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never about "victory"....

When Russia invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago, President Joe Biden set three objectives for the U.S. response. Ukraine’s victory was never among them. The phrase the White House used to describe its mission at the time—supporting Ukraine “for as long as it takes”—was intentionally vague. It also raised the question: As long as it takes to do what?

“We were deliberately not talking about the territorial parameters,” says Eric Green, who served on Biden’s National Security Council at the time, overseeing Russia policy. The U.S., in other words, made no promise to help Ukraine recover all of the land Russia had occupied, and certainly not the vast territories in eastern Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula taken in its initial invasion in 2014. The reason was simple, Green says: in the White House’s view, doing so was beyond Ukraine’s ability, even with robust help from the West. “That was not going to be a success story ultimately. The more important objective was for Ukraine to survive as a sovereign, democratic country free to pursue integration with the West.” 

That was one of the three objectives Biden set. He also wanted the U.S. and its allies to remain united, and he insisted on avoiding direct conflict between Russia and NATO. Looking back on his leadership during the war in Ukraine — certain to shape his legacy as a statesman — Biden has achieved those three objectives. But success on those limited terms provides little satisfaction even to some of his closest allies and advisers. “It’s unfortunately the kind of success where you don’t feel great about it,” Green says in an interview with TIME. “Because there is so much suffering for Ukraine and so much uncertainty about where it’s ultimately going to land.” 

For the Ukrainians, disappointment with Biden has been building throughout the invasion, and they have expressed it ever more openly since the U.S. presidential elections ended in Donald Trump’s victory. In a podcast that aired in early January, President Volodymyr Zelensky said the U.S. had not done enough under Biden to impose sanctions against Russia and to provide Ukraine with weapons and security guarantees. “With all due respect to the United States and the administration,” Zelensky told Lex Fridman, “I don’t want the same situation like we had with Biden. I ask for sanctions now, please, and weapons now.” 

 

The criticism was unusually pointed, and seems all the more remarkable given how much support the U.S. has given Ukraine during Biden’s tenure—$66 billion in military assistance alone since the February 2022 Russian invasion, according to the U.S. State Department. Combine that with all of the aid Congress has approved for Ukraine’s economic, humanitarian, and other needs, and the total comes to around $183 billion as of last September, according to Ukraine Oversight, a U.S. government watchdog created in 2023 to monitor and account for all of this assistance. 

Yet Zelensky and some of his allies insist that the U.S. has been too cautious in standing up to Russia, especially when it comes to granting Ukraine a clear path to NATO membership. “It is very important that we share the same vision for Ukraine’s security future – in the E.U. and NATO,” the Ukrainian president said during his most recent visit to the White House in September.

During that visit, Zelensky gave Biden a detailed list of requests that he described as Ukraine’s “victory plan.” Apart from calling for an invitation to join NATO, the plan urged the U.S. to strengthen Ukraine’s position in the war with a massive new influx of weapons and the permission to use them deep inside Russian territory. Biden had by then announced that he would not run for re-election, and the Ukrainians hoped that his lame-duck status would free him to make bolder decisions, in part to secure his legacy in foreign affairs. “For us his legacy is an argument,” a senior member of Zelensky’s delegation to Washington told TIME. “How will history remember you?” 

The appeals got a mixed reception. On the question of Ukraine’s NATO membership, Biden would not budge. But he did sign off on a number of moves that the White House had long rejected as too dangerous. In November, the U.S. allowed Ukraine to use American missiles to strike deep inside Russian territory. And in January, the Biden administration imposed tough sanctions against the Russian energy sector, including the “shadow fleet” of tankers Russia has used to export its oil. 

While these decisions fell short of what Zelensky wanted, they helped Biden make the case during the last foreign-policy speech of his tenure that the U.S. had met its goals in defending Ukraine. He remained careful, however, not to promise that Ukraine would regain any more of its territory, or even survive to the end of this war. Russian President Vladimir Putin “has failed thus far to subjugate Ukraine,” Biden said in his address at the State Department on Jan. 13. “Today, Ukraine is still a free, independent country, with the potential — the potential for a bright future.” 

The future that Zelensky and many of his countrymen have in mind is one in which Russia is defeated. But in rallying the world to the fight, the implication Biden embedded in his own goals was that defending Ukraine against Russia is not the same as defeating Russia. So it is not surprising if that goal remains far from Zelensky’s reach.

https://time.com/7207661/bidens-ukraine-win-zelensky-loss/

 

 

In total, Ukraine has lost over 53,330 servicepeople and 308 tanks during the offensive in Kursk region, the ministry added.

https://sputnikglobe.com/20250120/ukraine-loses-over-460-soldiers-in-kursk-region-in-past-day---mod-1121473363.html

 

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

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

HYPOCRISY ISN’T ONE OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS SINS.

HENCE ITS POPULARITY IN THE ABRAHAMIC TRADITIONS…

 

 

from the front....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4ERSabG99k

Kursk Frontline Combat: Massive Russian Artillery Strikes On Ukraine

 

Kursk Frontline Combat: A Glimpse into Russia's Artillery Strikes on Ukrainian Forces
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In my latest report from the frontlines of the Kursk region, I provide an exclusive look at the Russian forces' artillery operations against Ukrainian positions. Accompanied by the Akhmat special forces, I travel deep into the heart of the conflict, where Russian artillery units are gearing up to deliver devastating strikes on Ukrainian targets.


#russiaukrainewar #russia #kursk

Months ago, Ukrainian forces breached the Russian border, occupying over 1,500 square kilometers of Russian territory. Since then, Russian forces have successfully pushed them back to less than 500 square kilometers. Now, in the Kursk region, I am on the ground to show you firsthand what the real situation looks like. This report offers an unfiltered view of the artillery strikes and the realities of war that you won’t see in mainstream media.

An Inside Look at the Russian Artillery Operations

I meet with Sergey, a member of the Akhmat special forces, who explains that we’re heading to a D-20 artillery unit, a 152mm howitzer, stationed to target Ukrainian forces. The situation on the frontline varies, Sergey tells me, and while some days are calm, there is always a constant tension—especially with the threat of return fire from Ukrainian forces.

The potential danger of counterattacks is very real. Russian artillery crews have to stay vigilant. After every shot, they quickly lower their position and retreat to shelter, constantly aware of the risk of drone strikes and artillery retaliation. Sergey also mentions that FPV drones, often used by Ukrainian forces, pose an additional hazard in the area.

Facing the Dangers of War: Personal Reflections

As we travel closer to the frontlines, I reflect on the personal risks that come with reporting from such dangerous locations. Just days earlier, a journalist friend of mine was tragically killed outside Donetsk when a Ukrainian drone dropped a bomb on a civilian vehicle. His death serves as a harsh reminder of the dangers that reporters face in conflict zones. Each moment I spend on the frontline, I think of my family, praying for their safety and hoping that I’ll return home unscathed.

This report, like many others I produce, is a direct response to the information gap that exists in much of the Western media. I feel a responsibility to bring these stories to light, especially since very few independent journalists are providing the kind of coverage that I am from the Russian side of the conflict. I believe that if I don’t show it, it won’t be shown.

The Artillery in Action

We arrive at the artillery position, and the crew is readying the massive 152mm gun for action. The artillerymen, including “Soldat” and “Saiga,” describe their roles in the operation. They’re part of a highly trained team that uses precise coordinates to strike enemy positions—whether large targets or infantry.

The gun has a range of about 15 to 17 kilometers, and once the order to fire is given, the artillery crew quickly prepares. The risks of counter-battery fire from Ukrainian forces are ever-present, but the soldiers remain resolute. “You should never underestimate your enemy,” one artilleryman tells me.

The crew, composed of individuals from various regions of Russia, is highly skilled and motivated, with many volunteering to serve in the Akhmat unit for the opportunity to contribute to the war effort. For them, it’s a “matter of duty”, and they “take pride” in their ability to fire precision artillery on enemy positions. But the danger remains high, as they are constantly on alert for incoming fire or drone strikes.

The Final Command

The tension builds as we witness the artillery being loaded and aimed at a Ukrainian position. The crew waits for the final command to fire, which could come at any moment. The anticipation is palpable. As soon as the command is given, the massive cannon roars to life, sending a round toward the enemy. After the first round is fired, the team quickly retreats to a safe distance, knowing that the danger of counter-fire is imminent.

A War in the Shadows

In this report, I bring you a rare glimpse into the realities of war in the Kursk region. From the strategic operations of the Russian artillery units to the personal experiences of the soldiers on the ground, this is a perspective that rarely makes it into mainstream news.
No matter which side of the conflict you’re on, it’s important to seek out as much information as possible and remain open-minded about the complex realities of this war.

 

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

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

criminal mercenaries....

 Clearing the liberated territories of the rabble of international mercenaries and terrorists is a matter of Russia’s security

 

Oleg Falichev

Konstantin Strigunov

 

After the liberation and annexation of new territories in the SVO zone to Russia, the question of carrying out their cleansing from nationalists hiding under civilian guise, covert saboteurs and criminal elements associated with international criminal syndicates and cartels is becoming increasingly acute.

In many ways, this task falls on the army counterintelligence, special services, and military police. What is the situation here and what should we be prepared for? Leading analyst of the Association of Information Operations Specialists, candidate of political sciences Konstantin STRIGUNOV answered this and other questions in an interview with SP.

 

“SP”: Konstantin Sergeyevich, we admire the courage of our fighters, we rejoice at the newly liberated settlements. But we do not always think about the fact that representatives of intelligence agencies and criminal structures can settle in these territories and disguise themselves as civilians. How serious is this threat?

— The President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin has already spoken out on this topic.

 

 

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He believes that security agencies and law enforcement agencies should pay special attention to neutralizing criminal syndicates that are cross-border in nature and operate jointly with foreign intelligence services and extremist structures. He stated this at the board meeting of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in 2024.

“Such criminal communities are tied to human trafficking, illegal arms trafficking, financial and cyber crimes, and drug trafficking,” the president said. He demanded that law enforcement agencies prevent the legalization of saboteurs in new Russian regions where the SVO is ongoing or has ended.

In the most difficult situation, when military actions continue, more than 3 million 200 thousand residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson regions have already received passports of citizens of the Russian Federation. But among them, of course, there may be criminal elements.

 

“SP”: Ukraine has long ceased to be a subject of international law, as has its expired president. How has this affected the crime situation in this country, the regime’s ties with international terrorist organizations?

— Ukraine with its corruption and lawlessness is a perfect environment for international criminal groups and terrorists from the Middle East and Latin America. Among the militants captured by our soldiers there are many representatives of these regions. And it is not only about the large fees for the murder of our citizens.

In recent decades, Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) has seen a radical increase and strengthening of a number of criminal organizations – various gangs and cartels.

These include Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel and Jalisco New Generation Cartel, transnational criminal organizations such as Brazil’s First Capital Command and El Salvador’s Mara Salvatrucha, Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua mega-gang, and many others.

 

Media News

The feat of a Russian soldier in the SVO amazed the whole world

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The feat of the Russian soldier impressed the whole world

 

The largest criminal organizations have reached an unprecedented level of development, obtaining enormous resources through drug trafficking, arms sales, control of prostitution, racketeering, illegal mining and many other forms of criminal business.

Moreover, criminal structures are uniting into transnational criminal networks that penetrate into various corners of the world. Criminal communities from different regions are integrated into these networks – from North America to Africa and Oceania.

The illegal incomes obtained allow gangs, cartels and mafias to expand their illegal and subversive activities, destabilizing states and their societies. It is not just a matter of their quantitative increase, but also of organizational complexity, the ability to conduct increasingly sophisticated criminal operations and, finally, politicization.

The essence of the politicization of criminal organizations with a selfish, i.e. criminal-economic, motivation is that these non-state violent actors, as a result of their evolution and activity, are able to cause such harm to states as if they had set political goals for themselves. In Ukraine, I repeat, excellent fertile ground has now been created for their germination and prosperity.

 

“SP”: But traditionally it is believed that the threat to the state itself, its national security as a whole, is posed only by politically motivated criminal organizations, which include terrorists or rebels…

— They are also called insurgents. In this case, the key qualifying feature of criminal organizations is the motive.

If the motive is political (ideological, religious), then it is considered that we are talking about rebels or terrorists. If it is selfish, then we are talking about gangs, cartels, mafias.

However, this approach is becoming outdated for two reasons. First, terrorists are increasingly commercializing, using organized crime tactics for operational purposes. Second, organized crime is increasingly using terrorist tactics for operational purposes. At times, one is becoming indistinguishable from the other.

It turns out that in order to achieve their criminal-economic goals, criminals and terrorists must achieve de facto political goals.

 

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I think that our special services may encounter precisely these manifestations in a number of liberated territories. And although the majority of the population is certainly on our side, it is very intimidated and is not always able to declare its civic position. This will take time.

 

SP: It turns out that Russia is a thorn in the side of international terrorists and Western criminals?

— Despite the fact that Russia is geographically far from the countries of Latin America, the gangs and cartels operating there pose a threat to its national security. Let me remind you that the Andean region, which includes Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, is one of the two key planetary centers of drug production, primarily cocaine hydrochloride.

Our country is considered by transnational crime as a logistics hub through which drugs are sent to the countries of the European Union. Don’t forget about Afghanistan with its traditional drug production, which is even closer to our southern borders.

To understand the scale of this entire criminal business, it is enough to cite the example of how, during just one operation in Moscow in December 2023, the FSB seized 673 kg of Latin American cocaine worth 2.5 billion rubles.

There are many such cases. After all, the profits from drug sales can be used to finance Islamist terrorist networks linked to the intelligence services of hostile states. These entities carry out various subversive activities inside Russia, from committing terrorist acts to recruiting people who then carry out sabotage.

Moreover, as is known, the Security Service of Ukraine is in fact a terrorist organization. All the latest terrorist attacks, including the shooting of people in Crocus City Hall, the murder of Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov and his assistant, are its doing.

The SBU is deliberately distributing drugs among Russian youth, especially among minors. All of this can and should be viewed as components of a new type of total hybrid war waged by the collective West against Russia.

Another threat to Russia, reported by the Foreign Intelligence Service, is the attempts of American PMCs, under the leadership of the Drug Enforcement Administration and the FBI, to train Colombians, Mexicans, and criminals from other countries serving sentences in US prisons to participate in military operations against Russia on the side of the Kyiv terrorist regime.

 

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It is noteworthy that in recent months, information has increasingly appeared about mercenaries from Colombia liquidated in the SVO zone. It is possible that some of them could have been related to Latin American criminal organizations. Thus, despite the geographical remoteness of the LAC, Russia is also in the field of view of Latin American criminal organizations.

 

SP: What countermeasures do you think are necessary?

— The fusion of traditional criminal activity, terrorist networks and special services of hostile states is especially dangerous. The former provide the means, the latter the perpetrators, and the third are the main and shadow organizers of terrorist attacks aimed at destabilizing our Motherland.

This is why continuous improvement of the means and methods of counteracting this fundamental threat to Russia’s national security is necessary. Particular attention should be paid to intelligence, including in the criminal environment.

This is the only way to reduce the risks associated with the unification of criminal offences, extremism (especially Wahhabism) in the form of terrorist networks and subversive activities of foreign intelligence services.

Particular attention should be paid to the radical tightening of Russia’s migration policy, since it is precisely in the migrant environment that hostile external forces find it easiest to find perpetrators of terrorist attacks. But most importantly, we need victory on the battlefield, which, as recent events at the front show, will definitely be ours.

https://www.theinteldrop.org/2025/01/20/american-al-qaeda-colombian-mercenaries-the-us-deploys-against-russia-are-graduates-of-american-prisons-trained-by-the-fbi/

 

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

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

no to victory....

By Dave DeCamp / Antiwar.com

President Biden spent hundreds of billions of dollars supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, but according to a report from Time Magazine, a Ukrainian victory was never his goal.

Throughout the nearly three-year proxy war, the Biden administration never set any clear goals and only repeated mantras, such as the promise to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”

Eric Green, who was on Biden’s National Security Council at the time of the invasion, told Time that the administration never gave any promises to help Ukraine take back the land Russian forces had captured.

“We were deliberately not talking about the territorial parameters,” Green said. “That was not going to be a success story ultimately. The more important objective was for Ukraine to survive as a sovereign, democratic country free to pursue integration with the West.”

The report said Biden set three objectives for the war: ensure Ukraine would survive as a sovereign state, keep the US and its allies united, and avoid a direct war with Russia.

However, there was another goal not mentioned in the report: weakening Russia, something then-Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin acknowledged back in April 2022 after his first trip to Ukraine during the war. Austin’s trip came after the US and its allies discouraged peace talks between Russia and Ukraine even though there was a deal on the table that could have led to a Russian withdrawal in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality.

On their way out, Biden administration officials claimed the proxy war was a success despite Ukraine’s lack of a path toward victory. “It’s unfortunately the kind of success where you don’t feel great about it,” Green told Time. “Because there is so much suffering for Ukraine and so much uncertainty about where it’s ultimately going to land.”

The Time report noted that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who defined victory as expelling Russian forces and taking Crimea, recently complained about Biden despite the massive amount of aid he provided.

“With all due respect to the United States and the administration,” Zelensky told podcast host Lex Fridman, “I don’t want the same situation like we had with Biden. I ask for sanctions now, please, and weapons now.”

 

https://scheerpost.com/2025/01/22/a-ukrainian-victory-was-never-bidens-goal-time-magazine/

 

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

 

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

 

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kiss america's arse or we break your windows....