Geography Archives: Russia

Gas shipments through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, which runs from Russia to Germany, were reduced to 40% of capacity in June, a cut that Moscow said was due to delays in the servicing of a turbine by the German firm Siemens.

The Western strategy to weaken Russia backfires on Europe.

The Jewish Agency is Israel’s life source and the Kremlin shut it down this month. The fallout may be a measurable schism between Moscow and Tel Aviv, in which the latter has a lot to lose.

The Russian Defense Ministry today confirmed the recent attack by the Russian armed forces on the port of Odessa, an action that directly hit military targets.

Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, told the newspaper that “discussions are ongoing” to send the fighters to Ukraine.

Today the foreign minister of the Russian Federation, Sergei Lavrov, announced the extension of the land in Ukraine that Russia intends to capture.

The unthinkable is happening for the second time in five months: Russian gas giant Gazprom writes to German gas companies announcing force majeure effective from June 14, exonerating it from any compensation for shortfalls since then. 

Notice how the amount of Western reporting on Ukraine has fallen off dramatically? That’s because the war is going well for Russia and its allies.

The International Committee of the Democratic Socialists of America has released a statement opposing the U.S. government’s ongoing proxy war in Ukraine, saying the billions being funneled into the military-industrial complex “at a time when ordinary Americans are struggling to pay for housing, groceries, and fuel” is “a slap in the face for working people.”

Two recent articles in Open Democracy report responses from Ukrainian trade unions to the “Lugano Declaration”, which came out of a conference between high Western and Ukrainian officials in Switzerland last week and sets out plans for economic reconstruction “after the war is over” by the Ukrainian Oligarchy* and its major imperial sponsors; the U.S., UK and EU.

Mark Brzezinski, the U.S. Ambassador to Poland, is the son of the late Zbigniew Brzezinski, a descendent of Polish aristocrats and mastermind of U.S. foreign policy for decades, whose dream was to use Poland as a base to try to weaken and destroy Russia. Mark is now at the center of the implementation of his dad’s plans.

Finance ministers are the pangolins in the world of international diplomacy, solitary animals and predatory, unlike foreign ministers who are like glowworms, mesmerising and gorgeous animals that create light through their tail.

140 days after the start of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine, the Western reaction, which according to Biden would have erased Russia from the international scene, turns out to be a political and economic failure, the most serious and profound in the history of American and European arrogance.

What were the policy cliques, “the intelligence community” and the press that serves both going to do when the kind of war in Ukraine they talked incessantly about turned out to be imaginary, a Marvel Comics of a conflict with little grounding in reality? I have wondered about this since the Russian intervention began on Feb. 24. I knew the answer would be interesting when finally we had one.

A survey by the Moscow Sinergiya University Analysis Center confirmed that eight out of 10 Russians support the idea of relaunching brands from the Soviet period, such as the Moskvich.

In two days, the Ukrainian army’s terror shelling of residential areas in the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic), some of which was carried out with weapons supplied by the West, has killed four children in the Donbass.

After Sakhalin-2, Moscow also plans to nationalise Sakhalin-1 oil and gas development project by ousting U.S. and Japanese shareholders. But Moscow will make an exception for India so that OVL which holds 20% stake will remain & continue to work.

In wars like the present one, politics on the home front cannot be permitted to give aid and comfort to the enemy. In the U.S. and NATO campaign, the Russian oligarchs and their businesses are targets and also weapons of the plan for regime change in the Kremlin.

In 1307 in Switzerland, so goes the legend, the Habsburg rulers’ local bailiff, Gessler, stuck his hat on a pole and commanded every passerby to salute it. Wilhelm Tell refused. As fearsome punishment he had to shoot an apple from his own little boy’s head with his crossbow. His aim was sure, the boy was safe. But “Gessler’s hat” still means forced obeisance to some symbol. Or else!

Owner of plant, Rinat Akhmetov, is allegedly connected to organized crime.