Russia targets Poltava military training center with devastating strike – Kiev
The missile attack has resulted in nearly 300 casualties, according to Ukrainian officials

Russian Iskander ballistic missiles have struck a training center in the Ukrainian city of Poltava, according to the government in Kiev, which has estimated the death toll at 50.

The School of Military Communications and Information Technology on the north side of Poltava was home to the 179th Training Center of Ukrainian signalmen, including radar and strike drone operators. It was destroyed by two missiles on Tuesday morning, local authorities have said.

The Ukrainian Defense Ministry has put the number of deaths at 49, with 219 injured. Rescue crews managed to save 25 people, of which 11 were pulled from the rubble, according to the military. 

Poltava Governor Filip Pronin later updated the casualty toll to 50 dead, more than 235 wounded and 15 missing.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky used the occasion to demand more air defense systems and missiles, as well as permission from his Western backers to launch “long-range strikes” into Russia.

“This is a stunning tragedy for all of Ukraine,” Zelensky’s wife Elena wrote on X, accusing Russia of striking “an educational institution and a hospital,” even though no hospitals are nearby.

According to local media in Poltava, area hospitals are overwhelmed with wounded. Social media posts soliciting blood donations spoke of “190 dead defenders” and many more at risk from their injuries. 

Igor Mosiychuk, a former MP and deputy commander of the notorious neo-Nazi Azov regiment, claimed that the attack may have resulted in up to 600 casualties. While blaming Russia for the strike, he also said the military command bears some responsibility for allowing so many high-value soldiers to be in one place without shelter.

The Russian Defense Ministry has not yet commented on the strike. In the absence of official information, rumors circulating on Russian social media have alleged the presence of NATO instructors at the school, including some from Sweden. 

Poltava is the site of the 1709 battle in which the Russian Army under Peter the Great decisively defeated Swedish invaders under King Charles XII. The Swedes were aided by Cossacks of Ivan Mazepa, who is revered as a hero in modern Ukraine but has long been considered a traitor in Russia.

https://www.rt.com/russia/603462-poltava-signal-academy-ukraine/

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A Russian missile strike has killed 51 people and injured more than 200 in the Ukrainian city of Poltava, Ukrainian officials said, marking the deadliest single attack of the war so far this year.

Earlier, in a video posted on Telegram on Tuesday, local time, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said two ballistic missiles had hit the city, which is located about 110 kilometres from the border with Russia and about 350km south-east of Kyiv.

"One of the buildings of the [Poltava Military] Institute of Communications was partially destroyed. People found themselves under the rubble. Many were saved," Mr Zelenskyy said.

He also said a nearby hospital was damaged in the attack.

Ukraine's defence ministry described the strike as "barbaric", and said the missiles hit shortly after an air raid alert sounded, meaning many people were on their way to a bomb shelter.

Photographs posted on social media in Ukraine showed several bodies lying on the ground covered in dust and debris, with the badly damaged side of a large building behind them.

The Reuters news agency could not immediately verify the images, and Russia has not yet commented on the attack.

Mr Zelenskyy has ordered a full and prompt investigation into the incident.

Rescue efforts were ongoing throughout Tuesday at the site of the attack.

"Every 15-20 minutes there are 'minutes of silence' to listen out for people who are under the rubble," Oleksandr Khorunzhyi, press officer of the emergency services, said in televised comments.

Poltava governor Filip Pronin announced three days of mourning following the attack, and said that many residents had donated blood for the injured.

The identities of those killed in the strike were not immediately disclosed.

He said 219 people were injured.

Speaking after the attack, Mr Zelenskyy repeated his calls for more Western air defences and urged allies to allow their long-range weapons to be used for strikes deeper into Russian territory in order to protect Ukraine.

"We keep telling everyone in the world who has the power to stop this terror: Air defence systems and missiles are needed in Ukraine, not in a warehouse somewhere," he said.

"Long-range strikes that can protect us from Russian terror are needed now, not some time later. Unfortunately, every day of delay means loss of life."

Russia has intensified its missile and drone attacks on Ukraine in recent weeks, two-and-a-half years into the full-scale war sparked by Russia's invasion of its smaller neighbour in February 2022.

Last week Ukraine was pummelled with the heaviest bombardment to date, and on Monday ballistic and cruise missiles targeted Kyiv, causing loud explosions.

Ukraine also targeted Russia with more than 158 drones over the weekend, damaging an oil refinery near Moscow and a power station.

In a series of government resignations, the deputy prime minister responsible for European integration, Olha Stefanishyna, stood down on Tuesday alongside Mr Zelenskyy's deputy chief of staff, Rostyslav Shurma.

The Ukrainian government said the moves were part of a restructure.

The government minister overseeing domestic weapons production during the war with Russia also tendered his resignation along with the justice minister and environment minister, the parliament's speaker said.

The ministers are Strategic Industries Minister Oleksandr Kamyshin, Justice Minister Denys Maliuska and Environment Minister Ruslan Strilets. 

The house speaker said their resignation requests would be discussed by politicians soon.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-03/russian-missile-strike-on-poltava-kills-dozens/104306806

Ukraine Loses Over 9,000 Troops Since Its Incursion Into Border Areas of Russia's Kursk Region

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240903/ukraine-loses-over-9000-troops-since-its-incursion-into-border-areas-of-russias-kursk-region-1119999059.html

Eastern Economic Forum Signals Russia’s Long Game ‘Strategy of Orienting Toward the Orient’

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240903/eastern-economic-forum-signals-russias-long-game-strategy-of-orienting-toward-the-orient-1120003148.html

The United States has felt no compunction about slapping unilateral sanctions with impunity for decades, with weaponized penalties a tried and tested tool favored over official diplomacy to force countries to do Washington's bidding.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240903/how-does-us-wield-sanctions-to-try-to-bring-countries-to-heel-1120000636.html

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

Written by Lucas Leiroz, member of the BRICS Journalists Associations, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert

In the midst of the US’ tense political scenario, the Democrats are doing everything they can to increase their chances of reelection. With the American people considering Joe Biden’s disastrous administration as the main reason for the current conflict with Russia in Ukraine, one of the Democrats’ bets is to try to “resolve” the conflict as quickly as possible, thus preventing the Republicans from gaining an advantage on this issue.

As well known, the Democrats have been characterized in recent years by maintaining a foreign policy that is even more bellicose and aggressive than that of the Republicans. This is due to a series of factors, mainly the more “multipolarist” tendency of the Republicans. The patriotic conservative wing of American politics, despite also being subservient to the US political establishment, seems to have already understood that geopolitical changes are inevitable, leaving the US with no option but to adopt a less interventionist stance, being more focused on solving internal problems.

For this reason, one of Trump’s main accusations against the Democrats is that their party was responsible for the crisis in Ukraine. The Republican candidate promises to “end the war in one day” if elected. Many ordinary Americans are likely to vote for Trump to stop their tax money from being used to finance a senseless war on another continent. This situation worries the Democrats, who fear that the number of votes will tip the balance in favor of Kamala Harris.

This situation is prompting the Biden administration to take all possible measures to “resolve” the Ukrainian situation before the elections. In recent months, the US government has taken steps such as seeking “peace negotiations” and pressuring Ukraine to stop “deep” maneuvers against undisputed areas of the Russian Federation. At the moment, escalating the war is harmful to Democrats because it strengthens popular belief in Trump’s promises to end the conflict.

Another alternative to lessen the impact of the Ukrainian issue on the electoral scenario is by trying to transfer the responsibility for the war to the European countries. In parallel with the hypocritical attempts to “resolve the conflict” through pseudo-diplomacy, the US has also encouraged the militarization of Europe. The American tactic consists of making the Europeans believe that they need to prepare for a conflict with Russia, thus expanding their defense capabilities.

By adhering to the anti-Russian paranoia, European countries subserviently accept the role of main arms suppliers to the Kiev regime. This provides Washington with two major strategic benefits: easing the burden on the domestic military industry and removing Ukraine from the attention of the American public, making the war appear to be a “European issue.”

Another important point is that the Democrats are also reinforcing US’ hegemonic role over the European continent. Washington dictates what European countries should do by establishing their priority agendas – such as, for example, “to prepare for war with Russia”. Interventionism profoundly impacts European strategic planning, making some irrelevant issues “priority” agendas only because they favor American interests.

This topic is also somewhat related to the Democrats’ anti-multipolar aspect. Turning Europe into an underdeveloped continent seems to be one of the American priorities. Washington wants to prevent each continent from becoming a regional bloc in the new multipolar world, allowing the US to remain the sole hegemonic power. On European territory, the American strategy is to prevent Russia and the EU from developing as two “poles” in the emerging multipolarity, which is why one side is pitted against the other in a pointless war.

Creating frictions between Russians and Europeans is vital for American interests, since, according to the basic principles of geopolitics, Russian-European friendship could bring great geopolitical advantages. In order to prevent the EU from becoming a partner of Russia in the future, the US is promoting all kinds of sabotage against the Europeans – including criminal acts such as the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines. For the US, the more deindustrialized and disintegrated Europe is, the better – since this prevents the creation of cooperation projects with Moscow and other multipolar powers.

In the end, it is possible to say that the Democrats are doing everything they can to desperately try to maintain American hegemony, even though there are already clear signs that this geopolitical status cannot be protected in the long term. The current administration refuses to recognize the new global geopolitical circumstances, trying in vain to sabotage all states that seek development and sovereignty – including its own European partners.

https://southfront.press/democrats-desperate-to-sabotage-multipolar-geopolitical-transition/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

In my new book, The War Against the Past: Why the West Must Fight For Its History, I argue that unless we retrieve our historical memory, we are doomed to a state of cultural paralysis.

This act of retrieval won’t be easy. Our historical memory is under sustained assault by a significant swathe of our cultural elites. While many involved in this culture war appear to be focussed on controlling the way we speak and think in the here and now, their main mission is to render toxic the legacy of Western civilisation. This ceaseless attack on our history threatens to distort society’s memory of the past and create a state of historical amnesia.

My principal argument is that a key driver of this elite culture war is, as the title of my book suggests, an undeclared war against the past. At times, supporters of the culture war against Western civilisation behave as if its legacy is a menace to the contemporary world. Their frenetic targeting of Western civilisation’s symbols, values and achievements is designed to make people feel ashamed of their cultural origins and who they are. They believe that through gaining control over the representation of the past they can acquire ideological hegemony over the present.

This project goes beyond the rewriting of history. It is about directly intervening in and poisoning society’s memory of the past, and delegitimatising its great achievements. Take the recent decision of the National Gallery in London to present John Constable’s iconic 19th-century painting, The Hay Wain, as a ‘contested landscape’. The curators’ aim here is not to showcase a great work of art but to outline what Constable should have painted. They effectively chide Constable for failing to address the social problems that plagued rural England in the late 18th and early 19th century. ‘Contesting’ this work of art entails questioning its integrity, and encouraging viewers to adopt a cynical attitude towards Constable’s idyllic vision of the rural past.

This attempt to contaminate the past and turn great historic figures into our moral inferiors is often animated by a spirit of revenge. Shakespeare is a favourite target. He is frequently attacked today as a proto white supremacist, despite race not existing as a concept in 16th-century England. Like the National Gallery curators accusing Constable of covering up social injustice, countless academics and writers anachronistically claim that Shakespeare’s great plays carry a racist message. One theatre company even changed the language of Titus Andronicus, ahead of a run at London’s Globe Theatre in 2022, so as to bring out its supposedly implicit racist character. Director Jude Christian said that the language of the production needed to resonate more clearly with the outlook of contemporary audiences. ‘Racism in the play is masked by Shakespeare’s language’, said Christian. ‘What we’ve done is show clearly what the words meant in Shakespeare’s time.’

But Christian’s production didn’t really bring out the meaning of Shakespeare’s language. Rather, it put present-day words into Shakespeare’s mouth. It replaced antiquated 16th-century terms, such as ‘Moor’ and ‘raven-coloured’, with contemporary racial terminology like ‘black’. Through this rewriting, 21st-century ideological attitudes towards race are inserted into a play over four centuries old.

In the aftermath of the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, the Globe even organised anti-racist Shakespeare webinars to discuss race and social themes in Shakespeare’s work. At one American University, Titus Adronicus and other Shakespeare plays were ‘discussed through the lens of critical race theory’.

For today’s culture warriors, what’s important about Shakespeare is not the beauty and audacity of his use of language but his work’s alleged hidden meaning. Those who seek to racialise the Bard’s texts are far more interested in what he did not say than what he did. They arrogantly assume that their versions of these plays, based on what he ‘really meant’, are superior to what Shakespeare actually wrote.

There’s a reason Shakespeare in particular is being presented as an ideologue of ‘whiteness’. It’s because he is recognised as arguably the key figure in the Western canon. By painting him as a proponent of white supremacy, culture warriors are trying to sully the reputation of one of the foundational figures of our entire literary tradition. They want to push him off his pedestal, leave his entire corpus of work compromised and devalue the canon itself.

Culture-war assaults on the likes of Constable and Shakespeare are now the norm. There has rarely been a time when so much energy has been devoted to questioning and criticising historical figures and institutions. Activists appear to be trying to fix contemporary problems by attacking and colonising our shared historical legacy. In doing so, they are erasing the boundary between the present and the past.

The crusade against the past has proven particularly successful at alienating wider society from its own history. Public and private institutions ceaselessly paint history in the darkest colours, and apologise for just about everything that has happened, no matter how long ago. Even the most spectacular achievements of human civilisation, from Greek philosophy to the Enlightenment to the scientific and technological advances of modernity, are now regularly indicted for their supposed association with exploitation and oppression. It is not just a small clique of headline-grabbing historians engaged in these attempts to draw attention to the malevolent, oppressive, exploitative and abusive dimension of the past. In many cultural spheres today, history now possesses the status of the ‘Bad Old Days’.

Those damning history in such terms often call for a break with the past and its legacy. They argue that this is necessary because wider society is not able to acknowledge the wrongs perpetrated by previous generations. They argue that the negative features of the past greatly outweigh the positive ones, and are sceptical of the value of a cultural inheritance that has inspired communities for centuries.

They reserve much of their moral condemnation for the historic achievements of European societies. In these negative histories, inspiring historical experiences and achievements are downplayed or called into question. It is what Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey, during arguments over Australia’s treatment of aboriginal peoples in the 1990s, described as the ‘black armband’ view of history – a history, that is, of mourning past misdeeds.

According to one American proponent of this school of negative history, the United States ought to view its very foundation as a source of shame. It does ‘not yet have the stomach to look over its shoulder and stare directly at the evil on which this great country stands’, she writes. According to this view, writ large in the New York Times’ ‘1619 Project’, the United States’ past possesses few redeeming qualities.

In these negative, accusatory histories, a teleology of evil is at work. They reduce history to a tale of unfolding malevolence – a malevolence that continues to manifest itself in oppressive and exploitative behaviour today. For those who subscribe to this perspective, it is essential to cleanse the present of the influence of the past, to wrest the present free from history. In recent times, this view has evolved from a need to break with history to a desire to exact revenge on it.

This results in a paradox. Those wanting to wrest the present free from the past are simultaneously obsessed with it. This paradox is expressed by advocates of what I call Year Zero ideology. They have twin objectives: to eradicate the past and to denounce the historical memory associated with it. They want to condemn Western civilisation while simultaneously damning and punishing ever more figures and achievements from the past.

Year Zeroists are judging the past according to the norms and values of today, and in doing so they look down on everyone who preceded us. This disdainful attitude towards the world of our ancestors makes no allowances for the different historical circumstances within which they lived. Nor does it appreciate the long and difficult journey on which humanity embarked thousands of years ago. Instead of seeking to understand the different historical experiences through which individuals’ and communities’ attitudes and behaviour developed, Year Zeroists prefer instead to indict them for their superstitious, tradition-bound and oppressive behaviour.

This is to read history backwards. It is to treat past societies in accordance with the experiences and values of the contemporary world. People from the past are contemptuously dismissed as moral inferiors who lack the awareness of their 21st-century critics.

This amounts to a self-flattering presentism. It diminishes society’s sense of historical consciousness and inevitably leads to a failure to grasp different historical moments in their specific contexts. The integrity of the cultural achievements of the past is increasingly treated with indifference. This is why contemporary critics engage with a painting by Constable as if it ought to be addressing rural poverty or a play by Shakespeare as if it is a 21st-century political statement.

What we are witnessing is the unravelling of any sense of historical continuity and the development of a deep historical amnesia. In the late 1970s, American historian Christopher Lasch was one of the first to recognise the coming crisis. ‘We are fast losing the sense of historical continuity’, he wrote in The Culture of Narcissism (1979), ‘the sense of belonging to a succession of generations originating in the past and stretching into the future’.

Since the 1970s, this loss of any sense of historical continuity has mutated into a consciously induced form of historical amnesia. As historian Tony Judt warns:

‘Of all our contemporary illusions, the most dangerous is the one that underpins and accounts for all the others. And that is the idea that we live in a time without precedent: that what is happening to us is new and irreversible and that the past has nothing to teach us.’

The war against the past has further weakened our consciousness of history and fuelled our social amnesia. This poses serious challenges. Presentism limits society’s understanding of historical variability and change, and the role human agency plays in the making of the world.

Contempt for the achievements of our ancestors is profoundly anti-human. By asserting that people in the past have achieved so little worthy of preservation and praise, today’s culture warriors call the moral status of humanity itself into question.

The harm done by the vandalisation of the past lies all about us. Young people are now growing up with a weak sense of connection to what preceded them. They are the human casualties of the war against the past.

This attack on the past also affects Western society’s relationship with the future. We used to view it largely as an opportunity to build on the shoulders of our ancestors, a chance to continue and improve upon the world they had bequeathed to us. That positivity and confidence has evaporated. Today, trapped in a presentist quagmire, the West has turned in on itself. It is full of self-loathing. George Santayana, the Spanish-American philosopher and poet, once said that ‘those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. A nation that cannot remember its own history deprives itself of a future.

Re-reading Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, I am struck by a passage warning of the loss of historical memory. A colleague in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth warns the novel’s protagonist, Winston Smith:

‘By 2050 – earlier probably – all real knowledge of Oldspeak [standard English] will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron – they’ll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be.’

It is not yet 2050, but a crusade designed to distort the understanding of the past is in full swing. Today’s Ministry of Truth operatives are systematically robbing society, especially young people, of their cultural inheritance. Their objective is to turn the past into an object of shame.

A society that becomes ashamed of its historical legacy invariably loses its way. Its capacity to socialise its children quickly weakens, plunging them into a permanent crisis of identity. It is our responsibility to the young to ensure that they have access to the legacy of the past. It provides the foundation for genuine solidarity across society and across generations. Without it, society becomes de-historicised, lost in a timeless wasteland.

As Shakespeare reminded us through the mouth of the Earl of Warwick: ‘There is a history in all men’s lives.’ Human beings are historical animals and the past lives through us. The possession of a sense of the past is integral to what it means to be human. Without it, we are all lesser beings.

These are perilous times. But the war against the past is not over. There is still much to fight for.

Frank Furedi is the executive director of the think-tank, MCC Brussels.

His new book, The War Against the Past: Why the West Must Fight For Its History, is published by Polity. Order it here.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/09/06/why-the-west-must-fight-for-its-history/

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

Why Everything You Know About World War II Is Wrong

“Much of the current political legitimacy of today’s American government and its various European vassal-states is founded upon a particular narrative history of World War II, and challenging that account might have dire political consequences.”—Ron Unz

Let’s start with Hitler. In the West it is universally accepted that:

1. Hitler started WW2
2. Hitler’s invasion of Poland was the first step  in a broader campaign aimed at world domination

Is this interpretation of WW2 true or false? And, if it is false, then—in your opinion—what was Hitler trying to achieve in Poland and could WW2 have been avoided?

Ron Unz—Until the last dozen years or so, my views on historical events had always been fairly conventional, formed from the classes I’d taken in college and the uniform media narrative I’d absorbed over the decades. This included my understanding of World War II, the greatest military conflict in human history, whose outcome had shaped our modern world.

But in the years after the 9/11 Attacks and the Iraq War, I’d grown more and more suspicious of the honesty of our mainstream media, and begun to recognize that history books often merely represent a congealed version of such past media distortions. The growth of the Internet has unleashed a vast quantity of unorthodox ideas of all possible flavors and since 2000 I’d been working on a project to digitize the archives of our leading publications of the last 150 years, which gave me convenient access to information not easily available to anyone else. So as I later wrote:

Aside from the evidence of our own senses, almost everything we know about the past or the news of today comes from bits of ink on paper or colored pixels on a screen, and fortunately over the last decade or two the growth of the Internet has vastly widened the range of information available to us in that latter category. Even if the overwhelming majority of the unorthodox claims provided by such non-traditional web-based sources is incorrect, at least there now exists the possibility of extracting vital nuggets of truth from vast mountains of falsehood. Certainly the events of the past dozen years have forced me to completely recalibrate my own reality-detection apparatus.

As a consequence of all these developments, I published my original American Pravda article a decade ago, which contained that passage. In that article I emphasized that what our history books and media told us about the world and its past might often be just as dishonest and distorted as the notorious Pravda of the vanished USSR.

• Our American Pravda
  Ron Unz • The American Conservative • April 29, 2013 • 4,500 Words

At first, my focus had been on more recent historical events, but I soon began doing a great deal of reading and investigation into the history of World War II as well, gradually realizing that a large fraction of everything I’d always accepted about that war was completely incorrect.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been too surprised to discover this. After all, if our media could lie so blatantly about events in the here and now, why should we trust it on matters that had happened long ago and far away?

I eventually concluded that the true history of World War II was not only quite different from what most of us had always believed, but was largely inverted. Our mainstream history books had been telling the story upside-down and backwards.

With regard to Hitler and the outbreak of the war, I think an excellent starting point would be Origins of the Second World War, a classic work published in 1961 by renowned Oxford historian A.J.P. Taylor. As I described his conclusions in 2019:

Hitler’s final demand, that 95% German Danzig be returned to Germany just as its inhabitants desired, was an absolutely reasonable one, and only a dreadful diplomatic blunder by the British had led the Poles to refuse the request, thereby provoking the war. The widespread later claim that Hitler sought to conquer the world was totally absurd, and the German leader had actually made every effort to avoid war with Britain or France. Indeed, he was generally quite friendly towards the Poles and had been hoping to enlist Poland as a German ally against the menace of Stalin’s Soviet Union.

READ MORE: https://www.unz.com/runz/why-everything-you-know-about-world-war-ii-is-wrong/

SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLay8Cm9h04

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.