ZIONCONS

Late on February 4, Assad forces broke through the defenses of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the Turkistan Islamic Party and their colleagues southeast of Saraqib and captured over 110km2, including the villages of Sheikh Edris, Balisah and Kafr Amim. Nearby Turkish observation posts observed this with tears in their eyes. Ankara just declared that its military had delivered a devastating blow to the regime with dozens of strikes. Turkish troops just did not expect such a cowardly attack from the defeated pro-government forces.

We published this video interview first in 2017 (Aug 22, 2017) but the relevancy of the material, in view of the growing role of Ukraine in the sordid kerfuffle between the two wings of the US ruling class, continues. So all the points made here are as good today as they were 3 years ago. That’s what happens with solid news analysis, it doesn’t age much at all.

MAX PARRY—Svoboda and its militant offshoots like the Azov regiment fighting in Donbass are the self-proclaimed ideological progeny of the fascist collaborators led by the Ukrainian nationalist, Stepan Bandera, who sided with Nazi Germany during its invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. In the Cold War, the CIA provided covert assistance to the post-war remnants of Bandera’s faction as it waged a failed insurgency in the 1950s. In post-Soviet Ukraine, a disturbing campaign of historical revisionism has rewritten Bandera‘s fifth column as nationalist heroes who fought solely for Ukrainian independence.

ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN—The four major DC-based think tanks that Team Warren draws from share one thing in common: aggressive support for sanctions and military interventions from Syria to Korea to Venezuela. Perhaps the most hawkish among these think tanks is the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). As The Grayzone reported, CNAS’ top donors include leading weapons manufacturers, NATO, the US and European governments, and titans of the fossil fuel industry. Until early last year, the think tank was directed by Victoria Nuland, a key architect of the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine and wife of neoconservative Robert Kagan.

BILL VAN AUKEN—As the Senate impeachment trial of the US president limps to an ignominious close, it is striking that Trump’s greatest crimes, including acts of war and his threat to drag the world into a nuclear war, feature in no way in the charges against him. On the contrary, the articles of impeachment center on allegations that he withheld lethal military aid to Ukraine and has been insufficiently aggressive in confronting Russia.