Russia - Ukraine war

[Wonderfulspam]

GB News.

United Nations 2018

German delegation laugh at Trump's energy security warning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7Owe-MxNu8

[Wonderfulspam]

The Spectator

Why the silence over Biden’s links with Ukraine?

Just because Trump dug for that dirt doesn’t mean the dirt isn’t there

‘He has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.’
So once said Robert Gates, the former US defence secretary, of the now president Joe Biden. We don’t yet know if Biden is wrong about the current Ukraine crisis. We may be about to find out.

His speech on Tuesday was at least competent, if not entirely coherent. ‘Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called ‘countries’ on territory that belongs to his neighbours?’ asked the president, in one of his now all-too-familiarly infirm attempts to sound firm.

Yet Biden said his administration, and the broader Nato alliance, are ‘clear-eyed’ and ‘united’ in response to the challenge Putin has thrown down. He said the world is witnessing ‘the beginning of an invasion’ of Ukraine and that the West’s punitive sanctions against Russia will go ‘far beyond’ what had previously been suggested.

He also stated that additional US forces would be deployed in the Baltic States to defend ‘every inch’ of Nato territory. ‘I’m hoping diplomacy is still available,’ Biden concluded. ‘Thank you very much.’


It was a short speech, as most Biden addresses are these days, and perhaps a pleasing contrast to the sinister, unhinged ramblings of the Russian leader in Moscow on Monday night. As Biden trotted off, journalists shouted after him asking if he would meet Vladimir Putin in the coming days.


What’s peculiar is that nobody seems able or willing to ask Joe Biden about his complicated familial connections to Ukraine. That is a Trumpist talking point, after all, and nobody wants to be accused of peddling those. Donald Trump was impeached, you may remember, in 2019 for allegedly attempting to coerce the Ukrainian government into giving over information that might have been damaging to Biden, the man he would soon face in the 2020 presidential election.


But just because Trump dug for that dirt doesn’t mean that dirt isn’t there. After the insanity of Russiagate, the Democratic attempt to bring down Trump over his ties to Russia, you can see why Trump might have wanted to wage his own Ukrainegate against Biden. Trump and his media boosters love to say ‘what if Trump’ when it comes to the media’s coverage of Biden, so much so it is tiresome. But when it comes to Ukraine and Biden, 'what if Trump' is a game worth playing.


What if Donald Trump’s son had been paid one million dollars a year by a Ukrainian energy company? Wouldn’t the talking heads on CNN, MSNBC and even the BBC now be talking about little else? What if Donald Trump’s brother had received a considerable loan from an entity controlled by a businessman with substantial ties to Ukraine? You know the answer.


Yet that is exactly the case with Joe Biden, the 46th president of the United States, and almost nobody outside the barmier fringes of the American right bothers to worry about it.

We heard the word ‘kompromat’ a lot in the Trump years. It was used to suggest Putin and his cronies had compromising information on the US president — a ‘pee tape’ involving prostitutes or details of Trump’s financial shenanigans — which they could use as leverage to get what they wanted. But the ‘smoking gun’ of the Trump-Russia inquiry never emerged.


Surely, though, there should be just a little more curiosity among more journalists about Biden’s chequered history with Ukraine and who might know what about it.

When tensions flared in Kiev and the Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in 2014, Biden took the White House lead as he did on most foreign policy issues (he travelled to Ukraine six times as vice president). At the time, as chance would have it and as Politico’s Ben Schreckinger has expertly detailed in his book The Bidens, Joe’s son Hunter, a drug addict with arguably no qualifications other than his surname, was on the board of the Ukrainian company Burisma. The founder of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky, was then under considerable suspicion for corruption (he has never been charged) – one State Department employee in Kiev called him a ‘poster child for corrupt behaviour.’

In 2016, Biden’s brother James was also given a loan of $500,000 (£360,000) by a family friend called John Hynansky, a successful American entrepreneur with strong ties to his Ukrainian motherland. In 2011, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a US federal agency, had authorised up to $20 million (£14 million) to Hynansky’s Winner Automative Group to expand its dealerships selling snazzy cars in Ukraine.

Let’s be clear: there is no evidence that the Bidens have been corrupt in their dealings with Ukraine. But there are quite a few strange connections and questions which America’s First Family probably should answer more thoroughly. Why aren’t they under more pressure to do so?

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-the-silence-over-biden-s-links-with-ukraine-

[Wonderfulspam]

The Spectator

Would Trump have prevented the crisis in Ukraine?

I know Vladimir Putin very well,’ said Donald Trump yesterday, speaking of the Ukraine crisis, ‘he would have never done during the Trump administration what he is doing now.’
As with a lot of Trump utterances, that statement is at once arrogant, preposterous — and probably true.
Maybe it is a coincidence — or Trump’s often-cited luck — that the last major crisis over Ukraine was back in 2014, after Viktor Yanukovych was ousted and Putin annexed Crimea. Or perhaps not.

Back then Barack Obama led the free world and, busy as he was, he offloaded the knotty Ukraine problem on to his Vice President Joe Biden, which I wrote about here yesterday. (Article Above)

In the years since, we’ve heard a lot about Russia’s further expansionist aims in the Donbas, Ukraine, and even the Nato Baltic states. But it is only now, one year into Joe Biden’s presidency, that Putin has made his first significant move since that annexation of Crimea.


In the Trump years, for all the talk of America’s Commander-in-Chief being Putin’s puppet, Russia more or less behaved itself. In public, at least, Putin tolerated the Minsk II accords, signed in 2015 following negotiations between Russia, Belarus, France, Germany, and Ukraine.


Moscow appeared to have a different understanding to the rest of the world as to what the Minsk agreements actually meant. For Ukraine and the West, the accords meant that Russia accepted Ukrainian sovereignty in the Donbas though with certain devolved powers to Luhansk and Donetsk. Russia on the other hand always saw the accords as more of a guarantee of the Russia-aligned status of those two regions.


Perhaps it was this ambiguity in the Minsk accords that meant the Ukrainian situation, while hardly stable, did not boil into a potential international conflict between 2015 and 2022.
Or perhaps it was something to do with Donald Trump being in the White House from January 2017 to January 2021. ‘Russiagate’ theorists will continue to tell you that Trump’s Moscow ties are deeper and more twisted than the exhaustive Mueller inquiry managed to reveal, and that if Putin behaved himself in Ukraine it was because he was getting what he wanted elsewhere, perhaps in the Middle East or something.


A simpler explanation is more likely. Putin, as a slightly comic alpha male authoritarian, saw in Trump something he recognised — an unstable, unpredictable yet potentially decisive actor on the world stage. Rightly or wrongly, he saw in Trump strength whereas in the Democratic leadership he sees only weakness and folly.

Trump also pointed out yesterday that, under his leadership, oil prices stayed low which helped limit Putin’s ability to act. Quite how much credit Trump can take for that is a matter for debate. But it’s reasonable to say that Biden’s ultra-green Build Back Better agenda has so far been much better news for global oil and gas investments than Donald Trump’s administration ever was. As Trump, always with dollar signs in his mind, pointed out yesterday ‘Putin is not only getting what he wanted, but getting, because of the oil and gas surge, richer and richer.’

In its demented ego-driven way, Trump’s view of the way the world works is intriguingly coherent. And painful though it may be for the many experts who have spent years denouncing him as a disastrous monster to admit, he could well be right: if he were in the White House, Putin probably wouldn’t be doing what he is doing.

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/would-trump-have-prevented-the-crisis-in-ukraine-

[Wonderfulspam]

Biden 'war criminal' remark a new phase in US-Russia relations

One by one, diplomatic bridges between the United States and Russia are being set ablaze.

The latest bit of rhetorical demolition came when Joe Biden labelled Vladimir Putin a war criminal, a move Russia said was "unforgivable".

Mr Biden’s statement was an odd one, albeit not out of keeping for a politician who has a history of making monumental policy shifts in seemingly off-the-cuff remarks (see, for instance, his comments on gay marriage in 2012).

After initially telling a reporter he did not think Mr Putin was a criminal, he came back and reversed himself. If there had been an internal debate at the White House over how to handle the growing calls in Congress and the press to condemn Mr Putin in this way, the president settled it in an aside, not a set-piece speech.

This, of course, will make it harder for Mr Biden and his administration to work with the Russians going forward. Every concession or negotiated agreement, on whatever topic, will invite the rejoinder: How can you associate with a criminal?

Perhaps Mr Biden, in his comments, was simply acknowledging the new reality - that the world's political order has irrevocably shifted, and there’s no going back to the way things were.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-60746557

[Wonderfulspam]

The demented old man in the Whitehouse could get us all killed, that's what people thought about Trump, but it's the Biden dementia diplomacy I find more terrifying.

[Wonderfulspam]

Air Marshal Edward Stringer, a former RAF chief, told LBC nuclear war is "no longer unthinkable".

He added: "It's in the realms of possibility, and that's what people have to get their heads around."


https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1581899/NATO-map-countries-attack-Russia-WW3-evg

[Wonderfulspam]

Why did the media cover up the Hunter Biden laptop story?

18 March 2022

It’s now a familiar pattern – a sensational news story is dismissed by serious journalists as bogus fake right-wing agitprop. You’d have to be a swivel-eyed conspiracy theorist to believe that. You don’t want to be one of those.


Then, a year or so later, the same important media organs, the same authorities who made you feel crazy for thinking that the story might be credible, turn around and tell you that, yep, it was true all along. It was just politically awkward to say so at the time.

We saw it in the Covid years with the Wuhan lab-leak theory. We saw it to some extent with Jeffrey Epstein. And now we see it with the Hunter Biden laptop story. Yesterday, the New York Times, which still does proper journalism when in the mood, published a long report into the very unusual business dealings of the President’s wayward son. Towards the bottom of the story, the report acknowledges that the evidence against Hunter Biden ‘appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr Biden in a Delaware repair shop.’


Funny that. When the New York Post reported in October 2020 on Hunter’s marvellous laptop – and the potentially incriminating documents on its hard drive – the New York Times, CNN and others went to great lengths to attack the Post’s reporting: it was, liberals insisted, a Trump-led hit job so therefore not credible. Twitter and Facebook actually censored the story. There was an election on and almost nobody wanted to be accused of doing anything that might stop Joe Biden kicking Trump out of the White House.


But the Hunter laptop story raises serious concerns about the Biden family and the role Joe Biden played as Vice President, especially in 2014 when he took the lead on the Ukraine crisis. It’s well-known that Hunter had a ludicrously well paid job at the Ukrainian mining company Burisma, despite having little qualifications for the role beyond his surname. Hunter’s emails, as the Times reports, suggest he was using or hoping to use his father’s vice-presidential visits to Ukraine as leverage in his business dealings. This is potentially a major story that relates to what is now the biggest foreign policy crisis in the world. Yet the story was quickly hushed up and then for several months treated as fake news – even though clearly it wasn’t.


Biden’s past with Ukraine really ought to be better scrutinised. His current top foreign policy people — including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland were heavily involved in America’s handling of the crisis in 2014. It’s not unreasonable to ask if what they did or didn’t do then had any bearing on what is happening now.

The role of Team Biden in Ukraine might also explain why President Barack Obama, who in 2014 delegated responsibility for Ukraine to his Vice President, has been somewhat mute in recent days. Maybe it’s because he’s contracted Covid. Maybe it’s that when it comes to Ukraine and his administration, something very bad went down.


https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-did-the-media-cover-up-the-hunter-biden-laptop-story-

[Vertigo Swirl]

More Russian heroes:

“Three Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station last night in flight suits made in the yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag, in what appeared to be a daring statement against the war.

Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a six-month stay aboard the orbiting laboratory yesterday, joining the crew of two Russians, four Americans and one German.

In an extraordinary move, the three new arrivals emerged from their Soyuz capsule after docking with the space station wearing bright yellow jumpsuits with blue stripes, instead of the standard-issue blue uniform.”

Putin must be spitting feathers.

[Myster]

More Russian heroes:

“Three Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station last night in flight suits made in the yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag, in what appeared to be a daring statement against the war.

Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a six-month stay aboard the orbiting laboratory yesterday, joining the crew of two Russians, four Americans and one German.

In an extraordinary move, the three new arrivals emerged from their Soyuz capsule after docking with the space station wearing bright yellow jumpsuits with blue stripes, instead of the standard-issue blue uniform.”

Putin must be spitting feathers.

Ah but they had the Russian flag emblazoned on their chest as well, so they'll plead neutrality to avoid a Gulag holiday vacation.

[John]

More Russian heroes:

“Three Russian cosmonauts arrived at the International Space Station last night in flight suits made in the yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag, in what appeared to be a daring statement against the war.

Oleg Artemyev, Denis Matveev and Sergey Korsakov blasted off from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for a six-month stay aboard the orbiting laboratory yesterday, joining the crew of two Russians, four Americans and one German.

In an extraordinary move, the three new arrivals emerged from their Soyuz capsule after docking with the space station wearing bright yellow jumpsuits with blue stripes, instead of the standard-issue blue uniform.”

Putin must be spitting feathers.

They better watch out as that madman might cancel their trip home.

[Vertigo Swirl]

They better watch out as that madman might cancel their trip home.

I'm sure the Americans will offer them a lift home.

[Vertigo Swirl]

Arnie for president

https://twitter.com/schwarzenegger/status/1504426844199669762?s=21

[Vertigo Swirl]

A citizen of Mariupol writes a daily update on facebook: 

#mariupol #hope I go out on the street during breaks between bombs. I need to walk the dog. She is constantly sneezing, shaking, and hiding behind my feet. I always want to sleep. My yard surrounded by many stories is quiet and dead. I'm no longer afraid to look around.

Opposite the entrance of the hundred-fifth house. The flame devoured five floors and slowly chews the sixth. The fire in the room burns neatly, like in a fireplace. Black tiled windows stand without glass. From them, like tongues, curtains fall out of them. I look at this calmly and cursed.

I'm sure I'm going to die soon. That's a matter of days. In this city, everyone is constantly waiting for death. I just wish she wasn't so scary. Three days ago, a friend of my oldest nephew visited us and told us that it was a direct hit into the fire department. The rescuers have lost their lives. One woman's hand, leg and head tore off. I dream of my body parts staying still, even after an air bomb blast.

I don't know why, but I think this is important. Although, on the other hand, there will still be no burial during combat. This is how the police responded to us when we caught them on the street and asked what to do with our friend's dead grandmother. They advised to put it on the balcony. I wonder how many balconies are dead bodies lying on?

Our house on Mira Avenue is the only one without direct hits. He was hit by shells twice, glass flew out in some apartments, but he was hardly injured and looks lucky compared to other houses.

The whole yard is covered with a few layers of ash, glass, plastic and metal shackles. Me trying not to look at the iron fool flying into the playground. I think it's a rocket, or maybe it's gone. I don't care, it's just uncomfortable. In the third floor window, I see someone's face and it's chasing me. Turns out I'm afraid of living people.

My dog is starting to howl and I understand they are going to shoot again now. I'm standing outside during the day, and there's a cemetery silence around me. There are no cars, no voices, no children, no grandmothers on the benches. Even the wind is dead. A few people on here though. They are lying on the side of the house and in the parking lot covered with upper clothes. I don't want to look at them. I'm afraid I'll see someone I know.

All life in my city is now mumbling in the basements. She looks like a candle in our ward. There's nothing to do to put her out. Any vibration or wind and darkness will come. I try to cry but I can't. I feel sorry for myself, my family, my husband, my neighbors, friends. I go back to the basement and listen to a nasty iron cross there. It's been two weeks, and I can't believe there was once another life.

People continue to sit in the basement in Mariupol. Every day, it's harder for them to survive. They have no water, food, light, they can't even go outside because of constant shelling. Mariupol residents must live. Help them out. Tell me about it. Let everyone know that the killing of peaceful people continue.

[Wonderfulspam]

Hunter Biden helped secure funds for US biolab contractor in Ukraine: e-mails


Russia’s assertion that President Biden’s son Hunter was “financing . . . biological laboratories in Ukraine” was based in truth, according to e-mails reviewed by The Post.

A trove of e-mails on Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop — the existence of which was exclusively reported by The Post in October 2020 — found that he played a role in helping a California defense contractor analyze killer diseases and bioweapons in Ukraine.


Moscow has claimed that secret American biological-warfare labs in Ukraine were a justification for its unprovoked invasion of the neighboring country last month. It doubled down on the accusations Thursday, claiming the labs produced biochemical weapons at the Biden family’s behest.

“US President Joe Biden himself is involved in the creation of biolaboratories in Ukraine,” Russia’s State Duma speaker, Vyacheslav Volodin said, according to state media.

“An investment fund run by his sun [sic] Hunter Biden funded research and the implementation of the United States’ military biological program. It is obvious that Joe Biden, as his father and the head of state, was aware of that activity,” Volodin continued, demanding a US Congressional investigation and a White House explanation.

US intelligence officials had earlier dismissed Russia’s messaging as war propaganda, explaining that Ukraine’s network of biological labs dedicated to pathogen research were not secret, and had publicly received funding from Washington.

However, Russia’s new claim that the first son’s investment fund was involved in raising money for biolab projects in Ukraine was accurate, according to e-mails involving Hunter Biden’s dealings in Ukraine, first obtained by The Post and initially reported on by The Daily Mail Friday.


Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners invested $500,000 in the San Francisco pathogen research company Metabiota and raised millions more through firms that included Goldman Sachs, according to the e-mails found on the computer, which was abandoned at a Delaware repair shop in April 2019 as Joe Biden ran for president.

Hunter introduced Metabiota to officials at Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company where he was a board member, for a “science project” involving biolabs in Ukraine, the e-mails show.

A memo from a Metabiota official to the then-vice president’s son in 2014 said the company could “assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia.”


Metabiota vice president Mary Guttieri also wrote to Hunter about geopolitical issues involving the company’s research in the former Soviet republic in April 2014, two months after Russia invaded and annexed the Crimea region.

“As promised, I’ve prepared the attached memo, which provides an overview of Metabiota, our engagement in Ukraine, and how we can potentially leverage our team, networks, and concepts to assert Ukraine’s cultural and economic independence from Russia and continued integration into Western society,” her memo read.

Days later, Burisma executive Vadym Pozharskyi wrote to Biden about a “as you called ‘Science Ukraine’ project.”

“As I understand the Metabiota was a subcontract to principal contactor of the DoD B&V [engineering firm Black & Veatch],” his e-mail read. “What kind of partnership Metabiota is looking for in Ukraine?”

The US awarded $23.9 million to Metabiota later in 2014, with $307,091 allocated for a “Ukrainian research projects,” government spending records showed.

The younger Biden bragged to investors that his company organized funding for Metabiota and helped it “get new customers” including “government agencies,” according to e-mails.

B&V had been commissioned in 2010 by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency to build a lab in Odessa, to “enhance the government’s existing surveillance systems to detect, report and respond to bioterrorism attacks, epidemics and potential pandemics,” the company’s website said.


Hunter Biden’s ventures raised the eyebrows of a former CIA officer.

“His father was the vice president of the United States and in charge of relations with Ukraine. So why was Hunter not only on the board of a suspect Ukrainian gas firm, but also hooked them up with a company working on bioweapons research?,” Sam Faddis told the Mail.

‘It’s an obvious Russian propaganda attempt to take advantage of this. But it doesn’t change the fact that there does seem to be something that needs to be explored here.


“Why is Hunter Biden in the middle of all this? Why is the disgraced son of the vice president at the heart of this – the guy with no discernible skills and a cocaine habit?”

Hunter Biden, 52, remains under federal investigation for possible tax fraud. The probe broadened in 2018 to look into how his international business dealings as a lobbyist and investor dovetailed with his father’s political career. He has denied allegations of impropriety.

https://nypost.com/2022/03/26/hunter-biden-played-role-in-funding-us-bio-labs-contractor-in-ukraine-e-mails/

[mrswah]

I agree with much of your post but don’t  you think the worse this is going for Putin, the more likely he will do something with catastrophic consequences for the whole of Europe, if not the world?

This is exactly my fear.