Surely a negotiated settlement to the conflict in Ukraine and the wider security concerns of Russia should be a priority. But regrettably, Washington and its European and Kiev minions are incapable of such diplomacy.
The Radio Free Europe outlet this week blatantly published satellite images of Russian military bases in Crimea and openly advocated for the Kiev regime to launch strikes. The reality is even more sobering and grim. It would not be the Kiev regime carrying out such strikes, but rather U.S., British and other NATO special forces acting as the brains and stealthy hands of the regime.
Moscow has already inveighed against NATO as being a direct participant in hostilities in Ukraine. The RFE report corroborates Russia's claims. It is self-admission by the United States of being a party to the conflict.
The satellite images were provided by a private U.S. company called Planet Labs which has a history of working closely with the Pentagon. The images included an airbase at Dzhankoy which is described as a main logistics hub. Naval sites at Sevastopol were also listed in detail as well as purported ammunition tunnels in the surrounding mountains. Other targets included anti-aircraft positions near Feodosia on the Crimean Peninsula. From Moscow's viewpoint, the peninsula is the sovereign territory of the Russian Federation. Yet here we have the U.S. government's media mouthpiece giving out the coordinates and calling for air strikes on "prime targets".
RFE is wholly owned by the U.S. government and it has a long and tawdry history of acting as a CIA conduit in Eastern Europe during the height of the Cold War. For the publication to publish targets for military attack and to advocate for such action is tantamount to Washington openly declaring itself to be director of war operations by the Kiev regime.
This role by Washington and its NATO allies has long been surmised since the conflict in Ukraine erupted in February this year. Indeed for the eight years since the coup in Kiev in 2014, the United States and its NATO partners have been weaponizing and prepping the anti-Russian regime for war, as former German Chancellor Angela Merkel recently admitted.
But since hostilities flared over the past 10 months, the United States, Britain, Poland and other NATO members have been actively involved in providing not just weapons, but training, logistics and intelligence for attacking Russian forces. It is believed that American and British advisers have been directing Ukrainian air strikes at the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, as well as more recently on air bases deep inside Russian territory. The assassination of over a dozen senior Russian military commanders in the battlefields is also thought to be as a result of close targeting information provided by U.S. intelligence.
The sinking of the Moskva, the Russian navy's flag ship in the Black Sea Fleet, with the loss of many personnel onboard, is another incident that points to NATO's overarching involvement in the pursuit of this war.
At the end of October it is believed that American and British special forces were involved in a daring drone attack on Crimea. That incident led to Moscow temporarily cancelling the shipping arrangement for grain exports from the Black Sea.
All this apparent participation in the conflict has been brazenly stonewalled by Washington and its NATO allies who steadfastly claim to be not a party to the conflict. Just this week, the Biden administration announced that it was planning to supply Patriot missiles to Ukraine which Moscow condemned as another serious escalation. The Pentagon rebuffed Russian concerns and maintained that the "United States is not at war with Russia, and we do not seek conflict."
Such blithe denials of responsibility in the conflict are either delusional or bare-faced lies. The fact is the United States and its NATO allies are at war in Ukraine against Russia. The arsenal of weapons and financial support for the Kiev regime is ensuring that the conflict is prolonged and near-impossible to halt. The United States and the European Union are bankrolling a self-declared NeoNazi regime to the tune of $100 billion in both military and financial aid.
The weapons being supplied to Ukraine have become incrementally more sophisticated and longer-range, including the HIMARS, ATACMS, IRIS-T and NASAMS artillery and anti-aircraft systems. The announcement of Patriot deliveries is a further escalation. These advanced systems necessarily mean that American, British, German and other NATO troops are on the ground in Ukraine firing weapons at Russian targets. It's inconceivable that Ukrainian conscripts could operate these systems without NATO commanders and advisers, if not actual triggermen.
Besides, too, there have been admissions by U.S. and British military sources that their special forces are operating covertly in Ukraine.
All of this contradicts previous vows by U.S. President Joe Biden to not deploy American forces or ballistic weapons in Ukraine because that could unleash World War Three. Biden has been lying through his teeth. Which is hardly surprising. American political leaders have been habitually lying about NATO aggression towards Russia for decades.
Washington, London, Berlin and so on are playing a contemptible game of gaslighting. It is evident they are involved in fueling a war on Russia's doorstep and it is evident that the objective for the war is the ultimate geopolitical prize of instigating regime change in Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has on several occasions succinctly deprecated this Western imperialist agenda.
On the other hand, however, the Western opponents project an air of innocence, claiming against all the evidence that they are "not at war".
The duplicitous dynamic is comparable to the boiling-frog scenario, as one commentator aptly put it recently. The slow, gradual shift of hostility is aimed at dissembling what is otherwise obviously malign intent.
The insidious game of gaslighting can often be difficult to uncover. That's what makes it a particularly sinister ruse. It's a cloaked dagger.
But in the case of the United States and NATO in Ukraine, the game is long past over as to what is really going on - that is, the calculated aggression towards Russia. That aggression has been seeded since the end of the Second World War. The defeat of Nazi aggression was followed by the succession of NATO as the manifest machinery of Western imperialism.
The historic aggression against Russia has culminated in the Kiev regime and its NATO-backed war. That war was a low-intensity campaign for eight years until its fully-fledged form this year.
When a U.S. government-owned media outlet is publishing satellite images of aviation and naval bases in Crimea and openly defining those sites as "prime targets" then we surely know that the conflict has broken through consciousness to the level of public admission. In short, it's official.
Russia has warned that it will view U.S. and NATO batteries in Ukraine as legitimate targets. What happens when American, British, Canadian, German, Polish and other NATO soldiers start going back in bodybags?
Surely a negotiated settlement to the conflict in Ukraine and the wider security concerns of Russia should be a priority. But regrettably, Washington and its European and Kiev minions are incapable of such diplomacy.
That's why it seems to be a dawning realization in Moscow that the war in Ukraine must be finished decisively by military means. There is no point trying to negotiate with liars and deluded knaves. That's been tried already to no avail. The Kiev regime must be eradicated once and for all.
The United States and NATO are all the while threatening a dangerous escalation. But Russia has to finish this war on its terms.