Russians, brothers killed their brothers, and benefited all sorts of political adventurers and foreign forces that divided and torn the country apart.

We will not allow this to happen again. We will protect both our people and our statehood from all threats. Also against betrayal from within.

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The Defender of Europe

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I woke up this morning and learned that an attempted coup was underway against Vladimir Putin, staged by Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Group. Since I have no expertise whatsoever on internal Russian politics, I won’t be commenting on the situation myself (Putin’s speech is here).

I don’t generally post photos of myself, but I’ll make an exception in this case, due to the t-shirt I was wearing at the beach the day before yesterday:

The rain finally quit for a while, and the sun came out (sort of), enough for me to go down and put my feet into the surf.

That’s Matteo Salvini on my shirt, which was marketed back when he was Interior Minister, before he was betrayed by Giuseppe Conte and the 5-Star Movement. Dymphna gave me the shirt for Christmas in 2018 (her last Christmas). It’s the first time I’ve worn it to the beach. Actually, it’s the first time I’ve been to the beach in seventeen years. It was good to feel the sand between my toes.

I doubt that one American in 10,000 would recognize the image of Matteo Salvini. When someone asks who that is on my shirt, and I tell them, they’ve never even heard of him. So I launch into an explanation, but by the time I get to phrases such as “interior minister” and “coalition government” and “closed the ports to migrant-rescue vessels”, their eyes glaze over and I can tell they are only pretending to pay attention, just to be polite.

Mine is a specialized line of work.

Azerbaijan = Corrupt + Terrorist + Evil

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David Boyajian’s latest report concerns the corruption and outright criminality of the Aliyev regime in Azerbaijan.


Ilham Aliyev and Vladimir Putin

Azerbaijan = Corrupt + Terrorist + Evil

by David Boyajian

There may be no regime more loathsome and deserving of U.S./European condemnation and punitive sanctions than that of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his crew of criminals and monsters.

Corrupt to the Core

State Sponsor of Terrorism

  • Azerbaijan deployed thousands of terrorists/jihadis against Christian Armenians in the early 1990s, including Afghan Mujahedin, Chechens, and Turkey’s Grey Wolves.
  • Azerbaijan had long befriended Osama Bin Laden. Baku’s Al-Qaeda cell belonged to the network that bombed American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. A dozen Americans and 212 others perished.
  • Columbia University’s Peace-Building/Human Rights program and others have documented Aliyev’s using thousands of terrorist mercenaries in his unprovoked 2020 war against Armenian-populated Artsakh/Nagorno-Karabagh (N-K) and Armenia. Turkey openly transported them from Syria and Libya. The jihadis included one-time ISIS commander/war criminal Sayf Balud and miscellaneous murderers, rapists, and kidnappers. Reportedly, Pakistan also sent terrorists. During the war, Azeri zealots chanted, “Jihad, jihad, jihad.” In Baku? No, in Washington, DC.
  • The EU Parliament denounced (January 20, 2021) Baku and Ankara for using “foreign terrorists” against Armenians.
  • The UN’s Working Group on Mercenaries condemned (November 6, 2020) Baku’s and Ankara’s hiring of jihadis. Predictably, the UN probe has stalled, doubtless due to obstruction by the U.S. and others.
  • The Senate Foreign Relations Committee grilled (July 21, 2021) neo-con Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs potty-mouthed Victoria Nuland about Turkey’s delivering terrorists to Azerbaijan. She refused to answer in open session. That’s consistent with America’s scandalous and long-running downplaying of Azerbaijan’s and Turkey’s state sponsorship of terrorism.

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Russian Sanctions Bingo

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This is hilarious:


The Russians are superb at this mockery. This is much better than anything we produce. And look how good the deep fakes are.

Hat tip: Conservative Tree House.

The Deindustrialization of Germany?

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Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from Die Welt:

“Before the people there freeze, we would have to throttle our industry or even shut it down”

Gas transit contracts between Russia and Ukraine will expire next year — it remains uncertain whether countries like Austria or Hungary will continue to be supplied from Russia. Economics Minister Robert Habeck is now making it clear that Germany would cut back its industry if necessary in order to help its neighbors.

According to Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Greens), Germany could be forced to reduce or even shut down industrial capacities if the gas transit agreement between Russia and Ukraine is not extended. “In my opinion, we’re not out of the woods yet,” Habeck said on Monday at the East German Economic Forum in Bad Saarow.

The currently good situation should not distract from what is actually threatening. “I just want to point out that the transit agreements that Russia has signed with Ukraine will expire in 2024,” the minister said.

“And the war is raging. There is no certain scenario as to how things will continue,” he said. “If the Russian gas doesn’t keep coming to Eastern Europe to the same extent that is still flowing through Ukraine now, what was agreed in Europe would apply: before the people there freeze, we would have to throttle our industry or even shut it down.”

Despite February’s Russian invasion, Ukraine still makes money from the transit fees it charges for sending Russian gas to countries like Austria, Slovakia, Italy and Hungary.

Even if some deliveries continue beyond 2024, this is unlikely to happen on comparable terms. There is a lack of political support for this, according to a report by the Center on Global Energy Policy last week.

“Direct negotiations between Ukraine and Russia on the extension of the transit agreement seem highly unlikely in the current environment,” say the report’s authors, Anne-Sophie Corbeau and Tatiana Mitrova.

Afterword from the translator:

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Tomio Okamura: No Support for the War in Ukraine

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Tomio Okamura is the leader of the SPD party in Czechia. He is multicultural in a unique Central European way: his father was Japanese and his mother was from Moravia.

In the following video Mr. Okamura lays out his party’s position on Ukraine and NATO’s proxy war on Russia. He opposes any financial and military aid for the regime in Kiev.

Many thanks to Xanthippa for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes and RAIR Foundation for the subtitling:


Video link

Video transcript:

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The Only Good Thing About the BBC is They’re Bad Liars

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The photo above is an obvious fake. I’m an untrained amateur, but the image is clearly a digitally modified composite using several layers (at least two or three) that have been sloppily merged.

It accompanied an article about Ukraine that was published yesterday by the BBC. The article itself is irrelevant; it’s just the usually boilerplate propaganda one expects from the MSM. What interests me is the photo.

The background is a shot of a sunlit field at midday during springtime. The foreground is probably composed of two distinct layers: the soldier shooting the grenade launcher next to a pile of dirt, and the pile of branches close to the camera. At least some of the fire and smoke associated with the firing of the weapon has been created digitally.

The soldier and the branches in the foreground were evidently photographed under a floodlight at night or during twilight. The pile of dirt beyond the soldier was outside the main glare of the floodlight, and was thus lit only by the blast from the grenade launcher — that is, backlit in orange and red.

It’s that last point that makes the image such an obvious fake: the pile of dirt does not share the same light source as the field beyond it. The technician who was assigned the job of creating the digital fake was either inept, careless, or untrained in the digital manipulation of images, or some combination of all three. It was a slipshod production, and Reuters and the BBC just let it slide on through.

But there is a fourth possibility: the composite image may have been created with deliberate incompetence, as an insult to the reader, as if to say: “We hold you in such contempt that we insult your intelligence by presenting you with this obvious fake. Deal with it.”

It brings to mind the well-known quote from Theodore Dalrymple:

In my study of communist societies, I came to the conclusion that the purpose of communist propaganda was not to persuade or convince, not to inform, but to humiliate; and therefore, the less it corresponded to reality the better. When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity. To assent to obvious lies is in some small way to become evil oneself. One’s standing to resist anything is thus eroded, and even destroyed. A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.

As I said, I’m an amateur when it comes to digital manipulation, but even I could do better than the Reuters snoid who made this image. It took me just a few minutes to adjust the light on the upper surfaces in the pile of dirt to make it more plausibly in agreement with the sunlit field beyond:

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What’s the Real Scoop on Nizhny Novgorod?

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The following AP article concerns today’s attempted assassination of a pro-Kremlin writer in the Nizhny Novgorod Oblast in Russia.

Although my knowledge of Russian geography is limited, when I read the story, alarm bells went off in my head. Why would someone traveling from the Donbas to Moscow stop off in Nizhny Novgorod en route?

Read the story, and then take a look at the map at the top of this post:

Pro-Kremlin Novelist Injured in Car Explosion in Russia

TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The car of a prominent pro-Kremlin novelist exploded in Russia on Saturday, injuring him and killing his driver, Russia’s state news agency Tass reported, citing emergency and law enforcement officials.

The incident involving the car of Zakhar Prilepin, a well-known nationalist writer and an ardent supporter of what the Kremlin calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine, took place in the region of Nizhny Novgorod, about 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Moscow.

[…]

The regional governor of Niznhy Novgorod, Gleb Nikitin, said Prilepin suffered minor bone fractures and was receiving medical help.

Russian news outlet RBC reported, citing unnamed sources, that Prilepin was traveling back to Moscow on Saturday from Ukraine’s partially occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions and stopped in the Nizhny Novogorod [sic] region for a meal. [emphasis added]

I don’t know anything about Zakhar Prilepin or his role in Russian political intrigues. All I can do is look at the map and state the obvious: There is something fishy about this story.

Giorgia Meloni: Fast-Track Ukraine Into the EU

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In the following video recorded at a conference in Rome on Wednesday, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni promotes the rapid assimilation of Ukraine into the European Union.

Ms. Meloni’s position puts her at odds with a substantial portion of her fellow Italians, among them Silvio Berlusconi and other members of her government. Italian public opinion is, generally speaking, pro-Russian.

One may speculate about the prime minister’s reasons for pushing Ukrainian membership in the EU and lionizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. She’s an intelligent woman, and must surely realize that Mr. Zelensky is an American puppet. Perhaps she wants to curry favor with the USA. Or maybe there are Italian commercial interests lobbying for Ukraine — who knows?

The resistance to the globalist Left isn’t monolithic. To take another example, Donald Trump is still promoting the vax. And Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán imposed a strict lockdown during the “pandemic”. I don’t often encounter fellow dissidents whose positions are in exact alignment with mine.

Many thanks to HeHa for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes and RAIR Foundation for the subtitling:


Video link

Below are excerpts from an English-language article in Remix News (hat tip Reader from Chicago) about Ms. Meloni’s remarks:

Meloni Urges EU to Speed Up Accession Talks With Ukraine

Speaking at a conference in Rome on Wednesday, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called on European allies to start accession negotiations with Ukraine as soon as possible.

In a joint statement with Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmihal, the Italian prime minister underlined that Ukraine’s future must be shaped in such a way that it can increasingly adapt to European dynamics and institutions.

“The smartest way to thank the Ukrainians for what they are doing is to accelerate their chances to participate in European institutions,” the Italian leader said. “We must acknowledge the enormous efforts made by Kyiv to reform its system and bring it more in line with the European Commission’s requirements.”

She added that Italy wants to play a leading role in the reconstruction of Ukraine.

Video transcript:

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The Bear and the Panda Join Forces

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Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from Uncut News. The translator’s comments are in square brackets:

Beijing and Moscow form a military alliance and challenge the Pentagon

Chinese Defense Minister Li Shanfu has brought a comprehensive package of strategic agreements with him from Moscow. Beijing has openly supported Moscow in the Ukraine conflict. And in doing so, it has shamed the West, which has attempted to issue an ultimatum to the Chinese authorities.

Robert Sutter: China and Russia together can withstand any “Ukrainian Blow”.

After arriving in Moscow on Sunday, Li Shanfu was immediately received by President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu was also present at the meeting. General Li also visited the General Staff Military Academy, which has signed a memorandum of cooperation with the PLA National Defense Academy.

Most of the four-day visit was classified. A spokesman for China’s defense ministry said Beijing and Moscow had “strengthened their strategic ties.”

The two countries also pledged to “jointly resist attempts by outside forces to interfere in internal affairs,” according to the spokesman. This sounds ominous to the West as Russia supports China’s territorial integrity. That is, it does not recognize Taiwan’s independence, which the West insists on.

Another blow to Western interests is Li Shanfu’s promise to exchange military technology and trade in arms. It is the first time General Li has traveled abroad since he became defense minister. And he has repeatedly made it clear that he chose Russia on purpose: this only underlines the specificity and strategic importance of the relationship between the two countries.

With his trip, Li Shanfu wants to show the world that military relations between the two countries can withstand the “Ukrainian blow”. It’s a very strong relationship! — says Robert Sutter, Professor of International Relations at George Washington University.

The West, of course, is concerned about the possibility of China providing direct military support to Russia. The Washington Post cites secret Pentagon documents showing there is an agreement in principle for such assistance. At the same time, for example, the European Union’s High Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, stated that Chinese components were allegedly found in Russian weapons in Ukraine (including drone navigation systems and tank fire control systems). [After they “sold” them the technology and knowhow for decades now, what the hell did they expect?]

There was no official confirmation of this. But it is a reason for Congress and the Joe Biden administration to prepare new sanctions against Chinese dual-use technologies. Just as before, the Europeans unduly imposed sanctions on Iran for the accusation that it supplied Russia with Mohajer and Shahed drones.

Joseph Wright: China is playing the role of the world’s chief peacemaker [with a .45 caliber to the head]

Given its unprecedented foreign trade, China is interested in a predictable and stable Russia — another factor behind Beijing’s support for Moscow, says City University of New York political science professor Xia Ming. The scientist is convinced that the West is aiming for a scenario similar to that of 1991 against Russia — a change in the state system and the actual collapse of the state. [To me it looks more the other way around, the West is not just crumbling, it uses a wrecking-ball on itself through pandering to Big Tech and Central Banks.]

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The Unthinkable Has Already Been Thought

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Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this essay from Anderweltonline.com. The translator’s comments are in square brackets:

Nuclear War? Only the southern hemisphere will survive

by Peter Haisenko

The effects of atomic bombing are mostly misjudged. Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not nuclear deserts. They quickly became thriving cities again. But what will be the effects if hundreds, even thousands, of atomic bombs are used?

Atomic bombs are detonated about 300 meters above the target. In this way, the explosive power has a greater range. The pressure and heat wave can have an effect over many kilometers. If the ignition took place on the ground, it would quickly be shielded by buildings or natural elevations. The radius of action would be severely limited, but the nuclear contamination would be many times greater in the center. If it were ignited at a height of 300 meters, hardly any of the dangerous radioactive particles would reach the ground. Why is that?

The pictures of “atomic mushrooms” show it: The development of enormous heat creates a very small but enormously powerful low-pressure area. The air, which is forced to move upwards with all the radioactive particles, rises to heights of ten to sixty kilometers and thus sucks all the particles off the ground. The sixty kilometers were observed in the detonation of the Soviet “Tsar Bomba”, the most powerful hydrogen bomb ever detonated. It was so terrible that Moscow decided never to build another bomb like this. The pilot who dropped and witnessed this ultimate weapon said it changed his life and never flew a bomber again.

This bomb would have leveled the whole of Paris, including all the suburbs, in one fell swoop. The pressure wave from the explosion measurably circled the globe three times. What is interesting, however, is that even the island in the Arctic Sea, Novaya Zemlya, where the ignition took place in 1961, was hardly affected by radioactive fallout. Also noteworthy is that the explosive power of this infernal machine was intentionally reduced to about half of what was possible. You can find out more about this here.

The difference between atomic bombs and nuclear power plants

So the point is that when an atomic bomb is used, the destruction below the point of detonation, i.e. at the so-called “ground zero”, is catastrophic, but the radioactive contamination is minor. This is because the radioactive particles are sucked off the ground by the enormous updraft generated by the explosion and transported into the upper atmosphere. There they are blown over the whole earth by the high winds and come down widely distributed everywhere. But wait, all over the world? Exactly not. Fallout is limited to one hemisphere. Why else do you think the US and France conducted their surface nuclear tests in the South Pacific? A total of 688 above-ground atomic bombs were detonated by the end of the 1960s, when it was agreed that these should only be carried out underground. The aim was to stop producing radioactive fallout during these tests.

In this sense, I will briefly address Chernobyl, the accident which is said to have contaminated Europe. This is sheer nonsense. This accident released only a fraction of what each surface explosion threw into the atmosphere. But the point is, before Chernobyl, no one thought of testing fungi or wild animals for radioactive contamination. These results were attributed to the Chernobyl accident and this is incorrect.

Almost all of the radioactive particles that have contaminated the ground came from above-ground atomic bomb tests. But of course you don’t want to admit that, because then you would have to take responsibility for it. Chernobyl would have to be reassessed and the discussions about nuclear power would also have to be conducted on a new basis. However, a meltdown in a nuclear power plant is different from a bomb explosion. The radioactive particles are not ejected into the upper atmosphere, but in the absence of extraction, they fall in an explosion in the immediate vicinity of the accident. At Chernobyl within a radius of about 30 kilometers.

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A Duty to Lie

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The following video features a recent appearance by Col. Douglas Macgregor (retired) on Judge Napolitano’s podcast. In it the two men discuss issues related to the leak of classified Pentagon documents by Jack Teixeira, an Air National Guardsman.

I was interested to see that Col. Macgregor and the judge had come to the same general conclusions about the leak that I did: it was a setup. The documents were deliberately made accessible to Airman Teixeira in the expectation that he would leak them. The intelligence community, a.k.a. the Deep State, found it expedient to have the information become public, without its having to be officially released by the U.S. government. Col. Macgregor outlines the most likely reasons for the leakage, which align fairly well with my own conclusions.

A side effect of the release is that major military and government officials have now been revealed as deliberate liars about the war in Ukraine and related matters. It’s still too early to tell whether this will affect any careers. If the media establish a uniform firewall against any meaningful discussion of the government’s mendacity, it’s quite possible that everyone can skate by and continue with business as usual. Or, it may be that the Deep State decided to sacrifice a few pawns, and maybe a rook and a bishop, in its execution of a sophisticated strategy on the global political chessboard.

Hat tip: Conservative Tree House.

Volodymyr Zelensky to Receive the Coveted Charlemagne Prize

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Global political events have recently morphed into the Theatre of the Absurd.

Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from JournalistenWatch. The translator’s comments are in square brackets:

That’s all that was needed: Charlemagne Prize for Zelensky

Volodymyr Zelensky is to receive the Charlemagne Prize in May. In the Coronation Hall of the Aachen City Hall. Probably no one there can remember where the Charlemagne Prize got its name from. A look at the Charlemagne situation.

by Max Erdinger

Who gave the Charlemagne Prize its name? Is it from Charles the coke maker? From Charles the comedian? From Charles the Unconscionable? Charles the aloof maybe? — No. The Charlemagne Prize takes its name from Charlemagne (748-814). That was quite a bustle. He managed to create a vast state entity for the first time since the fall of Western Rome. He defeated the Lombards, conquered the Avar Empire, secured the eastern borders of his vast empire against the Slavs and in the southwest against the Moors, and even Christianized the Saxons after a long war in 804. When he became king, his empire encompassed almost the entirety of today’s France and half of today’s German territory. When he died it had almost doubled its size and Charlemagne had been Emperor for fourteen years. From king to emperor. [An overly power-hungry, greedy, and religious genocidal maniac, in my eyes. That makes it the perfect prize for these power-hungry, greedy, ideological retarded genocidal maniacs.]

What does that have to do with Zelensky? — Exactly: nothing. Nothing at all. His empire is not expanding; it is shrinking. Also, he is not Christianizing anyone, he is de-Christianizing the Orthodox church in his developing country. He also has it bombed back to the Stone Age. In short: Zelensky is an absolute failure. If you really wanted to give the Charlemagne Prize to someone from their corner of the world, you should have chosen Vladimir Putin. At least he’s expanding properly, and overall he’s a more dignified person than the trained comedian from Kiev. Putin is clearly more emperor than the purchased pro-American king and dick pianist Zelensky. So they chose the wrong person in Aachen to give the Charlemagne Prize. Of course they wouldn’t contest that in Aachen. And in Berlin.

So what is this guy supposed to get the Charlemagne Prize for? — No idea. The Charlemagne Prize of the City of Aachen has been awarded since 1950 to personalities who have made a contribution to the unity of Europe. Personalities, not questionable figures. Unity of Europe? — Zelensky? — Nope.

The question of why the Original Chief-Ukrainer should receive the Charlemagne Prize is definitely easier to answer. The prize cannot defend itself against being awarded. It is not awarded to Zelensky because he deserves it, but because the awardees want to pretend that they have been on the right side for years. Or more pathetically: On the right side of history. But that is grossly wrong. They’re probably awarding the Charlemagne Prize to Zelensky because they have to act as if they couldn’t have known any better. It’s a kind of self-exculpation award ceremony along the lines of: We’ve all screwed up a lot, Zelensky most of all — and that’s why he gets the prize. It will probably be the last time that the city of Aachen honors someone with the Charlemagne Prize. Because: What decent person would allow himself to be decorated with it in the future, knowing that Zelensky has already received it? — Precisely. None. Bodo Ramelow [Minister-President of Thuringia] maybe. Or Annalena Baerbock [current Foreign Minister]. They don’t care what they are awarded with, the main thing is prize and press coverage. Everyone else would say: kiss my…

So far it is not certain whether Zelensky will even come to Germany in May. Because that collides with his date for the major Ukrainian offensive. He would not like to miss his victorious major offensive at home. It is said that they had collected masses of drones, his own. They then want to use them to expand their war into Russian territory. One will soon have to speak of “Zelensky’s war of aggression”. But the Russians will presumably be faster, so that not much will remain of the major Ukrainian offensive.

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Does Sending “Peacekeepers” to Ukraine Guarantee World War III?

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Many thanks to Hellequin GB for translating this article from the Austrian outlet eXXpress. The translator’s comments are in square brackets:

Orbán warns of secret EU plan: peacekeepers for the front in Ukraine?

“Peacekeepers, peacekeepers from the EU nations, are to be sent to the front lines. If that happens, World War III will draw closer,” warns Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in a recent interview.

According to Viktor Orbán (59), the plan for sending tens of thousands of peacekeepers to the east of Ukraine, which has already been discussed among the heads of state of the EU nations, sounds sensible on the surface: These EU troops are intended to separate the two warring parties and thus secure a ceasefire zone — it should bring a quick end to the bloody hostilities.

But the Hungarian Prime Minister sees an extremely great danger in this plan: “We are approaching World War III with it,” says Viktor Orbán in a recent interview with Kossuth Radio.

With peacekeeping troops in the Ukraine, there is a risk of a world war

And it’s pretty clear what Orbán means by this: If German, British, French, Polish and maybe also Austrian peacekeeping units are standing in the rubble fields of Bakhmut and other frontline towns, incidents may very quickly occur — the first shots could lead to firefights, then escalate to massive acts of war. This would mean that NATO and EU countries would suddenly be involved in a dramatic military conflict with the Russian Federation. [Personally, I believe that this is the name of the game — ESCALATION.]

The motivation behind the elaboration of the EU plan to send peacekeeping forces to the front lines in Ukraine is not difficult to see: not only are the Ukrainian armed forces running out of weapons systems and ammunition in the current war of attrition, they are also increasingly short of soldiers. The 1,200km-long front is impossible to hold with fewer and fewer able-bodied men.

The government in Kiev is still hiding the current casualty figures, but according to their own statements, battalions deployed near Bakhmut lost up to 80% of their soldiers. In addition, military observers in Western Europe know that a radical wave of recruitment is once again underway in Ukraine: even extremely young boys and older men are being forcibly drafted into the army. [Sounds like 1944-45 in Nazi-occupied Germany, doesn’t it?]

Orbán warns: “Our security is at risk”

The Federal Government has not communicated how Austria is reacting to these EU plans. On the one hand, there is nothing to be said against another peacekeeping mission by neutral Austria; on the other hand, the resulting high risk of being drawn into a direct conflict with the Russian Federation should be given sufficient attention.

And Viktor Orbán also said in an interview with the radio station: “In any case, the war is becoming more and more brutal and bloody. The Hungarian population is concerned; our safety is at risk. We must reach a ceasefire — if there is one, then peace talks are possible.”

Afterword from the translator:

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