When one reads the incredibly vague ceasefire agreement for Ukraine (in Russian, various English versions) it is immediately clear that this can not and will not hold. Russia had pressed for the ceasefire, despite battle advantage of the Novorossiya forces it supports, to avoid a further round of sanctions from the EU and in the hope that some of the warmongers in the "west" might come to their senses and listen to sane people. The Ukrainian president needed the ceasefire because his forces were defeated and, without reorganisation, would not have been able to defend against any further onslaught.

As soon as the forces on both sides have reorganized the battle will continue beyond the small skirmishes that are already taking place today. Neither side has full control over the various groups involved in the fighting and any flare up can immediately escalate.

Meanwhile NATO continues a increase its forces in East Europe for "troop training" and in the black sea. Military people in Moscow will certainly interpret this NATO build up as the threat that it is meant to be.

It was the "west" that provoked the war in Ukraine by organizing a coup against the democratically elected government. It is also the "west" that created the civil war in Syria. There the "west" and its various Arab poodles feed the war in Syria through money, weapons and substantial propaganda for the cause of the Jihadis fighting the Syrian government. It now wants to fight the Syrian government as well as the head choppers of ISIS by supporting the FSA organ eaters who are allied with the 9/11 plane hijackers of Nusra and Al Qaeda. That is seen as morally good even though no "western" country has any case for an involvement in Syria except for some very vaguely defined "interests".

Russia has an very important security interest in Ukraine. It is its immediate neighbor and the cradle of the Rus civilization. Several large attacks on Russia, by Napoleon as well as Hitler, used the plains of Ukraine as their concentration area and for their marches on Moscow. Many of the forces of the Ukrainian government now fighting against their Russia affine compatriots in the east are outright Nazis. 70 years ago over 20 million Russian lost their life to defeat that ideology.

Why is it seen as morally wrong when Russia, with much more immediate interest, is helping forces in Ukraine when similar intervention by the "west", much less, if at all justified, is depicted as morally right?

The sole answer one can get to that question is that whatever "we" do, no matter what, is right and whatever those oppose to what "we" do do is automatically wrong. That position is the recipe for much bigger conflicts than the ones we currently sees.

September 2002: TRACES OF TERROR: THE STRATEGY; Bush Aides Set Strategy to Sell Policy on Iraq

White House officials said today that the administration was following a meticulously planned strategy to persuade the public, the Congress and the allies of the need to confront the threat from Saddam Hussein.
…
"From a marketing point of view," said Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff who is coordinating the effort, "you don't introduce new products in August."

It is September 2014 and we are past the summer and past Labor Day. Time to roll out the (old) new product:

• NY Times: Syria May Have Hidden Chemical Arms, U.S. Says
• ABC News: US: Terrorist Could Get Syria Chemical Weapons
• HuffPo: US Warns Terrorist Could Get Hold Of Syria's Chemical Weapons

United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power says the United States is concerned that the most dangerous terrorist groups could get a hold of chemical weapons if Syria is hiding any stockpiles.

We know of course that Syria has disposed of all its chemical weapons and that these were destroyed under the eyes of the OPCW. But Iraq had also disposed of all its WMD and that it has none left was in fact one reason why it could be and was easily attacked.

So is Obama is doubling down (again) on Syria? Hoping that the mystical "Free Syrian Army" (Jihadis in disguise) heavily supports by the U.S. will fight the Islamic State and the Syrian government?

The chronic warmonger Juan Cole is already searching for flimsy legal excuses, using the false pretense of fighting ISIS, to bomb whatever in sovereign Syria even without a UN Security Council resolution. Maybe Syria should invite the Russian air force to help against ISIS. A few Russian jets in Damascus would likely  keep despicable nuts like Juan Cole away.

The new big international enemy is the Islamic State which is fighting the Syrian government. It would likely replace it should the government fall. But the Obama administration is not willing to draw the consequences and to ally with the Syrian army. It still wants to dispose the Syrian government under president Assad. It hopes that more weapons given to its mystic "moderate rebels" will somehow enable those to win.

But for that they will need at least additional air support and to enable such some "legal" reasoning -  ISIS, Al-Qaeda, WMD – must be found and marketed to the war tired public.

President Obama and his British poodle tried hard to push other NATO countries in repeating the mistakes the U.S. and UK made when they attacked Iraq:

President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain have called on NATO to reject “isolationist” impulses and confront the rising terrorist threat posed by Sunni militants in the Middle East, saying the United States and Britain “will not be cowed by barbaric killers.”

“We will not waver in our determination to confront” the militant group known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, the two leaders wrote in a joint opinion piece published in Thursday’s editions of The Times of London. “If terrorists think we will weaken in the face of their threats they could not be more wrong.

The problem with their call may have been that it was published behind the Times of London’s pay-wall. Why should any NATO head of state bother to hand over a British Pound to Rupert Murdoch for the questionable fun of reading more U.S./UK lobbying for their weapon industries?

Mr. Obama and Mr. Cameron argued that NATO must transition to a “more effective security network that fosters stability around the world,” urging member nations to bolster military spending.

The leaders of other NATO states know that their tax-payers will not agree to higher military spending. They reject the call. But the effort to write the op-ed was not completely for naught?

NATO leaders are set to agree at a summit on Friday to help organize security assistance for Iraq in its fight against Islamic State militants, including coordinating the airlift of supplies, a Western official said.

NATO is expected to set up a clearing house that would match offers of military supplies to help the Iraqi authorities with available transport aircraft, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

NATO would not take part in any combat operations, and the security assistance would be provided by individual member states and partners, he said.

Somewhere in Brussels some U.S./UK sergeant stashed away in a dark corner of NATO headquarters will have some spreadsheet saying five mattresses are waiting to be flown from Croatia to Basra. That will “help” a lot.

Notice that this is a complete rejection of the Obama/Cameron request. The “help to coordinate” phrase means that there is not even the tiniest bit NATO will do. Anything to be actually done is up to “individual members” i.e. the U.S. and UK.

Two days ago I wrote that NATO is in decline:

there is little left of NATO that future taxpayers might want to support

At least with regards to Iraq (and Syria) NATO members just told the self proclaimed “leader of the free world” to shove it.

Count that as one positive outcome of the current NATO summit in Wales.

Anonymous Europe, allegedly some hacker group, claims in a video uploaded three days ago to have letters from officials near the German chancellor Merkel to officials in Poland. The letters are about deals of buying hundreds of thousand tons of Ukrainian steel from Ukrainian oligarchs at above market prices. Other countries supposed to buy overpriced Ukrainian steel are Italy, Hungary and Bulgaria.

I have no idea if these claims are true and the copies of the letters shown are legit. The uploaded video seems to have only some 820 views so far which seems very low.

If these claims are true there will certainly be some scandal about this abuse of taxpayer money for bribing Ukrainian oligarchs and subsidizing the coup government in Ukraine.

(Screenshots of the letters below the fold.)

Cont. reading: Do European Governments Buy Overpriced Steel From Ukrainian Oligarchs?

Included in yesterdays assessment of the Ukrainian loss of the war and the coming ceasefire was this caveat:

Obama may still decide to double down and that destroying Ukraine -like Afghanistan, Libya and Syria- by prolonging the conflict is in U.S. “interests”.

Pat Lang believes that Obama will take the escalation path:

Will the United States let the world “off the hook” by accepting this outcome? Perhaps it will not. The lure of the Children’s Crusader vision of a future devoid of schoolyard bullies may prove too strong to ignore. NATO exercizes are planned. Speeches have been made. Grand posturing has taken place. Obama wills it! pl

That “Obama wills it” may be the reason for the confusion about a Ukrainian presidential statement today on a ceasefire agreement that came after Poroshenko had had a phonecall with Putin:

Mr. Poroshenko’s office first issued and then retracted a statement saying that the two had agreed to a “lasting cease-fire.” A spokesman for Mr. Poroshenko’s office said the initial statement, posted on the presidential website, went too far in describing the results of a telephone call between the two leaders, and that the call had not produced a formal agreement.

The statement, “The conversation resulted in an agreement on XXX in the Donbas.” actual changed twice from XXX being first “lasting ceasefire” then “ceasefire” then “ceasefire regime”. After the Poroshenko call Putin went public with a 7 point ceasefire plan which seems to have been the one Poroshenko had agreed to. But some “intervention”, I assume from the U.S., took place to change Poroshenko’s statement of a “lasting ceasefire”.

The main U.S. puppet, scientology prime minister “Yaz” Yatsenyuk, is still throwing verbal bombs even though Ukraine has run out of significant military means:

“Putin’s real plan is the destruction of Ukraine and the resumption of the U.S.S.R.,” Mr. Yatsenyuk was quoted as saying. He said “the best plan to stop Russia’s war against Ukraine” would be if “Russia withdraws their regular troops, mercenaries and terrorists from Ukrainian territory — then peace will be reinstated in Ukraine.”

… and pink ponies will fly by.

To the delight of U.S. hardliners France has “postponed” the delivery of the two helicopter carrier of the Mistral type to Russia. The Russians will be happy about that. Such carriers are useful in small conflicts against minor enemies but Russia has now again to prepare for larger ones. The deal (once given to Sarkozy for his help in the 2008 Georgia conflict) included several ships some of them to be build in Russia. As part of the deal a shipyard in Russia has been modernized for the project and that important work has been finished. Russia can now (again) build such ships on its own.

If the two ships from France get not finally delivered Russia will demand back some €600 million already paid and a €1.2 billion contractual penalty. Without the Russia deal France may also have to close its shipyard in Saint-Nazaire. To hold back the ships is a terrible deal for France but president Hollande’s poll rating is already so bad that the further drop in the polls for kissing Obama’s ass will likely be irrelevant.

If Obama, as Pat Lang believes, wants to keep the conflict brewing we will see more destruction, more dead people and larger land losses for the current Ukraine. The end state will not change. Ukraine will become a bankrupt finlandized federation, not join the EU and not join NATO. The EU will lose a lot of business with Russia and take even longer to get out of the second great depression. China will win a lot. Not only in commerce but also because the U.S. will be busy to herd the NATO cats and to fight the non-existing Russian “threat”. This will give China probably a decade of less pressure in south Asia. All for the genius of Obama and his Children’s Crusader.

There is only little news of new developments out of east-Ukraine. The insurgents kicked the Ukrainian troops out of the airport in Lughansk and the Ukrainian troops at the Donetsk airport are said to be confined in a basement and will have to negotiate their surrender.

According to Spiegel NATO generals assess (in German) that Ukraine has lost the war. It is out of material in decent shape and out of enough soldiers with the moral to successfully fight for the oligarchs. But that does not mean the fighting is over. Obama may still decide to double down and that destroying Ukraine -like Afghanistan, Libya and Syria- by prolonging the conflict is in U.S. "interests".

The "western" financed Kyiv Post is lamenting that the Ukrainian president Porochenko did not keep the promises he made before he got elected. That snub may well be a sign that his time is already over. The current Ukrainian campaign of claiming that Russia has "invaded" Ukraine is making his position weaker. Apparently all those T-90 tanks only fly in by night and their cloaking devices prevent any picture of them appearing anywhere.

Putin said somewhere that if Russia would really invade Ukraine it would take 14 days to get Kiev. "Western" media claimed that was a "threat". It was rather a somewhat pessimistic statement of fact. Kiev would probably fall in four days though preparing the victory parade may indeed take a bit longer.

The United Nation has found that 1 million Ukrainians have fled from their homes, more than 800,000 of them to Russia. The Ukrainian "Anti-Terrorist-Operation" is apparently a campaign of ethnic cleansing. But as that campaign for now comes to an end the population movement may well reverse.

There will hopefully now be some negotiated solution which will likely end in a federalized Ukraine with great autonomy for the federal states. Ukraine as a nation, if that has ever existed at all, is over. Ukraine as a confederation of states is still a possibility.

The sad reality is that such a development was foreseeable and indeed in detail foreseen. The whole war was completely unnecessary.

NATO will get some temporary propaganda push out of the conflict but I do not expect any longterm change in its downward trajectory. Defense budgets will not increase and the newly announced rapid reaction force for east Europe is at least the third version of such an multinational emergency force concept. These never can work as their activation still depends on the the lengthy political process NATO needs to go to war. Such forces also depend on rotating "pledged" units by member states and, as experience has shown, many such units get "pledged" even when they are not available or incapable to fight.

After this conflict the loss of credibility of NATO will likely be greater than its leaders today anticipate. Showing off satellite pictures even a naive can recognize as irrelevant and propagandizing an "invasion" when obviously none happened will leave marks. Top that with the catastrophic results in Libya and the strategic loss in Afghanistan and there is little left of NATO that future taxpayers might want to support.

The Washington Post Funny pages have added a really good one today:

In prosecuting his widening war in Ukraine, [Putin] has also resurrected the tyranny of the Big Lie, using state-controlled media to twist the truth so grotesquely that most Russians are in the dark — or profoundly misinformed — about events in their neighbor to the west.

Most Russians get their news from state-controlled broadcast outlets, which have moved beyond mere propaganda into outlandish conspiracy theories and unhinged jingoism.

To prove the Washington Post editors right the state-controlled Russian internet outlet inoSMI, personally advised by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, "moved beyond mere propaganda into outlandish conspiracy theories and unhinged jingoism" by immediately translating the WaPo editorial into Russian so that Russians can now dive further "into the dark" and "profoundly misinform" themselves by reading this editorial of the Washington Post in their native language.

Dear Washington Post. Your funny pages can not beat Russian humor.