America Goes To War
America Goes To War… Yet Again
With two unnecessary and very bloody conflicts being pursued in Ukraine and Gaza, what does one more needless massacre really mean? Well, maybe plenty in this case, as the recent deaths of sunbathing Russian civilians on a beach near Sevastopol Crimea have the Joe Biden administration’s bloody fingerprints all over them as do the May 22 reckless Ukrainian drone attacks targeting Russia’s strategic nuclear early warning radar capabilities. Both incidents occurring in what is regarded as an unpredictable global situation create very grave risks that consideration by Moscow of the possible U.S. role in the events could have led to a hard retaliation by Vladimir Putin up to and including a massive launch of Russian nuclear forces.
The Ukrainian attack on the giant dish-type radars at Armavir, which shut down both units, was significant. It has been reported that, within minutes of the attack, an emergency meeting took place with the commander of the Russian strategic rocket forces along with his highest-level officers.
A major retaliation for the attack was on the table but Putin advised caution, particularly as a subsequent attack on a third radar was successfully defended against by Russian antiaircraft units. The June 23 Sevastopol incident, which killed four civilians, three of whom were children, and injured 150 more, including dozens more children, came on top of the destruction of the radars. That it appeared to be directed against civilians enjoying what was a Russian religious holiday Holy Trinity Day was widely and immediately regarded as an outrage and a war crime. It produced an intense popular reaction to which the Kremlin had to respond.
The narrative quickly emerged that there was a U.S. hand in both incidents in the form of satellite intelligence and guidance that likely played a role in the two attacks. The Sevastopol attack, which took place near the resort town of Uchukuevka, involved five U.S.-provided ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles with cluster munitions warheads, a weapon that is widely regarded as “a weapon of mass destruction” intended to kill civilians, the use of which is a war crime, and which is outlawed in more than 100 countries. Four of the five missiles were destroyed by Russian air defenses, but the fifth was damaged, veered off, and was detonated over the crowded Black Sea beach.
The Russians also claimed that the targeting and guidance systems of the missiles were operated through signals sent by U.S. orbital surveillance satellites and drones, beyond the capabilities of the Ukrainians, manned by American technicians even though the weapons were actually fired by Ukrainians from Ukrainian soil.
Russian officials responded to Sevastapol immediately. “The U.S. is helping Ukraine launch ‘terrorist strikes’ against Russian civilians,” Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, said in response to Russian Defense Ministry reports that the Ukrainian attack was purposefully carried out when there was a maximum concentration of people on the beach. He also told journalists, when asked to comment on Washington’s lack of reaction to the deadly strike: It is obvious to policymakers in Washington that cluster munitions in ATACMS missiles cannot be launched without the participation of American specialists and support from U.S. intelligence.
It is no coincidence that enemy drones are circling over the Black Sea almost every day. All this indicates the death of America’s pseudo-humane foreign policy in the bloody swamp of the Ukrainian crisis. The Russian Defense Ministry, as well as Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ryabkov, seconded the ambassador’s message in assigning the blame for Ukraine’s “premeditated terrorist missile attack” on Washington, accusing it of supplying Kiev with the ATACMS missiles while also providing the necessary intelligence and reconnaissance data on Russian targets. The incident also prompted the Russian Foreign Ministry to summon American Ambassador Lynne Tracy and present her with a demarche in connection with what it called “a new bloody crime by the Kiev regime patronized and armed by Washington.” She was told that the Sevastopol attack “was a flagrant case of a direct [U.S.] involvement in the conflict. The complicity in a terrorist act committed by the Kiev regime will not go unanswered.”
Ministry officials also emphasized to the ambassador that the United States was “waging a hybrid war against Russia,” and that Washington has become party to the Ukraine con flict by supplying Kiev with modern weapons, including the precision ATACMS missiles with cluster munitions. The ministry also noted that Russian intelligence was aware that American military specialists were actively engaged in designing the flight mission for ATACMS, which means they “bear the same responsibility for this atrocity as the Kiev regime.”
Tracy agreed to forward the message to Washington, but was in no position to respond to it personally without guidance from the State Department. A direct query to the Pentagon regarding the incident also produced no response plus a refusal to engage on the issue, responding to media inquiries with, “We have seen the reports and have nothing to say.” It is generally understood that continuous deliveries of weapons to Ukraine and recent attempts by the United States and its allies to confiscate frozen Russian assets abroad undermine attempts to find a diplomatic solution to this latest Crimean War.
It has also convinced the Russian government that it is de facto at war with the United States and most of NATO, and reports from Moscow indicate that the Kremlin has warned the U.S. Defense Department that it will now shoot down any American drones in the Black Sea that fly too close to Russian territory.
It is a response to Sevastopol as well as to Ukraine’s Western backers’ recent renewed pledges to continue both monetary and weapons support for Kiev in its fight with Moscow. Russia has repeatedly stated that no amount of foreign aid will stop its operation in Ukraine, and that weapons deliveries only lead to further escalation. Putin and his advisers have made clear that Russia will, if necessary, use everything in its arsenal if it is seriously threatened.
Moscow has placed the blame primarily with Washington because Russia claims that the targets for these U.S.-provided missiles are assigned to Ukrainian troops by American specialists based on their own uniquely developed intelligence data. According to data from the flight tracker Flightradar, a U.S. RQ-4B Global Hawk reconnaissance drone was patrolling in the Black Sea south of Crimea during the Ukrainian missile strike and may have been directing the paths of the weapons. There have also been claims that Kiev deliberately chooses mass gatherings of people as targets, both out of hatred and to sow panic, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said following the attack.
The day of the Holy Trinity holiday was picked deliberately, she claimed. Ukraine has previously used the same ATACMS missiles to target the Crimean Peninsula, which it considers to be part of its own territory even though it is historically part of Russia and mostly inhabited by ethnic Russians. In May, 10 U.S.-provided ATACMS were shot down on a trajectory aimed at one of the most strategic Crimean bridges. Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky’s top aide, Mikhail Podoliak, has dismissed the Sevastopol attack while also downplaying the loss of life on the beach. He stated that “civilian occupiers” should know better than to stay on the Crimean Peninsula. He added that: There are not and cannot be any “beaches,” “tourist zones” and other fictitious signs of “peaceful life” in Cri mea. Crimea is definitely a foreign territory occupied by Russia, where hostilities are taking place, a full-scale war is ongoing.
Will these initiatives by Ukraine and the U.S. bear bitter fruit like the destruction by the United States and proxies of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022? The suggestions of the possible consequences that might easily develop from destruction of the radar facility and the bombing near Sevastopol should illustrate to Washington policymakers just how close the U.S. and its Ukrainian ally have come to triggering what might develop into a nuclear war, but no one at the Pentagon, State Department or White House appears to be listening.
The situation is further complicated by the 10-year Bilateral Security Agreement that Joe Biden signed with Zelensky at the G7 meeting in Italy a little more than a month ago. What it commits Washington to do is by no means clear, but the war will continue to go on, even though the consensus is growing that Russia cannot lose and Ukraine cannot win, no matter how many billions of dollars and weapons are provided to Zelensky’s corrupt regime. Meanwhile, Washington foreign policymakers are already buzzing about the over-the-horizon threat from China while also considering what should be done about it. One must conclude that there is something seriously wrong in the U.S. government perception of its proper role visà-vis the rest of the world. One can only hope that the American people will manage to escape from the possible consequences without being seriously damaged.
The Israeli military, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the course of 24 hours on July 30 and 31, assassinated the political leader of Palestinian guerrilla group Hamas, the No. 2 leader of Lebanese militia Hezbollah, and a top Iranian military commander in Syria. Making matters much worse, Israel assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was in Tehran on an official visit to attend the ceremonies marking the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian. A week before, Netanyahu spoke before a joint session of Congress where half of the Democratic senators and congressmen opted not to show up in protest of the war criminal’s visit to the United States. While the mainstream media in the U.S. chose to parrot Israeli propaganda on these three provocative moves, the Arab world was awash with the reality of the situation— that the Israeli government led by a psychopath is hoping to provoke Hezbollah, Iran, and Yemen into an allout war—and drag the U.S. right into the middle of it all. Mentally impaired President Joe Biden has yet to respond to the three assassinations, but his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, did splutter out a quick response to reporters’ The U.S. Navy has deployed at least 12 warships, including an aircraft carrier, to the Middle East following a provocative spate of assassinations by Israel. questions while on a trip to Singapore. “This is something we were not aware of or involved in,” Blinken told the world. It matters not if the U.S. actually had any involvement or advanced knowledge of these three assassinations, as the Iranians certainly think the U.S. did. In a letter delivered to the UN Security Council on July 31, Iran’s Ambassador to the UN Amir Saeid Iravani wrote, “This act could not have occurred without the authorization and intelligence support of the U.S.” Even as far back as 1973, infamous Secretary of State Henry Kissinger understood that Israel sowing violent chaos in the Middle East was not good for the United States. “From an Israeli point of view, it is no disaster to have the whole Arab world radicalized and anti-American, because this guarantees [U.S.] continued support,” Kissinger said during an Oct. 23, 1973, meeting at the State Department. “From an American point of view, it is a disaster.” The killing of Hamas’s leader comes as the U.S. has been working on a ceasefire deal between the Israelis and Hamas in Gaza—something twothirds of Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. support. Netanyahu, who faces a criminal trial for corruption once he is out of office, has been accused of repeatedly sabotaging peace deals, so he can keep the war going and remain in power. While in the U.S., Netanyahu met with Biden, Vice President and Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris, and former President Donald Trump. According to Israeli media reports, Netanyahu was “irked” with Harris, who had told the Israeli prime minister that he should accept the deal with Hamas and treat Palestinians better. Multiple analysts contend that these warmongering acts were ultimately intended to box in Washington and force the U.S. into a war that an overwhelming majority of Americans do not want.
The Ukrainian attack on the giant dish-type radars at Armavir, which shut down both units, was significant. It has been reported that, within minutes of the attack, an emergency meeting took place with the commander of the Russian strategic rocket forces along with his highest-level officers.
A major retaliation for the attack was on the table but Putin advised caution, particularly as a subsequent attack on a third radar was successfully defended against by Russian antiaircraft units. The June 23 Sevastopol incident, which killed four civilians, three of whom were children, and injured 150 more, including dozens more children, came on top of the destruction of the radars. That it appeared to be directed against civilians enjoying what was a Russian religious holiday Holy Trinity Day was widely and immediately regarded as an outrage and a war crime. It produced an intense popular reaction to which the Kremlin had to respond.
The narrative quickly emerged that there was a U.S. hand in both incidents in the form of satellite intelligence and guidance that likely played a role in the two attacks. The Sevastopol attack, which took place near the resort town of Uchukuevka, involved five U.S.-provided ATACMS (Army Tactical Missile System) missiles with cluster munitions warheads, a weapon that is widely regarded as “a weapon of mass destruction” intended to kill civilians, the use of which is a war crime, and which is outlawed in more than 100 countries. Four of the five missiles were destroyed by Russian air defenses, but the fifth was damaged, veered off, and was detonated over the crowded Black Sea beach.
The Russians also claimed that the targeting and guidance systems of the missiles were operated through signals sent by U.S. orbital surveillance satellites and drones, beyond the capabilities of the Ukrainians, manned by American technicians even though the weapons were actually fired by Ukrainians from Ukrainian soil.
Russian officials responded to Sevastapol immediately. “The U.S. is helping Ukraine launch ‘terrorist strikes’ against Russian civilians,” Moscow’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, said in response to Russian Defense Ministry reports that the Ukrainian attack was purposefully carried out when there was a maximum concentration of people on the beach. He also told journalists, when asked to comment on Washington’s lack of reaction to the deadly strike: It is obvious to policymakers in Washington that cluster munitions in ATACMS missiles cannot be launched without the participation of American specialists and support from U.S. intelligence.
It is no coincidence that enemy drones are circling over the Black Sea almost every day. All this indicates the death of America’s pseudo-humane foreign policy in the bloody swamp of the Ukrainian crisis. The Russian Defense Ministry, as well as Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ryabkov, seconded the ambassador’s message in assigning the blame for Ukraine’s “premeditated terrorist missile attack” on Washington, accusing it of supplying Kiev with the ATACMS missiles while also providing the necessary intelligence and reconnaissance data on Russian targets. The incident also prompted the Russian Foreign Ministry to summon American Ambassador Lynne Tracy and present her with a demarche in connection with what it called “a new bloody crime by the Kiev regime patronized and armed by Washington.” She was told that the Sevastopol attack “was a flagrant case of a direct [U.S.] involvement in the conflict. The complicity in a terrorist act committed by the Kiev regime will not go unanswered.”
Ministry officials also emphasized to the ambassador that the United States was “waging a hybrid war against Russia,” and that Washington has become party to the Ukraine con flict by supplying Kiev with modern weapons, including the precision ATACMS missiles with cluster munitions. The ministry also noted that Russian intelligence was aware that American military specialists were actively engaged in designing the flight mission for ATACMS, which means they “bear the same responsibility for this atrocity as the Kiev regime.”
Tracy agreed to forward the message to Washington, but was in no position to respond to it personally without guidance from the State Department. A direct query to the Pentagon regarding the incident also produced no response plus a refusal to engage on the issue, responding to media inquiries with, “We have seen the reports and have nothing to say.” It is generally understood that continuous deliveries of weapons to Ukraine and recent attempts by the United States and its allies to confiscate frozen Russian assets abroad undermine attempts to find a diplomatic solution to this latest Crimean War.
It has also convinced the Russian government that it is de facto at war with the United States and most of NATO, and reports from Moscow indicate that the Kremlin has warned the U.S. Defense Department that it will now shoot down any American drones in the Black Sea that fly too close to Russian territory.
It is a response to Sevastopol as well as to Ukraine’s Western backers’ recent renewed pledges to continue both monetary and weapons support for Kiev in its fight with Moscow. Russia has repeatedly stated that no amount of foreign aid will stop its operation in Ukraine, and that weapons deliveries only lead to further escalation. Putin and his advisers have made clear that Russia will, if necessary, use everything in its arsenal if it is seriously threatened.
Moscow has placed the blame primarily with Washington because Russia claims that the targets for these U.S.-provided missiles are assigned to Ukrainian troops by American specialists based on their own uniquely developed intelligence data. According to data from the flight tracker Flightradar, a U.S. RQ-4B Global Hawk reconnaissance drone was patrolling in the Black Sea south of Crimea during the Ukrainian missile strike and may have been directing the paths of the weapons. There have also been claims that Kiev deliberately chooses mass gatherings of people as targets, both out of hatred and to sow panic, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said following the attack.
The day of the Holy Trinity holiday was picked deliberately, she claimed. Ukraine has previously used the same ATACMS missiles to target the Crimean Peninsula, which it considers to be part of its own territory even though it is historically part of Russia and mostly inhabited by ethnic Russians. In May, 10 U.S.-provided ATACMS were shot down on a trajectory aimed at one of the most strategic Crimean bridges. Ukrainian president Vladimir Zelensky’s top aide, Mikhail Podoliak, has dismissed the Sevastopol attack while also downplaying the loss of life on the beach. He stated that “civilian occupiers” should know better than to stay on the Crimean Peninsula. He added that: There are not and cannot be any “beaches,” “tourist zones” and other fictitious signs of “peaceful life” in Cri mea. Crimea is definitely a foreign territory occupied by Russia, where hostilities are taking place, a full-scale war is ongoing.
Will these initiatives by Ukraine and the U.S. bear bitter fruit like the destruction by the United States and proxies of the Nord Stream gas pipelines in 2022? The suggestions of the possible consequences that might easily develop from destruction of the radar facility and the bombing near Sevastopol should illustrate to Washington policymakers just how close the U.S. and its Ukrainian ally have come to triggering what might develop into a nuclear war, but no one at the Pentagon, State Department or White House appears to be listening.
The situation is further complicated by the 10-year Bilateral Security Agreement that Joe Biden signed with Zelensky at the G7 meeting in Italy a little more than a month ago. What it commits Washington to do is by no means clear, but the war will continue to go on, even though the consensus is growing that Russia cannot lose and Ukraine cannot win, no matter how many billions of dollars and weapons are provided to Zelensky’s corrupt regime. Meanwhile, Washington foreign policymakers are already buzzing about the over-the-horizon threat from China while also considering what should be done about it. One must conclude that there is something seriously wrong in the U.S. government perception of its proper role visà-vis the rest of the world. One can only hope that the American people will manage to escape from the possible consequences without being seriously damaged.
The Israeli military, led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in the course of 24 hours on July 30 and 31, assassinated the political leader of Palestinian guerrilla group Hamas, the No. 2 leader of Lebanese militia Hezbollah, and a top Iranian military commander in Syria. Making matters much worse, Israel assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh while he was in Tehran on an official visit to attend the ceremonies marking the inauguration of Iran’s new president, Dr. Masoud Pezeshkian. A week before, Netanyahu spoke before a joint session of Congress where half of the Democratic senators and congressmen opted not to show up in protest of the war criminal’s visit to the United States. While the mainstream media in the U.S. chose to parrot Israeli propaganda on these three provocative moves, the Arab world was awash with the reality of the situation— that the Israeli government led by a psychopath is hoping to provoke Hezbollah, Iran, and Yemen into an allout war—and drag the U.S. right into the middle of it all. Mentally impaired President Joe Biden has yet to respond to the three assassinations, but his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, did splutter out a quick response to reporters’ The U.S. Navy has deployed at least 12 warships, including an aircraft carrier, to the Middle East following a provocative spate of assassinations by Israel. questions while on a trip to Singapore. “This is something we were not aware of or involved in,” Blinken told the world. It matters not if the U.S. actually had any involvement or advanced knowledge of these three assassinations, as the Iranians certainly think the U.S. did. In a letter delivered to the UN Security Council on July 31, Iran’s Ambassador to the UN Amir Saeid Iravani wrote, “This act could not have occurred without the authorization and intelligence support of the U.S.” Even as far back as 1973, infamous Secretary of State Henry Kissinger understood that Israel sowing violent chaos in the Middle East was not good for the United States. “From an Israeli point of view, it is no disaster to have the whole Arab world radicalized and anti-American, because this guarantees [U.S.] continued support,” Kissinger said during an Oct. 23, 1973, meeting at the State Department. “From an American point of view, it is a disaster.” The killing of Hamas’s leader comes as the U.S. has been working on a ceasefire deal between the Israelis and Hamas in Gaza—something twothirds of Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. support. Netanyahu, who faces a criminal trial for corruption once he is out of office, has been accused of repeatedly sabotaging peace deals, so he can keep the war going and remain in power. While in the U.S., Netanyahu met with Biden, Vice President and Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris, and former President Donald Trump. According to Israeli media reports, Netanyahu was “irked” with Harris, who had told the Israeli prime minister that he should accept the deal with Hamas and treat Palestinians better. Multiple analysts contend that these warmongering acts were ultimately intended to box in Washington and force the U.S. into a war that an overwhelming majority of Americans do not want.
By: Jewel Staite
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