The steady lies about expectations for the mythologized 'counter offensive' are sort of funny to review.
Ah, strategery brilliance from the Ukes has…backfired/failed once again.
Russia struck Ukrainian port facilities as one would expect after the bridge attack.
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We also know that Tu-22M3s specifically were up in the air, which typically launch Kh-22s, rather than the Kh-101s the Tu-95 Bears launch. So, all in all, last night was a smorgasbord of missiles which probably included: Kh-59s, Kh-22s, Kh-101s, Kalibrs, Onyx/P-800s, sub-launched P-120s and P-700s, and possibly even others like Kh-35s or Iskander-M or K (R-500) variant, as well as a mass of drones led by Gerans/Shaheds.
In short: it appears Russia has finished off Ukraine's port and grain future.
And presidential advisor Podolyak explains that it's not the carriers but the insurers who won't take up the risk on insuring ships crossing the contested warzone waters:
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Not a single cargo ship will call at the ports of Ukraine on the Black Sea after the termination of the grain deal, Mikhail Podolyak, adviser to the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, admitted on the air of the Rada TV channel.
"No country will dare to send its ships [to the ports of Ukraine]. And this is not a question of ships, this is a question of insurance companies," Podolyak said.
Meanwhile, Russian grain prices logically have leapt:
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Seeing that Ukraine is now doomed and stands no chance, with options running out, the U.S. intelligence state will push to accelerate the above developments so that they can unify Europe under one rule and then preferably use them as the next fodder with which to attempt to dismantle Russia.
In fact, in his new article, MK Bhadrakumar notes that "CDU's leading foreign and defence expert Roderich Kiesewetter (an ex-colonel who headed the Association of Reservists of the Bundeswehr from 2011 to 2016) suggested that if conditions warrant in the Ukraine situation, the Nato should consider to "cut off Kaliningrad from the Russian supply lines. We see how Putin reacts when he is under pressure."
The point being that, slowly, the powers are converging to continue their war on Russia in any way possible once Ukraine is used up and discarded like a wet rag. Unfortunately for them, Russia at that point will be by far the most experienced, powerful, and technologically advanced military nation in the world, having sharpened its teeth on NATO's latest and best thrown into the cauldron of the Ukrainian war.
We've seen them testing the waters before, with Lithuania attempting to blockade Kaliningrad last year by banning Russian trains, as well as the Baltic Sea nations, like Estonia and Finland, threatening to blockade the passage of Russian ships, which I wrote about extensively long ago. They have several means to do this, by extending their maritime economic zone borders and playing other such geographic 'technicality' tricks.
Now, Poland (as well as all of NATO in general) is setting up more and more troops near the Belarus and Kaliningrad border, and the Russian Duma Defense Committee chair already let the cat out the bag, as I mentioned here, about Wagner being positioned in Belarus for the purpose of defending the Suwalki corridor.
My prediction is the following: there are huge tectonic shifts currently underway for which the Ukrainian war serves only as a surface level symbolic playing field. The true play happening beneath the surface are the major moves that BRICS are making. Now that a lot of the long awaited summits and other milestones of the past few months have passed, the next big milestone to look forward to is the BRICS summit on August 24th in South Africa.
Zerohedge: the media and Ukraine,
where truth takes a holiday. More are noticing, obviously:
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Though we may not know about the prevalence of covert information operations for some time, a pair of stories published last month offer a window into some more overt efforts to shape our perception of the war in Ukraine. First, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, a Ukraine correspondent for the New York Times, wrote a viral story detailing how Ukrainian press officers and some Western journalists have tried to downplay, justify, or cover up the use of Nazi symbols by Ukrainian soldiers.
One specific passage tells of Western photojournalists asking their subjects to remove patches with Nazi emblems before taking photos. By doing so, these journalists crossed the line from documenting their subjects to staging them.
On the same day, former New York Times media columnist Ben Smith published an article reporting that many Western journalists have grown frustrated with how the Ukrainian government uses access and accreditation to shape war coverage. For example, the Ukrainian military threatened to revoke a photojournalist's credentials after he took pictures of conscripted soldiers in a trench without the presence or permission of a military press officer.
In another example, an NBC News crew traveled to Crimea to interview residents about the war. After reporting that most people they talked to preferred that Crimea belonged to Russia, the Ukrainian government revoked NBC's credentials and confined their in-country crew to a hotel.
Smith even brings up Thomas Gibbons-Neff from above, who had his access and credentials revoked after reporting on Ukraine's use of banned cluster munitions. There's no question that, at least to some extent, the continual threat of a loss of access affects everyone reporting over there in an official capacity.
This is not a new or unusual technique. The US government used similar tactics to help shape the narrative of its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Most professional journalists struggle endlessly to find sources. So, by granting extensive access that can always be revoked, governments can run an effective carrot-and-stick ploy to control media coverage.
Our views of war are warped by design. Sure, the Russian regime is mounting a similar effort to control how the Russian people view the war, but it would be absurd to say that the Kremlin holds an influence over the American public that's even comparable to the US or Ukrainian governments.
Despite what the media, the government, or your middle school civics teacher wants you to think, you don't need to frantically keep up with the hourly developments in Eastern Europe to be a good citizen. But if you choose to follow this war, understand which parties have a hand in delivering whatever information you're consuming because not everyone is trying to tell you the truth.
Amen to that. Clown world;
