26 Sep, 2023 13:51

‘Killed’ Russian fleet commander spotted in new MOD video

Admiral Viktor Sokolov was shown at a meeting of senior military officials after Kiev claimed he was killed

The Ukrainian military claims it killed the commander of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. On Tuesday, Admiral Viktor Sokolov was participating remotely in a high-profile meeting, images released by the Russian Defense Ministry show.

Kiev’s claim came on Monday from its Special Operations Command, which bragged about two recent missile attacks on the Crimean Peninsula. The strike at the headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol last Friday resulted in thedeaths of 34 officers, “including the commander of the Black Sea Fleet,” the Ukrainian military said on social media.

On Tuesday, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu chaired a regular briefing of senior military officials. Sokolov’s face could be seen in a photo and video materials from the event, displayed on a large screen behind the minister’s back with the caption ‘ChP’ (an abbreviation for the Black Sea Fleet in Russian). Presumably, the admiral was participating in the meeting remotely, as did other naval commanders displayed alongside him.

Kiev has been raising the claimed kill countin the Sevastopol strike in recent days. On Sunday, Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kirill Budanov stated that the attack killed at least nine people and injured 16 others, including two generals. Speaking to the local branch of the US-government funded outlet Voice of America, he said he could not confirm the status of Sokolov.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported a single service member missing in action on the day of the strike. British media outlets have claimed that Kiev used UK-provided Storm Shadow missiles in the attack.

https://www.rt.com/russia/583575-commander-black-sea-fleet/

25 Sep, 2023

Russian drone strikes Ukrainian jet from long range (VIDEO)

Upgraded kamikaze drones are now reportedly able to reach key Ukrainian air bases

Russia has upgraded its ‘Lancet’ kamikaze drones to reach targets more than 80km away, a source close to the manufacturer has revealed. Video footage shared last week confirms this upgrade, with a camera on the nose of a Lancet drone capturing the moment a Ukrainian MiG-29 was obliterated as it sat at an airbase.

Circulating online since last Tuesday, the video shows the drone descending toward a military airfield near Krivoy Rog from high altitude. Honing in on a Soviet-era MiG-29, the drone rapidly draws closer until the camera feed is cut as it delivers its explosive payload directly behind the plane’s cockpit.

A second drone hovering nearby filmed the moment of impact. With the jet engulfed in smoke and fire, it is unclear whether the aircraft was left repairable after the blast.

Russia regularly uses Lancet drones to target Ukrainian equipment and armor. The inexpensive devices have proved devastatingly effective against Western-made tanks. However, the strike on Krivoy Rog drew the attention of the Western media, as the distance between the Russian front line and the airfield was beyond the previously known range of the Lancet.

“The real problem is that Russia’s one-way ‘suicide’ drones apparently now range as far as 45 miles (72 kilometers),” Forbes wrote on Tuesday, noting that with the Krivoy Rog base and another similar facility near Nikolayev now within range, the development is “bad news for the scrappy Ukrainian air force.”

Developed by Zala Aero, a subsidiary of the Kalashnikov concern, two versions of the Lancet are currently in use by Russian forces. A smaller variant can carry a 1kg payload and fly for 30 minutes, while a larger version can haul 3kg of explosives and fly for 40 minutes.

Both were thought to have a range of around 40km, but a source close to Zala told Russia’s RIA news agency last week that the company “has introduced a number of innovations into the hardware and software complex of the Lancet unmanned system…which make it possible to variably use kamikaze drones outside the direct radio visibility of the ground control complex.”

As a result, the source said that Russian forces wereable to hit the Ukrainian jetfrom a launch point ofmore than 80km away.

https://www.rt.com/russia/583549-lancet-drone-fighter-jet/

26 Sep, 2023 11:39

Kiev stonewalled Warsaw’s probe into missile deaths – media

Polish investigators have reportedly ruled out Ukrainian claims that Russia was the culprit in the November 2022 incident

Polish investigators have confirmed that a missile strike that killed two farmers in the border village of Przewodow, was fired by Ukrainian forces, the Rzeczpospolita newspaper reported on Tuesday.The probe findings directly contradict multiple claims by Kievthat Russia was responsible for the incident.

The outlet referenced a comprehensive report prepared by investigators who examined all available forensic evidence in the case. A spokesperson for the National Prosecutor’s Office acknowledged the receipt of this classified document.

“We have sent an application for legal assistance to Ukraine, and we are waiting for a response,” the official told the publication.

The newspaper claimed thatso far Kiev “has not made any materials available to Poland”.

The tragedy in Przewodow happened last November amid a Russian missile barrage hitting targets in Western Ukraine. The victims, aged 59 and 60, were killed after a projectile hit a grain farm.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky immediately branded the incident a “Russian missile strike on collective security.” Hours later, Warsaw reported that the weapon was most likely Ukrainian, but the leadership in Kiev doubled down on claims that Russia fired it.

According to Rzeczpospolita, Polish investigators have identified the missile responsible as a 5V55 model known to be used in the Soviet-designed S-300 air defense system. Polish authorities have alsopinpointed the precise location from which this missile originated in Ukraine. The article points out that, given the interceptor’s range, it is evident that it could not have been launched from any Russian positions at that particular moment, including those in Belarus.

Sources cited by the newspaper, who are familiar with the investigation, explained thatKiev was employing a strategy of firing two anti-air missiles at each incoming target to enhance the likelihood of interception.However, the experts suggested that, in this particular case, the projectile in question failed to self-destruct.

Senior Ukrainian officials had reportedly expressed their willingness to collaborate in investigating the incident. Aleksey Danilov, the secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defense Council, asserted that Kiev possessed “evidence of a Russian trace” and offered to share it with Warsaw.

According to Rzeczpospolita, however, Polish prosecutors declined to undertake a joint investigation and did not permit Ukrainian officials to visit the site of the strike, citing legal constraints. Instead, they sought assistance through established bilateral channels, the newspaper reported.

The publication also noted the incident in Konstantinovka, a city under Kiev’s control in Donbass, where a missile struck a market, resulting in the deaths of at least 15 civilians.

President Zelensky accused Russia of being responsible for the strike. Last week, The New York Times published findings suggesting that a Ukrainian Buk missile was likely responsible for the deaths.

https://www.rt.com/news/583571-polish-deaths-ukrainian-missile/

UNCANNY! FBI Predicted Those Jan 6 Riots They Instigated

Stephen Green

9:07 AM on September 26, 2023

“Violent extremists” would be “very willing to take action” on Jan 6, the FBI correctly predicted two months before the riots the Bureau helped organize and instigate.

Funny how that works, isn’t it?

It’s a predictably breathless report from NBC News examining an internal FBI analysis that determined the Stop the Steal protests would =•require “law enforcement preemption” but that the “disorganization” of extremist groups would “hinder widespread violence.”••

Unless, you know, the FBI stepped in to help organize things a bit.

More:

Trump’s infamous “will be wild” tweet on Dec. 19, 2020, inviting his supporters to Washington, both the committee and federal prosecutors say, was the call to action that caused disorganized extremists to zero in on a date and time: Jan. 6, in the nation’s capital. The day Trump sent that tweet, as NBC News reported, a confidential human source told the FBI that the far right saw the tweet as a “call to arms” and that there was a “big” threat of violence on Jan. 6.

Emphasis added, but I’ll get to that in just a sec.

Trump’s “infamous” tweet was about as innocuous as could be. The whole thing reads, “Peter Navarro releases 36-page report alleging election fraud ‘more than sufficient’ to swing victory to Trump. A great report by Peter. Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”

When a party invite says, “Be there, will be wild!” guests know to expect loud music and strong drinks — not a riot.

But just to be clear, there were two events on Jan 6, one outside and one inside the Capitol. The outside event was the actual Stop the Steal protest, and it was entirely peaceful. The indoor event was a confused riot. And by “confused,” I mean it had everything from peaceful weirdos like the Viking helmet guy (QAnon ‘Shaman’ Jacob Chansley) to the police killing of an unarmed protestor (Ashli Babbitt) in cold blood. Even more confusing, while some rioters — the violent ones — could be seen breaking Capitol Building windows, others were let in by police and allowed a lovely, off-hours tour.

Back to that emphasized line from the NBC News report. It said that“a confidential human source told the FBIthat the far right saw the tweet as a ‘call to arms’ and that there was a ‘big’ threat of violence on Jan. 6.”

The FBI mole told the FBI exactly what the FBI wanted to hear, “justifying” the FBI’s involvement on Jan 6.

PJ Media’s own Matt Margolis reported last week that there are “lingering questions about the riot are how many FBI agents and informants were embedded amongst the demonstrators and what role they played in instigating the violence.”

“How many informants were involved?” Matt asked. “We still don’t know exactly.”

As I quipped on Instapundit about Matt’s story last week, the Capitol Building riots look “increasingly like an FBI sausage party.” For those lucky enough to be uninitiated, a sausage party is a party/social event/dating app/etc. where the women fail to show up.

Then there’s riot organizer Ray Epps, who many on the Right believe to be an FBI informant. The Left dismisses that notion as a conspiracy theory, yet Epps was somehow given a slap on the wrist — he pled guilty last week to a single misdemeanor charge — while others received harsh treatment while awaiting trial and record-setting punishments after being found guilty.

Remember when we learned how the FBI fabricated out of whole cloth an extremist “plot” to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer?

As CJ Ciaramella put it for Reason last year, “The Whitmer case is more than just a high-profile embarrassment. It’s a window into the FBI’s decades long strategy, born of powers granted to fight the war on terror, of pursuing criminal investigations against hypothetical criminal acts that may never be committed based on evidence that amounts to little more than fringe political or ideological speech.”

I could write an entire additional column detailing the various ways Democrats have conveniently exploited Jan 6 to punish their political opponents and silence their critics.

“Never let a serious crisis go to waste,” Democrat Rahm Emanuel once said as his justification for expanding government power “to do things you think you could not do before.” And as I’ve added on many occasions about what Emanuel might have been thinking:“Not even if you have to create the crisis.”

So, yeah,I’m more than willing to accuse our modern-day Praetorian Guards of instigating the Jan 6 violence.

https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2023/09/26/uncanny-fbi-predicted-those-jan-6-riots-they-institgated-n1729812

The Morning Briefing: The Lying 'Hate Speech' Censor Fascists Are Winning Hearts and Minds

Stephen Kruiser

Top O’ the Briefing

Another day, another lament about a freedom almost on life support in Joe Biden’s America. This is getting to be like a “Groundhog Day” scenario but with nightmares, don’t you think?

As someone who has spent my adult life speaking and writing for a living, I greatly value the freedom of expression I’ve enjoyed as an American entertainer and writer. As I made my way as a young comedian in the glorious 1980s, free speech was something I honestly thought I would never have to worry about in my career.

Had I been a writer of dystopian horror fiction, I might have foreseen the rise of the 21st-century freedom-hating Left in the United States.

Those leftists are so insidious that they hid their assault on free speech in plain sight by attacking “hate speech.” Well, it’s working. This is from something Catherine wrote yesterday:

A new poll from Real Clear Politics (RCP) highlights adangerous anti-freedom trend in America, as 50% of Republicans and about 75% of Democrats reportedly approve of the government violating the Constitutionand targeting “hateful” online content.

In modern America, it should be increasingly clear that “hateful” is a highly subjective word that can be applied to anything with which a person disagrees. Thus affirming biological realities about sex has actually been called genocide. So not only is the term completely subjective, and thus highly dangerous as a standard for targeting content, but the First Amendment is not meant to apply only to speech that is non-controversial. It is mostly meant to apply to speech that could be controversial, with which some or most people disagree. The federal government thus has no right or ability at all to target free speech. And if this poll is accurate, the fact that so many Americans reportedly think it does is incredibly disturbing.

It’s the subjectivity that Catherine mentions that’s always been so maddening. For a very long time in this country, there was a standard: my offense at what you said didn’t mean you had no right to say it.

Then the hippie radicals from the sixties bathed and took over public education, and everything became an emotion-based mess (all of which is explored in my classic “Don’t Let the Hippies Shower“). That shift led directly to where we are today. The grievance addicts on the Left have weaponized their emotional weakness and are using it to erode life as we know it.

This poll may only deal with the censorship of online hate speech, but we all know that’s a slippery slope that will be greased up anew each morning. Giving a nod to the censorship of online content doesn’t end well for speech in general.

I must say that I’m a bit skeptical of the Republican response in the poll. People can identify however they want in polls, often untruthfully. However, any Republicans who do condone the Big Brother approach to alleged hate speech are monumentally stupid. Things that offend people on the Right will never be labeled hate speech. Leftists, however, can — and often do — threaten violence against conservatives and face no consequences whatsoever. That will always be the case.

The number of young people comfortable with censorship is further proof that the American public education indoctrination mill is having great success. It will continue to do so until we choke it off with greater school choice and/or the abolishment of the Department of Education.

Hate speech doesn’t exist. It’s a leftist construct designed to weaken the First Amendment to the point of unsustainability. It may be working for the moment but there’s still time to fight back.

I’m hoping to offend some people along the way as I do so.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stephen-kruiser/2023/09/26/the-morning-briefing-the-lying-hate-speech-censor-fascists-are-winning-hearts-and-minds-n1729796

Democrats Are Intolerant Racists and We Know Why

Gwendolyn Sims

By now, pretty much everyone has heard the Democrats’ incessant claim that they are the (only!) party of true tolerance and inclusion. But have you noticed lately how their well-crafted facade is slipping faster than Joe Biden’s anemic poll numbers? While it’s not really new to any of us who follow politics, the Democrats showing their racism so blatantly is new.

Speaking of Good Ol’ Democratic Joe, if he’s such an inclusive and non-racist, why did he recently feel the need to divide Americans into purely racial groups like “African-American and Hispanic workers and veterans”? And why did he further declare that those specific races of people are “you know, the workers without high school diplomas”? Maybe Grandpa Joe has forgotten it’s 2023 and not 1963.

And if that wasn’t cringy enough, how about this embarrassing incident where Biden fumbled rap legend LL Cool J’s name in a lame attempt to sound hip and then called him “boy”? Yikes. And the sad thing is, that wasn’t even the first time Good Ol’ Joe has used that tired racist epithet to refer to a black person, and it won’t be the last, which kinda makes it impossible to believe it was a slip, right?

His cognitive problems aside, you have to feel sorry for the old guy since it must really be difficult for a hardened old segregationist like him to not only remember it’s 2023 but that that kind of bigotry of low expectations really isn’t in vogue among his party’s Klan memberscohorts anymore. I mean, it’s been years since his beloved KKK white-sheet-wearing and white supremacist mentor Robert Byrd descended into Hell left the planet, but Biden’s a busy guy with an unprecedented number of vacations to attend, none of which will involve a trip to America’s over-run southern border.

Meanwhile, as PJ Media reported, there’s the New York Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul, who “pleaded with illegal aliens that ‘there must be other cities’ they could go to because New York City is ‘truly out of space’ to squeeze them in.” I mean, how racist can you get not wanting all those poor habitual criminal trespassing “migrants” to come to your welcoming state? Just because Hochul welcomed them in from afar and the Democrats’ own lack of immigration policies incentivized every poor person from every hostile corner of the world to come to America, it certainly doesn’t mean they should actually come to live in New York becausethey should stay in Texas, well, that’s just virtue-signaling crazy.

How racist is New York City Mayor Eric Adams? Pretty racist. He doesn’t want any more of those dirty virtuous “migrants” in his pristine city either. In fact, Adams recently claimed they will “destroy” The Big Apple.

Adams has complained about the city’s illegal immigrants overflowing because of that dastardly Texas “madman,” Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who buses illegal immigrants north to self-declared sanctuary cities. What a madman!

NIMBY, amirite, Adams?

Then there’s Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who said, “Chicago will always be a welcoming city and a champion for the rights of our immigrant and refugee communities,” which apparently means illegal immigrants have the right to live in tent city communities. How compassionate.

If the Democratic Party really truly cared about the millions of illegal immigrants invading our southern border, they’d tell them to stay home, not encourage them with false promises to risk violent assaults, rape, disease, and death coming to a country that can’t take care of them.

In the end,the reason Democrats weaponized racism and hate for the last half a century or more is to fuel their ruthless pursuit of powerat any cost. Now, they’re just not hiding it anymore.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/gwendolynsims/2023/09/26/democrats-are-intolerant-racists-and-we-know-why-n1728304

Zelensky offers insight into family history, igniting debate over Ukrainian Holocaust memory

03.23.22 | 10:24

Ukrainian president says great grandparents were killed by Nazis in a blaze that consumed their entire village; Zelensky's account comes afterIsraeli legislators accused him of conjuring Holocaust to garner support for war-torn Ukraine

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky‘s great-grandparents died when the Nazis burned their village, he said in an interview on CNN Monday

Speaking through a translator with Fareed Zakaria, Zelensky said, as he has many times before, that his grandfather and his grandfather’s brothers all entered the Soviet Red Army, and only his grandfather survived.

He also offered details about what happened to his grandfather’s parents that have not previously been reported in English.

“His father and his mother were killed in a terrible fire. The Nazis set ablaze the entire village where they lived and where my grandfather was born,” he said.

Zelensky did not name the village. But massacres by fire were part of the Nazi army’s playbook in Ukrainian territory and elsewhere. In one well known case, the village of Koryukovka was burned in 1943 after its residents were shot in retaliation for partisan activity based there; the Jews of Koryukovka had largely been deported and murdered already.

Zelensky also did not mention the Holocaust or the fact that his grandparents were Jewish, even as Zakaria asked him to comment on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “denazification” agenda as “somebody who is of Jewish descent.” Instead, he talked about “the war.”

“When Russians are telling about neo-Nazis and they turn to me,” he said, “I just reply that I have lost my entire family in the war because all of them were exterminated during World War II.”

Jews from the former Soviet Union said Zelensky’s way of speaking about his family history was not surprising.

“Soviet policy after the war was one narrative: the Soviet people suffered greatly. The government would not acknowledge that the Nazis targeted the Jews specifically for extermination.

They punished Soviet Jews who did not toe the party line,” Alex Zeldin, who was born in the Soviet Union and goes by Jewish Wonk online, wrote in a Twitter thread that has been shared thousands of times.

“As a result of Soviet persecution and limiting the distribution of information about the Holocaust, later generations of Soviet Jews came to understand their family history as part of the war, even if it didn’t sound like other experiences (e.g., why did Jews have to hide?),” he added.

Zelensky’s interview with Zakaria — in which he relayed that he has “distant relatives” in the United States, Poland and Israel — came a day after he addressed Israeli lawmakers, some of whom wererankled by Zelensky’s characterization of Ukrainians as having saved Jews during the Holocaust.

While 2,673 Ukrainians have been recognized by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial and museum, for their efforts to save Jews, Ukraine was also the site of notable collaboration between locals and their Nazi occupiers in the effort to murder Jews.

Zelensky’s speech reflected hisstrategy of devising pleas for support that are tailored to each of the countrieshe addresses.

Both Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid indicated that while they did not agree with Zelensky’s characterization of Holocaust history, they also were prepared to cut him slack because of the desperate situation his country faces.

https://www.ynetnews.com/article/byo5yf00zc

26 Sep, 2023 15:23

Biden planned on blowing up Nord Stream before Ukraine conflict began – Hersh

The CIA was ready to sabotage the pipelines as early as last January, intelligence sources told the veteran reporter

US President Joe Biden initially planned on destroying the Nord Stream gas pipelines to deter Russia from launching its military operation in Ukraine, American journalist Seymour Hersh reported on Tuesday. However, Hersh alleged that thesabotage operation went ahead later not to deter Russia, but to harm the German economy.

The Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, which connected Russia and Germany under the Baltic Sea, were destroyed in a series of underwater explosions exactly a year ago on Tuesday. Competing theories have emerged as to who was to blame, with mainstream media in the West blaming a Ukrainian commando unit and Seymour Hersh claiming that the CIA carried out the operation under direct orders from Biden.

In a blog post on Tuesday, Hersh alleged that US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan convened a series of meetings in late 2021, tasking intelligence officials with coming up with a means of deterring Russian President Vladimir Putin from sending troops into Ukraine.

“The White House’s policy was to deter Russia from an attack,” an intelligence source told Hersh. “The challenge it gave to the intelligence community was to come up with a way that was powerful enough to do that, and to make a strong statement of American capability.”

By January, as Russian forces were massing on the Ukrainian border, the CIA had “solved the problem,” the source said. With a plan in place to plant remotely-detonated explosives on the pipelines under the Baltic Sea, Biden warned in early February that in the event of military action by Russia, “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Following Biden’s statement, which was delivered alongside German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the CIA team tasked with sabotaging the pipelines received new orders, Hersh claimed. Instead of immediately destroying Nord Stream, the team was instructed to plant the explosives for detonation at a later date.

“It was then that we understood that the attack on the pipelines was not a deterrent because as the war went on we never got the command,” a member of the team told Hersh.

“We realized that the destruction of the two Russian pipelines was not related to the Ukrainian war,” the source continued. “But was part of a neocon political agendato keep Scholz and Germany, with winter coming up and the pipelines shut down,from getting cold feet and opening up.”

According to Hersh’s earlier reporting, CIA divers planted the explosives last summer with the help of the Norwegian navy, using a NATO exercise in the region as cover. By the time the bombs were triggered in September, the flow of Russian gas to Germany via Nord Stream 1 had already been slowed to a trickle by Russia in response to Western sanctions, while Nord Stream 2 was never certified to begin operation by Scholz’s government. However, with the German economy heavily dependent on Russian gas, Biden reportedly feared that Scholz would choose reproachment with Moscow over support for Ukraine.

“The President of the United States would rather see Germany freeze than [see] Germany possibly stop supporting Ukraine,”Hersh declared earlier this year.

https://www.rt.com/news/583590-biden-nord-stream-plan-hersh/