BY Brian Berletic

While Western governments and the Western media continue clinging to the hope of an eventual “victory” for Kiev’s forces in Ukraine, the “frontline” is quietly being moved back to western Ukraine and even Poland just across the border. Recent pledges by NATO as well as arms deliveries this year and next appear to be headed in the direction of using Poland as the next battering ram with which US-led NATO will use against Russia.

More immediately, Poland could serve as a springboard for launching a NATO incursion into Ukraine, not necessarily to confront Russian forces directly, but to establish a “buffer zone” in western Ukraine just as the US and NATO-ally Turkey did in Syria.

The Build Up Continues

Poland has hosted a build-up of US troops since as early as the beginning of February 2022. US state media Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in their February 5, 2022 article, “US Soldiers Arriving In Europe To Reinforce NATO Amid Russian Buildup,” noted the movement of US troops to Europe and specifically Poland as well as the transfer of US troops in Germany to Romania which also shares a border with Ukraine.

More recently, a Retuers article, “US to boost military presence in Europe as NATO bolsters its eastern flank,” would note:

US President Joe Biden pledged more American troops, warplanes and warships for Europe on Wednesday as NATO agreed the biggest strengthening of its deterrents since the Cold War in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The article also mentioned Poland specifically, stating:

The United States will also create a new permanent army headquarters in Poland, which was immediately welcomed by Polish president Andrzej Duda, as Warsaw long sought a permanent US military base on its soil. “It is a fact that strengthens our safety a lot … in the difficult situation which we are in,” Duda said.

It should be kept in mind that similar sentiments had helped reinforce US-NATO involvement in Ukraine since 2014, ultimately precipitating the current crisis rather than strengthening any sense of “safety.”

Poland serves as both the most logical geographic location for this build-up as well as the most logical political location for it. The current Polish government has demonstrated an eagerness to play a central role in Washington’s proxy war with Russia both in terms of support for Ukraine as well as feeding heavily into the Russophobic rhetoric used to justify continued Western involvement politically.

Turkish state media in a recent article titled, “Poland takes delivery of 1st batch of US-made M1 Abrams tanks,” would note Poland’s own military build-up. In addition to hosting a growing number of US troops, Poland is purchasing the latest and most sophisticated weapons the US and its allies have on the market. The article claims:

On April 5, the country signed a contract worth nearly $4.75 billion to buy 250 MA12 SEP battle tanks from the US following a December 2020 agreement with Washington for 32 F-35 jets.

It also revealed that Poland agreed to a contract with the US on the purchase of 116 more used M1 Abrams tanks.

The Abrams tanks will operate near Poland’s eastern border “to deter an aggressor,” Błaszczak stressed, according to PAP.

The article also notes Poland’s acquisition of High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS), Turkey’s Bayraktar drones, as well as additional main battle tanks from South Korea.

NATO’s Paper Tiger in Eastern Europe

The once vaunted weapon systems produced by the US and its allies have suffered tremendously in recent years as M1 Abrams used by Saudi Arabia found themselves outmatched and destroyed in Yemen and more recently Russian air defenses have eliminated Turkish-built Bayraktar drones from Ukraine’s airspace while Russian long-range weapons have begun hunting and destroying US-built HIMARS on Ukrainian battlefields.

Apparently these weapons systems are not as formidable as advertised. The secret to their success until relatively recently had been Washington’s ability to carefully pick its adversaries, avoiding hostilities with nations or organizations capable of undermining the illusion of military superiority the United States attempts to cultivate.

The loss of M1 Abrams in Yemen by Saudi Arabia became so concerning, US policymakers questioned the wisdom of providing replacements. The Brookings Institution in a 2016 piece titled, “Is selling tanks to Saudi Arabia such a good idea?,” would point out:

The State Department this week notified Congress of an impending sale of 153 M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks and twenty heavy tank recovery vehicles plus assorted ammunition, weapons and other kit to the Saudi army. Buried in the fine print of the notification is the statement that twenty of the Abrams tanks are intended to replace tanks destroyed in combat. The only place Saudi tanks are in combat are along the Saudi–Yemeni border in the Kingdom’s southwest where the Houthi rebels have been surprisingly effective in striking targets inside Saudi Arabia since the start of the war sixteen months ago. It’s probably a good bet that more that just 20 Saudi tanks have been damaged. The Kingdom has an inventory of 400 Abrams.

Meanwhile in Ukraine, even pro-Western media organizations including Al Jazeera in their article, “What do we know about Ukraine’s use of Turkish Bayraktar drones?,” have admitted the limits of hyped weapons like the Turkish-built Bayrakter. The article notes:

…given Russia’s strength of forces, what impact drones might have in Ukraine?

“It will very well depend on Russian air defences. Drones like the TB2 are vulnerable to anti-air defence systems. To be effective, they need to be employed in a savvy way, in coordination with other electronic warfare systems that ‘blind’ enemy radars and through appropriate tactics,” [Mauro Gilli, senior researcher in military technology and international security at ETH Zurich] said.

“However, against capable enemies, these technologies and tactics might not be sufficient. In Libya, Russian forces figured out effective ways to counter Turkish tactics and shoot down their drones. The same [has been] observed in Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh,” he added.

With Retuers reporting the alleged demise of two US-made Ukrainian HIMARS in early July and Newsweek reporting the alleged destruction of an additional HIMARS in mid-July, the most recent “wonder weapon” promoted by Western governments and their media appears just as vulnerable and underwhelming as other advanced Western arms touted recently.

The build-up of all these advanced systems in Poland, while promoted by NATO leadership and the Western media as necessary against “aggression,” represents yet another substitute for the absolute fundamentals that truly underwrite national and regional security.

What Poland Actually Needs for Actual Security

The Russian Federation has not only demonstrated an understanding of these fundamentals, it has put them into practice. Even Western commentators have begun taking note.

A June 2022 piece published by the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) titled, “The Return of Industrial Warfare,” would convincingly argue that relatively mundane munitions and military equipment produced in large scale are far more essential to victory on the battlefield than a focus on “efficiency” through sophisticated precision munitions built in relatively small quantities. Basic small arms ammunition and conventional artillery shells were among the examples cited –   munitions that are absolutely essential, needed in vast quantities, and are having a far greater impact on the battlefield than the high-tech weapons shipped by the West to Ukraine.

It could also be argued that diplomacy and economic cooperation pursued by the Russian Federation with Europe prior to the events now unfolding in Ukraine reduced the ability and/or desire of at least some European nations to follow Washington down the path toward dangerous escalation.

But above all, Poland and other European nations (if national security is an actual priority) require independent foreign policies – policies that reflect the best interests of each respective state rather than those of an unelected bureaucracy heavily influenced by a small handful of corporate-financier interest not only in Europe, but across the Atlantic in Washington and on Wall Street.

It should be pointed out that among these select few special interests are arms manufacturers who thrive especially when conflict, not peace and stability (or prosperity for everyone else), prevail.

A focus on these latter most factors may make the necessity of focusing heavily on military factors less of a priority.

Also key to regional security is promoting regional stability. Europe’s role in aiding or even just remaining apathetic to US political interference along and far beyond the borders of the European Union created the instability requiring constant military spending in the first place. Whether it is the flow of refugees fleeing decimated nations in the Middle East and North Africa targeted by NATO aggression, or a deteriorating socio-economic crisis following US-sponsored regime change in Eastern Europe, Europe’s inability to address the “causes” of the crises it faces results in ever-growing investments in addressing the urgent “effects” that follow.

Since Poland’s current leadership is focusing on none of the above, while projecting recent policy decisions as the bolstering of security and safety for the Polish people, the Polish government is in fact instead escalating tensions even further on behalf of Washington all while relying on weapons systems and a strategic approach proven right now on the battlefields of Ukraine and elsewhere as wholly inadequate.

Only time will tell if Polish and other European leadership continue down this self-destructive path where they, along with Ukraine, carry the full burden of Washington’s proxy war against Russia, or if they decide to pursue actual security, stability, and prosperity. If they chose the latter they are likely to find they won’t require massive investments into the military means of addressing conflict, because the “enemies” they imagine they would use these means against, would likely be more interested in trade.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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by Vladimir Platov

Russia’s special military operation to localize neo-fascist activities in Ukraine continues to receive more and more documentary evidence of the criminal plans and activities of the current government in Kiev, sponsored by Washington, as well in as the USA itself.

This special operation has helped to publicize many secret programs for the development of biological weapons by the United States and its NATO allies in Ukraine. Documentary evidence was obtained of the research on dangerous pathogens, including the Ebola virus, the causative agent of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, as well as many others (for by no means peaceful and humane purposes) by American, British, and German military biologists in Kiev and Odessa. It became known that the American company Metabiota was going to study the Ebola virus in Ukraine. Due to such experiments being prohibited in the USA over their inherent risk, they were transferred to Ukraine and other countries – as a rule, those where the government is corrupt, completely subordinate to Washington, and does not ask unnecessary questions.

Additionally, Russian doctors in hospitals, where captured Ukrainian soldiers were taken for treatment, obtained data indirectly confirming that the Ukrainian special forces were preparing to use biological weapons developed by the USA. This is evidenced by the presence of a high concentration of antibiotics, sulfonamides, and fluoroquinolones in their blood, which could indicate the use of such drugs as a preventive measure, and therefore preparation of the personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to carry out tasks via the use of bacteriological weapons.

From a report obtained during the capture at a US biolab in Ukraine, prepared for the Pentagon by Metabiota and Black & Veatch, it follows that “Veterinary Projects” codenamed “TAP” were implemented in Ukraine, during which infections were developed that could cause damage not to the manpower of the enemy, but the agriculture of entire regions. Of particular interest to US military biologists was African swine fever (ASF). It should be noted that the USA already has vast experience in causing damage to the agriculture of its opponents in this way. This is how the United States devastated Cuba in the 1990s, poisoning the entire country’s agriculture with various biological agents, spraying such bioweapons from airplanes. Then pigs, sugar cane, tobacco, and rice died en masse, causing Cuba to amass an enormous debt of $32 billion. This is one of the many episodes of the USA’s subversive economic war against its opponents, which is, in fact, a manifestation of American state terrorism.

According to information obtained during the special operation in Ukraine, the USA carried out a significant portion of its secret biological experiments under the guise of Ukrainian institutions and companies. For the past five years, the Ukrainian company Microkhim, judging by the documents discovered, has been conducting biological experiments with E. coli, staphylococcus, and salmonella. Microorganism strains were delivered from a collection in the Czech Republic, as well as pharmaceutical prototypes from Europe and the USA. The experiments were carried out on Ukrainians themselves, who were paid 6,000 hryvnias each (that’s about $250-300) for participation. Experiments were also carried out with potent narcotic drugs, particularly, nalbuphine, which is dangerous because it is very addictive and is on par with morphine, methadone, and tramadol. It, in particular, was supplied to the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the Luhansk front. It is nalbuphine, although it has not been registered in the country, that is present in the first-aid kits of Ukrainian military personnel. The militants of the Armed Forces of Ukraine used these drugs and went into battle, and this potent drug dulled all of their pain receptors and fear. The owner of this Ukrainian pharmaceutical company fled and, according to the intelligence services, is now in Europe under the patronage of the West.

The efforts of American secret biological laboratories to develop hard drugs for US and NATO soldiers for use in military operations, as well as developments in the field of psychotropic weapons, are well known. In the middle of the last century, experiments with LSD in the hope of creating a “universal soldier” became famous. It is noteworthy that the Nazis of fascist Germany also actively engaged in similar “experiments,” trying to create a super-soldier to correspond to their ideology of the Aryan domination in the world. Pervitin, created by the Nazis, was one such “remedy” to increase the stamina of those fighting. The British and Americans took up similar studies in the wake of the Nazis. Moreover, as evidenced by the documents obtained during Russia’s special operation in Ukraine, the Pentagon is even now continuing this “research” in its secret biolabs.

It terms of drug research at the USA’s secret biolabs, one must not forget that war is a very costly business. Based on what funds the United States has been pumping into Ukraine over the past eight years and continues to do so after the start of Russia’s special operation, the bill is in the tens of billions of dollars. In order to “compensate” for such costs, the USA has long been involved in illegal drug trafficking, which has already been repeatedly confirmed by journalistic investigations and scandals about the activities of the US military in “war zones.” Frank Lucas’ “Vietnamese business” in which he supplied drugs from Asia to the United States in the coffins of soldiers sent home is well known.  Many such scandals became known from American journalists then and during the US war in Afghanistan. In addition to the use of new types of drugs in research to create a “universal soldier,” secret biolabs may certainly have an “applied” interest in narcotics, especially since there is no control from the side “receiving” these biolabs, or from the American authorities in this matter.

Recall that 30 biolabs have already been discovered in Ukraine, created with the active financing of the Pentagon. In total, there are 336 such facilities around the globe, according to the Chinese government, most of which are located in the area of the former Soviet Union. Research at these biolabs is carried out in three main areas: the study of the epidemic situation near the expected deployment areas of NATO or US troops; the study of the genotype of possible future opponents (in particular, Slavs and Chinese); increased pathogenicity via synthetic biology, which have already appeared in service with US military virologists. Over the past 20 years, the USA has spent more than two billion dollars on the creation of biolabs in the CIS alone.

When discussing the issue of the use of weapons of mass destruction by a particular country, especially, bioweapons, one involuntarily recalls the year 2003 and US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who demonstrated a test tube allegedly containing anthrax spores at the UN Security Council. Back then, a merely symbolic demonstration, without any evidence, was enough to launch the invasion of Iraq and destroy this state, and to execute Saddam Hussein.

So why, when a lot of documentary evidence about the criminal activities of the USA has already been collected at its secret biolabs to create coronavirus and conduct research on the development of new bioweapons, are all these materials now being ignored by the international court, the UN Security Council, and the WHO? Are the war criminals in the USA really not going to be held accountable for what they’ve done?

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

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