The Eurasian Economic Commission (EEC) is celebrating its tenth anniversary this year. Launched on February 2, 2012, it has become the permanent regulatory body of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The main purpose of the Eurasian Economic Commission is to ensure the conditions for the functioning and development of the EAEU and to draw up proposals for the further development of integration. “Despite external pressure, the countries of the Eurasian Economic Union are strengthening and developing cooperation,” Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin said at the EAEU intergovernmental council on February 25.

It is well known that the US and the EU are trying to obstruct the development and strengthening of Eurasian integration by subversively suggesting to the states that have not yet become full members of the Union (in particular Uzbekistan and Tajikistan) that joining the EAEU would allegedly have a negative impact on their trade and economic ties with Western countries. Washington is particularly active in preventing Uzbekistan from moving closer to the EAEU, primarily because it is one of the most attractive states in Central Asia in terms of resources and development potential. Back in the mid-1990s, the US placed its bets on a number of post-Soviet republics to increase its geopolitical influence: Georgia in the South Caucasus, Ukraine in the European part of the CIS, and Uzbekistan in Central Asia. Washington’s policy shows that this trend is still valid today. However, unlike Ukraine, which has been put under a tough choice – either the West or the EAEU, Washington has so far failed to impose such conditions of choice and bloc confrontation on Uzbekistan, as there are no serious contradictions between WTO membership and the development of Eurasian integration. Prior to the Andijan events in 2005, the desire to choose the best format of cooperation led Tashkent to swing its foreign policy course like a “seesaw,” first to Russia, then to the United States. However, the attempted coup convinced Uzbekistan to take a more balanced course towards military and political cooperation with the US.

In recent years, the EAEU has become a powerful regional association with prospects for integration into the global economy through a network of FTAs. For example, existing and pending agreements provide opportunities to enter markets in Southeast Asia (via Vietnam and Singapore), the Middle East (via Iran), Africa (via Egypt) and, in the future, Latin America as well. In some cases, the terms of trade for EAEU exporters under the FTA are much more favorable than under WTO conditions (certain groups of goods are subject to a complete abolition of import duties).

In the context of global geopolitical and economic turbulence, the development of integration in the Eurasian space is of particular importance. And along the way, Russia has had considerable success in strategizing integration processes in the Eurasian space and bringing its closest neighbors together within the EAEU. An updated concept of Eurasian integration in relation to the new geopolitical and geo-economic context has been elaborated and its gradual implementation with the most prepared partners from the CIS countries has been initiated. At the same time, the negative experience in the EAEU space, the existing problems in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus and Armenia are also taken into account. Russia is also going through a difficult geopolitical and economic period, under the burden of international sanctions, which are negatively affecting its own economy.

Nevertheless, as a result of the calibrated policy of Eurasian integration, in 2021 the volume of mutual trade of the EAEU countries in value terms set a record, reaching $72.6 billion and increasing by 31.9% compared to the previous year. The growth rate of mutual trade was only slightly behind that of external trade (35.1%), which is much more dependent on energy exports and tends to grow much faster in a well-priced hydrocarbon market. Kyrgyzstan (44.9%) tops the list in terms of trade growth with the EAEU countries in 2021, managing to significantly increase its supplies of metals and textiles to the Union. Kazakhstan (34.9%) and Russia (34.3%) rank second with almost identical results, showing high increases in shipments of food, metals and metal products as well as wood and pulp and paper products. Armenia (25.2%) and Belarus (24.7%) are the next fastest growing intra-union trade, with the former most active in food, agricultural raw materials and textiles, and the latter in food and metals.

The high growth rate of mutual trade between the EAEU countries is evidence of the economic sustainability of the association, which has significant prospects for further development. And in the face of sanctions pressure on Russia and Belarus, the role of the intra-union market may become even more important.

It is therefore not surprising that Tashkent is slowly but surely moving closer to the EAEU. It is well known that Uzbekistan obtained observer status in the Eurasian Economic Union in December 2020 and since then the republic has been systematically studying the rules of the EAEU in an effort to deepen economic cooperation. On February 25, Prime Minister of Uzbekistan Abdulla Aripov addressed a meeting of the Eurasian Intergovernmental Council, where he announced accession to certain EAEU projects. A little earlier, on January 31 this year, President of the Republic Shavkat Mirziyoyev signed a development strategy for Uzbekistan for 2022-2026, under which the EAEU treaty will be analyzed and proposals for the country’s further integration with this international organization will be drawn up; there will be a smooth synchronization of economic policies to bring together the regulations, to which businesses must prepare in time. This work should be completed by the end of 2022. The main interest for Uzbekistan is the very large EAEU market, which is already the main destination for Uzbek fruit and vegetable products and textile goods. Moreover, Uzbekistan is interested in the joint development of the transport and transit potential of all EAEU countries.

Iran continues its efforts to join the Eurasian Economic Union as a full-fledged member of the organization. Since March 21, 2021, Iran’s trade turnover with the Eurasian Economic Union has reached $5.034 billion, a 48% increase over the same period last year. At the same time, Iran’s non-oil exports to the EAEU amounted to over $1 billion, a 15% increase over the same period last year, and Iran’s non-oil imports from the Union amounted to $3.949 billion, a 95% increase over the same period last year. The full membership in the EAEU by Iran, a hundred million nation, would make the organization potentially more powerful than the European Union, and the territory of the Eurasian Economic Union would spread from the Arctic Ocean to the Indian Ocean.

It has been reported that, against the background of the positive results of the integration processes in the EAEU, Abkhazia and South Ossetia may ask for observer status in the Union. Although formal discussion of Abkhazia and South Ossetia joining the Eurasian Economic Union is premature for the time being, increased economic integration with the Union could allow the republics to qualify for observer status in the EAEU.

Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The Center for Arab Unity Studies (CAUS) has held recently a very interesting and useful webinar on the US-led NATO-Russia confrontation in Ukraine and related international developments. Many Arab scholars, diplomats and analysts have attempted to analyze the current state of affairs in Europe and, where possible, provide some political predictions. Among the issues addressed first and foremost was how to articulate the current developments that have led to the military hysteria hyped up by the West in Ukraine against fraternal Russia, Kiev’s thorough preparations for aggression against Donetsk and Luhansk, and the attack on Crimea. Was this a scheme devised by the West to damage Russia by dragging it into a protracted conflict with Ukraine, as happened with the Soviet Union in Afghanistan? Or was the special operation a well-considered preemptive Russian strike to stop NATO’s expansion into Ukraine – a direct threat to Russian national security?

Many believe that the Afghanistan analogy was part of Western propaganda aimed at making Moscow look like a “reactive player,” a characterization reinforced by the Western media’s emphasis on the slowness of the Russian military offensive. Proponents of this view argue that the comparison between Ukraine and Afghanistan has no place either in terms of scale or, more importantly, in terms of results. They predict that where Russia has failed in Afghanistan, it will succeed in Ukraine. It will be some time before Russia’s specialized counter-guerrilla forces prepare the ground for the Russian army to enter Kiev to make two basic demands: the disarmament of Ukraine and the overthrow of extreme right-wing political elites. Any delay in achieving these objectives would be primarily the product of Russian calculations, which are focused on targeting the enemy’s military capabilities rather than destroying Ukrainian infrastructure. In the meantime, special attention is paid to President Putin’s speech, in which he said quite clearly that the special operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine is a surgical intervention, in which a malignant tumor has to be removed without damaging vital organs.

The opposing view, which supports a Western conspiracy theory to lure Russia into a Ukrainian trap, believes that the West’s aim is to strengthen and expand NATO’s reach by bringing its provocative activities sharply closer to Russia’s borders. And in doing so, try to throw such an international leash on Russia that its leaders are forced to go to war for geostrategic purposes, regardless of the enormous economic costs. This postulate sparks a debate about the extent to which Russia has coped with economic sanctions since 2014. But there is a lack of data here, as no studies have been conducted in the West and they can only guess how Russian economy “feels” now.

The webinar also looked at the impact of the Ukrainian special operation on the world order. Much will depend on the outcome of hostilities, but that is not the only factor. Even assuming that Russia fails to achieve its political and military goals in Ukraine and NATO strengthens as a result, Washington’s continued leadership of NATO is not a foregone conclusion, especially in light of its allies’ experience with this notorious leadership in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is no coincidence that Germany has embarked on an ambitious program to restructure its army and radically modernize its defense strategy, or that some European powers that have remained neutral are now reconsidering their position. In the East, a Chinese giant appears with a well-equipped, highly disciplined army. If the special operation in Ukraine, as the Western media claims, has momentarily distracted Washington from its aggressive policies, then ultimately the US – originally an imperialist project, defended and promoted through a series of wars – will not tolerate the rivalry at the international helm that China is now trying to challenge it. One speaker put it this way: if the United States does not remain at the top of the world order, it will not remain united and a civil war will break out on its soil. The question arises: how will NATO feel in this new environment, and how should the countries of the Arab world respond to all this?

This raises questions about the relationship between history and change. There is a perception that Western leaders who have made major changes to the world order have not read history well. Another view expressed doubts about the extent to which history can be used as a tool for change in any particular direction and how it applies to current failed US policies. The global geopolitical realities have been extremely complex, which the West has so far failed to cope with. At the level of Eurasian-Atlantic interactions alone was their trajectory and impact on the future world order too multifaceted an issue to make any truthful and reliable predictions. And, incidentally, as was said at the webinar, this interaction will be reconsidered in the near future in favor of increasing the influence of Eurasian states on world politics.

The third question, discussed quite extensively during the webinar, was of a moral nature: how can one express sympathy for Russia’s legitimate need to defend its national security while opposing the use of force to enforce its demands? Many participants noted that a significant part of Arab public opinion was inclined to support Russia’s resentment of NATO’s crude and permanent expansion into countries that were once part of the Eastern Bloc. More importantly, some have asked how support for Russian actions in Ukraine can be reconciled with opposition to US behavior in Iraq and Afghanistan and, more importantly, to Israeli behavior in Palestine under the rubric of supposedly protecting national security. According to one view, if Russia were to limit its operation to Donbass in order to dislodge Ukrainian forces in order to allow the Donetsk and Luhansk republics to acquire the right to legitimate self-determination, the Russian position would have more legitimacy, as the two republics have a predominantly ethnic Russian population. Others argue that this view does not address the issue of legitimacy because it encourages separatist movements which, if not stopped, will lead to the proliferation of small states. After all, there is no country without minorities. The United Kingdom, which consists of a number of patchwork parts – Scotland, Wales, England and the invaded Northern Ireland – can be cited in this regard. With current trends, these parts of the common state could rightfully demand secession from the common country and the status of an independent state. Incidentally, it is in Scotland and Northern Ireland where these tendencies towards independence are strongest.

Turning to the Arab position on the Ukraine issue, it was noted that Syria was the only Arab country whose support for Russia went beyond the diplomatic level, expressed in its vote against the recent UN Security Council resolution on Ukraine, to the logistical level. The facilities Russia has in Syrian ports epitomize how intertwined Russian and Syrian interests are. Just as Moscow saved that country from falling into the hands of terrorists actively supported and armed by the West and the Gulf monarchies. At the same time, Syria is one of the regions that will suffer the most from the protraction of the special operation in Ukraine.

At the webinar, many analysts who are more courageous in their judgement than their diplomatic colleagues came to a clear conclusion: any state, including Russia, has a perfectly legitimate right to defend its national interests, and even more so the Russian special operation in Ukraine. In the current circumstances in which the West, especially the US, is abandoning its allies to their fate, the countries of the Arab world should rely only on their own strength and pursue policies only in the interests of their state and their nation, unlike in the past.

Viktor Mikhin, corresponding member of RANS, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

“Ukraine: the price of the American-European deception,” “A lesson for the Ukrainian people in the school of the West.” These and similar headlines have flooded the Middle Eastern media and social media in the wake of the Russian military operation in Ukraine.  One of the main topics is the reasons and background for this move and its perception in the Arab region at various levels.

Most Arab countries have taken a low-key stance on the crisis in Ukraine, objecting in principle to military solutions, according to the influential pan-Arab website Elaf. At the same time, they called for dialogue, diplomacy and negotiation to prevail among all parties to reach a settlement.

There is now a debate about the motives behind Moscow’s moves in Ukraine. A number of Arab analysts are sympathetic to Russia’s circumstances, its sensitivities and psychological mindset in the name of defending its vital interests.

They also cite the history of Moscow’s relations with the West. The anti-Russian phobia it now fosters reminds Russia of the bitter experiences of the past, of invasions from its west by Napoleon and later Hitler. Western Europe’s enmity towards Russia is nothing new; it is primarily linked to historical, strategic, civilizational factors rather than political ones, including a belief in its superiority.  This forces the Kremlin to act to shield itself from any surprises.

By supporting and facilitating the rise to power of loyalists in Ukraine in 2014, the West has built a fence in front of Russia. It encouraged and pushed the Ukrainian leadership to a conflict with Russia. In the Soviet era, the US sent Stingers to Afghanistan to fight Soviet troops, the same is happening now with supplies of Javelin anti-tank systems to Ukraine.

“Ukraine has shown that it is not acting as a sovereign state. If it were, it would not have joined a foreign party that is supplying it with weapons and targeting it against its huge neighbor, Russia,” concludes the Algerian publication. “On the contrary, it would become a strategic ally of Moscow and would greatly benefit from its vast natural resources and technology for its development”.

A number of Arab authors agree that Volodymyr Zelenski, a man far removed from the great corridors of power and from world politics with all its subtleties, was deceived. He has apparently not realized that the Western powers traditionally do not present anything for free to their clients. His country, seduced by the call to take a stand against Russia, has become a pawn in the West’s machinations.

“It is clear,” stresses the London-based newspaper al-Arab, “that Ukraine has become a victim of its president’s policies. Ukraine is a small country and is not capable of playing the game in the great power club. It is doomed by terms of history and geography to be closer to Russia than to the West. Of course, it is correct to say that it is an independent and sovereign state, but within those two conditions outlined above. There is no need to squeeze it into Moscow’s orbit, but it must not become a tool that would damage Russia”.

According to some commentators, the Americans are well aware that Kiev’s accession to NATO would do great damage to Russia in moral, psychological, military and other respects. In military respect, this entails the deployment of state-of-the-art air defense and medium-range missiles, including nuclear and other equipment close to Russia’s borders.

Such a scenario, according to local observers, is unacceptable not only for Russia but also for any other sovereign country. Saudi newspaper Okaz believes that the logic of the Russian leadership and its concerns about its national security “do not appear to be something exceptional, but are legitimate and recognized by international and diplomatic law”.

According to a Libyan author, basic common sense and a sense of self-preservation demand action in opposition to Ukraine joining NATO, plans to place military bases under Russia’s nose.

Many commentators these days recall the twists and turns of the Cuban crisis, when the US, fearing the deployment of Soviet missiles in Cuba, close to its borders, brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.   Today, few authors do not mention the well-known facts of US military intervention in faraway sovereign countries, especially Iraq and Libya.

The Arabs recall that back in the day Ukraine took part in the occupation of Iraq after 2003, its takeover by the US, and was involved in military operations that resulted in the deaths of Iraqi civilians.

Regarding the Russian operation and developments in Ukraine, an Emirati author states that the limits of Washington’s power and might are looming around the world.  Washington’s hegemony faces various challenges and crises on the world stage. In addition, the rapid growth of China and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic must be borne in mind. There is a feverish race to rivalry in global society to fill the vacuum that is created by the US role reversal.

Yuri Zinin, a senior researcher at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Institute of International Studies of the Moscow State Institute for International Relations, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The decision by the Russian President to order military action in neighboring Ukraine beginning February 24, 2022 has shocked many, myself included. The question at this point almost two weeks into military action by Russian and other forces inside Ukraine, is what pushed Russia into what Western media portrays as unilateral unwarranted war of aggression. A public threat by Ukrainian president and comedian Volodymyr Zelenskyy on February 19, during meetings with top-level NATO officials and others in the annual Munich Security Conference, provides a largely-ignored clue to Moscow actions. In addition more recent reports of numerous US Pentagon bioweapons labs across Ukraine add to the background threats. Did Moscow believe Russia faced a literal do-or-die reality?

Some essential history

The current conflict in Ukraine has its seeds in the 1990’s and the US-backed collapse of the Soviet Union. During high-level Two Plus Four Treaty talks pertaining to Germany’s reunification in 1990, talks between US Secretary of State James Baker III and then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, along with France, the UK and the West German government, over unification of Germany, Baker gave a verbal promise that NATO would not move “one inch” to the East to threaten former Soviet territories, in return for the USSR allowing German reunification within NATO.

For years Washington has lied about the exchange, as they moved one after the other former Warsaw Pact countries including Poland, Czech Republic, Romania, Hungary, Baltic States into NATO and closer to striking distance to Russia. Recently Putin cited the 1990 Baker agreement to justify Russian demands that NATO and Washington give binding legal assurances that Ukraine would never be admitted into the NATO alliance. Washington until now has categorically refused to do so.

Putin’s 2007 Munich Speech

At the 2007 annual Munich Security Conference, as the Bush-Cheney administration had announced plans to install US missile defense systems in Poland, Romania and the Czech Republic to,“guard against rogue states such as North Korea or Iran,” Russia’s Putin delivered a scathing critique of the US lies and violation of their 1990 assurances on NATO. By that time 10 former communist Eastern states had been admitted to NATO despite the 1990 US promises. Furthermore, both Ukraine and Georgia were candidates to join NATO following US-led Color Revolutions in both countries in 2003-4. Putin rightly argued the US missiles were aimed at Russia, not North Korea or Iran.

In his 2007 Munich remarks Putin told his Western audience, “It turns out that NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders, and we continue to strictly fulfil the treaty obligations and do not react to these actions at all. I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernization of the Alliance itself, or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.” Putin added, “But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee”. Where are these guarantees?” That was 15 years ago.

The 2014 Maidan Coup d’Etat

By November 2013 an economically corrupt and floundering Ukraine under elected and also very corrupt President Viktor Yanukovych, announced that, rather than accept a “special” association with the EU, Ukraine would take a far more generous offer from Moscow to join the Eurasian Economic Union led by Moscow. Russia had agreed to cut the price of Russian gas to Ukraine by 30% and to buy $15 billion of Ukraine bonds to ease the Kiew financial crisis.

At that point, on 21 November, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the man selected by Washington’s Victoria Nuland and Kiev Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, together with then-Vice President Joe Biden, launched what were called Maidan Square protests against the Yanukovych regime backed by US NGOs. On February 20, 2014 after CIA-organized snipers, reportedly recruited from nearby Georgia, killed dozens of student protesters and also police, leading Yanukovych to flee, Yatsenyuk became Prime Minister in a hand-picked US-run regime, hand-picked by Nuland and Biden among others.

Later in December 2014 in an interview with a Russian newspaper, George Friedman of Stratfor, a private firm consulting to the Pentagon and CIA among others, said of the US-led February 2014 Kiev regime change, “Russia calls the events that took place at the beginning of this year a coup d’etat organized by the United States. And it truly was the most blatant coup in history.” He was boastful in the interview.

That Kiev coup regime proceeded after February 22, 2014 to wage a war of extermination and ethnic cleansing of Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine, led to a large degree by a private army of literal neo-nazis from Right Sector (banned in Russia), the same ones who ran security in the Maidan Square and launched a reign of terror against Russian-speaking Ukrainians. Battalions were formed of neo-nazi mercenaries. They were given official state status as “Ukrainian National Guard” soldiers, the Azov Battalion, financed by Ukrainian mafia boss and billionaire oligarch, Ihor Kolomoisky, the financial backer of Zelenskyy as president. The Azov soldiers even sport open SS runes as its logo. In 2016, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) accused the Azov Battalion, officially upgraded to a regiment in January 2015, of committing war crimes such as mass looting, unlawful detention, and torture.

Today Nuland is Biden’s Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs responsible for Ukraine and Russian affairs. She is well aware of who the Azov Battalion are.

Zelenskyy and Munich 2022

On February 19 in Munich, Ukrainian President Zelenskyy made his threat to deploy nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory. He expressed this as his unilateral revocation of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, although Ukraine was not a signatory of the agreement. Two days later on the evening of February 21, Putin made his speech recognizing the sovereign independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. He explicitly referenced Zelenskyy’s Munich nuclear weapons pledge: “This is not empty bravado,” Putin stressed in his speech.

On March 6 Moscow state news agency, RAI Novosti, quoted a senior Russian SVR foreign intelligence source with details on a secret Ukraine project, reportedly with vital covert Western support, to build a Ukrainian nuclear missile capability and a Ukrainian atom bomb in brazen violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. According to the report, Ukrainian nuclear scientists were disguising the developments by locating them near the high-radiation levels of Chernobyl nuclear reactor site, an explanation for the swift Russian moves to secure Chernobyl. “It was there, judging by the available information, that work was underway both on the manufacture of a “dirty” bomb and on the separation of plutonium,” RIA Novosti quotes the source. The primary bomb research facility was located at the National Scientific Center, “Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology.” As of this writing reports of fierce fighting underway between Russian forces and neo-nazi Ukrainian Azov fighters who reportedly are planning to blow up the research reactor site and blame it on Russia. The battle for control of the large Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is also apparently part of the attempt to conceal the illegal Ukraine bomb project.

It now begins to become more clear that Putin had serious reason to react at the Ukraine nuclear threat. A Ukrainian nuclear missile within six minutes of Moscow would present existential danger whether Ukraine were in NATO or not.

Huge Military Buildup- Biowarfare?

There was more. Ukrainian press reported a year ago about new Western-built de facto NATO naval bases in Ochakov and Berdyansk as, “modern infrastructure facilities capable of receiving ships of all types, equipped according to NATO standards and built with the money of the alliance countries.” The media boasted, “In three years we will be able to strike at Russian ships in the Black Sea with our mosquito fleet. And if we combine with Georgia and Turkey, the Russian Federation will be blocked,’ Ukrainian military experts boasted. “

In addition, the US Pentagon had no less than eight, perhaps as many as 30 top-secret bioweapons research labs across Ukraine testing DNA of some 4,000 military volunteers. Once Russian soldiers moved to secure the evidence, the US Embassy in Kiev deleted previous mention of the sites from its website, and Ukrainians reportedly moved to destroy the lab evidence. Ukrainian labs in Kharkiv and elsewhere were operating in cooperation with the United States. Stocks of such weapons were being secretly stored in direct violation of international conventions.

A full month before the Russian military action on 24 February in Ukraine, independent biowarfare researcher, Dilyana Gaytandzhieva, obtained documents detailing “US Pentagon biological experiments with a potentially lethal outcome on 4,400 soldiers in Ukraine and 1,000 soldiers in Georgia. According to the leaked documents, all volunteer deaths should be reported within 24 h (in Ukraine) and 48 h (in Georgia).” She details the human experiments, which include testing for antibodies against some 14 pathogens including Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, Borrelia species (Lyme disease) and others. According to the documents the labs in Ukraine and Georgia are part of a Pentagon “$2.5 billion Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) Biological engagement program which includes research on bio agents, deadly viruses and antibiotic-resistant bacteria.”

On March 6, in a statement to the official RAI Novosti in Moscow, Major General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Ministry of Defense, stated they had received documents, “from employees of Ukrainian biological laboratories confirming that components of biological weapons were being developed in Ukraine, in close proximity to Russian territory.” He noted, “In the course of a special military operation, the facts of an emergency cleansing by the Kiev regime of traces of a military biological program being implemented in Ukraine, funded by the US Department of Defense, were uncovered.”

Added to this evidence of nuclear and bioweapon WMD placements inside Ukraine in recent years, the West NATO member countries have been pouring billions of dollars of military equipment including anti-tank weapons and explosives into Ukraine while Zelenskyy, rumored by opposition to be in hiding in the US Embassy in Warsaw, calls repeatedly for a NATO “No-Fly” zone over Ukraine, an act that would be a direct casus belli of war between Russia and NATO a war that rapidly could go nuclear or beyond.

The question is whether this years-long provocation by Washington and NATO of Russian national security via Ukraine is aimed at destroying the viability of Russia as a sovereign nation and military power. Is it a calculated move to use sanctions against Russia to cause global collapse and energy crises, food shortages and worse, all to advance the Davos 2030 Great Reset agenda? Blame it on the “evil Putin” and Russia while BlackRock and the financial powers reorganize the world? It is too early to tell but certain is that whatever prompted the action by Russia on February 24, 2022 had to have been far more serious than CNN or other controlled Western media are telling us.

F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The western mass media and governments have fallen into a frenzy of anti-Russian propaganda over Russia’s military operations in Ukraine. One element of their propaganda war is the claim that Russia’s action is illegal under international law. But is this the case and what does it mean for these countries to make that claim when they have themselves invaded and attacked too many nations to enumerate, every one of which was not only illegal, but without any moral, ethical justification whatsoever?

The law on the use of force in international relations has two aspects, codified international law as set out in the Charter of the United Nations, and the commonly understood right to self-defence.

The UN Charter is the primary document governing the use of force. Nation states do not have a right to use force in relations with other sovereign states except in very limited circumstances. It used to be, before the twentieth century, that there was an understanding that all nations had the right to use force, to go to war to ensure their interests. But the cataclysms of World War I and World War II led in each case to an attempt to prevent wars of aggression.

After WWI the League of Nations was created, supported by the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928, which I have referred to in previous articles, a Treaty still in effect, in which the USA and Soviet Union and all other nations promised never to use war to solve political disputes. The League of Nations fell apart in the 1930’s with the rise of fascism and the aggressions of Italy and Germany. But the Kellogg-Briand Pact still exists.

However the Pact was understood to permit wars in defence of a nation that was under attack. The same applies to the security structure set up after WWII with the creation of the United Nations and the UN Charter that governs relations between sovereign nations and the use of force,

According to Article 2(4) of the Charter all member states are obliged to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial or political integrity of any state. There are two important exceptions to this obligation, the first being the right of individual or collective self-defence under Article 51 and the collective enforcement by the Security Council on the basis of Chapter VII of the Charter which deals with threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression. The inherent right of self-defence, individually or collectively, with the support of other states, exists so long as the Security Council has not taken measures to “maintain international peace and security.” That right, therefore is meant to be a measure of last resort.

The Kellogg-Briand Pact was a paradigm shift in how war was regarded. Before it, war was considered a part of a continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means, as Clausewitz put it in his famous book, On War, and an acceptable way of resolving disputes. At least, it was not considered illegal. It was outside of law, except for the customary rules of war governing treatment of combatants, civilians, proportionality and so on.

This shift is set out in the UN Charter’s preamble which states that,

“Armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest. and Article 2(4) prohibits any threat or use of forces “inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.

The common interest is determined by essential principle of the sovereignty equality of states, which in turn means protection against acts of aggression.

When the common interest is involved then the Security Council can enforce the Charter by using the coercive measures contained in the Charter. Article 42 of Chapter VII authorises the Council to take action, using armed force, to “maintain or restore international peace and security.” But this authority is exercised within the strictures of Article 27(3) that gives the permanent members of the Council the right to veto any decision, including even when the nation casting the veto vote is the subject of the vote. This veto power has effectively led to the paralysis of the United Nations in a number of international conflicts, where national interests are in conflict and has resulted in reality to a state of the world where might makes right.

Disputes in the UN have also led to a situation in which, for instance the United States was able to manipulate the Council to authorise, if we can use that term, the use of force through the back door, and form “coalitions of the willing” to attack US targeted nations. The term is of course a euphemism for a coalition willing to violate international law for the interests of the United States. This practice has become routine for the United States and its NATO alliance since the Korean War. It undermined the general ban on the use of force and in effect allowed the United States to attack and to invade nations at will.

So, how does the Russian claim of legality in its Ukraine operations stand up to the international law and how does it compare with the military operations of the United States?

To answer that question we have to look back in history to the Korean War since it is the only American-NATO war the Americans claim had legal backing. This was the first of the many illegal acts of aggression conducted by the United States after World War II. The Americans claim that their “police action,” their euphemism for the invasion and destruction of Korea and the deaths of millions of people, and the attacks on and attempted invasion of China, at that time, was legal, through a decision of the Security Council. But this is a lie.

There was no valid approval of that American-NATO aggression against Korea and China by the UN. The USA manipulated the vote so that their motion to approve their military plans was presented to the Security Council on a day the Russians were absent from the Council. Votes in the Security Council require the positive vote of all the permanent members. Russia was not there to vote but the Americans pushed their NATO allies, Britain, France and the Kuomintang Chinese, who still held the seat for China at the UN, to vote to approve their war anyway. They did what they were told. That vote was not valid and in law never existed it. It is on this trickery that their aggression rested.

Have any of the other American wars been legal? None of them All of them are in violation of Article 2(4). The list is long. When I first drafted this I set out all the invasions of nations the Americans conducted since then but to list them here would turn this into a thick book of American crimes, from Korea to Vietnam, from Cuba to Congo, from Iraq to Afghanistan, from Latin America, to Yugoslavia, Syria, Lebanon. But one crime must be added to all their war crimes and aggressions, the crime of hypocrisy. For all of their aggressions were conducted for reasons of domination and exploitation of resources and peoples, for profit. There was never any legal justification ever offered, as there were none. None of them were conducted in self-defence, whereas Russia’s action clearly is.

In my opinion Russia acted in accordance with international law under Article 51 of the UN Charter for the following reasons;

First, the Kiev regime was mounting a major offensive with NATO’s help against the Donbass Republics with the intent of destroying them. Intensive shelling had already begun days before Russia acted, the shelling of civilian buildings and infrastructure, which resulted in scores of thousands of civilians fleeing into Russia. During that period the Kiev regime also attempted to assassinate a leader of the Republics with a car bomb. Russia had no choice but to protect the Donbass peoples and since the Security Council could do nothing, and the EU and NATO were supporting the Kiev offensive against the Donbass, Russia was the only nation that could act.

The request for military assistance from the Donbass Republics also compelled Russia to send in its forces to help push back the Kiev forces from the territories of the Republics.

Second, Russia itself had been attacked multiple times by Kiev regime forces. Saboteurs were sent into Crimea time and again to carry out raids, assassinate officials, to destroy infrastructure. They even cut Crimea’s water supply, a crime against humanity. Just a few days before Russia acted a Kiev reconnaissance unit invaded Russia but was detected and destroyed. Russia had every right under The Caroline Doctrine to go after the attackers and to prevent further attacks.

The Caroline Doctrine was established in 1837 when American forces invaded Canada, to assist Canadian rebels who had risen against the government. The Americans travelled to Canada by ship across Lake Ontario. The British then later invaded New York State to retaliate and burn the ship, named the Caroline. As a result of that incident, it was agreed by both the USA and Britain that the right of a nation to self-defence rested on two factors:

1. The use of force must be necessary because the threat is imminent and thus pursuing peaceful alternatives is not an option, and,

2. The response must be proportionate to the threat.

In this case the threat was more than imminent. It was on-going and increasing. The only effective and proportional defensive response was to destroy the offensive forces being deployed. These forces include not only Kiev regime government forces but also the nationalist, Nazi brigades supporting and spearheading the Kiev offensive and all the NATO equipment being supplied to them to conduct the Kiev offensive.

Thirdly, the deeper issue was the imminent threat to Russia from NATO posed by its continuous expansion to the east, its continuous build up of forces and offensive structure pointed at Russia and the completion this September of the American missile systems in Poland, Romania and Ukraine which could then be used to launch a nuclear attack against Russia.

We remember that in the past few months the NATO nations have conducted military exercises that included practicing launching nuclear attacks on Russia. We also remember that the USA has a first strike nuclear war policy, claiming the right to use nuclear weapons wherever and whenever they deem fit. It was evident that they were practising attacks because that was and is their intention.

Russia demanded the Americans withdraw those systems, and to withdraw NATO from Eastern Europe. They flatly refused. Ukraine talked of acquiring nuclear weapons and threatening Russia with them. It would take time for them to manufacture but there was nothing to stop the Americans from giving them nuclear weapons, under their control, as the Americans have done with Germany, for instance.

Russia could do nothing, keep the peace, and watch, as the weapons for its destruction were installed and made ready to fire; to commit suicide in other words, or it could defend itself. It warned the US that it would do so, and had the right to do so, the same right the Americans always claim to have, but again Russia was ignored. It had to act or face destruction and subjugation.

We remember that during the Cuban Missile Crisis, in 1962, the Americans threatened to invade Cuba and to attack the USSR because nuclear missiles had been placed in Cuba to protect it against American aggression. President Kennedy established the precedent principle that when a nation feels its existence is at stake from nuclear weapons it has the right to use force to protect itself pre-emptively. Russia is acting on the same principle.

Lastly, the NATO powers have lately relied on their bogus legal doctrine of “responsibility to protect” that they invented after the fact to try to justify their aggression against Yugoslavia. No such doctrine exists in international law but they claim the right to use it nevertheless. It applies, according to them, when a military action is justified, though illegal, “for legitimate humanitarian reasons.’ They were warned that this false doctrine could be turned against them. Russia has not referred to it at all, but if NATO can rely on it for their wars of aggression, then surely Russia can rely on it to justify their military action to defend the Donbass, and themselves.

When one takes account of all the factors that governed the Russian decision to send its forces into Ukraine it is clear that in law they had the legal right to do so whereas the United States continues its illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and Syria to this day and the NATO media powers and governments say nothing, because they are all complicit in those invasions.

If the United States and the NATO alliance had complied with international law in the first place as set out in the UN Charter, the world would not be in this mess. They caused this, not Russia. The responsibility is entirely theirs and they will be judged for it.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

For almost a decade the policy of the United States toward Russia has been based on Cold War logic. And today the western mainstream media blames Vladimir Putin for current events saying he wants the world to turn back the clock. For eight years, the leading nation of the NATO war pact has done everything in its power to turn the world against Russia. And now, having pushed the American brand of tyranny up to the gates of Moscow, it is Vladimir Putin who is the villain, yet again. The doomsday clock just clanged its first chime, but the liberal order still won’t relent. Dark and evil people and forces are at work today. Forces we thought were wearing white cowboy hats.

“We have to look at the bigger picture here, and realize this is the culmination of a long-standing, neoconservative attempt to reignite the Cold War for a variety of reasons. They want a massive arms buildup. The neoconservative movement really emerged from anti-Russian sentiment in the 1970s… They despise Vladimir Putin… because he is the main leader in the world who is challenging US hegemony…” - Max Blumenthal, 2018

The madness has its core, like the center of every human tumor of hatred that has fueled every war ever fought. To peel back the layers and see its bloody blackness, one need only read the foaming insanity of Putin haters like chess champion Garry Kasparov. The chess grandmaster who’s transformed himself into what the Jerusalem Post calls a “veteran expert on the psyche of Russian President Vladimir Putin.” The nutty madman who’s known for his mastery of the ever-popular board game just suggested more of the same strategy against Russia’s leader, that got us here in the first place. Kasparov says the lawmen of the western world should support Ukraine militarily, bankrupt Russia’s war-making machine, freeze and seize Russia’s finances, and kick the Russians out of every financial institution. There’s a big, big problem with the plan. It’s so stunningly apparent.

“These people communicate only inside their peers and dismiss any outside opinion as “stupid” or “paid”. They converted themselves into a kind of political sect and lost public support.” – Dimitri Scholz, Professor at University College Dublin – On Kasparov’s hatred of Putin

The Russians and their leadership don’t care anymore. We, the community of nations that comprise the NATO military country club, finally pushed too far. There’s no more room to wiggle. Russia is backed up to her own living room. And Putin just kicked open the screen door and slammed a round into the chamber of a pump shotgun. If the people in Washington, London, and Brussels don’t back the hell off of Russia’s porch, the yard dogs of Kyiv won’t be the only ones yelping from the sting of buckshot. People like Kasparov, you see, hate what Putin represents more than anything. Even the lives of you and me.

I’ve focused on Garry Kasparov here not because he is especially important, but because his most recent words parrot what the liberal order has been up to from the start. The gamer champion says “the international community should “Recall all ambassadors from Russia. There is no point in talking. Ego, my point about the Russians not giving a shit anymore. For years and years, all Russia got back over concerns about NATO/America upsetting Ukraine, Georgia, and most recently Kazakhstan and Belarus, was idle talk. The United States has ringed the biggest nation on Earth with wars, insurrections, and hundreds of military bases since the fall of the Berlin Wall. And at every complaint, our leaders spit in the face of Putin and 143 million of his countrymen.

America blames Russia for trying to interfere in US elections, but America medals in everything that goes on, almost everywhere in the world. My country, dumbed down by her own insecurities and exceptionalism, has become world champion at only one thing. We cannot be beaten if we compete in an event older than chess. If the world were to hold a “Pot calling the kettle black Olympics,” no other country would stand a chance. Americans would blame Jesus for crucifying himself if the son of God decreed higher gas prices. And no, I am not joking. Putin and Russia have come to represent a kind of the last bastion of Orthodox spirituality, while my country hurries to become the new Gomorrah. There, it had to be said. The media in Russia shares a photo of Vladimir Putin crying in church, and Bloomberg makes fun, calling it all a PR stunt. Meanwhile, the closest one of our leaders gets to a crucifix is former President Donald Trump gassing protesters to do a photo op with the Holy Bible in his hand.

Seriously. No, really, seriously. It’s like we are all living inside a very badly written comic book. If somebody does not do a running edit on our madness soon, if we don’t get out our erasers quickly, the scariest parts of the New Testament of the Bible, and of the Quran, are about to happen again. Ask my mother-in-law in Bucharest, Romania, who called my wife crying at a screaming pitch scared all Romania would soon burn. Ask my sweet high school classmate who went on Facebook facetime to ask me if I thought she should move from the United States. “Phil, it’s getting so bad here. Prices are outrageous, people are getting nuttier all the time. I am scared,” she said. Talk about an epic WTF?

And then the world order’s Pied Piper Kasparov spills it. He writes that the global community needs to spur OPEC to increase production, and the defunct Keystone must be reopened so that Russia can’t get any gas money. He says “It’s time to fight.” This is what Vladimir Putin and the leaders of Russia just figured out. Only their battles are not on a wooden checkerboard.

Wait, though! There is a bigger point to be made. It’s meaningful to note here that Khodorkovsky named former secretary of state Henry Kissinger and Lord Rothschild to his Open Russia foundation when it was created in 2001. We, the dissenters in the media who’ve adopted an alternative view, we’ve been warning this would happen for more than a decade. The western world has listened to the western pirates Putin banished from Russia exclusively. The people of Earth have paid close attention to this so-called “liberal order” for decades now. And look what we have failed to achieve in doing so. A pandemic has ruined our lives, and it turns out they never had our backs. We’ve spent tens of trillions fighting a so-called “war on terror,” and now we are the terrorists. 3,000 billionaires have been created since the financial crisis of 2008. And the rest of us still struggle to pay our electric bills each month. Hello! Wake the fuck up, please! The Taliban (banned in Russia) still runs Afghanistan. Yoohoo! Is anybody awake there?

Vladimir Putin has done everything to halt the march of NATO eastward. 11 years ago Putin tried to integrate Russia’s defense capabilities with those of NATO. He said, “missile threats against Europe must be tackled jointly.” But the NATO bunch had no intention of competing against any outside enemy other than Russia. Then-President Dmitry Medvedev”s and Prime Minister Putin’s concern was the looming threat to Russian security we see made real today. And for those who believe the Russian president is their enemy, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange being arrested saw Putin slamming the west for cables that described Russia as a “mafia state,” and for the failure of democracy for Assange. This was 2010, as well. In 2011, Putin raised the alarm over the role the US played in the killing of Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi. Back then, lunatic Senator John McCain, now deceased, insinuated that Putin would face a similar fate. In 2009, just for added clarity, remember then vice-president Joe Biden’s aggressive support for NATO in the Republic of Georgia.

But Putin is the villainous thinker, let me remind you. I remember when Alaska Senator Sarah Palin told the “World News Tonight” audience that she supported Senator John McCain’s push to get NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. This was in 2008, just to show how today’s crisis has its roots in US policies for decades. So please, let us not appear to be overly contrite over the fate of Ukraine today. Let’s not be misleading here. Joe Biden and all the cast of players pounding the economic war drums against Vladimir Putin and Russia today wanted what is happening. They desperately needed what is befalling us to happen. It was, and is THEIR PLAN!

Finally, in order to show you how despicable and devious the people behind NATO expansion are, this EUObserver story from 2011 shows how Putin and Russia have been plotting against all along. Andrew Rettman wrote “Nato: Russian hard men not packing much punch,” wherein the militarist organization came to the conclusion:

“Russian armed forces were: able to respond to a small to mid-sized local and regional conflict in its western region; not able to respond to two small conflicts in different geographical areas simultaneously; not able to conduct large scale conventional operations.”

Furthermore, Joe Biden and all these warmongering liberal order Jacobites know full well Russia will, at a point, have to rely on tactical nuclear weapons to defend its borders. President Putin has just come forward warning that outside interference in Russia’s denazification of Ukraine, will reap a nuclear whirlwind, in no uncertain terms. I must reiterate here, for Mr. Putin’s speech the other day has been totally convoluted by the corporate-owned mainstream throughout the western world. The Russian president said:

“Whoever would try to stop us and further create threats to our country, to our people, should know that Russia’s response will be immediate and lead you to such consequences that you have never faced in your history. We are ready for any outcome.”

So, here we are. The same people who brought you every war since the beginning of time are at it again. Putin, the Russians, and anybody who stands in the way of those who would totally dominate us all, they are in the meat grinder. Somebody, somewhere out there, has decided to make Russia a nuclear pressure cooker. Forces that are largely unseen, have made the decision to cast the dice, to see if Mother Russia will really obliterate all her enemies when pushed all the way back into the corner. The resolve, as it were, of a people hammered relentlessly throughout modern history, is the crucible Biden and the western mafia will rely on.

Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

In view of the unrest that US intelligence services have been actively initiating lately, whether in Central Asia, Transcaucasia or other areas bordering Russia and China, the risk of a biological disaster from multiple secret military biological laboratories deployed by the US in potentially politically and socially unstable regions is objectively increasing. In this regard, the issue of the US preparing a biological time bomb in Kazakhstan has been raised many times before. The growing risk of the Pentagon initiating biological warfare using over 400 US biological laboratories located overseas around the world and the need for a clear response to the risk of worldwide biological disaster from such secret US overseas facilities has been repeatedly pointed out.  After all, these biological laboratories employ some 13,000 “employees” who are busy creating strains of killer pathogens (microbes and viruses) that are resistant to vaccines.

It is no secret nowadays that the US has set up such biological laboratories in 25 countries around the world: in the Middle East, Africa, South-East Asia. Only within the former Soviet Union there are US military biological laboratories in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Uzbekistan.

The Americans try to deny the military nature of the studies conducted in such laboratories. However, the secrecy that surrounds them is only comparable to that of the most important military facilities. There is no accountability to the local and global public about the “work” being done there. Moreover, no scientific “achievements” have been publicly demonstrated by American biologists over the many years of the existence of such foreign secret laboratories, and the results of their research are not published anywhere in the public domain.  Meanwhile, laboratories are actively collecting information on the gene pool of the populations of countries where such laboratories operate. All this indicates that the Pentagon is undoubtedly preparing to wage a biological war using biological weapons, which the US is building in such biological laboratories. It is well known that the US has already spent over $100bn in recent years developing biological warfare weapons. The US is the only country that still blocks the establishment of a verification mechanism under the 1972 Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and on their Destruction.

However, like Russia’s demands to the West for a clear agreement on universal security measures and on the non-proliferation of NATO to the east, warnings about US readiness to unleash a global biological war have never been heeded in Washington and Western capitals.

With this in mind, one can hardly deny that Russia, like any other country, does not wish to have such weapons near its borders, thus jeopardizing the security of all.

Therefore, in Moscow’s military operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine in recent days, getting rid of the numerous US military biological laboratories on the territory of that country is an important point.

On February 24, the British conservative publication THE EXPOSÉ published an article entitled “Is there more to the Ukraine/Russia conflict than meets the eye?” It recognizes that Russia should have conducted the current military operation on the basis of its security interests and confirms that there has long been a very serious threat to the lives and health of the Russian Federation population from the territory of Ukraine. It refers to at least 16 US military biological laboratories located in Odessa, Vinnitsa, Uzhgorod, Lviv (three), Kharkiv, Kiev (also three), Kherson, Ternopil, Dnepropetrovsk, as well as near Luhansk and the border with Crimea. Such “cooperation” between the Pentagon and the Ukrainian Ministry of Health dates back to 2005. Opposition parties managed to push through the Verkhovna Rada in 2013 to end this “cooperation”, but the US-led coup d’état in Kiev in February 2014 prevented the implementation of this decision, resulting in this “cooperation” not only continuing but also actively developing at the initiative of Washington.

Many of the Pentagon’s and White House’s official secrets about US clandestine biological laboratories overseas have been revealed by Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois at Champaign (USA) and author of the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 (BWATA). As this American scientist points out, “We now have an Offensive Biological Weapons industry in this country that violates the Biological Weapons Convention and my Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989”. According to Boyle, “American universities have a long history of willingly permitting their research agenda …. to be co-opted, corrupted, and perverted by the the Pentagon and the C.I.A. into death science”. He cites as an example the group of Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin, which managed to increase the toxicity of the flu virus by a factor of 200. According to Boyle, the Pentagon and the CIA are “ready, willing and able to launch biowarfare when it suits their interests… They have a stockpile of that super-weapons-grade anthrax that they already used against us in October 2001”.

The threat to people living even at a distance from such laboratories is evidenced by an investigation conducted by USA Today newspaper, which showed that from 2006 to 2013 alone, more than 1,500 accidents and safety violations occurred in 200 military biological laboratories on the territory of the US. So what about possible similar incidents in biological laboratories in Ukraine or other former Soviet republics?

In the summer of 2019, “America’s main biological warfare lab has been ordered to stop all research into the deadliest viruses and pathogens over fears contaminated waste could leak out of the facility,” reported Britain’s The Independent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the public health authority in the US, has revoked the military bioresearch center at Fort Detrick’s license to handle Ebola, smallpox and anthrax after CDC inspectors found “problems with the procedures used to decontaminate wastewater” at Fort Detrick. In this regard, it is notable that the possibility of “deadly viruses and pathogens” leaking into Fort Detrick’s wastewater was detected shortly before the COVID-19 outbreak, which the Americans were quick to blame on China. It is also noteworthy that the Pentagon has significantly stepped up the activities of its overseas biological laboratories since 2019, clearly shifting the “work” on particularly dangerous strains and biological weapons development there.

In these circumstances, the task of terminating the activities of the US secret biological laboratories as part of the demilitarization of that country is justified in the program of Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine.

Against this background, it is noteworthy that the US embassy in Ukraine removed all documents about the biological laboratories in Kiev and Odessa from its official website after Moscow launched its military operation. This further confirms that in addition to the nuclear threat from Zelensky, Russia was also being prepared for bio-extinction behind the ocean. Under these circumstances, the announcement by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) on the US government procurement website last October of an addendum on “combating highly dangerous pathogens” is understandable. This document concerned the $3.6mln finishing work to launch two biological laboratories in Ukraine – in Kiev and Odessa, where machinery, equipment and personnel were already being prepared for the United States to unleash a biological war under the cover of Ukraine.

Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

For more than many weeks now, many Western leaders have been calling for blocking Russia out of the SWFIT payment system. The UK’s Boris Johnson thinks that this is a potentially good way of ‘punishing’ Russia. But the US/EU have not blocked Russia out of this global payments system yet. There are two reasons for this ‘reluctnace.’ First, even if the West decides to ‘punish’ Russia financially, it could potentially push the drive towards de-dollarisation of the global financial system. Secondly, even after blocking out of SWFIT, there are already alternative payment systems in place that Moscow can use to off-set Western sanctions. Therefore, if the US/EU were to block Russia out of SWIFT, it could directly – and very forcefully – accelerate the growth of payment systems that are not only not dollar-centric, but would ensure that the global payment system is no longer West centric. Thus, a Russian exclusion of SWIFT – which remains a possibility as more and more western countries join the call for Russia’s exclusion – could mean the beginning of the end of the US/Western financial hegemony.

SWIFT is, therefore, a double-edged sword for the West. According to reports in the German media, the economic consequences of excluding Russia from SWIFT would be deeply felt in Europe – which nonetheless relies on Russian supply of gas for more than 40 per cent of its total gas exports. There is already opposition from many western financial quarters, including Germany, to block Russia. More importantly, excluding Russian from SWIFT would also mean that Western creditors, which hold the lion’s share of the nearly US$30 billion in foreign banks’ exposure to Russia, will not be able to get their money back.

At the same time, the fact there are alternative payment systems in place means that Russian financial system could never be fully cut-off. There are two least two systems. First, there is the Russian System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS). The SPFS already has more than 400 member banks and handles more than 20 per cent of domestic financial communications.

Whereas Russian exclusion from SWIFT could further accelerate the growth of SPFS, there are already talks going-on with regards to connecting SPFS with China’s financial system i.e., Cross Border International Payment System. While CIPS, like SPFS, is still under-development, it already has 80 foreign banks as its partners. There is, therefore, no reason that CIPS cannot replace SWIFT immediately for Russia, and gradually for more and more financial institutions and interests that would, as mentioned above, be inevitably hurt by a US/EU decision to block Russia. There is, then, also the possibility of connecting SPFS with Iran’s own financial system known as SEPAM. As it stands, Russia and Iran are already using these systems to trade in local currencies, proving that bypassing US/western sanctions is not only possible, but that trading in local currencies is not a bad option either.

Furthermore, if Russia, China and Iran start – which they will eventually – coordinated moves in the wake of US/western sanctions, its impact will not be limited to three countries only. China’s Belt and Road Initiative has already expanded out of Asia into Africa and even South America and the Caribbean. The Russian led Eurasian Economic Union – which now has Iran as its member – too will find an opportunity to consolidate itself in the face of sanctions by connecting with these systems. It could have the impact of helping SPFS and CIPS to grow even more quickly, covering more and more countries beyond Asia, than has been the case thus far. This, in turn, will accelerate the growth towards de-dollarisation of the global financial system – a change that, more than anything else, could signal the beginning of the end of the US hegemony.

Ever since the end of the Second World War in 1945, the US dollar has been the central currency of trade in the world. Use of the US currency has, however, given the US disproportional amount of influence – and power – that it often exercises to force countries into submission. A case in point may be Iran. What the US basically did is that after signing an agreement with Iran, it backed out of the agreement and even imposed sanctions unilaterally to hurt Iran financially – a move opposed by Russia, China and even European powers. The question that many Iranians have been asking is: should the US have so much power to unilaterally strangulate any country that refuses to submit? Russian, Chinese and Iranian payment systems are, in this context, a step towards breaking the US hegemony, and not just a de-dollarisation of the financial system.

As of 2018, trade in Eurasian Economic Union is already de-dollarized by almost 70 per cent. This trend is spreading fast. As Yi Gang, the governor of the central bank China, also said last week, China is in talks with its Asian partners to increase the use of local currencies for payment settlements. As Yi mentioned, bilateral currency swaps among the ASEAN regional grouping, China, Japan and South Korea have already reached US$380 billion, and that there was a growing need to rely on local currencies to increase economic and financial “resilience” against global economic shocks, such as the one expected by a possible Russian exclusion from SWIFT or caused by US sanctions on any country it wants to punish. As some very recent reports have suggested, Gazprom Neft, the oil unit of Russian gas giant Gazprom, has confirmed that it has become the first Russian company to entirely shift to Yuan settlements for fueling planes within China.

An acceleration towards alternative payment systems plus a decreasing reliance on US dollar could give access to many countries in the world to a system that would directly allow them to pursue their specific, national-interest based foreign policy goals without the US pressure of retaliation. This includes countries in Europe, such as Germany, who seem just forced to tow the US line than having a genuine ‘German’ approach to the crisis.

Salman Rafi Sheikh, research-analyst of International Relations and Pakistan’s foreign and domestic affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

A few days ago, Russian troops invaded Ukraine. The movement of Russian troops went far beyond removing Ukrainian forces from the Donbass region that they have occupied and challenged for the past eight years. The uproar from Western nations was as predictable as it was hypocritical. In 2014 an American backed coup took place against the lawfully elected and legitimate government of Ukraine. The silence then at this blatantly undemocratic move from western nations was stunning.

The two regions of the Donbass, and the island of Crimea declared their independence. In Crimea’s case the government held a referendum of the people. They overwhelmingly (more than 90%) voted to leave Ukraine and apply to re-join Russia. The word “re-join” is used advisably. Crimea had been part of Russia for hundreds of years until 1954 when the then Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev gifted Crimea to Ukraine. Neither the Russian parliament, nor, more significantly, the Crimean people were consulted.

The western attitude to Crimea has been marked by hypocrisy ever since it voted to re-join Russia. The British, for example, have refused to recognise the legitimacy of Crimea’s actions. Late last year a British war ship violated Crimea waters and had to be chased away by a Russian warship.

The two Donbass republics have had a hard time of it since their similar declaration that they wished no part of the new Ukrainian government. It is not an overstatement to call that government fascist, a fact that seems not to trouble western governments that are now loudly proclaiming Ukraine’s right to be free of Russian interference.

Among those western nations that have condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine are France and Germany. These two nations are part of the Normandy grouping that negotiated a settlement of the Donbass problem. They then did nothing for the next eight years as Ukraine refused to implement the agreement to which they had been a party. The protestations that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is a violation of international law rings especially hollow. For eight years they have remained silent, not only on Ukraine’s refusal to abide by the terms of an agreement that they had willingly signed, but worse, waged war against the two Donbass regions.

The arrogance and hubris of the Australian government has been especially notable. The Prime Minister and the Opposition Labor Party have both condemned the Russian move. In Australia’s case they have gone so far as to shut down the Russian television channel Russia Today and prevented it from being broadcast in the country. Even the Americans have not gone that far.

The actions of the Australian government in isolating Russia for its invasion of Ukraine demonstrates a particular historical blindness. Australia has been a consistent cheerleader and willing participant in multiple acts of United States aggression around the world. Australian troops willingly joined the United States invasion of South Vietnam and waged war against the North. This was despite overwhelming evidence that the initial justification for the war, an alleged attack on a United States warship in Vietnamese waters, was manifestly a staged operation. Australian participation in that war lasted more than a decade before the newly elected Labor government withdrew Australian troops, an act that earned the Australian Labor Party the enmity of the Americans who were instrumental in the overthrow of that government three years later.

Obviously, no lessons were learnt by Australia as in 2001 they willingly joined the United States invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. That was only ended last year with the ignominious withdrawal of United States troops from that country. It is notable that the Americans loyal allies, including Australia, were not consulted about that decision. The result was an ignominious and rapid withdrawal of Australian forces and the messy betrayal of thousands of Afghan citizens who had been employed by the Australians.

The invasion of Afghanistan was followed in short order by an equally illegal and unjustified invasion of Iraq. The difference here however, is that 18 years later Australian troops still occupy Iraq and have refused a demand from the Iraqi government that they should leave. In that decision, Australia simply looked once again the to United States who similarly refused to leave Iraq.

This history is worth bearing in mind when one listens to the sanctimonious prattle of the Australian Prime Minister talking about the sanctity of national borders and the right of governments to be free of the fear of invasion and occupation. It is a lesson that his own government should heed, but that is unlikely to happen.

We are many more examples where the Australian government has refused to condemn, this alone sanction, egregious acts by foreign powers.

One has to look no further than the actions of the state of Israel. Its treatment of its own Palestinian population, the illegal seizure and takeover of the Syrian Golan Heights and Israel’s constant bombing of Syrian territory are all subjects that were met with complete silence from the Australian government.

It may well be that Russia has gone too far in invading Ukraine. One sincerely hopes that the matter will be resolved and Russian troops can return to their own country. But the west is far from justified in sanctimonious condemnation of the Russian move. There is an old biblical saying, “ those who are without sin amongst you, cast the first stone.” There are precious few western governments that are in a position to throw that stone.

James O’Neill, an Australian-based former Barrister at Law, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

After having read forty thousand headlines revolving around what Russian President Vladimir Putin “wants” for the past decade, I wonder if anybody but Putin knows? Based on what I have learned about the Russian leader, I can tell you this. He absolutely wants what almost all Russians want, for the west to just quit the crazy speculation.

Western policymakers rely on experts to help determine the course of international relations. Or, at least we assume Washington politicians are consulting somebody. Since the think tanks seem to reflect (or construct) what’s going on, it seems natural to assume there is some uniformity of purpose. And where Russia’s president is concerned, it’s uniformly apparent that somebody(s) wants the public to believe Vladimir Putin wants something bad for other peoples and nations. Just to check my memory, I used a Google refined search to see how many times the public has been told what Vladimir is really after.

I began with a timeframe of 2011 until the end of 2015. Up first in the results I found Brookings experts saying Putin wanted to “pull Europeans away from the United States,” and to divide and to create a new “Yalta” agreement of borderlines between the U.S. and Russia influence. Then there was “BEYOND CRIMEA: What Vladimir Putin Really Wants”, a semi-scholarly paper by Jeffrey Gedmin telling future foreign service trainees how the Russian leader was set on conquest. Of course, Gedmen is the former president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, so I guess we know how his bills get paid.

A year before these prophetic strokes of predictive genius, the Atlantic ran a piece entitled, you guessed it, “What Putin Wants” a la 2014. In this one, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, David Frum comes to the conclusion that “So long as Putin retains power, Russia can never evolve into a normal state.” And with this the essence of all “Putin wants and needs” inquiry is revealed. It’s all about definitions. Russia is not normal, according to the thinkers Washington is relying on. Or, Washington employs a lot of “thinking” in order to prove Russia is not normal!

I could go on, indefinitely since there are limitless pages of search results telling us what Russia’s leader is allegedly after. The Washington Post, the Daily Beast, Politico, the New Yorker, BBC, NBC, Slate, NPR, RAND, and etc, etc, etc. If it’s bad for us… But just for fun I created a similar search for 2016 to 2019, and guess what? The same media outlets recreated the headlines on Putin’s desires. The Atlantic led off with “What Putin Wants” followed (in the search) by the New York Times asking “What Does Putin Really Want?”, and the rest followed suit in a weird redux somebody decided appealed to American readers. The funny thing is, all the prophecies say the same thing, which should make intelligent people wonder “why all the journalistic/analytical mind reading?”

Fortunately, there are still voices of moderation, experts who seem to at least understand the Russia position on things. Take this “What Putin Wants” analysis for Foreign Policy by Dmitri Trenin, who’s the Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, the other day. Trenin, who’s a former colonel of Russian military intelligence, and who served for 21 years in the Soviet Army and Russian ground forces, surely knows the positioning here, even if his tilt is naturally with the Carnegie funders. The essence of his report is correct, for once, in assessing that what Putin is after is stopping NATO’s advance. The rest of the report is of no consequence, but Putin seeking to protect Russia’s frontiers is the point.

Vladimir Putin and the Russian people want to live in peace, and to prosper from their legacy resources, ingenuity, and hard work. That’s it. The Russians do not want to have their country chopped up into manageable little territories as was the case with Yugoslavia. Russians have a national identity they would prefer remained intact. And the Russian president, put in power by rich oligarchs or the deeply prideful Russian gatekeepers, or both, is doing the Russian nation’s bidding. End of story. NATO moving onto the doorstep of Moscow reminds every Russian of the lead up to the Nazis’ Operation Barbarossa, or to WWI, or even Napoleon’s ill-fated escapades. After all, what is the ultimate purpose of expanding NATO? What’s the mission for the average American in Utah who cannot find Europe on a labeled globe? Who and what is served?

Maybe we should be asking the pertinent question “What Does America Want?”

Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.