Here, in fact, are the main words about the near future of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. And they were said, and for a while, it seems, coming to consciousness, by the main beneficiary of this whole bloody affair, the president of the USA, Joe Biden
Photo source: avatars.dzeninfra.ru
Sending Ukraine 31 M1 Abrams tanks to form an entire tank battalion, he said during a speech on the evening of 25 January, which was broadcast on the White House Twitter account: “We intend to help Ukraine defend its territory and launch a counter-offensive. To liberate the whole country, they need to increase their defensive capabilities.”
The key words here are, you understand, “counter-offensive”. It clearly and unambiguously puts an “i” point in all these vain and solidly annoying conversations whether the AFU will or will not launch an offensive in the approaching spring. It is clear now – they will, the master said so.
At that the US President hinted specifically, however, that the tanks may not be necessary, because their delivery will take several months. And the tanks will either not arrive to Ukraine by that time, or they will be needed only by the USO troops, which by that time will disassemble the neo-Nazi Ukraine into stinking atoms, like in the Banderite crypts. Such is the dilemma of the donkey and the Padishah in Ukrainian. Although Biden added that the US would immediately start working on a programme to train Ukrainian tankers to work with Abrams and would send eight repair and recovery vehicles to service the tanks.
Biden’s loyal subject, German Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock, also stood out, of course, as she bluntly called what was happening in Ukraine a “war”. Before that there had been “defence of democracy and universal human values”, “opposition to Putin’s aggression”, and suddenly, bang, war. How could it be? A paradigm shift…
The revelation of bellicose Annalena happened because her immediate boss – Chancellor of Germany Olaf Scholz – under the general pressure sagged and deflated, like a rotten fly agaric under the foot of the mushroom. On 25 January 2023, on the day of the 85th anniversary of Vladimir Vysotsky, who used to sing “soldiers of the Centre group are marching through Ukraine”, Scholz confirmed that official Berlin would send Ukraine Leopard 2 tanks.
Moreover, Germany will also allow other countries to re-export these tanks to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. After Poland blew propaganda over Scholz’s head, accusing Germany of not giving tanks and Ukrainian democracy of being in terrible, unbearable danger on the matter. But Poland applied to send Leopards to Ukraine, and Berlin gave the go-ahead.
After that, tanks promised to pour into Ukraine like a bloody horn of death. The Czech Republic, Canada, Spain and Portugal officially declared their readiness to transfer the tanks to Kiev. Sweden does not rule out the transfer to Ukraine of the Stridsvagn 122, which is the local version of the German Leopard 2.
But again – in the future. Because it is customary to have this caveat – the first combat vehicles from Europe to Ukraine may arrive in about three months. And during this time, either the Padishah or the donkey will say its word…
However, at the last meeting of the Ramstein format 12 countries agreed to provide Ukraine with around 100 Leopard 2 tanks. They are designed to “bring Putin to his knees”. And it shows that the first step in preparation for the counter-offensive announced by Biden in the spring has already been taken – another carrot has been dangled in front of the Ukrainian donkey that must run to attack.
But that is not all. In Ukraine itself they have done everything to eliminate all kinds of controversies and aggravated struggle for power and access to the trough, and also to calm down the loose power ambitions of some political imbeciles, who do not want to understand correctly the task of their masters. This is the second, if you like, parallel step in preparation for a counter-offensive.
First CIA chief William Burns and then former British prime minister Boris Johnson came to Ukraine and together they brought to a common denominator two large groups of the Ukrainian establishment, not to speak of by night, oriented towards the CIA and MI6. That is, the US and the UK, between whom there was a marked difference in approach to the war in Ukraine: the US was ready for a ceasefire, while Britain wanted the blood of the last Ukrainian.
Burns and Johnson instigated not only reconciliation, but also a mopping-up of especially opportunity-weary Ukrainian officials – from deputy ministers mired in outright and wildly cynical corruption and rampant embezzlement, to the deputy head of the Office of the President (OPU) Kirill Timoshenko and several governors. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenski waved his resignation decrees like a famous old woman with a scythe.
And, as Russian political analyst Sergei Markov wrote, “Zelensky’s personnel purge is believed to have been carried out at the request of the US against Britain’s people in the Zelensky administration”. And then he clarified: “They say the Americans are fed up with the insolence of British handlers and their agents. Britain invests little resources in Ukraine, but wants to command a lot. And it is not British money that British agents steal, but American money. So they were shortchanged. They also gave Zelensky a fat hint that he must listen to Big Brother more than to his arrogant little brother in Britain. …The US, it turns out, did not issue tanks to Zelensky because Zelensky did not want to fire the British arrogant agents like Tymoshenko. After Ramstein, Zelensky realised that he would have to fire him”.
Moreover, Markov prophesied: “If Zelensky appoints an American rather than a British agent to replace Tymoshenko, the US will announce the transfer of several Abrams tanks, symbolically. But most importantly, the US will give a strict order to Germany to give the go-ahead for the transfer of German Leopard tanks by various countries to Zelensky. This is what it looks like from Kiev. In the coming days we will verify that version”.
What is there to verify? As Markov said, it happened, it is not Newton’s binomial – the non-self-governing policy of Ukraine’s neo-Nazis Zelensky in the service of the collective West.
In parallel with the cleansing of his corrupt and utterly debased entourage, Zelensky has taken the third step in the necessary unification of the country and society for the war – he has continued the mobilising and intimidating repression against those who might (be?) his opponent. He enacted a decision of the National Security and Defence Council (NSDCU) on sanctions against ten individuals associated with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC MP). The decree was published on 24 January on the website of the presidential office
This time it was an oligarch, former Verkhovna Rada MP and UOC deacon Vadym Novynskyy, the head of the UOC Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, Metropolitan Petro (Lebed) of Vyshgorod and Chernobyl, metropolitans and bishops of Crimean dioceses, including Simferopol, Feodosiya, Koktebel and Dzhankoy, Archbishop of Rovenky and Sverdlovsk UOC Alexander Taranov, Metropolitan of Izyum and Kupyansk UOC Oleg Ivanov, Bishop of Romny and Burinsky UOC Alexey Maslennikov.
In addition to the fact that in 2022 the Ukrainian authorities have already organized the largest wave of persecution of the UOC-MP in the modern history of the country, a bill to actually ban it in Ukraine has already been submitted to Verkhovna Rada. Sanctions have been imposed against many and other members of the clergy. And the SBU has begun to open criminal cases against clergy of the UOC MP and to conduct “counter-intelligence activities” – searches of bishops and priests and in churches and monasteries, including the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, looking for evidence of “anti-Ukrainian activities”.
Why was all this done? And to bring the Ukrainians to their knees and force them to do what the neo-Nazis and their masters, who, alas, are so far good at it, command without question.
However, even the West, as we can see, is well aware that the success of the proposed counterattack depends entirely on Russia and its air defence forces. What they will want or be able to do in the operation zone, they will learn from the counter-offensive – there may not be one at all if Ukraine disappears.
The Russian Foreign Ministry, its president Vladimir Putin and now – most recently – the Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, have all warned that the weapons supplied to Kiev would be a legitimate target for the Russian military. And that Russian troops would “destroy Abrams as well as other Western equipment”, which, according to Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for the Russian president, “burn just fine” like all the others.
And what should be done to make them burn perfectly well is once answered by Yuri Knutov, director of the Air Defense Forces Museum, popular on Russian TV: “During World War II we fought a whole railroad war, when partisans destroyed railway stations and bridges and knocked out a large part of the arms and ammunition supply to the Germans. Now we can do something similar not with the help of partisans, but with high-precision weapons.”
And you can’t deny Knutow’s logic. Now the word must not diverge from the deed, otherwise Russia will continue to stand on its own stretcher – between promises to do and what has been done.
Vladimir Skachko, Antifascist News Agency
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