Observer in a Black Sea Port
The techniques and extent of Ukraine’s push into the regions of Kursk, Bryansk and Belgorod, which borders on to Ukraine shows the West is deeply involved in this invasion of Russia. Public statements from EU and US leaders giving their wholehearted support for the invasion indicates the West are behind it. The US has satellite imagery over Russia providing real-time intelligence to Ukrainian forces. Ukraine is getting help.
Significant damage has been done to civilian infrastructure in the three regions of Russia especially Kursk — cars of people fleeing have been destroyed, and drone missiles have struck Kursk city close to a nuclear power plant.
A downed missile fell on a residential building in Kursk. This was reported by the city’s mayor Igor Kutsak in his Telegram channel. The information was also confirmed by the acting governor of the Kursk region Alexey Smirnov (see image below).
Russia has mounted the biggest counter-terrorism operation ever in the history of Russia with massive equipment, FSB officers and troops deployed to the three regions — Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod. In the past three days around 1,400 Ukrainian troops have been killed and over 100 military vehicles destroyed, including 18 tanks.
Ukraine is attempting to create fear in Russia as they attempt to gain more leverage in future negotiations, but it won’t work. Russia will destroy the Ukrainian forces and secure their border. Meanwhile, while Ukraine goes on this Hongkong trip into Kursk, Russia continues to make significant gains in the Donbass region.
Dmitry Medvedev says Russian tanks may reach the square in front of the Reichstag building in response to the appearance of German tanks and military equipment (as part of the Ukrainian units) invading the Kursk region.
Kursk
Dmiti Medyedev
The last time German tanks were in Kursk was 80 years ago and the Nazis were defeated by Russia at Kursk then and will again now.
Ukraine says if Russia can invade Ukraine then why not Ukraine invade Russia. So, if German tanks invade Russia, why not Russia tanks head back at the Reichstag building to celebrate their 80th year anniversary defeat of Nazi Germany and their 2024 defeat. Germany has not learnt a single lesson from their Nazi past.
STOP PRESS … Monday morning 12 August: “It is now 154 Ukrainian military vehicles destroyed, including armoured vehicles and tanks.”
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ADDDENDUM, Monday 12 August 2024
No one has any right for tit for tat.
But the West is using Ukraine to undermine Russia, Russia is trying to satisfy its aggrandizing objective using Ukraine as the objective, after invading and anexxing Crimia in 2014. At that time, in 2014, the West remained passive and did not retaliate, but after that it began arming Ukraine expecting further territorial aggrandizement by Russia. So, Ukraine is the victim of big power confrontation. The “Observer in the Black Sea Port” is also a pawn in these confrontations, clearly supporting further Russian expansion as Tit for Tat. Note that all these countries have in principle acccpeted the validity of existing boundaries under the UN charter that they have signed. Instead of undermining the UN
Chandre Dharma Wardana demonstrates a very weak understanding of geopolitics and history that has led to the present situation in Ukraine. I am not a pawn. My commentaries are based on analysis of the history of this conflict.
Chandre Dharma Wardana fails to mention,
• that NATO is currently trying to turn the Black Sea into a NATO lake to prevent using the sea for commercial purposes. NATO is also violating the Montreux Convention of 1936, signed by European governments, which gives Turkey the right to limit the number of warships any nation can have in the Black Sea. In times of war, Turkey has the right to close the straits to the Black Sea to all warships, and also control commercial shipping. Which countries are violating the Montreux Convention today? The US, NATO and the UK.
• that the US mounted a coup in Ukraine in 2014 to topple a democratically elected government and insert a pro-American government,
• In 2008, Bill Clinton announced that NATO would extend into Ukraine which prompted Putin to make his famous Munich speech in 2009 warning that the US and NATO would be crossing a red line by extending their military and nuclear missiles right up to Russia’s border.
• that Britain is attempting to expand its influence into the Black Sea in actions against Russia,
• that if Putin had not annexed Crimea, the US would now have a major naval base in Sevastopol with nuclear missiles that could reach Moscow in 8 minutes. When the US-backed coup took place in Ukraine in 2014, it was obvious the next step was for the US to set up a naval base in Crimea. Russia could not let that happen. Had the 2014 coup not occurred, Crimea would still be part of Ukraine. This is not about Russian expansionism. It is about stopping the US military forcing its way up to Russia’s borders. In this context, Crimea has to be in Russia.
• that the majority of Crimeans are Russian-speakers, people who identify with Russia and chose to be in Russia rather than in a US -puppet run Ukraine.
• that Crimea had been part of Russia before the end of the Soviet Union, and was given to Ukraine by Russia after the new Russian Federation was born – BUT but before the US mounted a coup in Ukraine in 2014.
I could go on like this for a week with examples. Chandre Dharma Wardana, you showed no understanding of this historical context in your criticism of my cameo piece. My analysis in this forum is always based on analysing the historical and political context, and to study what is happening in this war, and how NATO, the US, UK and Western powers are involved in this war. It is not about being a pawn, it is about making sense of the world.
Your statement that Russia is trying to satisfy “its aggrandizing objective… after invading and annexing Crimea” is not a serious argument, and demonstrates no understanding of how nation states think and act.
For example, pause to consider the following scenario. Imagine how the US would respond if China and Russia put 200,000 troops into Mexico, established military bases all over Mexico with nuclear missiles that could reach Washington DC in five minutes, with the support of Mexico and the rest of the Caribbean and South American countries providing diplomatic and military support. Imagine China and Russia launching attacks across the US border seeking to expand Mexico into the US as part of a geopolitical strategy to bring down the US Government and to insert a puppet Chinese backed government. How do you think the US government would respond to this situation? Would they smile and say “that’s okay, nothing to worry about.” No the US Government would not. They would be enraged, angry, off their heads, and their response would be far worse than Russia’s response to America and NATO’s provocations against Russia.
Here’s a tip in case you think I am a Chinese pawn playing tit for tat games. What I presented here is called a scenario and it has purpose. The aim is to make people think about the perspectives of the other side in a conflict; it is not about siding with one or the other. Of course, China and Russia are not that stupid to insert troops and military bases into Mexico or topple the US Government. The US Government does that.
My cameo essay above which you commented on was not advocating a tit-for-tat response. I was reflecting on Dmitry Medvedev’s comment. Medvedev is is a ultra hardcore on the very right of the political spectrum in Russia and much tougher than Putin—to throw it back on the West to see if, for just a moment, they could use their little brains to imagine how they would feel if the roles were reversed—as I did with the Mexico scenario. It doesn’t mean I support it. I was positing a scenario.
The fact is the US, EU, UK and NATO are not interested in understanding Russia, or in seeing the Russian perspective, and they are not remotely interested in considering how they would feel if this history since 2088 was reversed against them. This is about power – it is about the NATO/US wet dream to destroy Russia, remove its government, insert a pro-US government in Moscow, and then plunder its resources for the benefit of the US and the West, and to reassert the US as the global hegemon to spread their version of democracy which is not democracy but a plutocracy.
Chandre Dharma-Wardana’s claim that no one has any right to tit for tat shows a failure to understand the history of human society since the time of the Mesopotamians– for history teaches us no human society believes that. All have engaged in ‘tit for tat’ as a matter of right. Rather than providing a 100,000 word dissertation on all the examples of ‘tit for tat’ since Mesopotamian times, I will restrict my comments to a few recent cases from modern and contemporary times.
I find ‘Observer in a Black Sea Port’ has made some good arguments, but he too has missed a crticial point about the ‘tit’ for ‘tat’ dichotomy, which he might care to learn from.
There is a belief in South Asian called ‘karma’ which posits that every action produces a reaction, and that there are consequences to our actions. In a similar fashion we find that belief extends into Western liberal democracies.
When Hitler invaded France, it was Hitler’s tit. The Battle of Britain was also his tit. When Hitler invaded Russia and reached Moscow, it was his tit. The ‘tat’ was Russia pushing the Nazis back to Berlin. The ‘tat’ was the Allied invasion of Normandy, and pushing the Nazis back to Berlin, ending with their unconditional surrender. Was defeating Hitler wrong because tit for tat is never right?
One could say Hamas’ incursion into Israel on October 7th was a ‘tit’, but it was actually a ‘tat’. Israel’s ‘tit’ before the 7th was their incursion into the Al-Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount a few weeks earlier, as well as Israel’s threat to demolish Al-Aqsa. Israel’s tit could also be their occupation of the West Bank and turning Gaza into a concentration camp for more than 15 years, and a host of other illegal activities under international law. So in the wilderness of mirrors, what might appear to be a ‘tit’ is often a ‘tat’ disguised as a ‘tit’ so as to mislead people into thinking that supposed ‘tat’ is justified.
When Israel assassinated Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, it was a ‘tit’ from Israel. Iran has promised to respond with a ‘tat’, but the US is trying to persuade Iran not to do a tat for Israel’s tit, which is a bit odd coming from America, because they always do a tat for a tit.
Remember 11/9. If 11/9 was a ‘tit’, the US responded with a ‘tat’ by invading Afghanistan, toppling the Taliban government, invading Iraq, killing around 1 million civilians in order to get to Saddam Hussein and killing him too. The only problem here is that Iraq was not behind 11/9 and therefore had not undertaken a ‘tit’, so what the US did was not a ‘tat ‘for the 11/9 tit, but was in truth a ‘tit’ dressed up to look like a ‘tat’. So the US ‘tits and tats’ at the same time, while threatening their adversaries not to ‘tat’ their ‘tits’.
So understandably, when German tanks are seen again in Kursk after 80 years, and if you consider the very real symbolic significance of German tanks in Russia in the context of WW2, which resulted in the deaths of 27 million Russians, then Medvedev’s proposed ‘tat’ is a continuation of what human beings have always done since time immemorial – ‘tit for tat’.