Puppet MastersS


Fire

Ukraine suffered 'disastrous' losses in single offensive - Forbes

Tank fire
© Ministry of Defense of the Russian FederationBurning Tank
Kiev reportedly lost over 25 tanks and IFVs trying to cross a minefield in Zaporozhye...

Ukraine's widely anticipated counteroffensive has seen Kiev's forces lose a significant amount of armor, including dozens of Western-supplied tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, Forbes reported on Tuesday.

According to the outlet, analysts believe that an attempt by the Ukrainian army's 47th Assault Brigade and 33rd Mechanized Brigade to cross a minefield near the town of Malaya Tokmachka in Russia's Zaporozhye region on June 8 proved to be "even more disastrous" than previously thought.

Despite deploying de-mining vehicles, including several Leopard 2Rs donated by Finland and one German-made Wisent, the Ukrainian battlegroup appears to have failed to clear a path through the minefield. The Wisent and three Leopard 2R struck mines, as did several US-supplied M-2 Bradleys, while the brigade came under fire from Russian artillery and aviation.

Comment: Deplete and plead for more: Clearly Ukraine has no acumen for war strategy nor field execution.
Two Ukrainian generals were killed in a Russian high-precision strike on the Donbass city of Kramatorsk on Tuesday, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said on Thursday, citing "updated data."

The ministry had earlier claimed that the strike targeted the temporary base of the Ukrainian Armed Forces 56th Motorized Infantry Brigade. Since then, the ministry has added that the base was hosting a "staff meeting" involving dozens of Ukrainian officers and foreign advisers.

The attack resulted in the deaths of "two generals, up to 50 officers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, as well as up to 20 foreign mercenaries and military advisers," according to the Russian Defense Ministry's daily briefing.

The news came as Russian forces continue to repel Ukrainian attacks on their defensive positions in Zaporozhye Region as well as in Donbass. Ukraine has lost almost 800 servicemen in attempted assaults on various fronts over the past 24 hours, the Russian ministry claimed. It added that Russian forces had destroyed dozens of pieces of Ukrainian heavy equipment, including howitzers, armored vehicles and a tank.

Earlier this week, Kiev accused Moscow of striking a restaurant full of civilians in Kramatorsk, killing 11 people, including at least two children and injuring more than 60 others.

Ukraine's security service, the SBU, said it had arrested a local resident suspected of leaking intelligence to Russia before the alleged strike. The agency also claimed that the goal of the strike had been to kill civilians.

Russia has denied the accusations, insisting that it only hits military targets.

The developments came as several Western media outlets reported that Ukraine has suffered heavy losses in its much-touted counteroffensive, which some allies are said to have assessed as unsuccessful thus far.

The Financial Times reported on the same day that Kiev's Western backers have warned that further funding and support will depend on the results of the ongoing offensive. General Christopher Cavoli, NATO's top commander in Europe, reportedly said last week that Russia was still enjoying "the advantage of mass."



Cardboard Box

US debt becoming unsustainable

dollarbomb
© Unknown
US national debt will nearly double over the next three decades and interest payments on the sum will triple in relation to gross domestic product (GDP), a non-partisan group of budget experts in Congress has warned.

If current laws remain unchanged, Federal government debt will jump from this year's estimate of 98% of GDP to 107% by 2029, and to 181% by 2053, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned in a report on Wednesday.

"Such high and rising debt would slow economic growth, push up interest payments to foreign holders of US debt, and pose significant risks to the fiscal and economic outlook", the CBO wrote.

Debt held by the public represents the amount that the Treasury has borrowed from domestic and foreign investors to support government activities and meet its basic obligations such as healthcare programs and social security. As of December 2022, the public debt stood at 78% of the gross federal debt.

Total US debt now stands at over $32 trillion, after the government suspended the debt ceiling earlier this month to avoid a default.

At the same time, the US Federal Reserve has implemented a series of interest rate hikes in recent months in an attempt to curb the nation's worst inflation in decades. The Fed interest rate is currently 5% to 5.25%, up from 0% in early 2022.

Arrow Up

A Matryoshka of Psyops: And why General Armageddon is not going anywhere

Lukashenko of Belarus
© Public Domain
The secret of a perfect psyop is that no one really understands it.

A perfect psyop accomplishes two tasks: it renders the enemy dazed and confused while achieving a set of very important goals.

It goes without saying that sooner rather than later we should see the real goals emerging out of the strategic play in Russia I described as The Longest Day.

The Longest Day may or may not have been a larger than life psyop.

To clear the fog, let's start with a roundup of the usual "winner" suspects.

First one is undoubtedly Belarus. Due to the priceless mediation of Old Man Luka, Minsk is now gifted with the most experienced army in the world: the Wagner musicians, masters of conventional (Libya, Ukraine) and non-conventional (Syria, Central African Republic) war.

That is already inflicting the Fear of Hell in NATO, which is suddenly facing in its eastern flank a super pro army, very well equipped, and de facto uncontrollable, and on top of it hosted by a nation now equipped with nuclear weapons.

Simultaneously, Russia props up dissuasion on its western front. Like clockwork that is leading NATOstan to invest in ballooning military budgets (with funds it doesn't have). That process happens to be a key plank of Russian strategy since at least March 2018.

And as an extra bonus Russia creates a 24/7 threat to the whole of Kiev's northern front.

Not bad for a "mutiny".

Arrow Up

Africa to the west: you are not hearing us!

For the first time in centuries, nations of the world have a choice. Tectonic changes lie ahead.

A very major event took place in Paris last week, only it got crowded out of the media coverage by Evgeny Prigozhin's weekend non-coup coup attempt in Russia. France's President Emmanuel Macron took the lead in bringing the global community together to develop a new financial architecture for the future and hosted the Summit for a New Global Financial Pact in Paris on 22 and 23 June. Among the attendees were many of the leaders of Western European, African and Latin American nations as well as the heads of the IMF, World Bank, US Department of the Treasury, the ECB and the European Commission.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa
© Alex Krainer's TrendCompassSouth Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa speaking at the Summit For a New Global Financial Pact in Paris, 23 June 2023.
We need a new financial pact because climate change...

The need for a new Global Financial Pact, supposedly, is due to the risk of climate change and the transition from fossil fuels to clean, sustainable energy sources. Western experts estimate that this transition will require an expenditure of about $1 trillion per year through 2030. That's a lot of money, but it is actually among the more moderate projections of what it will take to Build Back Better. Western leaders are proposing to fund the transition by levying a global tax. The specific objective with respect to climate would be to limit global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial levels. Presumably, the new financial architecture for the world would entail a global tax paid to a supra-national governing structure - perhaps the World Economic Forum's partner organization, the UN - who would use that money to fix the climate emergency for us and save the planet.

Colosseum

SOTT Focus: America has Just Destroyed a Great Empire

graphic four empires nato america china russia flag
Herodotus (History, Book 1.53) tells the story of Croesus, king of Lydia c. 585-546 BC in what is now Western Turkey and the Ionian shore of the Mediterranean. Croesus conquered Ephesus, Miletus and neighboring Greek-speaking realms, obtaining tribute and booty that made him one of the richest rulers of his time. But these victories and wealth led to arrogance and hubris. Croesus turned his eyes eastward, ambitious to conquer Persia, ruled by Cyrus the Great.

Having endowed the region's cosmopolitan Temple of Delphi with substantial silver and gold, Croesus asked its Oracle whether he would be successful in the conquest that he had planned. The Pythia priestess answered: "If you go to war against Persia, you will destroy a great empire."

Croesus therefore set out to attack Persia c. 547 BC. Marching eastward, he attacked Persia's vassal-state Phrygia. Cyrus mounted a Special Military Operation to drive Croesus back, defeating Croesus's army, capturing him and taking the opportunity to seize Lydia's gold to introduce his own Persian gold coinage. So Croesus did indeed destroy a great empire, but it was his own.

Propaganda

Best of the Web: For a hot minute, Wagner's Prigozhin was a hero for Western regime change enthusiasts

Prigozhin
Yevgeny Prigozhin
Even as last weekend's mutiny failed to live up to their wishful thinking, commentators kept harping on about imminent chaos in Russia

Western figures who have long dreamed of Russian regime change saw an open window with the Wagner mutiny, and apparently saw a prime opportunity to toss their credibility out of it.

They couldn't stop grafting their disaster porn fantasies onto the events, even as facts and reality started distancing themselves from all the wishful thinking. Who cares that Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin himself had said that his beef was with Russian military leadership - Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu and chief of the general staff, Valery Gerasimov, about whom he previously complained for insufficient ammunition and support. Or that his armed march towards Moscow was for "justice" for his men who he said had done the heavy lifting in the grueling months-long battle of Artyomovsk (Bakhmut), leading to an eventual Russian victory. So what if Prigozhin explicitly denied that he was mounting a coup, and hadn't at all evoked Russian President Vladimir Putin as his target? This whole drama, viewed from here in Moscow, where people continued to go about their daily lives as usual, just seemed like a tiff between siblings, one of whom was hell-bent on getting Daddy Putin's attention by tossing his toys out of the pram - at Rostov-on-Don and Moscow.

Comment:


Snakes in Suits

Vassal: Zelensky asks lawmakers to mandate Ukraine's officials & military staff be proficient in English

zelensky swiss parliament speech
© Keystone / Sergey DolzhenkoFILE PHOTO: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky. Under one of the articles of the draft law, proficiency in English would be mandatory for the heads of local government bodies and their deputies, military officers serving under contract, prosecutors, tax and customs officials, and mid-and senior-level police officers, as well as the senior staff of other law enforcement agencies and civil defense services.
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has submitted a bill to the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine's unicameral legislative body, that would officially designate English as a language for international communication in Ukraine, and would mandate that local government officials, military officers, policemen and prosecutors learn English.

"English is among the languages for international communication in Ukraine," the text of the bill, as published on the Rada's website, says.

Comment: Or, put more simply:




Rocket

Best of the Web: Nuclear falseflag on Zaporozhye NPP heats up + major Wagner updates and more

The situation can only be considered urgent as Ukraine has now made their full intentions crystal clear. If before we suspected with high confidence, now it is plain fact. They intend to destroy the ZNPP plant as a last ditch attempt to 'activate NATO' by blaming Russia.

A completely coordinated campaign over the last few days has affirmed this. Not only was Budanov's maiden speech after reappearing from his Kalibrated cranial trepanation centered on Russia's alleged 'mining of the ZNPP' basement, but now several new instances of highly coordinated messaging have been released by Ukraine and its Western controllers.

(I re-post Budanov's video just to have them all here in one place for easy reference)


In fact, since that video from days ago, he's released a new, even more urgently threatening message:
Nuclear Falseflag on Zaporozhye NPP 1
🇺🇦🤡 "The 4th and 6th power units of the Zaporozhye NPP were mined by Russia," - Kyrylo Budanov

"The situation has never been as serious as it is now.

The plan of the terrorist attack at the ZNPP has been fully developed and approved. To accelerate the catastrophe, they can use technical means," Budanov stated

Quenelle - Golden

Russian Armed Forces will destroy 'meetings' of Ukrainian military with foreign mercenaries and Western Generals - Lavrov

Sergey Lavrov
© AFP / Russian Foreign MinistryFILE PHOTO: Sergey Lavrov attends a meeting of the Council of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Minsk, Belarus, June 20, 2023
The RF Armed Forces will destroy "assemblies" of militants of the Kyiv regime with foreign mercenaries and Western generals participating in them. This was stated by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Lavrov also urged the leadership of NATO countries that provide their instructors for the training of fighters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to pay attention to the fact that the Kiev regime regularly deploys heavy weapons on the territory of civilian infrastructure, which is certainly a war crime.

The minister also stressed that if the Russian Armed Forces detect gatherings of militants, such as the one in occupied Kramatorsk, they will immediately be attacked.

Comment: Full text of Tweet below:
Western media told us that the Russia missile strike on a hotel in Kramatorsk yesterday killed only civilians. This was directly refuted by a (likely) Western soldier/mercenary on the scene (possibly South African or British based on accent) who stated that there were "soldiers under the rubble all over".

In one of the videos of the aftermath, a tattoo of a wounded man is clearly visible, indicating that he belongs to the 3rd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment of the US Armed Forces. Either an instructor, or a mercenary. Another video shows a man in a uniform with the emblem of the 101st Airborne Division of the US Armed Forces.



Megaphone

Best of the Web: 'EU is on the brink of bankruptcy' says Hungary's PM Orbán at EU summit


Comment: By American design, or Eurocratic fecklessness?


orban
The money that was approved to be spent and was supposed to be there for the next five years has already been spent, says Hungary's PM
The first question asked by Prime Minister Viktor Orbán in his Facebook post is: "The only question everyone is asking here in Brussels is: Where has the money gone?"

Orbán is currently attending the two-day summit of EU leaders in Brussels, and one of the hottest topics is the question as to where the EU's budget money has disappeared to. The Hungarian prime minister said that the European Commission had submitted a budget amendment proposal asking member states to pay tens of billions of euros.

"The question arises: How did this situation come about and how did they bring the European Union to the brink of bankruptcy?" Orbán asked.

Comment: