IF there were any doubts that the Ukraine conflict is a proxy war between Nato and Russia, provoked by the US, they should be laid to rest after recent revelations about Nato member states’ direct involvement.
On February 19, high-ranking German generals were caught on tape discussing how to take down the Kerch Bridge, a pair of parallel 12-mile bridges connecting Crimea to Russia. Der Spiegel validated the tape’s authenticity. They discussed whether to target these or the ammunition depots using Taurus, HIMARS and Storm Shadow missiles and queried Ukraine’s ability to handle rocket technology. “It is known there are many people there in civilian clothes who speak with an American accent. So, it is quite possible they will soon be able to use it themselves.”
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Not wanting the German military to be implicated, they discuss seconding military personnel to the German missile manufacturer MBDA. After training them, they would turn the Ukrainians over to the British to take things to the next stage.
Outing the UK, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that British soldiers are helping the Ukrainians launch long-range Storm Shadow missiles. Tobias Ellwood accused Scholz of “a flagrant abuse of intelligence” to distract from Germany’s reluctance to arm Ukraine with a long-range missile system. This indicates fractures within Nato, where one member state openly attacks another.
Another confirmation of UK involvement came in a report that the Chief of the UK Defence staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, has been helping Ukraine destroy Russian warships. In addition, since 2021, the UK has been building military bases near Odessa, a direct threat and provocation to Russia’s security. Babcock, the contractor, also manages on behalf of the MoD the Faslane, Coulport and Clyde nuclear weapons sites in Scotland.
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The New York Times reported that the CIA has, since 2013, been operating in Ukraine to destabilise Russia. It installed 12 secret underground bases along the Russian border to spy and launch terror attacks on Russian territory. Would the US tolerate Russia doing the same on the Canadian or Mexican border?
These are all signs that the West knows the game is up in Ukraine. It gambled and lost. Russia is stronger than ever and has forged economic and strategic alliances with China. Ukraine has been destroyed.
But defending Ukraine and its “democracy” was never America’s goal. Rather, it was to weaken Russia and the EU. It failed miserably in the first but succeeded in the second. The EU economy, led by Germany, is in a tailspin. Again, it was all preventable.
Yegeniy Muraev was right. A former presidential candidate and leader of the Nashi (Our) party which was banned in 2022 along with 10 other political parties by President Zelensky for supposed ties to Russia, Muraev advocated for Ukrainian neutrality and an end to hostilities in Donbass. In January 2022 he said: “We are hostages of false priorities of Ukrainian politicians and somebody else’s geopolitical game … we cannot win in this, no matter which of the two geopolitical players [US or Russia] wins … the fight will be on our land … our government and our president are placing the country under attack in the interests of those beyond the ocean. We are cannon fodder in their eyes.”
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The former chair of Nato’s military committee, Harald Kujat, blames all the dead Ukrainians and Russians on the US/UK stopping Ukraine from signing a peace agreement hammered out in Istanbul in March 2022 that would have prevented the war. Boris Johnson acted as the US’s errand boy telling Zelensky not to sign it because the West would support Ukraine to the end.
Now the whole Ukraine debacle, fuelled by Western hubris, is collapsing. The toll is horrendous – 500,000 dead Ukrainians, hundreds of thousands more severely wounded, once fertile land contaminated, and six million Ukrainians forced to emigrate. Ukraine will be carved up – the east will go to Russia and the west will become a Nato arms manufacturing hub financed by Blackrock and JP Morgan Chase.
Here’s a tantalising thought. An independent Scotland could forge a foreign policy that places economic trade and development above the UK’s pathetic post-imperialist, dangerous and bombastic wargame-playing that has exposed it as the failing third-rate power it is.
Leah Gunn Barrett
Edinburgh
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