Sweden Joins: Dangerous NATO escalation of Ukraine War 2 years on
Kyiv has right to strike Russian targets ‘outside Ukraine’, says Nato chief
Ukraine has the right to strike “Russian military targets outside Ukraine” in line with international law, the Nato secretary-general has said for the first time since the start of the full-scale war nearly two years ago. Jens Stoltenberg earlier this week acknowledged that the use of western-supplied arms to strike targets in Russia had long been a point of contention among Kyiv’s allies, due to fears of escalating the conflict. “It’s for each and every ally to decide whether there are some caveats on what they deliver, and different allies have had a bit different policies on that,” Stoltenberg told Radio Free Europe in an interview published on Tuesday. “But in general, we need to remember what this is. This is a war of aggression by Russia against Ukraine, in blatant violation of international law. And according to international law, Ukraine has the right to self-defence,” Stoltenberg added. “And that includes also striking legitimate military targets, Russian military targets, outside Ukraine. That is international law and, of course, Ukraine has the right to do so, to protect itself.” A Nato official confirmed to the Financial Times on Thursday that Stoltenberg said Kyiv had the right to self-defence, including by striking legitimate Russian military targets outside Ukraine.
Extraordinary escalation here by NATO.
The pressure is now on Zelensky.
He knows the West tires and focus turns to Israel.
He knows if Trump wins, he will cut aid to the Ukraine and cut a ‘peace’ deal directly with Putin.
He knows his only chance is to regain global attention from Israel’s ethnic cleansing war crime is by escalation with Russia. If he uses the next generation heavy weaponry the West have given the Ukraine inside Russia proper, that could escalate Russian aggression to commit a terrible response bordering on a tactical field nuke.
Sweden just joined NATO, the expansion Putin wished to avoid has occurred BECAUSE he was foolish enough to start a war that has minced 370 000 of his own men!
I am Socialist Left as fuck and despise the American Military Industrial Complex, but I have never understood the spineless devotion of Putin apologists!
Putin is an authoritarian thug whose unspeakable violence marks him as a brutal dictator. His needless war with Ukraine is an abomination and he has assassinated anyone he likes, with Alexei Navalny but one of many Putin has had killed.
I don’t care about the Donbas provocations, that doesn’t justify a war where he is minced up almost half a million people!
Don’t forget his naked contempt for the Gay community and his cruelty towards them either!
When Putin invaded the Ukraine, we all told ourselves in the West that the great Chessmaster had blundered and had grossly underestimated the power of sovereignty to the Ukrainian people.
I wrote at the time that I hoped we were right, and that he had blundered, but I feared it was we who were blundering.
I argued Putin would invade because of his strong Orthodox Christian faith and that he had come to view his leadership in comparison to the great Russian Leaders of the past and after the attempted coup in Kazakhstan, Putin decided that true greatness for Mother Russia would reside outside of America’s Rules based Order regime and that Russia could be great again in a destabilised world.
I fear Putin forced his country into war and sees the 370 000+ casualties and dead as a great price to pay for Russia to seed chaos and build power from that chaos.
His only regret is that he didn’t start sooner!
The blackbelt Judo in him knows winning can be the one prepared to take the most pain and that submission is as good as a knock out.
It is absolutely in Putin’s interests to seed more disruption. Russian Intelligence finger prints are all over the Hamas plans of October 7th and Russia’s new friendship with Iran sets up the Middle East as a new front in Putins war.
Already Western appetite for Ukrainian support is waning as money is taken to Israel.
Russia’s ability to throw their own men into slaughter to literally blunt Ukrainian forces is staggering and has gridlocked any gains. The new Western heavy armour and jets will be ready for early this year and if the Ukraine can’t force an advance, all Putin has to do is wait for Trump to win and cut a peace deal with Trump.
The reality of how little time the Ukraine has to make advances could lead some to a desperate cross border escapade into Russia triggering a far more extreme response from Russia…
Kyiv has right to strike Russian targets ‘outside Ukraine’, says Nato chief
…You can see the impact of these new weapons already with the downing of a half billion dollar Russian spy plane and Black Sea fleet.
Expect more problems in Serbia as Russian backed interests start destabilisation tactics to keep the Europeans worried.
Putin knows he just has to hold on till Trump is re-elected and Trump will freeze Ukrainian funding and force Zelensky to the negotiating table.
Zelensky knows this too.
All eyes are now on Trump. His possible re-election is the momentum for every other power to try it on and take as much as they can before he is elected and then ‘negotiate’ a symbolic peace while keeping what they want.
If Trump wins, he will bring a level of isolation and internal fascism never seen before. His militarisation of ICE with massive detainment camps is the effective creation of an internal secret police with vast unchecked powers.
It’ll be the worst bits of the Handmaids Tale mixed with Toxic White Christian Nationalism.
Expect a spike in escalation for world attention as Israel’s ethnic cleansing war crime continues and worsens and Putin is tempted to do the most extreme thing he can which is give Iran the technology and material to successfully test a nuclear bomb.
Boss of Japan crime syndicate conspired to traffic nuclear material, say US prosecutors
Takeshi Ebisawa is being charged over a conspiracy to traffic uranium and plutonium from Myanmar, believing Iran would use it to make weapons
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I don’t think Trump will walk away (assuming he becomes POTUS). Trump says a lot of things that he doesn’t actually do and the love affair with Putin has waned over time I think. And yes Putin managed to get Sweden to join NATO. That’s quite an accomplishment.
Sweden has always been effectively part of NATO. The NZ peace activist, Owen Wilkes, was kicked out of Sweden in the 80s for exposing (through public documents) Swedish regime collaboration with the American scum.
If – and it’s possibly a big if – the Democrats hammer the living crap out of the Dobbs decision and various States’ attacks on IVF and birth control, there’s no way Trump is going to be the president. Unless something drastic happens between now and November. But if it does happen, he’ll be governing with a democratic Senate and House. And they’ll eat him alive.
” assassinated anyone he likes”
Should that be dislikes?
Otherwise a good explanation of the situation, I recently read that Russia has started getting people from India involved in the Ukraine war, initially as support roles but then put into the front line so Putin continues to demonstrate that he only cares about himself.
Trump derangement syndrome rampant. If the commentariat from both Left and Right can’t see it Trump is a symptom of the disfunction of democracy. He is right, the swamp needs draining, but he isn’t the guy to do it. My suspicion is that the rotten corpse of Washington, of lawfare, of a degenerate culture is too far gone. Civil war is a distinct possibility, maybe the only way to regenerate the Republic.
Unfortunately, Iran will not be building nuclear weapons (which they are quite capable of doing without Russian assistance). As Gareth Porter has documented ad nauseam, even during the so-called ‘Iran-Iraq War’ when Saddam Hussein was hitting Iranian cities as well as military formations with chemical weapons, Ayatollah Khomeini refused to allow the development of chemical weapons for retaliatory strikes let alone nuclear weapons, and indeed ordered that a chemical weapons program that had been started without his knowledge be stopped.
This position has continued and been codified further under the current Supreme Leader.
It just isn’t that useful to build them, anyway. You can’t use nukes against the zionist entity because you’d kill 1948 Palestinians. Even if Iran was to build some very expensive ICBMs, beyond the current MRBMs they have, that would go the distance to New York or DC on the entire other side of the world, there are probably a few innocent people even there.
Putin has few real friends other than a few desperate despots. All despot everywhere are very nervous.
That statement is exactly the problem. It reflects how the West, the “golden billion” view the world.
So let’s do a deconstruct. China supports Russia. That’s a billion alone. Add pretty much all of Africa, the Middle East, there’s another two billion. India another billion leans towards non alignment. South America in general toe the line with the US but would prefer not to.
Another two ways of looking at Putin popularity versus the West. The Islamic world views Putin favourably, more so since the latest US support of Israel.
There are countries lined up to join BRICS, chaired by Russia which in terms of GDP is larger than the G7.
The argument is not whether you like Putin, or Russia. It is about an emerging multipolar world replacing Western unipolarity.