Putin’s ultimatum to US (w/ VIDEO)
Rostislav Ishchenko writes for Ria Novosti (via Russia Insider):
After the President of the Russian Federation decreed that Russia was suspending implementation of the agreement with the US on disposal of weapons-grade plutonium, and after submission of a draft law to parliament, the media started to argue about whether this was related to the breakdown of cooperation on Syria. […]
Although Putin has withdrawn Russia from the reprocessing agreement, he announced that it could be restarted, under certain conditions, including canceling all sanctions against Russia, compensating Moscow for losses resulting not only from those sanctions but from Russian’s counter-sanctions, canceling the Magnitsky Act, reducing the American military presence in NATO countries near Russia’s border, and ending the policy of confrontation with Moscow.
Putin’s demands can only be defined as an ultimatum.
This happened once before, in 1861, when Great Britain delivered an ultimatum to Washington in relation to the Trent Affair, during the American Civil War. Back then, though in severe straits, America only partially satisfied British demands, although there was nothing humiliating about them. The US had violated International law, arresting people on neutral (British) ships, infringing the sovereignty of Great Britain, nearly provoking a war. After disavowing the captain and releasing the arrested people, America refused to apologize.
Now Putin demands not just apologies and the release of a couple of prisoners, but a change of America’s entire policy, besides compensation. This is an impractical and insulting demand for unconditional surrender, in a hybrid war which Washington does not consider irreparably lost.
Only Great Britain claimed something similar from the US, before the end of the American Revolution, when it was still a rebellious subject. During the last hundred years, no one could imagine talking to Washington like that. Putin clearly and intentionally humiliated the US, showing that it could be talked to the way it speaks to the rest of the world – only more so.
What was Putin responding to? Did he really think the US would carry out the agreement between Kerry and Lavrov on Syria? Was he really disappointed? Russia was aware that Washington had not been adhering to the Plutonium Pact for years, but this benefited its nuclear industry, which practically became a global monopoly and didn’t care about the technical limitations that prevented the US from disposing of its weapons-grade plutonium as stipulated in the agreement.
Russia’s tough and almost immediate response followed an announcement by the US State Department that Russia would be sending body bags home from Syria, losing its planes, and that terrorists could attack Russian cities.
Immediately following that statement, the Pentagon announced its readiness to strike a preventive nuclear blow on Russia, and the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Moscow was aware of the US intention to start an air war against Syrian troops and Russia’s legal presence there.
What other reasons are there for Putin’s ultimatum?
Missile defense, air defense and Strategic Missile Forces training to repel a nuclear attack on Russia, including a launch under attack, took place six months ago. Exercises of the Russian Ministry of Emergency Situations (involving up to 40 million civilians), are announced for the coming days to check the readiness of the civil defense apparatus for nuclear war and to inform the population of emergency measures.
If we put all this together, we see that the US has long unofficially intimidated Russia with the threat of nuclear conflict, while Moscow let it be known that it was ready and was not going to retreat.
Now, the Washington hawks have decided to raise the ante during the last months of Obama’s presidency, uncertain of Clinton’s victory. They have come to an extremely dangerous point, when conflict has begun to develop independently. At this stage, nuclear Armageddon could occur at any moment, due to the inadequacy of Pentagon and White House personnel.
Moscow seized the initiative and raised the stakes, transforming the confrontation in another way. Unlike the United States, it did not threaten war, but gave a tough political and economic response, which, rather than making Obama’s dream come true, threatens to ruin the US economy should it misbehave.
Russia’s action has seriously undermined US international prestige of the United States, showing that America can be beaten with its own weapon. As you give, so you receive. With this sequence of events, we could see hundreds of American elites in the dock in the Hague, not just in our lifetime, but before the end of the first term of the next American president.
The US must choose either to implement its threats and launch a nuclear war, or put up with the fact that this is no longer a unipolar world, and begin to behave accordingly. […]
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Theres a detailed and cross referenced article on the clandestine American intervention in Libya, that has now spilled over to Syria.
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2014/08/19/the-benghazi-brief/
A takeout:
In July 25, 2012, Taliban fighters in Kunar province successfully targeted a US Army CH-47 helicopter with a new generation Stinger missile.
The next day, an explosive ordnance disposal team arrived to pick through the wreckage and found unexploded pieces of a missile casing that could only belong to a Stinger missile.
Lodged in the right nacelle, they found one fragment that contained an entire serial number.
The investigation took time. But when the results came back, they were stunning: The Stinger tracked back to a lot that had been signed out by the CIA
While there was internal opposition in the US to arming AlQuida directly, the well funded Saudis and related Wahaabiists appear to have no such qualms. The more MANPADs the better.
Which would explain Russia’s decision to no longer delay removing these threats from Syrian soil
The point here, and it is made by inference, is that all nations are seemingly coming to an acceptance of — even ready to embrace — multipolarity. All except one, that is. Empires don’t die wondering. They just don’t … or can’t. Our mind tricks us into the belief that the status quo will continue, ad infinitum. And so their head is stuck in unipolar wonderland. And it’s not easy, when you are used to stretching your limbs, to have to tuck your legs in and to fold your arms to make room for others. The good news (there is good news? you ask) is that after the bombs bring stalemate, a multipolar world is a real possibility. The clean-up bill wont be pretty, of course.
The U.S is painting their F/A-18’s to match the paint schemes of Russian jets in Syria. Is there a false flag incident in the offing?
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/10/is-the-us-preparing-a-false-flag-bombing-in-syria.html
it is completely useless, and US should understand that – since the Identification, Friend or Foe System (IFF) System is working… 😉
The Friend or Foe system is immaterial if you are running a false flag operation. All you need is a US fighter aircraft painted in Russian colors conducting low flying bombing raids on civilians (with some pretty pictures to match). The Russians can complain all they like that they didn’t do it but the Western media will publish the false claims against them.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/air-strikes-against-syria-who-are-the-war-criminals-who-is-supporting-al-qaeda-russia-or-america/5548799
Looks like the Americans are gearing up for military confrontation.
Putin is looking to trade 13 people to the US for 2 in return. He wants Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout and a drug-running pilot, Konstantin Yaroshenko, men who may or may not have dirt on Russia’s leadership. Bout is serving 25 years in a US prison for arms trafficking, Yaroshenko for drug trafficking. Both were captured outside the US and illegally transported there for trial.
One of the 13 offered in exchange is a Russian-American businessman, Gennady Klotsman, who got 10 years in a Russian jail for a failed jewel story robbery in Moscow in 2010.
Normally, the US wouldn’t even consider such a trade. But here’s where it gets interesting. Gennady Klotsman is a close business associate of Felix Sater, a reported US-Russian crime figure and close associate of Donald Trump. Klotsman and Sater are also very close and have had a long friendship.
You never know your luck in the big city. A Trump win could see Klotsman coming home courtesy of The Donald.
I think the Russians are adopting a sensible stance to curtail the US idiots.
I doubt that Obama will want to vacate the White House having caused military conflict with Russia.
His replacement – Clinton, for example – might be another story.
My advice to Putin and Assad: get the job finished in Syria by the end of December 2016.
I doubt that Obama will want to vacate the White House having caused military conflict with Russia. His replacement – Clinton, for example – might be another story.
Obama didn’t do this on his own. He had all kinds of advocates — the State Department, CIA, The Pentagon, neocons and Israel backers, Middle East countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, John McCain, the Republicans and the National Endowment of Democracy — all promoting the idea.
When the 2013 Ghouta sarin gas attacks happened all of these groups were pressing Obama to send in US forces — that Assad had “crossed the red line” of chemical weapons usage. Obama didn’t want to do it but was being pressured to do so. Only an adroit move by Putin saved his bacon. Putin offered to get Assad to give up all his chemical weapons, which he did. (Btw, al Nusra did the sarin attacks, not Assad).
Please be clear about this. Hillary Clinton was a major driver of increased US involvement. She more than anybody was pushing the idea of no-fly zones and other confrontational strategies. As President you can expect from her a major US-Russia conflict over Syria.
Maybe. I really don’t believe the fairy story of Obama-the-isolated-good-guy. Rather this fairy tale of warring internal factions is handy cover for wriggling out of US cock-ups in the same way that every brutal bombing of civilians (or recently Syrian army soldiers during a ceasefire) is mea culpa an “accident”.
In fact it was immediately clear to the ROW that the Sarin attacks were a foreign sabotage designed to exactly (and far too obviously) cross Obama’s random red line and thus provide an R2P excuse for USA/NATO/ to openly declare war on Syria on behalf of Greater Israel. It was eminently obvious to non-Americans (i.e. ROW) that Assad would NOT gas his own people – especially children!! – and especially not at the same moment that the chemical weapons inspectors’ plane touching down in Damascus.
So this act of sabotage and war crime didn’t fly: it was clear that it was the work of the Americans. And the no vote of the UK parliament was the clincher. And so Washington cut its losses. Enter Obama-the-good and the “warring factions”…
Reblogged this on Susanna Panevin.
I despair at the bullying nature of US foreign policy – this is an important piece and I am going to share it on facebook as I think my friends and family need to know what is going on (they read too much MSM)
This is the Russians informing the Americans that their military in Syria has been placed on a hightend state of readiness, or, put more bluntly, on a hair-trigger in the event of the Americans threatening Russian postions. Added to everything else that’s happening, it means we’re really, really, close to a direct military confrontation with Russia, something that hasn’t happened for over half a century. That our media is deliberately ignoring how dangerous the situation is, makes disaster, more, not lesss, likely. That’s a true indictment of our media, a criminal abrogation of their responsibilties to inform their readers/viewers. Perhaps they know or sense what’s coming, which is why, already, they are on a ‘war footing’ and spewing so much propaganda?
Diplomacy will always fail if one side wants it to fail and the USA has been especially duplicitous in Syria and the Ukraine, saying one thing for public consumption while deliberately undermining diplomatic efforts to end the conflicts. With this statement Russia has declared their clear understanding of this and I wish them complete success in their efforts to end these wars
“With this sequence of events, we could see hundreds of American elites in the dock in the Hague, not just in our lifetime, but before the end of the first term of the next American president.”
Don’t I wish . . .
We can start with impeachment of Obama, which would also bring down Hillary.
This is a very serious position and I am appalled at the lack of reporting of the US threats in Western media. Putin is clearly intent on calling the bluff of US warmongers and there seems at least a possibility that the Pentagon might well feel forced to turn away from threats made by those warmongers.
I do hope that common sense will prevail but sadly there is little to suggest that the US will draws back.