Just may be a game changer and I do want the Russians to take them prisoner.
http://thesaker.is/sitrep-operation-z-7/

Posted by: jo6pac | Apr 10 2022 13:37 utc | 3

Cold War Allies: CIA’s Relations w Ukrainian Nationalists | CIA Archives |
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/STUDIES%20IN%20INTELLIGENCE%20NAZI%20-%20RELATED%20ARTICLES_0015.pdf
As relations between the United States and the Soviet Union deteriorated, the Central Intelligence Agency expanded its ties with these emigres. Using the Ukrainians as an example, this bonding illustrates the pitfalls and problems of enlisting disaffected ethnic minorities in an ideological struggle.
Three problems prevented immediate and close collaboration between SSU and the Ukrainian emigres. Most importantly, American intelligence was woefully ignorant of the different Ukrainian groups and their aims.

Aradi also met Mykola Lebed, a fierce nationalist and key figure in the Ukrainian liberation movement. Lebed, one of the founders of the Orgcmizcicya Ukrainskych Nationcilliv, or Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), served as the foreign minister of Zakordonne Predstavnytstvo UHVR or Foreign Representation of the Ukrainian Supreme Liberation Council. Lebed fervently believed in Ukrainian independence, but was controversial. Poland sentenced him to death (later commuted to life in prison) for his involvement in the assassination of the Polish Minister of the Interior Bronisław Pieracki in 1934.”

Mykola Lebed died peacefully in the United States serving the good of CIA intelligence.

Posted by: Oui | Apr 10 2022 13:56 utc | 5

one of the founders of the Orgcmizcicya Ukrainskych Nationcilliv, or Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN),
So what ? I believe the current Ambassador of Ukraine in Berlin is a descendant of one of the founders of OUN

Posted by: Paul Greenwood | Apr 10 2022 14:14 utc | 7

What must be very alarming for Ukraine is the fact that the ppl who live on the territories now under Russian control, eg Kherson and Melitopol, are not revolting. At least nothing transpires from that except some demonstrations early on. This shows that Ukrainians accept Russian rule, if their material needs are satisfied. Ukraine should be under no illusion that it will get those territories back via a local insurgency, once it loses control to Russia.

Posted by: Arne Hartmann | Apr 10 2022 14:41 utc | 9

NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard
I did find something quite useful when searching out
Svetlana Savranskaya and the National Security Archive in Washington DC.
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early

Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner

Posted by: librul | Apr 10 2022 14:42 utc | 11

Peter Hitchens:
Some cold, hard facts they don’t tell you about Ukraine

Posted by: b | Apr 10 2022 14:57 utc | 13

Zelensky and two Azov fighters speak inside the Greek parliament: One of the most disgraceful moments for the country that suffered most from the nazis
Posted by: KillWallStreet | Apr 10 2022 14:27 utc | 9

With all due respect to the suffering Greece endured under the Nazis — and continues to endure under the Nazis’ progeny in the EU and USA — I think that by most measures the USSR was the country that suffered most from the Nazis. Poland could probably make a claim for that distincution as well.
And this much said, SYRIZA can shut the hell up; it is forfeit of all credibility and respect.

Posted by: malenkov | Apr 10 2022 15:02 utc | 15

+Posted by: La Bastille | Apr 10 2022 14:52 utc | 13
Transcript of Cnews video on

Transcription by RM + machine translation
Régis Le Sommier: “I just spent 8 days in Ukraine, and I accompanied French volunteers (…), one of whom had been a soldier before and 2 of whom had fought in ‘Rojava’ – so people who had military experience, I spent several days with them, and I was surprised, and so were they, to discover that in order to go into the Ukrainian army, well, it’s the Americans who are in charge. We almost got arrested, we were confronted with an American who came to tell us ‘here, it’s not the Ukrainians who are in charge, it’s me who is in charge’, – I’m talking about the training and the enrolment of international volunteers in the Ukrainian army. (…) I was extremely surprised by the violence of the words of this American, by the fact that he took us for volunteers at the beginning, when he saw that we were journalists, he first told us to get out, then he was a little more uh [conciliatory?] (…)
The contract [that he makes the volunteers sign] stipulates that you fight until the end of the war in the Ukrainian army. And who is in charge? Well, it’s the Americans, I saw it with my own eyes. So it’s not the American army officially, obviously, but in this case it’s quite significant. (…)
I had the impression ‘somewhere’ that this war, beyond the romantic aspect, … I had the impression to be with the international brigades and in fine I find myself with the Pentagon. So this war is a Russian-American war, that’s the bottom of the problem, and the Europeans and everyone else around [the Ukrainians?], it’s a bit on the fringe.

Posted by: Bastille | Apr 10 2022 15:04 utc | 17

The Downfall of Europe
The impact of social media on deadly provocations in Ukraine, and the suicidal nature of European regimes for the past 100 years.
https://readingjunkie.com/2022/04/10/the-downfall-of-europe/

Posted by: Ian Kummer | Apr 10 2022 15:07 utc | 19

Posted by: Jerry1 | Apr 10 2022 14:59 utc | 15 –
Suggest you move this comment over to non-ukraine thread to see if folks want to chat this up.
cheers!

Posted by: gottlieb | Apr 10 2022 15:14 utc | 21

I think the people that really need to be aware of the false flag atrocities perpetrated by the Ukrainian regime are the Ukrainian public. I hope they realize what their government is doing.
Posted by: Edward Q | Apr 10 2022 15:17 utc | 23

Not a chance of that happening among the western Ukrainians. There is a reason that the US chose them to launch this long hybrid war of attrition against Russia.

Posted by: Opport Knocks | Apr 10 2022 15:26 utc | 23

. . .from WaPo, Mar 11

. . .While President Biden has said repeatedly and emphatically that U.S. troops will not be pulled into the conflict, the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky has actively recruited Western military veterans to join its newly formed International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine. An estimated 20,000 foreigners have expressed interest, the Ukrainians say. About 4,000 are Americans, said an official with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the issue is seen as highly sensitive in Washington. It’s unclear how many may follow through. . .here

Posted by: Don Bacon | Apr 10 2022 15:41 utc | 25

@Arne Hartmann – 10

What must be very alarming for Ukraine is the fact that the ppl who live on the territories now under Russian control, eg Kherson and Melitopol, are not revolting.

You have to imagine that, even if they oppose the invasion, there are some upsides: the fact that they are not being conscripted (if young and male), not being given guns and asked to go out and fight professional soldiers (if female or older), not facing bands of raving criminal/militias, not risking being tied to a pole and trashed for speaking Russian, and not having artillery placed next to their homes, among others.

Posted by: Brannagyn | Apr 10 2022 15:44 utc | 27

This is juicy, if true:
https://t.me/opersvodki/3129
Such information comes from sources:
Under the Azovstal industrial zone, owned by oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, presumably the illegitimate son of former Ukrainian President Kuchma, there are 24 km of tunnels at a depth of up to 30 meters.
There is also a secret NATO facility PIT-404 – and a secret NATO biological laboratory with biological weapons. At the PIT-404 facility, NATO officers are blocked. The tunnels are equipped with a bunker system with armor protection.
There are about 240 foreigners inside, including officers of NATO and the French Foreign Legion, as well as biolab staff. Their security, funded by Akhmetov, has up to 3,000 people.
The biolab under the Azovstal plant in Mariupol at the so-called PIT-404 facility was built and operated by Metabiota, a company associated with Hunter Biden, Rinat Akhmetov and Vladimir Zelensky.
In the laboratories of this facility, tests were conducted to create bioweapons. Thousands of Mariupol residents have become “guinea pigs” in these terrible trials. And mostly Western “specialists” took part in these inhuman experiments.
French intelligence and special operations officers were unable to take their colleagues out of Mariupol. That’s why Macron called the Kremlin so often and asked for “humanitarian corridors.”
Some French intelligence officers died during the rescue operation. The head of French intelligence, Eric Vido, was dismissed on March 31, 2022 for the failures of French intelligence in the war in Ukraine.
Officers from the USA, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Turkey, Sweden, Poland and Greece are now blocked in the dungeons of Azovstal. American Lieutenant General Roger Clothier, captured by the People’s Militia of the DPR the other day from a downed helicopter, was tracked by the GRU of the General Staff and the SVR of Russia in Mariupol based on the results of external surveillance of his mistress in Turkey in Izmir.
A citizen of Ukraine, known to intelligence as Klute, always accompanied the general as a traveling wife, confidant and translator. As soon as it was reported that this lady had arrived in Mariupol, Russia launched a military operation and blocked the city.
@opersvodki

Posted by: Boo | Apr 10 2022 16:03 utc | 29

End is near for “Kalina” the 2nd in command of Azov:
https://t.me/intelslava/24891

Posted by: Boo | Apr 10 2022 16:06 utc | 31

propaganda challenge – and thanks maria and noteinstein…
@ Maria | Apr 10 2022 9:30 utc | 413 – post from the previous thread –
“Boris Johnson trip to “Kiev” April 9th:
Flight ZZ336 – U.K. royal airforce
Departed to Poland at 7h33
Landed back in Brize Norton U.K. at 17h28
Train journey Poland to Kiev: 7 hours each way
The studio set of “Servant of the People “ must be in Poland or Lviv as there is no time to travel to Kiev .
It’s a European Hollywood.”
response –
“Maria | Apr 10 2022 9:30 utc | 408:
If Boris was on Flight ZZ336 – U.K. royal airforce, this confirms the impossible timescale https://www.radarbox.com/data/registration/zz336
Posted by: NotEinstein | Apr 10 2022 12:20 utc | 446″

Posted by: james | Apr 10 2022 16:13 utc | 33

It looks like that 3 of the original 6 attack directions – namely, zaporozhie, Kherson and volnovakha/mariupol – were strategically chosen to cauldron/cordon the Mariupol command center. If it’s true that Clothier is there and they went after him so fast, this is going to be an absolute PR win for the RF, and executed so brilliantly to boot.

Posted by: Boo | Apr 10 2022 16:25 utc | 35

Russia Hits Back at Israel Over Ukraine

“Under the pretext of ensuring its national security, Israel has for several years delivered air strikes at targets in the SAR, this on top of the existing differences with Damascus. These actions grossly violate international law, trample upon Syria’s sovereignty, and run the risk of further escalating confrontation in the region. They have repeatedly led to Syrian civilian casualties, including among children, not to mention the damage done to the combat potential of the Syrian armed forces and accordingly to the efficacy of their efforts to eliminate the terrorist presence on Syrian soil.
Attacks by the Israeli Air Force are directly threatening the Russian military personnel who are providing assistance to the legitimate Syrian authorities in their fight against terrorism. Fifteen Russian officers were killed in an air strike on a Syrian facility in Latakia on September 17, 2018. Israel wrongfully believes that the incident has been forgotten. However, even after that tragedy, on multiple occasions, Israeli pilots on combat missions in Syrian and Lebanese airspace used civilian aircraft as shields, thus putting them in great danger. And once again, we are hearing the same claims that the air raids are to eliminate threats to Israel’s national security.”
….

Posted by: Sundial | Apr 10 2022 16:33 utc | 37

3 minute video on intel slava telegram site… unfortunately i don’t speak russian, so don’t know what they are saying –
“The military of Russia and the DPR rescue the crews of the ships blocked by the Nazis “Azov” in the port of Mariupol”
https://t.me/intelslava/24890

Posted by: james | Apr 10 2022 16:36 utc | 39

How do people comment on something they can’t view as this April 10th flash on Ukraine?

Posted by: steven larsen | Apr 10 2022 16:42 utc | 41

Deplorable Commissar | Apr 10 2022 15:10 utc | 21
“Yes, the world committed economic suicide in lockstep so that Trump wouldn’t be elected. You must be a self centered ‘merikan to make such a statement. News flash, the world doesn’t revolve around ‘merika, it never did actually.”
Well, as we speak the governments of Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, Japan and many others, with apparently the ardent psychotic enthusiasm of the masses, are completing the economic suicide they began with “Covid” by burning down whatever’s left in the name of their Russophobic war-fever lunacy, all at the command of the empire. So yes, it’s simple truth that for those shitholes the world does indeed revolve around the US government (and probably the Sodomite culture as well).
Just a little while ago here in NJ I drove past a street called “Russia Road”. I laughed and said those wingnuts in Europe already would have torn down that sign, all because our imperial media commanded them to.

Posted by: Flying Dutchman | Apr 10 2022 16:54 utc | 43

Posted by: the pessimist | Apr 10 2022 17:01 utc | 45
Should have said “An all too common non-trivial error in discussions about the civil war.”

Posted by: the pessimist | Apr 10 2022 17:03 utc | 45

In response to james@40,
Here’s a rough transcript:
… bus. As soon as possible, they will be transported to the city of Donetsk. Yesterday, as part of our assignment at the port, we discerned which ships belong to civilians. Today, as soon as possible, the decision has been made to provide them with evacuation. They’ll be evacuated. Among the crews there are foreigners. They will be evacuated to Donetsk. They will be provided with hot food and quarters. We’ll do a document check, after which they will be sent home.
Among the civilians, there are citizens of the Russian federation and Ukraine. An Egyptian, and maybe someone else. (unclear)
Q: Do you know how many people got stuck here?
A: In the area around 50 people. More than 50, for certain. In terms of crews, we’re working on getting an accurate count. We’re doing inspections of the ships to try and find everyone.
At the current time, around 7 ships couldn’t leave because of naval mines. Look, you could see one there, behind the ship. The camera zoom will let you see it.
Right now the morale and psychological well-being is at a high level. Finally we’ll have an end to all this madness. Only good things in the future. In particular, to be able to go back home.
Captain: They wouldn’t let the ships leave, even though there were many ships ready to leave. They showed up on a minelaying trawler, y’know a warship, and mined the bay. 2 exits, one there and the other here.
Q: To do what, leave some sort of international human shield here?
A: *shrug*
Q: Well, what do you think it was for?
A: I think that’s probably it.
Woman: Difficult. We lived in the cold, horrible. Didn’t sleep, didn’t do nothing. Ate, you could say (unclear, talking in background, right out of the pack or cold? who knows). All the time there was shooting. Where we had those metal things, how many mines blew up (?). Very scary. Guys, it was so scary. I thought they were gonna kill us. I was getting ready for death.
Man: You know, when our guys came — DNR — it was such a feeling of happiness, it’s impossible to describe. Such emotions, impossible to describe, one could only feel it. Guys, thank you so much, that you helped us, gave us a hand, freed us. May God grant everyone peaceful skies, to all of us.
Q: Could you tell us something about your crew?
A: The entire crew is Russian-speaking. They’re all Russian, to the core, to the soul. Russia is our motherland. We love our Russia.
End of transcript. Also, as a bonus, a bit of irony. The Ukrainian nationalist battalion Azov, whose members torture Russian-speakers in the street for failing to pronounce some Ukrainian word properly and commit all kinds of heinous acts, was founded by an individual by the name of Biletsky. Biletsky reportedly didn’t speak a word of Ukrainian until 2017, so it’s little wonder that when he picked the name Azov, after the Azov sea and whatever accompanying infrastructure and industry, he went with the Russian spelling of the name. In Ukrainian, it’s not Azov — it’s Oziv.

Posted by: Skiffer | Apr 10 2022 17:13 utc | 47

Can anyone here translate this https://t.me/intelslava/24891
🇺🇦🐷 New appeal of the deputy commander of the Nazi regiment “Azov” “Kalina”. He says that:
they were betrayed by “politicians who talk about support, but do not answer the phone and do not communicate for more than 2 weeks”;
they were betrayed by friends, “they hide their eyes, they are afraid to come to the rescue”
Currently he’s in Azovstal plant and his death is very close

Posted by: Helen | Apr 10 2022 17:20 utc | 49

“China makes semi-secret delivery of missiles to Serbia
Russian ally Serbia has taken delivery of a sophisticated Chinese anti-aircraft system in a semi-secret operation this weekend, amid Western concerns that an arms buildup in the Balkans at the time of the war in Ukraine could threaten the fragile peace in the region”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/china-missiles-secret-operation-serbia-b2054978.html

Posted by: Eol | Apr 10 2022 17:22 utc | 51

The Sirius Report @thesiriusreport
10h
It is increasingly clear there is a major geopolitical shitstorm brewing wrt Mariupol and it appears enough to cause serious damage to several western nations.
…………
The Kremlin spokesman had said the Ukraine operation may be finished in the next few weeks which seemed odd. Perhaps the Kremlin has info that that there will be a change within Ukraine with the upcoming operation, or it may be as the tweet above suggests and Russia will capture some serious bargaining power in Mariupol.

Posted by: Peter AU1 | Apr 10 2022 17:38 utc | 53

“… return of their land stolen by SS-supporting Galatians.”
S Brennan | Apr 10 2022 16:05 utc | 31
Total agreement on lands stolen—we’ll soon see what borders may look like after Z is concluded. But I think you meant Galicians rather than Galatians. Galicia is the western district of current Ukraine where Nazism is far too well entrenched; Galatia was an ancient part of Asia Minor settled by Gallic Celts after a series of raids and battles between Celtic tribes and the city-states of the region.
Excellent link to Doctorow, thank you!

Posted by: Vintage Red | Apr 10 2022 17:52 utc | 55

Chissà come si sentono i cavalieri dell’Apocalisse richiusi in quei bunker,
Sicuramente come topi in trappola,
E chissà se hanno ancora voglia di fare i gradassi ostentando croci celtiche e lupi mannari.
Sembra che alcuni abbiano cercato di cancellarle con il fuoco.

Posted by: Alessandro Cagliostr | Apr 10 2022 17:57 utc | 57

Peter AU1@54
I agree. Actually I made the same suggestion yesterday. The bad news is that the juicy details would be hidden and it would probably take twenty years of waiting before we learned who and what was in the bunkers.

Posted by: bevin | Apr 10 2022 18:04 utc | 59

Jared @61 – the link I posted @50 is the Azov commander in the bunker which is why it would be interesting to learn exactly what he is saying.

Posted by: Helen | Apr 10 2022 18:21 utc | 61

I read somewhere there’s a rumor that Russian military engineers are discussing the feasibility of flooding and drowning them or smoking them out.

Posted by: Flying Dutchman | Apr 10 2022 18:24 utc | 63

As a U.S. Air Force enlisted man in West Berlin 1970-72, I was lodged in the barracks of Tempelhof Airport, on the ground floor (Erdgeschoss). Those buildings used to have several underground levels. You can read about them, for example, in books about the Battle of Berlin. During that battle, in 1945, those underground levels were flooded. When I was in Berlin, they still were inaccessible.

Posted by: Lysias | Apr 10 2022 18:34 utc | 65

re Cloutier (@ Boo)
Dismaying, isn’t it, how American generals just can’t seem to keep it in their pants?

Posted by: malenkov | Apr 10 2022 18:35 utc | 67

Posted by: Boo | Apr 10 2022 14:18 utc | 8
I figured out the pro NATO stance of Oryxblog through the connection to Bellingcat and the relatively low count of Ukraine losses. But they claim to document each loss with picture evidence, which everyone can check openly. Are they selling Ukraine losses as Russian ones or how is the high number of Russian hardware losses explainable?

Posted by: clayt1n | Apr 10 2022 18:38 utc | 69

Posted by: Oui | Apr 10 2022 13:56 utc | 5
I made a similar comment about ex-pat and disaffected ethnic voting blocs in the NOT Ukraine thread as I saw some similarities with the Venezuela and Cuba situations.
Specific to your comment, Yasha Levine has recently published two Substack articles on exactly what you speak of.
https://yasha.substack.com/p/nato-and-immigrants?s=r
and
https://yasha.substack.com/p/one-last-note-the-polish-vote-bill?s=r

Yesterday, I wrote about the overlooked importance of the immigrant/ethnic vote in helping convince Bill Clinton to pursue NATO expansion {the first article I linked}. Today, Michael Pollack — a reader and friend — sent me a note about it. Looks like I totally missed it, but the great Andrew Cockburn wrote about the issue of NATO and the Polish vote in Harper’s back in 2014.
As Michael wrote me, “In re your last newsletter on Nato expansion and the Polish-American ethnic community — Chap 6 (Game On) of Andrew Cockburn’s book The Spoils of War is all about NATO expansion and it’s excellent. It’s a reprint of an article he wrote in 2015. He blames it almost entirely the drive to increase defense spending. But he has a quote in passing you might be able to use:”
“It was widely understood in the White House that [influential foreign policy adviser Zbigniew] Brzezinski told Clinton he would lose the Polish vote in the ‘96 election if he didn’t let Poland into NATO,” a former Clinton White House official, who requested anonymity, assured me. To an ear as finely tuned to electoral minutiae as the forty-second president’s, such a warning would have been incentive enough, since Polish Americans constituted a significant voting bloc in the Midwest. It was no coincidence then that Clinton chose Detroit for his announcement, two weeks before the 1996 election, that NATO would admit the first of its new members by 1999 (meaning Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary). He also made it clear that NATO would not stop there. “It must reach out to all the new democracies in Central Europe,” he continued, “the Baltics and the new independent states of the former Soviet Union.”

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 10 2022 18:51 utc | 71

Posted by: Arioch | Apr 10 2022 17:55 utc | 57
“in the heart of Europe” is being used as much as possible. Ukraine isn’t even a member of the EU and nowhere near the actual heart of Europe. Repeat it enough times, though, and that’s the image that (geography challenged) Americans will embrace.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 10 2022 19:00 utc | 73

Your opinion is not shared by Andrew Cockburn’s nor with, apparently, high level advisors to the Clinton campaign. Foreign Affairs had a similar take to Cockburn’s.
https://share.goodnotes.com/s/ei0rWvC6P9GpbhuB6eYaYF#page-2
Without a detailed breakdown of the electoral map and analysis of the political calculations at play within his campaign, it’s not accurate to wave one’s hand and say that the Polish and larger Eastern European-American vote wasn’t needed or wanted. Heck, it may not have been *absolutely* needed, but you forget how sensitive Bill Clinton could be to electoral minutiae.

Posted by: Tom | Apr 10 2022 19:05 utc | 75

> NATO facility PIT-404
…in some underground of the country 404
and doesn’t “pit” just mean “hole in ground” in english?
frankly, this all sounds like a prank to me.

Posted by: Arioch | Apr 10 2022 19:12 utc | 77

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 10 2022 19:09 utc | 77
your link was “Political Map of Europe” – and the slogan always referred to geographical Europe not political.
granted, it was said that the medieval decision to treat Ural as the border was political itself. Indeed, it is rather arbitrary choice where to split one landmass in two parts. Ural is neither worse not better than many other mountains or rivers. But… it stuck.
Well, lattitudes should be accounted for if we speak of geography, so perhaps Belorussia or Poland would be more suiting as the center, than relatively southern Ukraine. But maybe nothern parts of Ukraine fit too.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/44/Europe_orthographic_Caucasus_Urals_boundary_(with_borders).svg

Posted by: Arioch | Apr 10 2022 19:18 utc | 79

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 10 2022 19:09 utc | 77

Ukraine is geographically nowhere near the heart (center) of Europe.

Yes, it is.
You just do not have a picture how much of the European territory is in Russia.
It is almost half of it.
Europe is basically Russia and a bunch of little states.

Posted by: hopehely | Apr 10 2022 19:22 utc | 81

Posted by: Arioch | Apr 10 2022 19:18 utc | 80

granted, it was said that the medieval decision to treat Ural as the border was political itself. Indeed, it is rather arbitrary choice where to split one landmass in two parts. Ural is neither worse not better than many other mountains or rivers. But… it stuck.

Europe is not a continent, but an idea.
One of the most important and far fetching ideas in human history.

Posted by: hopehely | Apr 10 2022 19:27 utc | 83

Europe is not a continent, but an idea.
One of the most important and far fetching ideas in human history.
Posted by: hopehely | Apr 10 2022 19:27 utc | 84
Agree with you here. Hence, it’s possible to make nearly any place “the heart” of the *idea* of Europe.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 10 2022 19:29 utc | 85

Posted by: Arioch | Apr 10 2022 19:18 utc | 80
That makes sense. I probably shouldn’t have focused too much on the term “geographically” (in the strict sense) either since what the Western media is really talking about when they repeat “the heart of Europe” is – as hopehely points out – an *idea* – with that word inclusive of the *idea* that most of us across the Atlantic have about what constitutes ‘Europe.’
Here in the US, saying that Russia’s military operation “strikes at the heart of Europe” is intended to conjure up images of the Russian army marching on Paris. And guess what, they’ve moved on to basically saying that Putin wants Portugal as well. LOL
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/putin-wants-build-pro-russia-26646057

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 10 2022 19:33 utc | 87

“It was widely understood in the White House that [influential foreign policy adviser Zbigniew] Brzezinski told Clinton he would lose the Polish vote in the ‘96 election if he didn’t let Poland into NATO,” a former Clinton White House official, who requested anonymity, assured me.”
“It was no coincidence then that Clinton chose Detroit for his announcement, two weeks before the 1996 election, that NATO would admit the first of its new members by 1999”
Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 10 2022 18:51 utc | 72
I sense Brzezinski or the “Clinton official” were feeding bull$shit to someone. The Polish-American voting block doesn’t decide US Presidential results. That supposed quote sounds to me more like an excuse for WHY THEY EXPANDED NATO, “See, the Poles forced my hand. I had to do it.”. Foreign Policy in the US is run by the Eastern Establishment. Some minor immigrant group has zero sway.
Then Cockburn says that Clinton chose Detroit to announce it !!!! Anyone who knows anything about the US knows that Detroit is no hotbed of Poles. Blacks yes, but not Poles. In 1996 Detroit was already starting on its road to Hell as an important industrial city. Today it looks like a city visited by war.
“Demographics
As of 2014, Macomb County has almost 4,500 immigrants from Poland and Wayne County has 3,300 immigrants from Poland. Those two counties have the highest numbers of Polish immigration in Metro Detroit.[2] ”
“According to Ethnic Communities of Greater Detroit, 1970, Poles were “in terms of their occupation, their education, and their income”, the “least successful” immigrant group along with the Italians.[10]”
In the case of Hungarians and Czechs in US, one would need to be looked for with a magnifying glass, that’s how many of them are there.
That’s some lame BS to justify NATO expansion.

Posted by: Tom_12 | Apr 10 2022 19:45 utc | 89

@ Skiffer | Apr 10 2022 17:13 utc | 48
thank you! i looked at that video again to see the name of the ship they were coming off of.. it is not the same name as the 2 ships discussed at rt news – “a group of retreating Ukrainian nationalists” from the Azov Battalion boarded two foreign ships, the Lady Augusta and the Tsarevna.” so, i wonder how much of this is happening at present in mariupol? thank you again for the greater insights here at moa…
@ Nobody | Apr 10 2022 17:50 utc | 55
thank you… any more details or links supporting all that would be most welcome… is see where rzeszow is located on the map in poland on the road to lviv…

Posted by: james | Apr 10 2022 19:50 utc | 91

re “heart of Europe”—
The Ukraine is the syphilis chancre of Europe.

Posted by: malenkov | Apr 10 2022 19:53 utc | 93

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 10 2022 19:33 utc | 88

Here in the US, saying that Russia’s military operation “strikes at the heart of Europe” is intended to conjure up images of the Russian army marching on Paris. And guess what, they’ve moved on to basically saying that Putin wants Portugal as well. LOL

Paris the heart of Europe? No way.
It is Prague.

Posted by: hopehely | Apr 10 2022 20:01 utc | 95

Paris the heart of Europe? No way.
It is Prague.
Posted by: hopehely | Apr 10 2022 20:01 utc | 96
I think there’s a language barrier at play here. I was alluding to the facetiousness of Western corporate media on this conflict in Ukraine.
Again, when the US media says “Putin strikes at the heart of Europe” what they’re trying to make Americans think is that Putin’s forces will imminently be marching on Munich or Paris. The underlying assumption (and largely correct) is that Americans don’t know European geography.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 10 2022 20:06 utc | 97

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 10 2022 20:02 utc | 97
To add more recent context to my point, Hillary lost several Midwestern states to Trump in 2016 by very small margins. You don’t necessarily need millions of votes; more realistically, you need to capture the right percentage of the vote in many small places to win in the US winner takes all electoral college system.
For that reason I don’t doubt that the Polish vote was in fact important to Clinton in 1996 and that Detroit was as good a place as any to make the NATO announcement if the message was in fact aimed at the Polish community – not just for the 1996 Presidential election – but for Democrats as a whole (Senate, Congress, Governorships), then and moving forward.

Posted by: Tom_Q_Collins | Apr 10 2022 20:10 utc | 99