One way to address the betrayal of the Trump administration in denying war materiel to the Ukrainians is to deny war materiel to the Russian aggressor.  Yesterday afternoon a series of powerful explosions rocked the Kirzhatsky district of the Volodymyr region of Russia.  The regional Ministry of Emergency Situations issued an emergency warning asking local residents to avoid the village of Barsovo, which really means the 51st Arsenal of the DRAU of the Main Missile and Artillery Directorate of the Ministry of Defense.

Located east of Moscow and 530 km from the border with Ukraine, this site is covered by the most concentrated air defense system in the whole of Russia.  It has an approximate area is 3.5 sq km.  Its design capacity is 264,000 tons of various ammunition.  In total there are forty-five separate covered facilities and thirty external storage points.  In the aftermath of the Ukrainian strike the explosions are continuing today.  Russia kept significant reserves of artillery shells at the site, plus missiles of various types including “Iskander”, “Point-U”, “Dagger”, ammunition for the Pansir-S1, S-300, and S-400, as well as “Grad”, “Smerch”, “Hurricane” rockets.  Ukraine’s UNIAN information agency reported the comments of Pavlo Narozhny, a Ukrainian military expert:

It is difficult to estimate the exact scale of losses as a result of the explosion at the Russian arsenal in the Kirzhatsky district of the Volodymyr region, because Russia hides such information. 

“You can give a rough estimate. 200,000 tons of ammunition was in this arsenal. If we imagine that these were exclusively artillery ammunition, then each projectile weighs about 100 kg, that is, it is 2 million artillery shells. Of course, there were not only artillery shells, but also rockets, rockets, etc. 2 million shells is approximately the annual production of shells of the Russian Federation and the DPRK combined”, Narozhny said.

He noted that this is a significant blow to the military capabilities of the Russians, which is almost impossible to quickly restore. The expert also called the possibility of extinguishing the fire at the arsenal “unreal”.

“Yes, they have special machines for simmering such fires. But in reality it does not work. In reality, it is impossible to stop it. There were shells for MLRS, rockets. Such a missile catches fire from fire, an uncontrolled launch occurs, and it can fly anywhere - both 100 meters and 10 kilometers. And other missiles, decomposed in clean air, begin to explode from it… We can say that 90 percent of this arsenal has been lost”, Narozhny added.

As a result of the on-going degradation in the number of Russian artillery pieces as well as similar strikes last September on very large-scale Russian ammunition storage facilities, the artillery offset in favour of Russia, which has generally been 10:1, reduced to an average of 3:1, even reaching parity in certain key areas.  It is only that “good” for the Russians because of the two million (variable quality) shells delivered from store by North Korea.  This latest strike will have a like impact, and will hopefully much reduce the use of ballistic missiles against civilian targets.

As was revealed by France24 video, using this CCTV recording on Uniannet, the RoseMarie restaurant beside the playground in Kryvyi Riy was not, in fact, “hosting a meeting between military commanders and Western instructors” on 4th April.  Only the local folk and their children were killed and wounded when two Iskander-M ballistic missiles struck.  They both had cluster warheads to maximise casualties.  Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov was retailing a lie, which should surprise no one.  He has doubled-down since.

For the avoidance of doubt, Russian war policy is to attack the people of Ukraine, and lie about it.  It is a settled policy, visible to all in the west since the attack on the railway station at Kramatorsk on 8th April 2022.  That also involved two ballistic missiles with cluster warheads.  Then, it was refugees escaping west.  Now, it’s children forty miles from the front line - no matter that peace negotiations are supposedly in train between Moscow and the Trump team.  On which subject, in the aftermath of the attack Bridget Brink, the American ambassador in Kyiv, managed to deliver herself of these cowardly sentiments:

It is horrifying that tonight a ballistic missile hit near a playground and restaurant in Kryvyi Rih. Over 50 injured and 16 dead, including 6 children. This is why this war must end.

In Zelensky’s words:

They are even afraid to say the word “Russian” when talking about the missile that killed children.

I think he is wrong about fear, though.  The American government response is calculated and forward-looking, to a world in which rules are supplanted by force and the will of the Great Powers as the driver of world affairs.  Children die, refugees die, but what are these deaths to the powerful?

... be cautious about who seeks to inflect you!

As the Trump administration struggles to impose a ceasefire on the Russian aggressor, the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine warns of an intensification in the Kremlin’s propaganda programme:

The Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine records the transition to an acute phase of the hostile information operation conducted by the Russian federation against Ukraine. Its aim is to eliminate Ukrainian statehood not on the battlefield, but in people’s heads: by delegitimizing the Ukrainian Government, devaluing democratic institutions and imposing an external political scenario with signs of controlled capitulation. The operation is conducted with the use of the capabilities of the Russian federation’s special services – the FSB, SVR, and GRU – under the overall coordination of the presidential administration of the rf.

The Essence of the enemy’s Operation

Under the guise of “peacekeeping initiatives” and “analytical discourse”, on the Ukrainian and international societies is being imposed the idea of:

the Ukrainian government’s alleged loss of legitimacy due to the failure to hold elections during martial law;

the need for a “temporary administration” under the auspices of the UN, the USA, the EU, or even the “quartet format” with the rf;

the impossibility of russia’s concluding a peace agreement with the Ukrainian government, which, according to the enemy, should become a casus belli for changing the political course.

Such narratives are not just disinformation, but an element of a special operation to force Ukraine to political capitulation under the guise of a “peaceful settlement”.

Methods of Implementation

The operation is carried out through:

⁕ formally Western or “neutral” media, which act as a proxy for Russian theses. Among them:

Magyar Nemzet, Magyar Hirlap, Pesti Srácok (Hungary): promote the idea of “Ukraine’s being incapable of self-governing”;

Salon24.pl (Poland): published a fake blog by an anonymous author “MarcinWi”, which, under the guise of “expert analysis”, supported the narrative of a “split” between the military and political leadership of Ukraine;

Réseau International (France): promotes theories about Ukraine’s alleged being incapable of conducting combat operations on its own and the “deep strategic gap between the Ukrainian political leadership and the General Staff”.

⁕ anonymous telegram channels posing as “insiders” in the Armed Forces of Ukraine or political leadership;

⁕ a coordinated wave of emotional videos on TikTok and YouTube with the narratives such as “the West no longer supports Ukraine,” “we have been deceived,” “we need a change in government,” as well as “it’s time for a change,” and “we need another government for peace.”

⁕ massive dissemination of destructive materials with the same theses on (Telegram /Strana.ua, Scott Ritter/, X /RothLindberg, DougAMacgregor/, Facebook /Florian Filippo, Fernand Kartheiser/) with the involvement of botnets and accounts associated with pro-Russian structures in Europe and Latin America. They publish pseudo-documents, statements and “analytical notes” that question the authority of the Ukrainian government;

⁕ quoting pro-Russian “experts” with the titles of “former diplomats”, “independent political scientists”, “UN veterans” who promote the thesis that “even the West needs a different Ukraine”;

⁕ the use of Ukrainian defendants in treason cases to legitimize narratives (including publications and comments by representatives of former pro-Russian political structures).

These actions are accompanied by the infiltration of the Kremlin’s narratives into the structures of influence of Ukraine’s partner countries, in particular through the organization of public “discussions” on the legitimacy of the government, the prospects for negotiations without Ukraine’s participation, and the alleged “loss of trust” in Kyiv.

Radosław Sikorski, the Polish Foreign Minister, powerfully rebutting the accusations of the Russian representative to the UN Security Council, Vasily Nebenzya:

Madame President,

I associate myself with the words of minister Kuleba and my colleagues from the European Union.

I’m amazed at the tone and the content of the presentation by the Russian ambassador.

And I thought I could be useful by correcting the record. Ambassador Nebenzya has called Kyiv a client of the West. Actually, Kyiv is fighting to be independent of anybody.

He calls them a criminal Kyiv regime. In fact, Ukraine has a democratically elected government.

He calls them Nazis. Well, the president is Jewish, the defence minister is Muslim, and they have no political prisoners.

He said that Ukraine was wallowing in corruption. Well, Alexei Navalny documented how honest and full of probity his own country is.

He blamed the war on US neo-colonialism. In fact, Russia was trying to exterminate Ukraine in the 19th century, again under Bolsheviks, and now it is the third attempt.

He said we are prisoners of Russophobia. “Phobia” means irrational fear. Yet, we are being threatened almost every day by the former president of Russia and Putin’s propagandists with nuclear annihilation. I put it to you that it is not irrational – when Russia threatens us, we trust them.

He said that we are denying Russia’s security interests. Not true. We only started rearming ourselves when Russia started invading her neighbours.

He even said that Poland attacked Russia during World War II. What is he talking about? It was the Soviet Union that attacked Poland together with Nazi Germany on the 17th of September 1939. They even held a joint victory parade on the 22th of September.

He says that Russia has always only beaten back aggression. Well, what were then Russian troops doing at the gates of Warsaw in August 1920? They were on a topographic excursion? The truth is that for every time Russia was invaded, she has invaded ten times.

He says that it is a perfidious proxy war by the West. My advice is – don’t fall into the Western trap. Withdraw your troops to international borders and avoid this Western plot.

He also says that there was an illegal coup in Kyiv in 2014. I was there. There was no coup. President Yanukovych murdered a hundred of his compatriots and was removed from office by a democratically elected Ukrainian parliament, including by his own party, the Party of Regions.

And finally he is saying that we the West are somehow trying to persuade that Russia can never be beaten. Well, Russia did not win the Crimean War, it didn’t win the Russo-Japanese war, it didn’t win the World War I, it didn’t win the battle of Warsaw, it didn’t win in Afghanistan and it didn’t win the Cold War.

But there’s good news. After each failure there were reforms.

Such demagoguery is unworthy of a member on a permanent basis of the Security Council. But what the ambassador has achieved is to remind us why we resisted Soviet domination and what Ukraine is resisting now.

They failed to subjugate us then. They’ll fail to subjugate Ukraine and us now.

Thank you very much.

This is the exchange which triggered the astonishing and graceless performance in the Oval Office this afternoon by Donald Trump and JD Vance:

Vance: For four years, the United States of America, we had a president who stood up at press conferences and talked tough about Vladimir Putin, and then Putin invaded Ukraine and destroyed a significant chunk of the country. The path to peace and the path to prosperity is, maybe, engaging in diplomacy. We tried the pathway of Joe Biden, of thumping our chest and pretending that the president of the United States’ words mattered more than the president of the United States’ actions. What makes America a good country is America engaging in diplomacy. That’s what President Trump is doing.

Zelenskyy: Can I ask you?

Vance: Sure, yeah.

Zelenskyy: OK. So he occupied it, our parts, big parts of Ukraine, parts of east and Crimea. So he occupied it in 2014. So during a lot of years — I’m not speaking about just Biden, but those times was Obama, then President Obama, then President Trump, then President Biden, now President Trump. And God bless, now, President Trump will stop him. But during 2014, nobody stopped him. He just occupied and took. He killed people. You know what the ...

Trump: 2015?

Zelenskyy: 2014.

Trump: Oh, 2014? I was not here.

Vance: That’s exactly right.

Zelenskyy: Yes, but during 2014 ‘til 2022, the situation is the same, that people have been dying on the contact line. Nobody stopped him. You know that we had conversations with him, a lot of conversations, my bilateral conversation. And we signed with him, me, like, you, president, in 2019, I signed with him the deal. I signed with him, Macron and Merkel. We signed ceasefire. Ceasefire. All of them told me that he will never go. But after that he broke the ceasefire. He killed our people, and he didn’t exchange prisoners. We signed the exchange of prisoners. But he didn’t do it. What kind of diplomacy, JD, you are speaking about? What do you mean?

Vance: I’m talking about the kind of diplomacy that’s going to end the destruction of your country. Mr. President, with respect, I think it’s disrespectful for you to come into the Oval Office to try to litigate this in front of the American media. Right now, you guys are going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems. You should be thanking the president for trying to bring an end to this conflict.

Zelenskyy: Have you ever been to Ukraine that you say what problems we have?

Vance: I have been to ...

Zelenskyy: Come once.

Vance: I’ve actually watched and seen the stories, and I know that what happens is you bring people, you bring them on a propaganda tour, Mr. President. Do you disagree that you’ve had problems, bringing people into your military?

Zelenskyy: We have problems ...

Vance: And do you think that is respectful to come to the Oval Office of the United States of America and attack the administration that is trying to prevent the destruction of your country?

From this point Trump and Vance became increasingly loud and offensive.  It was astonishing that the world’s press should witness such low and stupid behaviour from the two most powerful politicians in America.  The plain truth, of course, is that with or without a signature on a minerals agreement they have absolutely no intention of lifting a finger to dissuade Vladimir Putin from re-starting his attacks.  They are pretending that a ceasefire agreement without security is just as solid as one with security, and they know that’s simply not true.  When Zelensky exposed the deceit with his history lesson they responded with chaff about his supposed lack of gratitude for past support, and about his not wanting peace.  It was a deflection technique - and it might also have contained an element of revenge after Zelensky roasted a White House emissary sent to Kiev last week with a third completely worthless draft agreement.

The passive-aggressive demand that Zelensky apologise to Vance constituted a new and weirdly wrong-headed take on victim-blaming.  All the noise and arrogance - and mafia-like threats - had come from the American pair.  In Moscow the reborn nuclear thug Dmitry Medvedev found time to celebrate by calling Zelensky “the insolent pig”.  The Trump White House and the Kremlin deserve each other.

A brief education for anyone who seeks to smear or belittle the Ukrainian struggle ...

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/hannes-fassold-0385977a_one-of-many-heroes-of-ukraine-who-defend-activity-7300024755586260992-s3ZG?utm_source=li_share&utm_content=feedcontent&utm_medium=g_dt_web&trk=social-share

A courageous cleric who never shied away from speaking - and practising - his truth, for which he was twice excommunicated, died last Tuesday.  Catholic traditionalism has lost Bishop Richard Williamson, thirteen years after its leading voice, Society of St Pius X, became lost to him.  He fought on regardless, often straying into the bad-lands of right-wing politics, often though he must have known in advance what the consequences would be.  His last Eleison Comments column, dated 14th December, was on the subject of Russia and the “rotten” west.  But there will be no more columns.  A communique to the recipients of his list states:

He had suffered a cerebral haemorrhage during the evening of Friday 24th January when he was taken to hospital. He spent his final days in a peaceful though declining state, surrounded by clergy and faithful continuously praying at his bedside for the intercession of the Blessed Mother to whom he had been so devoted throughout his life and whom he credited for leading him to the Holy Catholic faith in his twenties.

Another old and wise hand who understands the global contest in which the war in Ukraine is a key element.  As he says, “The question is: will the world in the 21st century be based upon force and tyranny, or not?