Heading towards World War III?

The US government has better information on Russian troops in Ukraine than on Ukrainian forces, The New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing US officials. Kiev is keeping its biggest military sponsor in the dark, possibly even misleading Washington to protect the generous flow of American military aid into the country, the newspaper claimed.

According NYT sources, the Ukrainian government gives the US "few classified briefings or details about their operational plans" while the US intelligence community's capacity to collect data in Ukraine is limited, because its focus has long been on Russia.

"When it came to the Ukrainians, the United States has worked on building up their intelligence service, not spying on their government," the report claimed. Intelligence-gathering has been complicated by cloudy weather in Ukraine, limiting the effectiveness of satellites for surveilling Ukrainian troops.

"Ukraine's secrecy has forced US military and intelligence officials to try and learn what they can from other countries operating in Ukraine, training sessions with Ukrainians and [from Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky's public comments," the NYT cited its sources as saying.

Kiev's secrecy comes with the obvious caveat that any nation engaged in a military conflict is incentivized to project an image of strength regardless of the real situation on the ground. Ukrainian officials "do not want to present information that might encourage the United States and its other Western partners to slow the flow of arms," the newspaper said.

www.rt.com/news/556815-us-intelligence-ukraine-lacking

Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) is plotting “another provocation with the use of hazardous chemicals” as part of Kiev’s smear campaign against Moscow, Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed on Wednesday, amid the ongoing military offensive in the neighboring country.

Speaking at a briefing, the head of the National Defense Control Center of Russia, Colonel-General Mikhail Mizintsev said that the provocation allegedly being planned is going to take place in the city of Sumy in northeastern Ukraine. He claimed that Ukrainian territorial defense units have already got protective hazmat suits and are now participating in training within a chemical attack scenario.

“According to the plan of the Kiev scriptwriters,” Mizintsev claimed, “units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine will launch artillery strikes on the border regions of Russia from the settlements of the Sumy region. After a staged retaliatory fire attack, allegedly carried out by the Russian armed forces, Ukrainian special services plan to spray potent poisonous substances in the provocation area.”

After the staged incident is recorded by experts from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, it will be “used to subsequently accuse the Russian armed forces of using chemical weapons against civilians,” the chief of the National Defense Control Center said, citing “available reliable information” obtained by the Russian military.

Kiev has not yet commented on the allegations.

Mizintsev stressed that Russian forces do not use chemical weapons and that the country’s stockpiles have been destroyed in accordance with international agreements.

www.rt.com/russia/556854-provocation-ukraine-russia-military

John Mearsheimer, professor of political science at the University of Chicago, says the United States is pushing the Russians into the arms of the Chinese, which violates "balance of power 101."

Syrian President Bashar Assad has told RT that Damascus is backing Russia’s military operation in Ukraine both out of loyalty and commitment to an “international equilibrium.” Assad, whose country has weathered sanctions and a US military intervention, has accused Washington of using the dollar to commit “robbery” on a global scale.

Within hours of Russia launching its offensive on Ukraine in February, President Vladimir Putin took a call from Assad, during which the Syrian leader “stressed that Syria stands with the Russian Federation, based on its conviction of the correctness of its position,” according to a readout of the call from Damascus.

“We can view Russia from two perspectives,” Assad told RT at the weekend. “The first is that of an ally: If our ally triumphs in the battle, or if their political position is strengthened… then this is a win for us as well.

“From a second perspective, Russia’s power today constitutes a restoration, albeit partial, of an international equilibrium. This rebalance that we are witnessing will impact smaller countries, including Syria,” he continued.

Assad has been a staunch ally of Putin since 2015, when Russia launched a military campaign in Syria that helped defeat Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) and the collection of militias and Western-backed terrorist groups opposing Assad’s government.

To the Syrian president, Russia’s current struggle with the West – described by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as a “war by proxy” – predates the First World War, and will continue as long as the US dollar remains the world’s reserve currency.

“If the dollar continues to govern the world economy, nothing will change, regardless of the results of the war [in Ukraine],” he explained. “Using the dollar is not blackmail, it is robbery,” he continued, claiming that the Nixon administration’s decision to decouple the dollar’s value from that of gold in the 1970s made it “a worthless piece of paper.”

“The United States still continues to trade around the world using this worthless piece of paper. This is robbery, and it applies to the whole world,” he said.

“As long as the dollar is a global currency and continues to be settled through US banks or what is called the American Federal Reserve, you are under the authority of this dollar; and therefore your future as a state, a country or society, as an economy is under the mercy of the United States,” he declared.

Yet amid the rise of China and Russia, the balance of power is shifting away from the US, Assad claimed.

“Yes, we are under sanctions, but many of our basic needs are not bought from Western countries, we have severed our relations with them,” he said. “Every country can now secure its basic livelihood and growth requirements without American permission.”

Since Russia became the most-sanctioned country in the world, trade between Moscow and those capitals refusing to join the West’s sanctions regime has flourished. Ruble-yuan trade has soared over 1,000% in the past three months, while Russian oil exports to India have increased by 25 times between May 2021 and May 2022. However, in Syria, which remains the world’s third-most-sanctioned nation, economic penalties continue to bite.

While Syria still has the means to provide its citizens with free but limited healthcare, education and subsidies, Assad’s government is struggling to rein in corruption and the Syrian leader told RT that after more than a decade of civil war, full-scale reconstruction requires investment.

“There are companies from various Arab states which have expressed a desire to take part,” he stated. “If we take into account the extreme pressure applied by the West through sanctions on any company that might invest in Syria, we recognize that the process will be slow and risky for many of them. Nevertheless, there are those that are preparing to invest in Syria in ways which circumvent the sanctions.”

Alongside the slow process of rebuilding, Assad visited the United Arab Emirates in March, marking his first trip to an Arab nation since Syria was suspended from the Arab League in 2011. While the media described his visit as a “return” to the diplomatic arena, Assad disagrees.

“I don’t know… what the word return means, because we never left,” he said. “Syria has remained in its place, with the same positions and the same conditions, dealing with them in its own way. Even [the Arab states] that withdrew their diplomatic missions maintained the relationship and kept positive feelings towards Syria despite not being able to do anything.”

Moving into the future, Assad said that Syria will eventually reclaim its oil resources – currently held by Kurdish militias with the backing of the US – through “popular resistance,” and that Damascus “will not hesitate” to defend Syria’s territorial integrity amid Turkish threats to enter the country and create a “security zone” along the Turkey-Syria border.

Diplomatically, Assad said Syria will talk with any of its Arab neighbors, and will maintain its close relationship with Iran, regardless of external pressure. “Syria’s relations with any country are not subject to discussion with anyone,” he stated. “No one decides for Syria with whom it can and cannot have relations.”

www.rt.com/news/556890-assad-russia-ukraine-interview

Shaun Pinner, a British citizen who fought with the Ukrainian forces and was sentenced to death on Thursday by a court in Donetsk, has issued a stark warning for all foreigners who might be considering joining the fight against Russian troops: “Don’t get into a war you don’t really understand.”

- - -

He revealed that the standard salary of a contractor at a point of permanent deployment was an amount equivalent to 360 British pounds, which could be raised to around £1,000 for participating in military operations.

According to Pinner, the emphasis of the military training was mainly on “cleaning” and “maintaining military” equipment with not much of actual military training.

www.rt.com/russia/556887-mercenary-brit-interview-donetsk

A senior Ukrainian presidential aide has told the BBC that between 100 and 200 Ukrainian troops are being killed on the front line every day.

Mykhaylo Podolyak said Ukraine needed hundreds of Western artillery systems to level the playing field with Russia in the eastern Donbas region.

He also said Kyiv is not ready to resume peace talks with Moscow.

- - -

Mr Podolyak's suggestion that 100 to 200 Ukrainian soldiers are dying each day is higher than previous estimates. On Thursday, Ukraine's Defence Minister, Oleksii Reznikov, said Ukraine was losing 100 soldiers a day, and 500 more were injured.

The differing casualty figures are a sign of how difficult it is to get precise information from the battlefield.

www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61742736