Sunday, 30 April 2023

Key nations resist US pressure regarding Russia – WaPo

Countries are trying to sit out the standoff between Washington, Moscow and Beijing, leaked documents seen by the paper suggest

India, Brazil, South Africa, Pakistan and other major emerging economies have rebuffed the Biden administration’s attempts to make them team up with the US against Russia amid the conflict in Ukraine, the Washington Post has reported, citing leaked Pentagon files.

According to classified US intelligence documents, which investigators believe were released online by US Air National Guard serviceman Jack Teixeira, India has no intention of taking sides in the standoff over Ukraine, the paper reported on Saturday.

One of the documents seen by the Post suggests that during a meeting in February, Indian National Security Advisor Ajit Kumar Doval told the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolay Patrushev, that New Delhi was resisting pressure to support a Western-backed UN resolution on Ukraine. India “would not deviate from the principled position it had taken in the past,” Doval reportedly assured the Russian official.

Another leaked file suggested that Brazil was more interested in playing a mediation role in the conflict than supporting Washington and its allies. Russia favours the idea of a “world peace bloc” to resolve the crisis over Ukraine, put forward by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during his visit to China earlier this month. Moscow believes it would counteract the West’s “aggressor-victim” narrative about Kiev, according to the document.

West’s efforts to isolate Russia have failed – Lavrov

In late February, Brazil welcomed two warships from America’s arch foe Iran, with one of the files suggesting that Lula likely allowed the port call “to bolster his reputation as a global mediator and burnish Brazil’s image as a neutral power.”

The leaks also revealed that when US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited South Africa last year and raised the Ukraine issue, he was told by local officials that Pretoria would not be “bullied” into making decisions that go against its interests, the Washington Post wrote.

An intelligence file from February 17 reportedly described discussions between Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his subordinate about an upcoming UN vote on Ukraine. It said the aide pointed out to the premier that support for the Western-sponsored resolution would signal a shift in Islamabad’s position, after its earlier abstention on a similar draft. Such a move would jeopardize important trade and energy deals with Russia, he warned, as cited by the Post. Pakistan was among 23 abstaining nations when the vote at the UN General assembly took place a week later.

As for Central Asian countries, their leaders were “eager to work with whoever offers the most immediate deliverables, which for now is China,” another leaked document, seen by the newspaper, suggested.

https://www.rt.com/news/575565-us-ukraine-india-brazil/

What is the “Rules-Based-Order”?

BY JOHN WHITBECK

Photo by Mark Duffel

When addressing the UN Security Council on April 24, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called out the United States and its Western allies for promoting a “rules-based order” where nobody has seen the rules and which bars access to modern technologies and financial services to punish countries with which it disagrees.

Mr. Lavrov is not alone in struggling to understand what rules are included in this U.S.-dictated alternative to international law, which apparently does not include the UN Charter, the Hague and Geneva Conventions, other multilateral conventions and treaties, rulings of the International Court of Justice or the World Trade Organization, the Rome Statute establishing the International Criminal Court or customary international law.

However, a close examination of American actions and inactions in recent decades, notably including its wars against Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, its unconditional support for Israeli apartheid, its recognition of Israeli sovereignty over occupied East Jerusalem and the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and its fierce hostility toward the International Criminal Court and international law generally, suggests that there are three primary and fundamental rules of this “rules-based order”:

1) It is not the nature of the act that matters but, rather, who is doing it to whom.
2) Do as America says, not as America does.
3) Whatever rules exist, the United States and its citizens are not bound by them.

It clearly does not include the “Golden Rule” — “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

From this perspective, no one should be surprised that the U.S. Government has never sought to publicly clarify, let alone to formally promulgate, the rules comprising its “rules-based order”.

But wait …

Perhaps such a struggle for understanding is an exercise in barking up the wrong tree, focusing as it does on the cosmetic adjective “rules-based” rather than on the operative noun “order”.

Tellingly, in an interview on the TV program 60 Minutes on May 3, 2021 (https://johnmenadue.com/us-hypocrisy-serial-rules-breaker-forfeits-global-credibility), Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “Our purpose is not to contain China, to hold it back, to keep it down. It is to uphold the rules-based order that China is posing a threat to.”

China, whose last war was a one-month border war with Vietnam in 1979, publicly proclaims its allegiance to the UN Charter and other aspects of international law as understood by most countries, and its actions and inactions in recent decades have been in substantially greater compliance with these internationally agreed obligations than the actions and inactions of the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council.

The order to which China is posing a threat is the existing international order of American full-spectrum global dominance and unipolar hegemony.

This order is threatened by an aspirational but burgeoning multipolar New Free World, encompassing countries with widely varying cultures and internal governance systems which, inspired and encouraged by China, are both willing and able to assert their own freedom, sovereignty and national preferences and to refuse to be told by anyother country what they must or must not do, either in their domestic affairs or in their relations with other countries, under threat of military or economic punishment if they disobey the dictates sought to be imposed upon them.

From this perspective, the U.S. government’s failure to identify the rules comprising its “rules-based order” can be explained by the reality that no rules are actually relevant, since all that matters is maintaining, in the spirit attributed to King Canute, the existing order.

John V. Whitbeck is a Paris-based international lawyer.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2023/04/28/what-is-the-rules-based-order/

Why Hasn’t the US Arrested WaPo Journalist for Publishing Classified Documents?

written by peter van buren

saturday april 29, 2023

Why hasn’t the US government arrested WaPo journalist Shane Harris for publishing highly classified documents related to the war in Ukraine and US spying on its allies? The ones leaked by Air national Guardsman Jack Teixeira?

The documents contain significant revelations. Among other secrets, they show the CIA recruited human agents privy to the closed-door conversations of world leaders, reveal eavesdropping that shows a Russian mercenary outfit tried to acquire weapons from NATO ally Turkey to use against Ukraine, explained what kind of satellite imagery the United States uses to track Russian forces, and made clear US and NATO have special forces on the ground inside Ukraine.

Why Shane Harris is not in jail has a long history, and a complex answer. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers, a secret US government-written history of the Vietnam War, to the New York Times. No one had ever published such classified documents before, and reporters at the Times feared they would go to jail under the Espionage Act (the same law under which Jack Teixeira is charged.) A federal court ordered the Times to cease publication after initial excerpts were printed, the first time in US history a federal judge censored a newspaper via prior restraint. In the end, the Supreme Court reversed the lower courts and handed down a victory for the First Amendment in New York Times Company v. United States. The Times won the Pulitzer Prize. Ever since media have published national security secrets as they found them.

Law professor Steve Vladeck points out “although the First Amendment separately protects the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press, the Supreme Court has long refused to give any separate substantive content to the Press Clause above and apart from the Speech Clause. The Supreme Court has never suggested that the First Amendment might protect a right to disclose national security information. Yes, the Pentagon Papers case rejected a government effort to enjoin publication, but several of the Justices in their separate opinions specifically suggested that the government could prosecute the New York Times and the Washington Post after publication, under the Espionage Act.”

The Supreme Court left the door open for the prosecution of journalists who publish classified documents by focusing narrowly on prohibiting prior restraint. Politics and public opinion, not law, has since kept the feds exercising discretion in not prosecuting the press, a delicate dance around an 800-pound gorilla loose in the halls of democracy.

The closest an American journalist ever came to being thrown in jail was in 2014, when the Obama administration subpoenaed New York Times reporter James Risen. They then accused former CIA officer Jeffrey Sterling of passing classified information to Risen. After a lower court ordered Risen to testify and disclose his source under threat of jail, the Supreme Court turned down his appeal, siding with the government in a confrontation between a national security prosecution and an infringement of press freedom. The Supreme Court refused to consider whether the First Amendment implied a “reporter’s privilege,” an undocumented protection beneath the handful of words in the Free Press Clause.

In the end, the Obama administration, fearful of public opinion, punted on Risen and set precedent extra-judicially. Waving a patriotic flag over a messy situation, then-attorney general Eric Holder announced that “no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail.” Risen wasn’t called to testify and wasn’t punished for publishing classified material, even as the alleged leaker, Jeffrey Sterling, disappeared into prison for three and a half years. To avoid creating a precedent that might have granted some form of reporter’s privilege under the Constitution, the government set a different precedent and stepped away from the fight. That’s why Shane Harris of the Washington Post isn’t under arrest right now. For traditional media American journalists like Shane Harris, the Risen case was a turning point.

Meanwhile Wikileaks’ Julian Assange is under arrest, rotting away in his fifth year in a UK prison fighting extradition to the United States. There are complex legal questions to be answered about who is a journalist and what is publishing in the digital world — is Assange himself a journalist like Risen or a source for journalists like Sterling was alleged to be? There is no debate over whether James Risen is a journalist and whether a book is publishing. Glenn Greenwald has written about and published online classified documents given to him by Edward Snowden, and has never been challenged by the government as a journalist or publisher.

Assange isn’t an American, so he is vulnerable. He is unpopular, drawn into America’s 21st-century Red Scare for revealing the DNC emails. He has written nothing alongside the primary source documents on Wikileaks, has apparently done little curating or culling, and has redacted little. Publishing for him consists of uploading what has been supplied. The government would argue Assange is not entitled to First Amendment protections simply by claiming that a mouse click and some web code isn’t publishing and Assange isn’t a journalist. The simplest interpretation of 18 USC. § 793(e) of the Espionage Act, that Assange willfully transmitted information relating to national defense without authorization, would apply. He would be guilty, same as the other canaries in the deep mine shaft of Washington before him, no messy balancing questions to be addressed. And with that, a unique form of online primary source journalism would be made extinct.

And that really, really matters. Wikileaks sidestepped the restraints of traditional journalism to bring the raw material of history to the people. Never mind whether or not a court determined disclosure of secret NSA programs which spied on Americans disclosure was truly in the public interest. Never mind the New York Times gets a phone call from the President and decides not to publish something. Never mind how senior government officials are allowed to selectively leak information helpful to themselves. Never mind what parts of an anonymous technical disclosure a reporter understood well enough to write about, here are the cables, the memos, the emails, the archives themselves. Others can write summaries and interpretations if they wish (and nearly every mainstream media outlet has used Wikileaks to do that, some even while calling Assange and his sources traitors), or you as an individual can simply read the stuff yourself and make up your own damn mind about what the government is doing. Fact checks? There are the facts themselves in front of you. That is the root of an informed public, through a set of tools and freedoms never before available until the internet created them.

Allowing these new tools to be broken over the meaning of the words journalist and publishing will stifle all of what’s left of the press. If Assange becomes the first successful prosecution of a third party under the Espionage Act, the government can then turn that precedent into a weapon to aggressively attack the media’s role in national security leaks. Is a reporter, for example, publishing a Signal number in fact soliciting people to commit national security felonies? Will media employees have to weigh for themselves the potential public interest, hoping to avoid prosecution if they differ from the government’s opinion? The Assange case may prove to be the topper in a long-running war of attrition against free speech.

Reprinted with permission from WeMeantWell.com.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/april/29/why-hasn-t-the-us-arrested-wapo-journalist-for-publishing-classified-documents/

War with Spain Changed America for the Worse (And We Knew It Would)

by Joseph Solis-Mullen | Apr 17, 2023

theodore roosevelt rough riders spanish american war kurz 1898

In his 1899 essay “The Conquest of the United States by Spain,” America’s foremost classical liberal William G. Sumner put forth a critique of the Spanish-American War that, in retrospect, was more horrifyingly accurate than he could have imagined.

Reflecting on the defeat of Spain in Cuba and elsewhere by the United States, it is worth quoting at some length:

“We have beaten Spain in a military conflict, but we are submitting to be conquered by her on the field of ideas and policies…We have self-government…if you mean by it acquiescence in what a little group of people at the head of the government agree to do. The war with Spain was precipitated upon us headlong, without reflection or deliberation and without any due formulation of public opinion. Whenever a voice was raised in behalf of deliberation and the recognized maxims of statesmanship, it was howled down in a storm of vituperation and cant. Everything was done to make us throw away sobriety of thought and calmness of judgment and to inflate all expressions with sensational epithets and turgid phrases. It cannot be denied that everything in regard to the war has been treated in an exalted strain of sentiment and rhetoric very unfavorable to the to the truth.”

Unfortunately, it is entirely unnecessary to explain how prescient these insights have proven.

In the words of that later monster—crowned great president courtesy of statist historians—Woodrow Wilson, “No war ever transformed us quite as the war with Spain transformed us.”

Indeed, the so-called Progressive Era is instructive for its wholesale abandonment of the old American traditions in favor of those institutions of the rival European nation-states, whose central banks, welfare states, standing armies, and propaganda arms made managing both population and permanent wars possible.

As a lesson in history, the circumstances surrounding the American attack on Spain in Cuba, the Caribbean, Pacific, and East Asia were a microcosm of the pattern Washington’s wars of aggression have tended to follow. Seizing on a manufactured incident, and with the help of a pliant press, war was made on the most specious of basis. President William McKinley gave Congress as reasons for the war, in order: humanity, the people of Cuba, American business interests, and that what happened in Cuba endangered the United States.

Apart from the quaint anachronism of an American chief executive going to the legislature for a declaration of war—something that has not happened since the imperial presidency was well and truly inaugurated under that other monster-made-great-man, FDR—the introductory textbook of U.S. foreign relations in many graduate seminars unapologetically (though helpfully) offers this additional explanation for the war: “A belligerent foreign policy offered a release for pent-up aggressions and diversion from domestic difficulties.”1

Indeed, in the words of that often misunderstood imperialist par excellence, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, a quick war with Spain would help to “Knock on the head the matters which have embarrassed us at home.”2 Fearing the transformative impact of industrial capitalism, urbanization, depression, immigration, and divisions of class and race, a congressman from Illinois averred that “War is healthy to a nation.”3

Understanding that the expansion of state power was necessary to wage the increasingly long-distance and capital intensive wars of imperial conquest, of which the war against Spain was only the first, in his essay Sumner argued for a return to “economical government,” limited government, one which offered “little field for ambition,” towards a state that could not steal away sons, brothers, and husbands to “shed blood for [the] glory” of the state.

While it may have been as unpopular a position as it is now, it is no less true for that, and the platform of the American Anti-Imperialist League, of which Sumner was himself a part, rings just as true today:

“We deny that the obligation of all citizens to support their government in times of grave national peril applies to the present situation. If an administration may with impunity ignore the issues upon which it was chosen, deliberately create a condition of war anywhere on the face of the globe, debauch the civil service for spoils to promote the adventure, organize a truth-suppressing censorship, and demand of all citizens a suspension of judgement and their unanimous support while it chooses to continue the fighting, representative government itself is imperiled.”

While comfily ensconced neocons, liberal internationalists, and their pliant media shills will say otherwise, the only defensible foreign policy for a republican United States remains that which was enunciated by the Whiggish John Quincy Adams some 200 years ago. America, he said, “is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

America’s interventionist foreign policy during the long twentieth century, 1898-2022, was nothing but a series of moves further and further afield of this laudable libertarian goal. Destruction abroad and the death of our liberty at home have been the price.

About Joseph Solis-Mullen

A graduate of Spring Arbor University and the University of Illinois, Joseph Solis-Mullen is a political scientist and graduate student in the economics department at the University of Missouri. An independent researcher and journalist, his work can be found at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute, Eurasian Review, Libertarian Institute, Journal of the American Revolution, Antiwar.com, and the Journal of Libertarian Studies. You can contact him through his website http://www.jsmwritings.com or find him on Twitter @solis_mullen.

https://libertarianinstitute.org/articles/war-with-spain-changed-america-for-the-worse-and-we-knew-it-would/

Top Pentagon Brass Cheers Tucker Carlson's Ouster...Soldiers Not So Much

written by daniel mcadams

wednesday april 26, 2023

It speaks volumes about Pentagon leadership that they are, according to Politico, celebrating the end of the Tucker Carlson news program. Tucker railed against the "woke" absurdities of "leaders" like Gen Milley and they hated him for it. But he was extremely popular among those expected to actually do the fighting. Wonder why they can't meet recruiting goals? Also today, Congress looks to pass bill to ensure Ukraine victory. Finally: Fauci blames science for his own Covid failures. Watch today's Liberty Report:

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2023/april/26/top-pentagon-brass-cheers-tucker-carlsons-oustersoldiers-not-so-much/

UK shows signs of good will to China, but it’s not the one calling the shots in this relationship

The British foreign secretary says antagonizing Beijing goes against London’s ‘national interests’, but Washington has other ideas

By Timur Fomenko, a political analyst

UK shows signs of good will to China, but it’s not the one calling the shots in this relationship

British Foreign Secretary James Cleverly has claimed in a recent keynote speech that trying to “isolate China” would constitute a “betrayal of [the UK’s] national interests” and spoke out against a “new Cold War.”

Although he denounced Beijing on a range of issues, including Hong Kong and the alleged human rights violations in Xinjiang, Cleverly’s underlying message was: “No significant global problem – from climate change to pandemic prevention, from economic stability to nuclear proliferation – can be solved without China.”

The speech is arguably the most dovish given by a UK official under the government of Rishi Sunak, who had opened up his premiership by declaring the end of the “golden era” of relations between the two countries and calling for “robust pragmatism” in handling Beijing. Despite this, Britain’s foreign policy has steered towards being increasingly hawkish and Sunak skipped the opportunity to meet with Xi Jinping at the G20 summit, as backbench hardliners including disgraced former prime minister Liz Truss and China hawk Iain Duncan Smith, call for a much more confrontational approach.

Can the UK feasibly improve its relations with China to suit its own national interests? The answer is no, it can’t, because it is ultimately not Britain who calls the shots. It has not been able to demonstrate any meaningful degree of independence in opposing the US policy on China, and when Washington says jump, London asks, ‘how high?’ The Americans have helped cultivate a hostile media climate combined with the constant promotion of ultra-hawkish figures, which places severe limits on how the UK can deepen its relationship with China.

The US is fine with China’s economic success, as long as it’s on Washington’s terms

The US exerts influence over its allies by manipulating their “civil society,” – the paradigm of public debate and focus – towards its goals. It does this by utilizing its resources, groups, funding, NGOs, think tanks and associated journalists in order to establish a news cycle favorable to itself, playing up the issues that suit its agenda, and playing down those that do not. Through this method, Washington has been able to weaponize public opinion in the West and turn it against China, creating a hostile climate irrespective of what the given country’s government might intend, and therefore changing the political incentives for all involved.

For example, by weaponizing the Xinjiang issue and misleadingly framing it as “genocide,” the US was able to exploit the human rights outrage of Western “civil society” to place pressure on governments and legitimize foreign policy shifts. The UK, which was favorable towards China in its foreign policy and public disposition in past years, is one of the examples of how such manipulation and direct pressure changed the game. While the Boris Johnson government initially advocated for economic engagement with China, the hostile climate which followed has created a firestorm of media negativity towards Beijing and encouraged politicians who vehemently oppose it, such as Iain Duncan Smith or Liz Truss.

It is precisely because of these circumstances that London has found it nearly impossible to pursue its own independent engagement with Beijing, and has capitulated on every public disagreement it has had with the US on China policy. For example, the government wanted Huawei to participate in the UK’s 5G network and cleared it as safe, only to then make a U-turn because of American pressure and suddenly brand it as a “national security risk.” Similarly, the government approved the Chinese-led takeover of the Newport Wafer Fabrication Plant in Wales, but a year later caved in to Washington’s demands and vetoed the sale, something which has financially ruined the plant and put jobs at risk.

The UK government does not control the terms of any engagement it might like to have with Beijing, and even Rishi Sunak himself, although privately more dovish than someone like Liz Truss, is blatantly open to the idea of using China bashing and paranoia for political gain when he gets the chance. This is a feature of the post-Boris Johnson political consensus in the Conservative Party. Likewise, London is pursuing a militarist, “gunboat diplomacy” stance by participating in the US “Indo-Pacific” strategy of containing Beijing.

These conditions are likely why China currently sees engaging with the UK as a waste of time. Thus, while Cleverly’s speech may be diplomatically positive, it is unlikely to be followed up with any real results because an extremely hostile media environment and hawkish agitators will continue to derail the relationship wherever possible.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

https://www.rt.com/news/575486-uk-relation-china-us/

OPED

Russian Official: Ukrainian Drone Attack Sets Crimean Fuel Depot Ablaze

The strike comes amid a recent uptick in attacks on Crimea which even the hawkish Secretary of State Antony Blinken has acknowledged would cross Moscow’s "red line" and provoke a severe reaction.

by Connor Freeman

A Ukrainian drone strike on an oil storage facility in the Crimean port of Sevastopol caused a massive fire, according to a Russian official cited by the Associated Press on Saturday. This comes amid an escalation in attacks against Crimea, annexed by Russia in 2014, and as the ever-imminent Ukrainian counteroffensive in the south and east of the country is expected to fail.

Despite earlier reporting of as many as four drones being involved in the strike, Mikhail Razvozhaev, the Russian-appointed governor of Sevastopol, said experts have since examined the site and it is clear that "only one drone was able to reach the oil reservoir," though another UAV was downed.

The blaze at the city’s harbor was assigned the highest ranking in terms of how difficult the flames would be to extinguish, but reportedly the fire has now been contained. On his Telegram channel, Razvozhaev shared videos and photos of the attack’s aftermath. He explained that nobody was injured in the fire, oil supplies in Sevastopol would not be hindered, and four oil tanks had burned down.

However, a Ukrainian military intelligence official has claimed that over 10 oil tanks had been destroyed, which carried roughly 40,000 tons of fuel for use by the Russian Black Sea fleet. Ukraine has not taken official responsibility for the attack. Kiev rarely admits its role in operations on the peninsula, with officials instead opting to strongly hint at their responsibility to the press or social media.

Such is the case with this latest drone strike. Andriy Yusov, the aforementioned Ukrainian military intelligence official, said the attack was "God’s punishment" for Russian air raids during the previous day in the city of Uman. At least 23 people, including six children, were killed in the Russian missile strikes, according to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry.

"This punishment will be long-lasting. In the near future, it is better for all residents of temporarily occupied Crimea not to be near military facilities and facilities that provide for the aggressor’s army," Yusov was quoted as saying in a report by RBC Ukraine.

Sevastopol has seen regular attempted drone strikes, particularly in recent weeks. On Monday, Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that its forces had repelled Ukrainian naval drones seeking to target the Black Sea fleet. According to the AP, one of the unmanned aircraft was destroyed while another blew up, causing some shattered windows in many apartment buildings in the surrounding areas. They reportedly resulted in no further damage.

Last month, a Ukrainian military spokeswoman implied Kiev carried out a drone attack in northern Crimea, which destroyed a shipment of Russian cruise missiles being transported by rail. Russian authorities have disputed that version of events, however, and maintained that the drone attack targeted civilian residential areas. Ukrainian military intelligence released a vague statement after the attack, claiming such strikes advance "the process of Russia’s demilitarization, and prepares the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea for de-occupation."

Moscow annexed the Crimean peninsula in 2014, following a US-backed coup in Kiev. Polling conducted since then has indicated overwhelming support among Crimeans for rejoining the Russian Federation. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said this week that Kiev will seek to reconquer the peninsula during its upcoming counteroffensive and has previously remarked that peace talks cannot happen unless all Ukrainian territory lost to Russia is recaptured, including the Black Sea peninsula.

There is a split in the Biden administration on what to do regarding Kiev’s goal of retaking Crimea. Even Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who previously called for Russia’s "strategic defeat," has suggested attacking Crimea would cross a "red line" for Russian President Vladimir Putin, likely provoking a severe reaction.

On the other hand, the ultra-hawkish Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland has said "Russia has turned Crimea into a massive military installation … Those are legitimate targets, Ukraine is hitting them, and we are supporting that." She went on to say Ukraine will not be "safe unless Crimea is at a minimum – at a minimum – demilitarized."

Pentagon documents allegedly leaked by National Guard airman Jack Teixeira exposed that the US has little faith in Kiev’s ability to regain territory it has lost to Russia during the ostensibly upcoming spring counteroffensive.

Two administration officials told Politico this week that it is highly unlikely that Ukrainian forces will have any luck in severing the land bridge to Crimea in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.

Connor Freeman is the assistant editor and a writer at the Libertarian Institute, primarily covering foreign policy. He is a co-host on the Conflicts of Interest podcast. His writing has been featured in media outlets such as Antiwar.com, Counterpunch, and the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity. He has also appeared on Liberty Weekly, Around the Empire, and Parallax Views. You can follow him on Twitter @FreemansMind96.

https://news.antiwar.com/2023/04/29/russian-official-ukrainian-drone-attack-sets-crimean-fuel-depot-ablaze/

SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.