News & views related to the war in Palestine …

News & views related to the war in Ukraine …

Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:

• Jun 2 – Ukraine – Strategic Escalation Intended To Influence Talks
• Jun 4 – Ukraine – Cost Of 6,000 Dead Soldiers, Thousands 'Abducted' Children Have Vanished
  Related:
  – Russian military retaliated against Kiev’s ‘terrorism’ – MOD – RT
  – Ukraine’s dirty war is just getting started (archived) – CIA/Washington Post
  – US Believes Russia Response To Ukraine Attack Not Over Yet: Officials – Reuters
  – Kiev unexpectedly postpones acceptance of bodies, prisoner swap — top Russian negotiator – TASS

• Jun 3 – The Defeat of The West And Its Dislocation
  Related:
  – Status, class, and the crisis of expertise – Conspicuous Cognition
  – Inside the battles that shattered Trump and Musk’s alliance (archived) – Washington Post
  – State Dept. Imposes Sanctions on International Criminal Court Judges (archived) – NY Times

• Jun 5 – Netanyahoo – "Hamas Is ISIS", "Let's Arm ISIS"
  Related:
  – FT Editors discover Zionism:
  – Israel is destroying the foundations of a Palestinian state (archived) – FT
  – The Genocidal Heart of Israeli Society – Ahmad Ibsais
  – Inside the TV Network Pumping 'Genocide' Into Israeli Homes – Zeteo

  – From Media Darling to Persona Non Grata: Greta Thunberg’s Journey – Scheeerpost

• Jun 7 – The Deep State Is Still Sabotaging Presidential Policies
  Related:
  – Cards in deck: Trump keeps stack of orders ready to play as needed (archived) – Washington Post

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Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-125

Ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar reminds us of subtle maneuvers by deep state actors to sabotage presidential policies.

When a U.S. spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union President Dwight Eisenhower had not be informed about its real mission. The CIA claimed that it had been a weather plane that went off course after its pilot was incapacitated. The president repeated that tale.

The Soviets then published that the wreckage of the U-2 spy plane had been recovered and the pilot captured alive. The Soviets were miffed of being lied to and Eisenhower's attempt of detente with them failed.

Bhadrakumar sees a parallel in the recent Ukrainian drone attacks on strategic bomber on several Russian air field.

President Trump, in a call with the Russian president Putin, claimed that the U.S. had had no knowledge of the attack. That is, as several former CIA members confirm, implausible. The operation had been the making for 18 month which means that it had been initiated under President Biden. U.S. and/or British intelligence was certainly involved in designating the targets.

It seem that Trump, like Eisenhower before him, was not informed and thus embarrassed himself.

While Trump was talking with Putin Russian officials warned that deep state forces within the U.S. have not changed their anti-Russian aims:

Cont. reading: The Deep State Is Still Sabotaging Presidential Policies

News & views related to the war in Palestine …

News & views related to the war in Ukraine …

News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine …

Use well known terrorists as bogeyman, then arm them.

I detect a well known pattern in this:

Israel PM Netanyahu says Hamas IS Isis … – Daily Mail, Oct 9 2023

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late on Monday that atrocities committed by Hamas during its attack on Israel mirrored those carried out by the jihadist group Islamic State.
…
'We have always known who Hamas is. Now the entire world knows. Hamas is ISIS. And we will defeat it just like the enlightened world defeated ISIS. This vile enemy wanted war and it will get war,' he said.

Israel opposition leader says Netanyahu arming 'equivalent of Isis' gangs in Gaza – MEE, Jun 5 2025

Israeli opposition leader Avigdor Lieberman has accused Israeli forces, under the approval of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of arming “crime families” in Gaza.
…
"Israel has provided assault rifles and light weapons to crime families in Gaza, on Netanyahu's orders," Lieberman, the head of the Yisrael Beiteinu party and a former finance minister and deputy prime minister, told Israeli public broadcaster Kan on Thursday.
…
"In my opinion, it did not pass cabinet approval. The head of the Shin Bet knows, I'm not sure the chief of staff knows. We're talking about the equivalent of Isis in Gaza," he added, referencing the Islamic State group.

Busy, so just a few items on Ukraine.

• Colonel Markus Reisner of the Austrian Army just published a new overview (vid) on the state of the war in Ukraine.

• During the negotiations in Istanbul Russia offered to 'unilaterally' deliver to Ukraine the 6,000 bodies of service members of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

  Today the Russian delegation leader in Istanbul, Vladimir Medinsky, reported to President Putin:

  We proposed, unilaterally, to transfer to Kiev over 6,000 bodies of Ukrainian troops. They will be transferred using refrigerator cars where they are currently kept. We are ready to begin shortly. We understand Ukraine may have bodies of our troops as well although in much smaller numbers. But we are ready to take them over, if any.

  The bodies were mostly recovered by the Russians after the hasty retreat of the Ukrainian army from its incursion into Russia's Kursk oblast.

  This offer is a significant problem (in Russian) for the Ukrainian government. Family members of the deceased soldiers are of course pressing to receive and to bury those bodies. But acknowledging that those dead are indeed Ukrainian soldiers would be quite costly.

  The dead are currently only listed as 'missed'. If they are declared dead their families will be entitled to receive 15 million hryvnias (UAH) (US$ 1 = UAH 41,50) each (3 million at once and the rest over three years and three months).

  The return of six thousand bodies of military personnel killed in battle will cost 90 billion hryvnias (~US$ 2.2 billion) of payments from the Ukrainian budget. This is almost 10% of the military budget of Ukraine for the whole of the year.

  The Ukrainian government will have to take the bodies. But it is likely to declare most of them 'unidentified' to then slow walk the process of identifying and naming them.

  (The high cost for the budget also explains why the official Ukrainian death count is always kept low.)

• Mediniski made another point which is also of interest:
  

  Finally, the Ukrainian side handed over to us the list of 339 children allegedly kidnapped from the territory of Ukraine. Here is the list. We are working on it, through the office of the Commissioner for Children’s Rights. We will investigate every name.

  But I must note that, for propaganda purposes, they earlier claimed that tens and hundreds of thousands of children had been brought over here. In fact, the actual number is 339 and we still need to check how many are in Russia, evacuated by our soldiers from under fire, and how many will eventually turn up in Europe, as experience shows.

  The 'experience' Medinsky mentions refers to this item from last year's April:

  Ukrainian children deported by Russia have been found in Germany: details have emerged

  Ukrainian law enforcement officers, with the assistance of their German colleagues, have established the whereabouts of 161 Ukrainian children abducted by Russia in Germany. They were wanted as forcibly transferred to the temporarily occupied territories or deported to Russia and Belarus.

  Those Ukrainian children, abducted by the bad, bad Putin, had fled with their parents to Germany …

In 1976 the French anthropologist Emmanuel Todd predicted the down fall of the Soviet Union. In After The Empire, first published in French in 2001, he predicted the (relative) decline of the United States. 

In his latest (and last) book, La Défaite de l’Occident (The Defeat of the West), he laments the West's inability to distinguish facts from wishes, as seen in its behavior during the war in Ukraine. Nihilism, a lack of values and of acceptance of reality, has infested western thinking:

Trans ideology is therefore, in my opinion, one of the flags of this nihilism that now defines the West, this drive to destroy not just things and people but reality.

Todd recently opened a substack where he is posting speeches and talks he has given.

Two of those, a recent talk given in Russia (in French) and one given in Hungary (in English) make (mostly) similar points.

The downfall of the Soviet Union led to deep psychological and societal dislocations in Russia. The defeat of the West, or 'liberal democracy',  is leading to similar consequences in Western societies.

While Todd had predicted the fall of the Soviet Union, he had not anticipated the consequences it would have for Russia:

But the collapse of Russia in the 1990s is something I would never have anticipated. The fundamental reason why I was unable to understand or anticipate the dislocation of Russia itself is that I had not understood that communism was not simply a means of organising economic activity in Russia, but also a kind of religion. It was belief that allowed the system to exist and the dissolution of that belief represented, of course, something at least as damaging as the dislocation of the economic system.

It took three decades for Russia to overcome the psychological dislocation that was the result of the destruction of its political and economical system.

Todd is suspecting that a similar process is currently happening in the West:

Cont. reading: The Defeat of The West And Its Dislocation

Days before negotiations towards an and of the conflict the operational tempo of the war in Ukraine has increased.

During the last week of May the Russian forces took 18 settlements and over 200 square kilometer. During the last 24 hours at least another 3 settlements have changed hands. The Ukrainian army is no longer capable to hold its defense lines. Its situation is deteriorating day by day.

On Saturday a Russian missile attack hit a Ukrainian military training camp. It killed or wounded about 100 soldiers. It was the second time the camp had been hit. Other agglomerations of Ukrainian forces had previously experienced the same fate. Still, Ukrainian forces beyond the frontline keep bunching up to become targets of long range weapons.

Taking responsibility for the repeated mistakes the commander of the Ukrainian ground forces resigned:

Commander of the Ground Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Mykhailo Drapatyi, has submitted his resignation over the tragedy at the 239th Training Range Center, where a Russian strike killed soldiers from a training battalion.

The loss is significant:

[Drapatyi] is considered one of the most skilled commanders in the Ukrainian Armed Forces and was a leading candidate to become the future Commander-in-Chief, expected to succeed Syrskyi.

On Saturday/Sunday Ukrainian diversion groups used explosives to destroy two Russian railroad bridges in the Kursk and Bryansk region. These bridges were located some 50 kilometer north of the Sumy region frontline. The hits will impact, if only for a short time, the railway bound supply of Russian forces north of Sumy.

One of the bridge explosions destroyed a civil passenger train. Some 10 people were killed and some 100 were wounded. This was likely intended and thereby a terror attack.

On Sunday morning a large scale operation by the Ukrainian secret service managed to attack multiple strategic airfields throughout Russia. Ukrainian sources claimed attacks on five airfields and the destruction of more than 40 strategic bombers.

Current damage assessment confirms attacks on two airfields and the destruction or damaging of up to 10 bombers.

The attack allegedly used 120 remotely controlled drones launched from civil trucks positioned near those airfields. Ukrainian sources claim that the operation took 18 month to prepare. It seems that the Russian mobile telephone network was used to remotely control the drones. It will be thereby relatively easy to prevent another attack of this kind by blocking the relevant traffic through these channels.

While the attack is of high propaganda value it will have no favorable impact on the Ukrainian position on the battle field. It will rather entice the Russian forces to hit harder, mostly likely by long range attacks against Ukrainian decision centers.

The U.S. claims to not have been informed about the attack on strategic (nuclear) Russian assets. The claim is not plausible. As former CIA agent Larry Johnson asserts:

In my opinion, none of these attacks could have been planned and executed without assistance, if not the direct involvement, of Western intelligence and NATO officers. The drones likely were activated by a remote signal made possible by Western satellites and/or systems like Starlink. Those systems also played a critical role in enabling the drones to navigate to the targeted airfields.

On Sunday eve the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov initiated a phone call with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The content of the call has not been published.

Also on Sunday the Russian forces launched about 100 long range drones against targets in Ukraine. On Monday morning some 100 drones were launched by Ukraine towards Moscow.  Damage assessments for these attacks are not yet available.

The escalation of the war beyond the immediate battlefield came on the eve of Ukrainian-Russian negotiations in Istanbul, Turkey.

Ukraine's international position continues to deteriorate. Coming June 6 EU import privileges for Ukrainian products will end. The impact on the Ukraine economy will be serious. Yesterday Poland, Ukraine's most supportive neighbor, elected a conservative president who is not in favor of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian side had likely hoped that its attack on strategic Russian airfields would entice Russia to delay or break-off the talks in Istanbul. They will however take place and continue.

Both sides are expected to exchange memoranda about their envisioned paths towards an end of the war.

I do expect the Russian side to deliver some kind of ultimatum.

News & views related to the war in Palestine …

News & views related to the war in Ukraine …

Last week's posts on Moon of Alabama:

• May 26 – A Week Long Drone Fight Which Russia Is Winning
• May 28 – U.S.-Supplied Air Defenses Fail In Ukraine
  Related:
  – Trump won’t walk away from Ukraine war – Indian Punchline
  – The 2026 bill for the Ukraine war is already in the mail – Responsible Statecraft
  – On the formation of a contour of equal and indivisible security and cooperation in Eurasia – Sergej Lavrov 

• May 27 – Recycling Old News Media Push For More War In Ukraine
  Related:
  – Desperation Time in Ukraine End-Game – Gordon Hahn
  – The real winner of Europe’s Russia policy America stands to gain – Unherd
  – How Peace-Oriented Norway Learned to Stop Worrying and Love War – Glenn Diesen
  – Merz has already lost the escalation battle with his comments on cruise missiles – The Peacemonger

  – Ukrainian Political Scientist Exposes The Ukraine Proxy War. – The Dissident
  – The Ukrainian Government Keeps Sanctioning Its Domestic Critics. – The Dissident

• May 29 – Tariffs Defeated, DOGE Failure, Big Bill Endangered – What's Trump Gonna Do?
  Related:
  – GOP runs into voter buzzsaw of criticism on Trump’s ‘big, beautiful bill’ – The Hill
  – American finance, always unique, is now uniquely dangerous (archived) – Economist

• May 31 – Trump Accuses China Of Violating Agreement He Did Not Adhere To
  Related:
  – "Johnny can’t read. Mary can’t do math. And you wonder why America never built its own chip industry?"
  – China forms new global mediation group with dozens of countries – AP

  – Birth of the Cruel: How Truckee Pioneered Modern Anti-China Hate – Peter Lee / Counterpunch
  – The U.S. Made a Terrible Mistake When It Deported This Scientist (archived) – NY Times
  – Trump Makes a New Push to ‘Decouple’ U.S. From China (archived) – NY Times

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Other issues:

Cont. reading: The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-119