RUSSELL BENTLEY—What does Russian recognition of the Donbass Republics really mean? Russian support, Russian protection? That was never in doubt, but now it’s OFFICIAL. And above all, it means Ukraine and their Western masters are “having a cow”, as the great political pundit Bart Simpson might say. The BIG Ukrainian attack starts tomorrow, that’s for sure. It will be a hard fight, a lot of blood will be spilled, but the outcome is beyond a doubt. Russia will LIBERATE as much of Ukraine as it wants or needs to, and hopefully and probably, that means at least as far as the other side of Kiev.
RUSSIAN MIGHT
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ANDREI RAEVSKY—For US Americans everything is measured in Dollars. For Europeans, everything is measured by Euros. During WWII Russia lost 27 million of her own people, two-thirds of them civilians, as for the Chinese, they lost a whopping 35 million. These are countries and nations which will not be broken, or purchased, by Dollars or Euros.
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SCOTT RITTER—There have been occasions in the past where the confluence of geopolitical posturing and military hubris combined to make the conditions favourable for nuclear conflict greater than those that exist today. We have reduced the amount of forward-deployed nuclear weapons and have altered our military doctrine so that the use of nuclear weapons is not assumed, but rather seen as a separate, deliberate action above and beyond the military mission at hand. This does not mean that the threat of a nuclear conflict isn’t real, or that the world should not be concerned. The point here is that it doesn’t matter where you set the Doomsday Clock; if the decision is made to use nuclear weapons, it means we are at zero, and we failed. So long as nations possess nuclear weapons and have corresponding nuclear postures that postulate scenarios for which the use of nuclear weapons are considered a viable outcome, we will always be one second away from global annihilation. The Doomsday Clock should be set at one second until all nuclear weapons are eliminated—that’s the true state of play.
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In Ukraine crisis, will Iran emerge a winner and Israel a loser?
12 minutes readABDEL BARI ATWAN—In recent days, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tried to adopt the intermediary role – that Israel is now seeking – to extract himself from a similar dilemma. He tried to cloak his bias towards Ukraine by presenting himself as a mediator in this crisis, but was also ignored.
Erdogan is already too neck-deep in his Ukraine faux pas for Putin to forgive. In recent months, Turkey and Ukraine have been discussing the joint production of ships, turbine engines and military aircraft. The Turkish president has sent around 500 Turkish Bayraktar drones worth $69 million to Ukraine, condemned the Russian annexation of Crimea, and dropped into Kiev for a photo op at the height of the crisis.
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ANDREI MARTYANOV—I am on record, Russia is not afraid of “sanctions” and there could be no military response by NATO because the only response the US can offer militarily is a nuclear one, but even the most ludicrous hawks in D.C. want to live, with the exception of a dozen or two of total fanatics in the US Admin and Congress. My guess will be, since, as I am also on record ad nauseam, that US “strategists” (Council on Foreign Relations, Atlantic Council, AEI, etc.) are one-trick ponies, they developed a “strategy” (or, rather, strategery) which, as is always the case with cowardly bullies, was designed based on a faulty “understanding” of conflict and lack of knowledge of Russia, and the hope was for an initial bullying effect on Russia. They couldn’t calculate consequences because they do not have situational awareness.