Eurasia note #37 - Agendas Align In Ukraine

Smart city, basic income rolled out amid war; Russia targets bio lab concerns

• Peace talks set to resume in Turkey on Tuesday as conflict enters 33rd day

• Zelenskiy says Kyiv reconsidering Russian demand for Ukrainian neutrality

• Ukraine’s president gives first interview to Russian media; censored by Moscow

• White House officials back-pedal furiously after Biden says Putin must go.

• Tells U.S. troops in Poland you’ll see the Ukraine’s suffering ‘when you’re there’

• Hunter Biden emails confirm he played key role in funding Ukraine biolabs

• In 2008 U.S. was criticised for poor monitoring of bio terror agents

• In 2018 criticised again for poor nuclear security — by U.S. officials

• U.S. and Russia not communicating over nuclear risks.

See previous article: Mar 11, 2022 — Eurasia note #33 - Ukraine's Bio Labs The Next Douma? Russian troops appear to lose momentum, the risk of interference rises

(2,700 words or 12 minutes’ read.)

Eviction, Odessa region, 1930, photo: P. Malchevitsy

Tbilisi, Mar 28, 2022

First, a quick summary on the latest verifiable developments, then analysis.

As the war reaches its 33rd day, negotiators were due to arrive in Istanbul for a sixth round of talks beginning Mar 29. Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said negotiators were studying a Russian demand for Ukrainian neutrality, which Kyiv had previously rebuffed.

Sanctions continue to hurt both sides. Russia would not supply gas “as charity,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Russia is demanding unfriendly countries pay for hydrocarbons in roubles, and not in “discredited currencies,” such as dollars and euros.

In an interview with Russian media, Zelenskiy complained that civilians had been forcibly deported from the besieged Black Sea port city of Mariupol. Ukrainian militia had previously been accused of obstructing the evacuation — which makes it easier for Russian forces to target Azov Battalion.

Former CIA director David Petraeus (who following NATO’s war in Yugoslavia became part-owner of the regions largest media and telecoms operator, United Group) said on Sunday that Mariupol was poised to fall to Russian forces.

Zelenskiy told the outlets, which include Kommersant, Meduza and Dozhd, that it was not possible for Russia to take the whole of Ukraine and thus it should compromise by returning “to where it all began, and there we will try to solve the issue of Donbas, the complex issue of Donbas.”

“We won't sit down at the table at all if we talk about some kind of 'de-militarization' or some kind of ‘de-Nazification’,” he added. The interview has been banned within Russia.

Lugansk People’s Republic may hold a referendum on becoming part of Russia in the near future, LPR head Leonid Pasechnik said yesterday.

Russian forces remain focused on securing Donbas, using missiles to strike behind Armed Forces of Ukraine’s lines — upwards of 40 missile strikes per day, according to Mikhail Podoliak, an adviser to president Zelenskiy. As Western countries continue to pour weapons into the cauldron, such missile strikes have targeted ammunition dumps.

Little change is reported in the position of both sides’ troops across a 1,500-km front. Russia’s spring draft begins Apr 1, with 100,000 conscripts due to enter the armed forces.

In Asia-Pacific Chinese jets are said to have probed Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone on multiple occasions. Earlier this month Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia is “the last obstacle” before Western hegemonists set their eyes on China.

No single cause

Like any war, this one only makes sense in context — requiring a bit more effort than pinning a virtual badge to Twitter. Which is why you’re here.

Ukraine is a puppet in this war and it’s not the only one. There was no reason for NATO to advance to Russia’s borders — and the latter’s subsequent invasion does not justify, after the fact, the Atlanticist mission creep. It simply shows the war was anticipated, perhaps on all sides.

War has done nothing to slow the march to a centrally-controlled medical tyranny. Ukraine even rolled out a basic income linked to vaccine passports in the midst of conflict.

Joe Biden repeats what he’s told — the recent headlining by establishment press of Hunter’s laptop contents may have further twisted his arm. When he says that president Vladimir Putin “cannot remain in power” — that is the message. Likewise his words to the Army's 82nd Airborne Division about Ukraine: “you're going to see when you're there.”

It doesn’t mean the U.S. is “going in” but it tells you some in the neocon or Atlanticist network are willing to threaten it. Kazakhstan’s armed uprising that began on Jan 2, leading to Russia’s intervention at the head of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, begins to look less spontaneous.

There is a broader discussion about whether the U.S. bureaucracy is woke or incompetent. Spoiler: it’s both. Biden-Harris can only do what they’re told and sometimes barely that. Their double act is an apparent strategy to demoralize those in America — while they are urged to cheer on Ukraine.

We are familiar with neocon rhetoric whose feud-like hatred of Russia and messianic overtones derives in part from the failure of their (Trotskyite) forebears to retain control of the nation after 1929.

Who commands the hordes that would take Kievan Rus as did Genghis’ grandson Kubla Khan almost 800 years ago? The clue is that these aren’t the Mongols, and their ambition is not constrained to Central Asia.

The Mongols get a bad rap, by the way. They freed up trade along the Silk Road, introducing “most favoured” status for merchants with tax exemptions, introduced a basic identification system or “paiza” for government emissaries, a communication network of caravanserai or horse stages, adopted the Uighurs’ alphabet, and copied the Song Dynasty’s paper currency. [1]

The limits to picking sides

Sanctions are amplifying a trend that was already underway. The reliance of Europe in particular on Russian gas was remarked in previous Eurasia notes. Between them Russia and Ukraine grow more than a third of global grain and produce many essential minerals, not least neon gas for etching computer chips and potash for fertilizer. Investors, meanwhile, are aware of these countries deposits not just of hydrocarbons but uranium.

The White House warned last week that food shortages are now inevitable. Joe Biden continues to blame everything that’s wrong with his economy on Russia. But none of these problems is new. They’re one reason why the war is happening.

The shortage of CO2 and fertilizer was already hitting food production and processing last year, mainly due to restrictions on hydrocarbon fuels that are only partly replaced by wind and solar.

Bureaucrats emptied California’s water reservoirs. They are running from farm to farm giving PCR tests to chickens, claiming bird flu and gassing them. Fish stocks are in free fall, not from climate change but from pollution and failure to defend territorial waters.

Dr Frédéric Leroy, a professor in the field of food science & biotechnology at Vrije Universiteit, Brussells, shows how shortages are connected to an agenda to change what we eat, advanced by The Club of Rome. [2]

Much of what is unfolding is consistent with the influence and reach of the organisation founded in 1968 by Aurelio Peccei and David Rockefeller, including limiting population, switching away from natural agriculture to synthetic meats, and establishing corporate control over every aspect of the food system, including people’s freedom to buy seeds and raise a garden. [3]

So when politicians blame Putin, they are not finding a scapegoat but signaling that the shortages, and even the conflict, are orchestrated. This doesn’t make Putin the good guy nor does it mean an orchestrated war is somehow unreal.

Russia did not need a green light to take Ukraine, just sufficient provocation. You can lure a sparring partner into the ring. Cooperation can be reluctant and even if you are playing a role against your better judgement it’s more than a cameo.

This script includes more revelations on the Biden family’s involvement with Ukraine’s biolabs, the U.S. governments preference for developing new weapons over monitoring existing WMDs, and the touchy topic of depopulation — all discussed below.

What is Putin’s part in the New World Over? Dispense with the code words — broken down it is the banality of lucre and power.