The US says it will support the delivery of advanced fighter jets to Ukraine by allowing Western allies to supply American-made F-16s to Kyiv and by training Ukrainian pilots to use the jets.
It would certainly be a military boost for Kyiv – but the devil is in the detail.
The crucial questions are: how many, how quickly, and what weapons will the jets will come supplied with?
No-one doubts the ability of the F-16, which has more than proved itself in conflicts around the world.
They will be a step up from Ukraine’s Soviet era Mig-29s and Su-27s, which fly comparable missions.
The F-16 radar can see further, allowing hostile aircraft to be engaged at longer ranges.
Moving closer to WW3. Somebody wants to destroy Europe along with Russia and probably USA as well. Ukraine has lost about half of its population to flight and death. The young men massacred in hopeless battles will never come back and neither will most of those who have fled. Are Poland and the Baltics next in line to be destroyed? ABN
It’s a lose-lose situation for Ukrainians. While they are dying, financial institutions are insidiously supporting the consolidation of farmland by oligarchs and Western financial interests.
So says Frédéric Mousseau, Policy Director of the Oakland Institute, an independent think tank.
Depending on which sources to believe, between 100,000 and 300,000 Ukrainian soldiers (possibly more) have died during the conflict with Russia. That figure, of course, does not include civilian casualties.
This is surely a big part of the reason Ukrainian men were deliberately slaughtered in hopeless battles and also why so many other Ukrainians have been driven from Ukraine, never to return. ABN
The Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) arrested Gonzalo Lira, a US-Chilean national residing in Kharkiv, on suspicions of harbouring pro-Russian sentiments. This marks the second time Lira has been apprehended by the SBU. Lira, an author and filmmaker who relocated to Kharkiv years ago and married a Ukrainian, was initially detained in April 2022 but was released after a week without charges. He was subsequently instructed not to leave the city and prohibited from discussing his arrest.
As reported by Ukrainian media, the SBU’s statement accuses Lira of publicly justifying Russia’s armed aggression, denying or glorifying supposed Russian war crimes, and undermining Ukraine’s top military and political leadership and Defence Forces.
On May 5, the SBU website published a statement in Ukrainian titled “SBU detained a foreign blogger in Kharkiv who denied the crimes of the Russian Federation and insulted Ukrainian defenders.” The statement alleges that Lira was among the first to support Russian invaders and glorify their war crimes. It also accuses him of discrediting Ukraine’s military-political leadership and Defense Forces. The SBU claims that Lira filmed provocative videos featuring Ukrainian defenders and insulted them.
The SBU filmed Lira’s arrest, during which heavily armed agents were involved. All participants’ faces, except Lira’s, were blurred out. A close-up of a smartphone displaying an image of Lira’s children as a screensaver was also left un-blurred. Lira is currently detained on suspicion of producing and disseminating materials justifying the Russian Federation’s armed aggression against Ukraine. The edited video shows heavily armed special forces knocking on Lira’s door and aiming a machine gun at the 55-year-old Lira, who opens the door in his pyjamas. The metal soundtrack from Override Spedup fades down enough to hear the words of a special forces member telling Lira while tapping his arm: “Welcome to Ukraine.”
Beijing is fully aware the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is the un-dissociable double of the U.S. war against its Belt and Road Initiative.
Imagine President Xi Jinping mustering undiluted Taoist patience to suffer through a phone call with that warmongering actor in a sweaty T-shirt in Kiev while attempting to teach him a few facts of life – complete with the promise of sending a high-level Chinese delegation to Ukraine to discuss “peace”.
There’s way more than meets the discerning eye obscured by this spun-to-death diplomatic “victory” – at least from the point of view of NATOstan.
The question is inevitable: what’s the point of this phone call? Very simple: just business.
The Beijing leadership is fully aware the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is the un-dissociable double of an American direct war against the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
Until recently, and since 2019, Beijing was the top trade partner for Kiev (14.4% of imports, 15.3% of exports). China essentially exported machinery, equipment, cars and chemical products, importing food products, metals and also some machinery.
Mercouris sets the tone and the others following in ‘not naming’ who is causing Western downfall led by USA. This is a symptom of deep parasitic infestation. Fearing YouTube cancelling their channel is a symptom as well. Western Christianized ethics and lack of clans is the root cause of the West being extremely vulnerable to parasitic infestation. We are in our death throes and it’s still hard for people to even recognize what is happening. ABN
As Ukraine sells off public assets in a privatization spree, US fossil fuel corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Halliburton are in talks to run its oil and gas industry, and the IMF is imposing the Washington Consensus.
As the war in Ukraine drags on, the government is selling off state assets in a big privatization spree.
US fossil fuel corporations like ExxonMobil, Chevron, and Halliburton are participating in discussions to take over the Eastern European nation’s oil and gas industry, as Kiev pushes to increase production to replace Russian energy exports.
This comes soon after Ukraine’s Western-backed leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, sent a friendly video message to a US corporate lobby group, thanking companies like BlackRock, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Starlink, and promising “big business” for others.
The Ukrainian government has used the war as an excuse to ram through some of the most aggressive anti-worker laws on Earth.
The director of the Kiev-based workers’ rights NGO Labor Initiatives warned of a “full-scale attack on Ukraine’s labour rights”, writing in a German government-funded journal that the “war cannot be used to justify stripping workers of their rights”.
Worth noting is almost all Ukrainians along with virtually all Eastern Europeans are descended from freed slaves. The so-called ‘Polish nobility’ instituted the psychopathic Arenda system, which was largely run by Jews. The largest ‘peasant’ (meaning slave/serf) uprising in European history occurred in 1648-57 in the southeastern part of the then Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which is now Ukrainian territory (or just was). The uprising was a manifestation from the fairly deep past of the ethnic and socioeconomic divisions that define much of Eastern Europe to this day. Ukrainians are still under the thumbs of someone else, including Jewish oligarchs and Russian soldiers. The article above describes the next chapter of someone else controlling Ukraine and getting most of the money. ABN
.@ComicDaveSmith shocks @joerogan with a powerful rant about NATO expansion, the 2014 Ukraine coup, and how American policies led to the War in Ukraine, bringing us closer to a potential nuclear World War III:
“It’s not like it’s just Ron Paul, Noam Chomsky, and Pat Buchanan…
•Robert McNamara (Sec. of Defense) •Robert Gates (Sec. of Defense) •William Perry (Sec. of Defense) •George Kennan (American diplomat) •William Burns (CIA Director)
“They all opposed NATO expansion in the strongest possible language and all explicitly because this will provoke a conflict with Russia. There’s this great interview that George Kennan gave with Thomas Friedman from the New York Times in the 90s when they were doing the first round of NATO expansion, and he is furious… What are you guys doing? We won the Cold War. Now, you are picking a fight with Russia?
These aren’t the Soviets. These aren’t the communists. These are the heroes who overthrew them. Why are we picking a fight with them? He’s said, and this is a crazy prediction, really ominous. The people who are expanding NATO will keep expanding it and expanding it, and then there will be a Russian reaction, and then when theirs the Russian reaction, they are going to say, see, that’s proof that we have to keep on expanding it.”
American Buddhist Net 