On Saturday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Western sanctions on Russia were akin to a declaration of war and warned that any attempt to impose a no-fly zone in Ukraine would lead to catastrophic consequences for the world.
Putin reiterated that his aims were to defend Russian-speaking communities through the “demilitarisation and de-Nazification” of the country so that Russia’s former Soviet neighbor became neutral and no longer threatened Russia.
Putin has started what some people are referring to as WWIII. Biden’s response has been to join other nations in hitting Putin with some financial sanctions, which have thus far not changed Putin’s game plan.
Biden is also sending, depending on your source, roughly $74 million to Russia EVERY DAY for oil.
Why hit Putin with sanctions if you’re handing him mad stacks for oil? Something is up. Biden could open the Keystone XL pipeline. He could “drill, baby, drill” in the States and tap into what might be billions of barrels of oil, but White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki refers to that idea as a “misdiagnosis.”
So instead, Biden is helping to pay for Putin’s war.
SWIFT is the international payment system. Cutting off a top country from SWIFT access is a very big deal.
When the US and EU trotted out the SWIFT sanction card, I thought I got that one wrong. Closer inspection by Eurointelligence and others shows it’s Not So Swift After All.
Many a warning has come in the form of a familiar phrase: “be careful to read the fine print.” We apply the theory to Immigration Minister Sean Fraser’s declaration regarding those currently fleeing war in Ukraine:
“Canada prepared to welcome an ‘unlimited number’ of Ukrainians fleeing war, minister says” reads the headline from CBC News. His wording fails to note a critical detail. The arrivals must leave Canada within a two year period:
Invading another nation, bombing hospitals, and killing civilians is not enough to get you kicked off of Twitter, but calling for peace and order will get you banned.
As the bombardment of Ukraine’s two largest cities intensifies, there’s another aspect of the struggle between Russia and Ukraine that is getting less notice from military analysts fixated on troop numbers and equipment — the moral aspect of war and its interplay with information warfare.
The only way to avoid World War III is to listen to both sides. The refusal to listen ensures that we will move into World War III, and this is not my opinion; unfortunately, our computer has never been wrong, for it is unbiased. It called BREXIT when nobody else did, and also forecast that Trump would win in 2016 when everyone thought that was impossible.
It is rare that a president can show he is living up to the mantle of “leader of the free world” — and even less common for him to do so against the backdrop of his main political rival praising an autocrat.
But that’s what President Joe Biden did during his first State of the Union address, highlighting how he has led the Western world in defending Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.
We are approaching a critical phase in the Russian conquest of Ukraine. There have been multiple commitments of Western lethal and non-lethal aid in the past 72 hours. Concurrently, the Russians continue to commit more combat forces. According to background briefings at the Pentagon, Russia now has committed about 75 per cent of its combat power initially arrayed at the Ukrainian border.
After an initial lack of progress, it is likely that the Russian military leadership has rethought its strategy and will change its operational approach in the Ukraine. This will result in an increase in the use of artillery, rockets, thermobaric weapons, and air-delivered munitions as they turn to their more traditional approaches to war to secure their version of “victory”.
We can only hope that the madness in Ukraine doesn’t escalate to the extent that the U.S. military ends up getting involved. It’s clear that Gen. Mark Milley and the rest of the brass have learned absolutely no lessons from Afghanistan and are determined to repeat the same mistakes that led up to the catastrophically mishandled withdrawal from Kabul. If the Army were called upon to move into Ukraine, which would be an indication that the situation there had gotten wildly out of control, it isn’t at all clear that today’s woke force would pose a significant threat even to the manifestly weak and sluggish Russian forces. An American army presence in Ukraine would likely herald World War III, and we hope it won’t come to that, but if it does, look out.
Canada asked the International Criminal Court on Tuesday to speed up its investigation into Russia for possible war crimes because of its invasion of Ukraine as the government moved to close its ports to Russian ships.
There’s a reason why Putin and Ukraine evidently cured COVID. They no longer want us discussing COVID because the daily revelations about the safety and efficacy of the shots – along with all the other lies about the pandemic – will create a frenzy of poignant and consequential questions from the public directed at elected officials. It’s precisely for that reason that we must not allow them to move on. They dragged us into COVID against our will; now it is our job not to allow them to distract us from it until justice is served.
Ukraine’s Foreign Affairs Minister Dmytro Kuleba said a “barbaric” air strike hit directly in front of a government building in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, killing an estimated 10 people, according to Ukrainian emergency services. Meanwhile, a large convoy of Russian troops was seen near Kyiv and Russian forces have reportedly entered the southern city of Kherson.
