Ukraine “frontline” updates follow this section
I wasn’t paying much attention, wasn’t going to touch this, it was just “too much.” But after Rubio’s “teed-up” (I’ve worked on the Hill and seen how this goes) question to Nuland—with the intent of establishing, “If anything biologically nasty happens, it’s the Russians—and with the Ukraine biolabs fully out of the bag, I can share a few things.
Russia’s defense ministry claims the Ukraine was researching (among other things) the spread of H5N1 influenza (potentially very dangerous to humans) among migratory birds (including birds flying between Russia and the Ukraine), Virulent Newcastle disease (another bird pathogen), the potential spread of human diseases by bats, and possibly Congo-Crimean fever.
Russia’s defense ministry further claims the U.S. has evacuated most documentation from labs in Kiev, Odessa, and Kharkov, although many papers from Kharkov (some of which have been displayed online) have fallen into Russian hands. Sure, you don’t have to believe it. But as others have pointed out, if it’s just some known diseases (however nasty), why does it matter if Russia gets to them? Nuland seemed very concerned about it—what’s the big deal?
I should mention, there are other, more well-known, and much more “costly”, U.S.-funded labs in other ex-USSR countries, namely Georgia and Kazakhstan. Whether or not these have any direct/immediate military purpose, it’s clear that, at a minimum, as with Wuhan, Uncle Sam or his contractors or grantees have distributed virology and bacteriology research to other, “developing” countries, presumably to (1) evade scrutiny and perhaps U.S. laws and ethical norms, and/or (2) minimize the risk of something “getting out” here at home, as happened with the post-9/11 anthrax, and/or (3) to study “local” diseases that they don’t want to bring back stateside.
It’s funny, some CIA/Pentagon shill media outlets claimed the Georgia lab got busy testing the locals for COVID, so it’s all good, must be a great place, and if they test people for COVID then they’re not up to no good. But in fact, the facility was built long before COVID, and is as big as a medium-sized factory!!! In a country of less than four million people! (See photo below from Pentagon source of the place, identified as home base for the “U.S. Army Medical Research Directorate – Georgia.” There’s a lot going on in there.
Probably, it’s not “doomsday” stuff, but you have to assume Uncle Sam spent the money there and not here, specifically because he’s interested in local pathogens (e.g., hosted in animal populations in that country), and he wants to (at a minimum) keep tabs on that for potential military purposes down the line. I mean, this is all under the military, duh. It’s not a welfare operation. As Tucker Carlson said, any biological program under the military, is a military biological program.
In other news: Urged on by Mitch McConnell—who is looking to out-war the Democrats, who he says are weak on Russia—Congress has approved $13.6 billion for the Ukraine. Most of it will get stolen or disappeared somehow, as that government is no longer functional, it can’t legitimately spend this kind of windfall. Its lead negotiator—a top Zelensky groupie—showed up to negotiations with suited Russians, wearing not only street clothes but also a baseball cap, indoors. This is not a promising investment. But they don’t care, it’s just a statement.
Recall, when the GOP had the majority in 2017-2018, they only gave Trump just a couple of billion dollars for “the border”, of which only a fraction (really, a joke amount) was for “The Wall.” Trump had to raid other piggy banks, and the Democrats took him to the Supreme Court over it. The Republican majority sat back and watched. What a bunch of cucks. I can count the worthy ones on less than two hands (Gosar, Gohmert, Banks, Massie, maybe three or four others.)
Sadly, we get what we vote for. I gave these scum A LOT of money. They’ve got my info, they send me 200 to 300 pieces of fundraising email spam a day—if I don’t clear out my spam folder for a week, it will have close to 2000 GOP emails in it. I won’t give another cent.
The “we won’t buy Russian oil” thing, has turned out to be a gimmick. They are still allowing U.S. companies to buy oil from companies that bought it from Russia. All this does is create an extra middleman, it won’t quite send prices to the moon but it will keep them high for no good reason; Russia still makes its money—so dumb.
The number of countries partially or fully restricting exportation of their key foodstuffs is growing with a quickness. As of yesterday, I’d heard of Hungary, Serbia, Malaysia, Indonesia, and of course, the Ukraine and Russia. There are probably more now, it’s cascading. Russia just said it will ban wheat and fertilizer exports to certain hostile countries. Directly or indirectly, we get about 40 percent of our ammonium nitrate fertilizer from Russia. If they cut us out, probably they will sell the balance to China, and the Chinese will re-sell to us at a big markup, in part to compensate themselves for the indirect or “multi-leg” shipping route. It’s not an efficient way to
do business, and inefficiency means high prices.
We Americans are not used to paying any price for our foreign policy (9/11 was a rare, sad exception, but it only “directly” impacted a very small percentage of our population.) As I keep saying, get ready to pay. “We’re all in this together!”
Ukraine war update
I’m not sure how he got wind of it, but Steve Bannon’s show was on this almost as soon as the war started. Now, I can confirm it. Namely: The Ukraine Security Service (or someone else, it’s not clear in all cases) has arrested about 20 leading opposition-oriented pundits and bloggers since the war started. Some have been released to house arrest and told to shut up, others have not been heard from at all; possibly, not all are still breathing.
This comes on top of the government having shut down all opposition TV stations last year (with the explicit, full support of the U.S. Embassy, Kiev.) In short, they have almost fully cleared out the information space. Also, they have been detaining/harassing and in some cases arresting (for “treason”) opposition party (the OPZZh) legislators and staff—I’m not sure how many, but it’s certainly in the tens already. Some have been beaten.
The security services are also busy settling scores, whatever those may be. Dimitri Demjanenko, a former top official with the Ukraine Security Service in the Kiev region, was killed yesterday by a special police unit, allegedly after he resisted arrest and shot back at them, although I saw the video of the “incident”, and then I saw a photo of his body behind the steering wheel—it seems they just executed the guy. This type of thing has been happening every day in the Kiev area.
If this regime survives, it will come out of the war as a military dictatorship up to its elbows in the blood of anyone considered to be in the way, even worse—much worse—than how Putin is running things in Russia.
(No matter what, I’m sure the non-redpilled crowd will keep emailing me about Ukrainian democracy and all that. Some people look at facts, while some stick to their feelings, you can’t fix that.)
As to what the Russians are doing: The “big convoy” outside of Kiev is not “stuck”—as I’ve said, it’s there to keep capital region forces (first and foremost, the special forces) from being transferred to other fronts where Russia aims to make fast progress. It is a holding operation. It’s also slowly but surely surrounding Kiev on all sides.
It’s astounding that 80 percent of MSM headline news about Ukraine, is just their comedian president yapping—whatever comes out of his mouth, is the news. Is this guy the Alpha and the Omega? No, he’s “Baghdad Bob.” He’s just talking up the team, for morale and to get NATO involved. Everyone knows this, but everyone holds on to his every word, regardless. A few days ago, he single-handedly moved the entire U.S. stock and bond market upwards, by dropping a few words about a “diplomatic solution.” It’s like he’s Alan Greenspan!
Outside of fake news and PR, the Ukraine’s situation is hopeless. It’s satisfying to watch Marco Rubio and Lindsay Graham freak out over it; they are so personally invested, and yet they feel so helpless and powerless; it’s like another January 6th. I’m sorry, but it’s fun to watch them squirm and “suffer.” It’s just so ridiculous. These guys were supposed to be the best we’ve got—esteemed, dignified senators of the United States. Now, they are surfing Twitter for any fake news about the “Ghost of Kiev” shooting down 12 Russian planes or whatever. It’s embarrassing for our country.
Any doubts about the quality of the Donetsk and Lugansk militias have been dispelled—with Russian artillery support, the assault columns of the first echelon have proven to be more than a match for any Ukrainians. The headquarters town (until the start of the war, anyway) of the entire Ukrainian army group in the Donbass was confirmed as taken by Donetsk forces today. The town is absolutely trashed, not one large building escaped serious to severe damage. The Ukrainians left their tanks and other junk all over the place.
The encirclement of the Ukrainian army group in the Donbass is gathering steam. It’s being done slowly, methodically, to minimize losses for the advancing forces, but it’s happening. There are, in fact, multiple encirclements forming (or formed already) within a larger encirclement. Most of the remaining Ukrainian forces in the Donbass are positioned in cities, with no “clean” way to get them out, if they don’t surrender.
It’s very unfortunate, but they will be smoked out, no matter how much “collateral damage”, i.e., how many of their own local supporters—and they’re all Russian in the Donbass, it’s the most Russian part of Ukraine—the Russian and allied forces have to, unfortunately, liberate from their property and/or their lives.
It’s bad enough as it is. People have been freezing, hiding for weeks in the basements of their unheated homes or apartment blocks, perhaps starving, certainly many babies have frozen or starved to death by now, or died from poor sanitation and lack of medical attention. You can have a slow death of the population, or you can go in like a ton of bricks and end it quickly. There’s no really good answer. It’s a very ugly thing. Of course, hundreds of thousands of people in Russian-controlled areas have been hiding in cellars as well, some have been killed by Ukrainian artillery, I won’t show you photos because it doesn’t mean squat—no one on either side is “aiming” for civilians; it’s war and stuff happens. Even in cellars, some people get killed, it just depends on how the cannon shell hits the building. If it hits at the foundation, all bets are off.
What I can say is that “Mother Russia” cares for its own people.
The Kiev government, as I have mentioned, doesn’t give a crap about anyone. For example, as I write this, they are blocking refugees from accessing an open road that the Russians have left for Kiev-area residents to reach the Belarus border, a few tens of miles away, because Belarus is an “enemy state”, and they don’t want to give Belarus any “points” for taking in Ukrainians. As I covered in my last email, they have explicitly stated that no one is to seek refuge in Belarus or Russia—no matter how convenient it may be, because it is “unacceptable” (the exact word used) politically.
They have also refused to let anyone get out of Mariupol, a fully “Russian” city of over 400,000 that is surrounded and being taken (now in the industrial outskirts) by the most elite Donetsk units, one warehouse or intersection at a time. A few hundred people managed to get out, risking their own lives, but it was not “approved”; no evacuation or way out has been approved. The population is being “kept” there because they are needed as cover. Of course, with fewer civilians (say, if half left), the place could just be napalmed and taken in a day.
On Wednesday, the Ukraine PR machine claimed a Mariupol “maternity ward” got hit with a missile. All I saw was a photo-op with one maybe-pregnant lady—looking directly at the camera, calm, fully conscious, on a stretcher and then standing, wrapped in blankets. It turns out, she is a social media “glam” model or some kind of “influencer”—in one of my attachments to this email, you can see a side-by-side with one of her “glam” photos and one of her “war” photos. There are other glam photos of her that are circulating; this is just one. Twitter has been censoring tweets with these photos. In truth, although they did the photo-op next to a trashed building, we don’t even know it’s a hospital, nor when exactly it was damaged. Yesterday, Kambodia Harris was in Poland, talking about how this warrants an investigation. Yes, I think we need to investigate the Ukraine PR machine.
Of course, as I’ve indicated, civilians are being and will be killed, but it won’t be some “maternity ward” with some posing model—it won’t be that sexy. Folks, this stuff is custom-made for your Anglo-Saxon, “we must do something!” emotions. As I’ve said, people are being bombed, cars are being shot at on the roads, babies are dying from hunger and disease, but it’s not in front of the cameras, and, both sides are doing it. What you see from the Ukrainians on Twitter or CNN is 95 percent fake news.
Their psy-op machine is so advanced, they have been texting hundreds of Russian actors, athletes, musicians, bloggers, etc., with pictures of dead Russian soldiers, trying to change public opinion. It is a sophisticated and well-oiled machine. At the same time, don’t forget…
ANYONE WHO KEEPS CIVILIANS WHO WANT TO LEAVE, FROM LEAVING, IS SCUM.
Now, I’ve heard from non-redpilled readers about evil Russia “indiscriminately” bombing schools and apartment buildings because Ukraine is “defenseless” and blah blah. Anyone who wants to come across like it’s 2003 and we’re eating up the Bush family’s and Liz Cheney’s dad’s propaganda, OK, I can’t help them. But “defenseless”, the Ukraine was not.
Those who read me regularly know that Ukraine has (or had) by far the second strongest army in Europe, after Russia’s. Their high-altitude air defense alone was, in terms of the volume of equipment, almost on par with Uncle Sam’s. Just their army group in the Donbass alone, had more personnel and FAR more firepower than the entire British army. It was very impressive. Uncle Sam built them up for eight years; that time didn’t go to waste.
Only “problem” was, the infantry were NOT going to stand and fight to the death on open terrain. This is not 1941. This is 2022, there is no Stalin at their back, and no one getting paid $500/month wants to get killed, unless it’s defending one’s own home or province, and most of these guys were not stationed in their hometowns.
So, after enough of them were killed while milling about or retreating or looking for someplace to hide, they have mostly abandoned their heaviest equipment, and they have linked up with the civilian militia, and the war has now largely moved to the cities, much like in Gaza, Mosul, Aleppo and other godforsaken Arab towns that took a beating from the USAF or Israel, or from Russia, for that matter.
Below is a video of some Ukrainians on a street corner in a town, with a bunch of shops around them, standing off against Russians in the distance. By their clothing and gear, most of them seem to be regular army. This group is clearly not well trained, as they are all bunched together and not taking any cover. All the guys closer to the camera are armed with antitank weapons, mostly Western-made. Although this bunch is not very good at it, what they’re doing is called “urban warfare.” People who want to leave this, who have somewhere to go (or who just want to take their chances in some camp), must be allowed to leave.
In Mosul, the USAF flattened an apartment building, killing about 140 civilians just to bag two ISIS snipers. (Of course, ISIS didn’t let anyone go, either.) Russia won’t be quite so brutal, if only because many of the civilians here (depends on whom, of course) are its own people. But, things have gotten nasty and will get nastier.
Russia is now bombing military industries, which are “legitimate” targets, but this will put thousands of people out of work. Already, two million refugees are sitting in Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Moldova, and Bulgaria. I think that figure could easily double before this is over, and that’s not including the “internally” displaced. It won’t be manageable. I think there will be starvation and disease on a mass scale.
However, Uncle Sam and his groupies are still trying to load the place up to the gills with advanced weaponry (now coming across the land border from Poland, much of it blasted by Russian aircraft, but they keep trying) so they can keep the Ukraine in the fight while it gets totally destroyed, dismembered, and—with all the weapons floating around—becomes EuroSomalia. They know it’s going to be wrecked, but they don’t care, because at the end of the day, they want to get their jollies from a high Russian body count (as of yet, it’s still well below their expectations); that’s their only bottom line now. The Ukraine is just a fire to pour gasoline on. Of course, it won’t be Russia paying for any of the reconstruction—if anyone pays for it. And as I’ve mentioned before, we will be lucky if none of the Ukraine’s nuclear power stations melts down in the disorder.
Everyone understands, the Ukraine’s only value to the USA now is to be another Syria or Afghanistan on Russia’s border. The “problem” is, it’s also on Europe’s border. But hey, that’s Europe’s problem. Europe can make its own decisions to correct its course. Soon enough, I think they will.
P.S. It’s become clear that at least one of the two Romanian military aircraft lost over the Black Sea at the start of the war, was hit by a Ukrainian missile. Along with the Estonian cargo ship that was sunk a few days later. The Ukrainians have certainly made the sea near Odessa dangerous for all comers, except Russia. If readers want to see any Odessa at this time, I’d recommend the one in Texas.
P.P.S. There’s a figure going around the MSM that Russia admits close to 3000 of its soldiers have been killed. I dug into this, and in fact, what happened is Russia says close to 3000 Ukrainian soldiers and militia have been killed. So, that’s some sloppy “reporting.” At the same time, an unnamed U.S. official at an unnamed U.S. Government agency (go figure) is claimed to have said that 6000 Russians have been killed, and the Ukrainians say it’s 11,000. Folks, the real number is in the triple digits, it’s somewhere under 1000, and that includes about 200 with the Donetsk militia (Lugansk losses are undisclosed as of yet, to my knowledge.) Of course, Russia will disclose every single name when this is over (many have been already), and every designated survivor will see their benefits, just as would happen here. Also, based on “Russian prisoner videos” made public, of the credible ones, it appears there are slightly over 110 Russian or Donetsk/Lugansk prisoners at this time. In short… There’s a Russian term for what the MSM are doing—it translates roughly as, “To portray the desired as the real.”
