Escalation into WW3 with Iran and its proxies returned to headlines in May after Israel launched a belated military operation in Rafah on the Egypt-Gaza border, and a helicopter crash this past weekend killed Iran President Ebrahim Raisi (aka the “Butcher of Tehran”) and their foreign minister fomenting rampant speculation of a covert assassination. NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine also intensified in recent weeks when Russia’s military advanced toward Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, amid a dramatic shift in battlefield priorities after the massacre of civilians in Moscow. The Kremlin also launched its own REPO operation by confiscating Western assets in retaliation for the collective West’s REPO Act. Let’s briefly recap “Part XXII: Repo Man” (Twitter thread) published in mid-April before covering recent developments on the Ukraine warfront.
“One key issue did not garner the attention it deserves when Capitol Hill passed a $95 billion supplemental ‘national security’ bill for foreign wars in Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan without a dime or action to resolve the U.S. border crisis. A piece of legislation that piggybacked on the war funding bill is the REPO Act… Russia’s response: ‘Washington made an overtly unlawful decision to steal Russian (sovereign) assets… it will do irreparable damage to international law by setting a precedent that enables any country to take a similar action. Now, our country has every reason to make symmetrical decisions against foreign assets’… Consequences of the REPO Act related to de-dollarization, the expansion of BRICS+, and the accelerated demise of the U.S. dollar’s reserve currency status is covered by Jim Rickards in an interview… The heightened level of attacks on Ukraine’s power grid facilities, logistics infrastructure, and military targets is a dramatic shift in battlefield priorities after the cold-blooded massacre of civilians by a terrorist cell at Crocus City Hall in a Moscow suburb (‘Part XXI: The Crocus’ [Twitter thread])… Escalation followed revelations that Ukraine and Western intelligence sources were funding and facilitating coordination of the terror attack, and it was not an ISIS-inspired event… Russia launched a military advance on all fronts in eastern Ukraine while neocons in the U.S. are busy admitting they want war with Russia and claim Putin wants to overrun Europe. The Kremlin obliged the West’s aggression after timidly accepting the fact they are in ‘direct confrontation’ with NATO… Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken publicly stated last week that Ukraine will eventually join NATO, and some media outlets opined that it’s time to send in NATO troops… The West is on a fast-track to relive memories that ‘it is bad to fight with Russia.’ U.S. and NATO decision makers are unwilling to face the reality of defeat and refuse to negotiate peace while they espouse warnings of a nuclear exchange.”
The most noteworthy rhetoric recently parading across Western legacy media was neocon war dog Victoria Nuland on ABC’s This Week last weekend, Senator Graham on NBC’s Meet The Press the previous weekend where he reiterated a years-long fixation to “nuke Iran” that now includes Hamas, and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated during a Pentagon briefing yesterday that “the coalition supporting Ukraine will not back down.” Nuland was a key figure along with the CIA who facilitated the Maidan coup in 2014 and decapitated the government of Ukraine. Despite resigning in March from the third-highest position at the U.S. State Dept. due to her hawkish views amid repeated warnings by Russian officials of nuclear war if NATO troops or weapons pose an existential threat, Nuland had the audacity to encourage direct strikes on Russian military bases within its sovereign territory.
Victoria Nuland calls for direct strikes on Russia – The Resistance
Sen. Graham says Israel should do “whatever” it needs to do to survive; nuke Iran and Hamas. Compares Iran & Gaza war to Hiroshima & Nagasaki in WWII – NBC News, May 12
Nuland was probably given a green light to threaten Russia’s sovereignty by U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken when he visited Zelensky in Kyiv last week.
War in Ukraine: Washington no longer rules out US weapons being used to strike Russian soil… “In a visit to Kyiv on Wednesday, May 15, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hinted that Ukrainian forces could strike Russian territory with weapons supplied by the US, for the first time since the Russian invasion in 2022. ‘We have not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine, but ultimately Ukraine has to make decisions for itself about how it’s going to conduct this war,’ said Blinken, opening up the possibility of Western military materiel being used against Russian units located beyond Ukraine’s borders.” – Le Monde, May 16
British MP Andrew Bridgen: We are at war with Russia, they just haven’t told you – Doc Malik, May 12
In early May, the Russian military advance towards Kharkiv in northeast Ukraine was a tactic that drew troops away from Donbas battlefields in the south and implemented a “sanitary zone” (aka buffer) to end the artillery salvos and troop infiltrations into Belgorod that have been killing and terrorizing civilians. President Putin confirmed that strategy in a press conference on May 17 but emphasized that it was the plan for “today” and left a door open to deeper advances if longer-ranged weaponry was introduced or additional threats warranted.
Answers to media questions following the visit to China… “As far as developments in the Kharkov sector are concerned, they are also to blame for these, because they shelled and, regrettably, continue to shell residential areas in border territories [of Russia], including Belgorod. Civilians are dying there, it’s clear for everyone. They fire missiles right at the city centre. I said publicly that if this continues, we will be forced to create a sanitary zone. And this is what we are doing today. As for [the seizure of] Kharkov, there are no such plans for now.” – Vladimir Putin
Since Russia began a more aggressive military campaign, it has been launching unstoppable waves of hypersonic missiles that have caused $1 billion in damage to Ukraine’s energy and transportation infrastructure. Approximately eight gigawatts of electricity is inoperable from its power grid so far, and cities imposed emergency rolling blackouts across the country. Despite those consequences, Ukraine continues to attack Russia’s infrastructure. The lack of morale among Ukraine’s foot soldiers and inability to conscript enough supplies and bodies by force to fight in the meat grinder is rearing an ugly truth among politicos and military brass. One reason why Russian’s advance was relatively easy in the suburbs of Kharkiv was corruption that squandered funds and the failure to build out defensive positions as promised.
The Russians simply walked in, Ukrainian troops in Kharkiv tell BBC… “Denys wants to know what happened to Ukraine’s defenses. ‘They just walked in, without any mined fields’ he says. He shows me video from a drone feed taken a few days ago of small columns of Russian troops simply walking across the border, unopposed. He says officials had claimed that defenses were being built at huge cost, but in his view, those defenses simply weren’t there. ‘Either it was an act of negligence, or corruption. It wasn’t a failure. It was a betrayal.’” – BBC, May 13
The Washington Post, New York Times, and DNYUZ also published extensive articles on the success of Russia’s campaign, and all conclude that Kyiv and Kharkiv were aware of an imminent offensive and did nothing to prepare for it.
Facing Russian Advance, a Top Ukrainian General Paints a Bleak Picture… “Ukraine’s military is confronting a ‘critical’ situation in the country’s northeast, facing troop shortages as it tries to repel a Russian offensive that has been advancing for several days, a top Ukrainian general said on Monday. His bleak assessment echoed those of other Ukrainian officers in recent days, that the country’s military prospects were dimming… and $60.8 billion worth of arms and ammunition from the United States after months of congressional gridlock has barely begun to arrive.” – DNYUZ, May 13
Second Russian invasion of Kharkiv caught Ukraine unprepared… “Despite months of complaints from troops over shortages and fatigue, Kyiv has been slow to ramp up mobilization, leaving some areas of the front critically understaffed… Ukraine’s 125th Territorial Defense Brigade — stretched thin along a roughly 27-mile stretch of the Kharkiv region’s border with Russia — used reconnaissance drones to monitor daily how Moscow was steadily building up forces for an attack. The morning it happened, May 10, the brigade lost all its video feeds due to Russian electronic jamming… But Russia’s battlefield gains in recent days were not only a result of Ukrainian shortfalls. Begrudgingly, Ukrainian troops admit that their enemy has gotten smarter and adapted, especially with technological advancements such as electronic warfare — a sharp contrast with the first year of the invasion, when Russia’s own blunders and overconfidence allowed the Ukrainians to hold key cities… The new advances in Kharkiv and in the Donetsk region have prompted questions about the viability of Ukraine’s defense” – Washington Post, May 17
On the REPO front, Russia has seized nearly $440M from JPMorgan funds at the end of April and a court in St. Petersburg ordered the seizure of assets from Deutsche Bank, Commerzbank, and UniCredit this week. On the nuclear war and weapons front, Russia launched tactical nuclear drills in its southern military district near the Ukrainian border today in response to threatening rhetoric from the West in recent weeks. Meanwhile, Zelensky is pushing allies to step up with additional cash and get more involved in the war.
I’ll leave you this evening with a few words by Dmitry Medvedev in response to recent rhetoric and actions out of the collective West and an excellent overview of the battlefield in an interview with Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer.
“The choir of irresponsible bastards from among Western elites calling for sending their troops to the nonexistent country is expanding. Now it includes members of US Congress, French and British administration, and some madmen from the Baltic States and Poland. They are also calling for active use of their missile weapons, previously delivered to banderovtsy against all of Russia’s territory. And it is not the spring exacerbation, but cynical calculation of political dividend. Some kind of total degradation of the Western ruling class is happening. This class really doesn’t want to make logical connections between elementary points. Sending their troops to Ukraine’s territory will mean direct engagement of their countries in war, and we will have to respond to it. And, alas, not within Ukraine’s borders. In that case, none of them will be able to hide either on Capitol Hill, or in the Elysee Palace, or in Downing Street, 10. It will be a global catastrophe. This is something that Kennedy and Khruschev managed to understand over 60 years ago; and something that the present-day infantile morons in power in the West do not want to comprehend. And this is why today the General Staff has started preparations for the military exercise that includes drills of preparation and use of nonstrategic nuclear weapons.” – Medvedev, Deputy Chair of the Security Council of the Russian Federation
Medvedev’s Ultimatum to NATO – WarNews24/7
Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer: Can NATO Handle Defeat? – Judge Napolitano, May 16
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