The major news regarding the wars NATO and its allies are waging was the approval of a long awaited ‘aid package’ of $61 billion from the US to Ukraine. Clearly, this is subsidy for the American weapons industry, and a windfall for anyone invested in it, gambling on a last moment change of heart of the ‘speaker’ Mike Johnson.
Reportedly, the weapons packages are already assembled and ready to be shipped, with no time to lose, as Ukraine is about to go under. The last of the carefully prepared fortresses facing Donetsk and Luhansk, the pride and joy of NATO, is about to fall. And Ukraine is out of everything. To my understanding this includes qualified and properly trained soldiers to man the sophisticated and cumbersome equipement requiring lots of maintenance, so who knows how NATO is going to solve that thorny issue? On top of all that, Belgium said that F-16’s will arrive before the summer, and various European countries, including Holland, are pledging billions upon billions. It is unclear whether this only will inflate the prices of ammo and weapons systems still available, as weapons traders see opportunities, or that it will actually produce weapons and ammo at fair price-levels from factories which found additional capacity.
Multiple claims from Ukraine about miraculous victories, destroying a valuable, very sophisticated radar system capable of detecting stealth aircraft like the JSF, and downing a Tu-22-M, but satellite images of the radar site appear to deny that claim, while the Russians said they lost this bomber due to a mechanical failure. I don’t know who is telling the truth, but if Ukraine somehow developed a long range air defense missile system, capable of intercepting targets at over 350 kilometers, I wonder why they prioritized that, as well as those long range ‘Neptune’ systems, while their front is falling apart. But let’s see what happens next, and how much of the weapons, aircraft and ammo reaches its destination.
In the other theatre, there was some ‘nuisance’ reported over Isfahan, where the Iranians took down some drones, while the media were reporting this was the Israeli counter attack. If that was true, they should have stayed home and done nothing. This was a horrible embarrassment. Or is there more to come? One generally well informed and trustworthy reporter, Pepe Escobar, claiming multiple sources to his story, said that the Israeli plan had been to detonate a nuclear bomb at high altitude, creating an ‘EMP’, ‘Electro Magnetic Pulse’, damaging electrical circuitry in Iran, but that the Russians shot down the JSF carrying that ordnance after it cleared Jordan. No way to confirm this story. I haven’t heard of any debris of the aircraft, or the nuke, although I did see some pictures from Iraq which depicted some semi-submerged bomb or rockets which was said to have been carried by an Israeli F-16 attacking targets inside Iraq itself. And there is no high level conformation from any source, so it may very well have been a fancy story fed to Escobar for whatever reason.
But…..
A real NAFO propagandist from Germany, one Herr Nauditt, drew attention to the fact that the US launched a massive number of B-2 strategic bombers all at once, for no apparent reason. Something must have tripped their fuses, right? Herr Nauditt jokingly asked if they were going to be part of the package sent to Ukraine, but what if it had been in response to this development in the Middle East? I’m only reporting it to make you aware of the story, and to keep your eyes peeled for information suggesting there might be some truth in it, because that would most certainly be a very significant development.
These theaters of war are generally considered to be separate, or Putin is blamed for October 7 to distract the all powerful US from its obligations towards Ukraine. But they are linked, although I don’t think Putin has anything to do with it as the person who initiated this. The US vetoing the acceptance of a Palestinian state as a member of the UN has its own set of consequences, no doubt. Don’t relax. Things are not anywhere close to where they used to be. Stealing the frozen Russians money passed the first hurdle in US Congress, while a bill allowing the government to listen in on all communications in the US, even if there is no suspicion, made it past Congress as well, and is now awaiting the signature of Joe Biden who requested it. You are living in ‘interesting times’.