Heading towards World War III?

Officials in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) have claimed that a missile allegedly launched by Ukrainian forces on Monday was aimed at a residential area in their capital city, but was intercepted by air defense systems before reaching its target. However, a portion of the rocket still ended up falling on a densely populated area of Donetsk, killing more than 20 people, some of whom were children, and leaving at least 36 injured.

Kiev has denied responsibility for the attack, which has been barely reported by Western media, . . .

www.rt.com/news/552178-tochka-u-missile-attack-donetsk

Not since ISIS have we seen such a flurry of recruitment activity.

The would-be militants have been recruited by groups like the Azov Battalion, a far-right nationalist Ukrainian paramilitary and political movement. Azov was absorbed into the Ukrainian national guard in 2014 and has been a basis for Putin’s false claim that Ukraine’s government is run by neo-Nazis. Though Azov remains a fringe movement in Ukraine, it is a larger-than-life brand among many extremists. It has openly welcomed Westerners into its ranks via white-supremacist sites. Azov stickers and patches have been seen around the globe: from a bookbag at a July 2020 neo-Nazi counterprotest in Tennessee to the motorcycle of an attempted mosque bomber in Italy.

To be clear, not all in the far right adore Azov, which some see as having ties to Israel or Jewish funders. But since Azov publicly invited foreign fighters into its ranks on Feb. 25, the organization’s official Telegram chat group has been packed with messages from people in the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland and other Western countries expressing interest in joining. Neo-Nazi chat groups and channels in various languages have echoed Azov’s calls. I haven’t noticed this level of movement-wide recruitment activity since the Islamic State declared its so-called caliphate in 2014 and sought sympathizers globally to join its fold.

We at SITE, an intelligence group tracking global extremists, have noticed a surge in online activity by white nationalists and neo-Nazis in conjunction with the war in Ukraine. Among the hundreds of individuals who have announced their intent to join Azov in recent weeks are several known neo-Nazis. For instance, “MD,” an American member of Azov’s recruitment chat group, has repeatedly tried to get fellow countrymen to join the battalion in Ukraine. “Are there any Americans looking to go? We could for a group to go over there,” he said. We discovered that MD is also a member of some of the most sadistic far-right extremist chats on Telegram, where he has proposed establishing a neo-Nazi militia in the United States.

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For the most extreme among these neo-Nazis, the plan is even more sinister. They see Ukraine as a chance to further “accelerationist” agendas, which seek to speed up a civilization-wide collapse and then build fascist ethno-states from the ashes. This school of thought is demonstrated vividly by “Slovak,” whom we at SITE consider one of the most influential accelerationist neo-Nazi voices in the far right. On Feb. 25, Slovak announced that he was leaving an unknown country to fight in Ukraine. “This war is going to burn away the physical and moral weakness of our people, so that a strong nation may rise from the ashes,” he wrote. “Our job is to ensure that conditions remain terrible enough for long enough for this transformation to happen, and happen it must. Our future is at stake and we may not get another chance, certainly not one as good as this.”

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In many ways, the Ukraine situation reminds me of Syria in the early and middle years of the last decade. Just as the Syrian conflict served as a perfect breeding ground for groups like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, similar conditions may be brewing in Ukraine for the far right. Syria became a plotting and training ground for terrorists to mount attacks in the West, such as the attacks in Paris in 2015 and in Brussels in 2016 attacks.

The extremists who successfully make it to Ukraine could return home with new weapons and combat experience under their belts — or stay in Ukraine, where they can further influence their countrymen online. Just because extremists are “somewhere else” does not make them any less dangerous to the countries they come from, as we’ve learned all too well. No matter where war takes place, it always amounts to opportunity for extremists.

www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/03/14/neo-nazi-ukraine-war

Die Bundesregierung bereitet die Wirtschaft auf einen möglichen Ausfall russischer Gaslieferungen vor. Unter Federführung der Bundesnetzagentur wird bereits überlegt, welche Unternehmen im Notfall als erstes vom Netz genommen werden sollen, wie das Handelsblatt aus Branchen- und Regierungskreisen erfuhr.

www.handelsblatt.com/unternehmen/energie/energiewirtschaft-bund-arbeitet-an-abschaltplan-fuer-industrie-bei-gas-lieferstopp/28176772.html

The Russian demands fall into two categories.

The first four demands are, according to Mr Kalin, not too difficult for Ukraine to meet.

Chief among them is an acceptance by Ukraine that it should be neutral and should not apply to join Nato. Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has already conceded this.

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Ukraine would have to undergo a disarmament process to ensure it wasn't a threat to Russia. There would have to be protection for the Russian language in Ukraine. And there is something called de-Nazification.

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The second category is where the difficulty will lie, and in his phone call, Mr Putin said that it would need face-to-face negotiations between him and President Zelensky before agreement could be reached on these points. - - -

. . . they involved the status of Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, parts of which have already broken away from Ukraine and stressed their Russianness, and the status of Crimea.

www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60785754

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Thursday blamed NATO for the war in Ukraine and said he would resist calls to condemn Russia, in comments that cast doubt over whether he would be accepted by Ukraine or the West as a mediator.

"The war could have been avoided if NATO had heeded the warnings from amongst its own leaders and officials over the years that its eastward expansion would lead to greater, not less, instability in the region," Ramaphosa said in response to questions in parliament.

www.reuters.com/world/africa/safricas-ramaphosa-blames-nato-russias-war-ukraine-2022-03-17