February 9, 2023
1. Moscow assesses prospects for peace with Kiev
Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia has called on the West to stop using Ukrainians in a “proxy war” that actually has turned into a direct combined armed aggression of Ukraine and NATO against Russia.
The West is only prolonging the bloodshed in Ukraine by supplying Kiev with weapons and waging a proxy war against Moscow, Vassily Nebenzia, Russia’s permanent representative to the UN, said on February 7. The statement came the same day US President Joe Biden vowed in Congress to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”
“The prospects of peace will be closer when the flooding of Ukraine with weapons stops… and when they realistically listen to our concerns,” Nebenzia told reporters at a press conference in NYC. He urged Ukraine’s Western backers to stop “using Ukrainians to wage a proxy war against us.”
Asked by a reporter if a peaceful resolution to the conflict could happen in 2023, the diplomat replied: “We all hope for peace.”
Russia launched a military operation in Ukraine nearly a year ago, citing the need to protect the people of Donbass from genocide, and Kiev’s intentions not to implement the 2014-2015 Minsk peace accords at all.
2. Ukrainian opposition leader: Zelensky 'set fire' to Ukraine
President Vladimir Zelensky has brought Ukraine to destruction in the name of Western interests because he is too incompetent and ambitious to govern it properly, famous opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk recently observed.
Medvedchuk formerly led the largest opposition political party in Ukraine, now banned, called as Opposition Platform - For Life party which won the second largest number of parliamentary seats in Ukraine’s 2019 elections. Zelensky first placed Medvedchuk under house arrest, then sent him to a “dungeon” run by the Ukrainian SBU or Ukrainian Security Service, where the opposition politician said he was exposed to “constant psychological pressure and humiliation.”
Medvedchuk now lives in exile, after being arrested in Ukraine under false convictions, and later has been exchanged for some Ukrainian POW. Medvedchuk still considers himself a Ukrainian citizen and lawmaker, and is building a team of like-minded people to represent those he claims are suppressed by the current government in Kiev. He advocates closer ties with Russia and rejected Kiev’s pro-NATO stance.
Zelensky was elected in 2019 as a “peace candidate” who pledged to put an end to the warmongering policies of his predecessor, Pyotr Poroshenko, Medvedchuk claimed in an article published by RIA Novosti on February 8. But instead of becoming “a sentence” for Poroshenko, which was his campaign promise, Zelensky became a sentence for Ukraine, the politician said.
The new leader had a mandate to rebalance Ukraine’s political system and make the country neutral and peaceful, Medvedchuk wrote. But this required a boring routine and difficult work. Zelensky “failed to put the nation in order, and found that blaming Russia rather than his own incompetence for the problems” was easier, he said.
By the end of 2020, polls showed a decline in the popularity of Zelensky’s party, and likely defeat in the next presidential election by a candidate proposed by the party led by Medvedchuk, he noted. An escalation of tensions with Russia and later open hostilities launched by Kiev’s regime saved Zelensky’s career, the politician said.
“The country was plunged into a fire for the inflated ego of this man,” he wrote.
Today, the West flatters him at every opportunity. What luck! A ruler who would destroy his country for a photo op, boost his ratings on the blood and suffering of his citizens. Zelensky slaughtered law and stability for the sake of applause and posturing.
The actual role of the Ukrainian president is that of a “fifth columnist” working against the interests of his own nation and Europe's, considering the price it pays for the Ukraine conflict, Medvedchuk stated.
Zelensky hopes that a military victory would wash away all the things he has done to crush his political opponents and to “lease his nation as a battlefield.” But Ukraine has “already lost,” and soon this reality will catch up with him, according to Medvedchuk.
The president “acts like a winner, speaks like a winner, poses like a winner. But victory is nowhere near,” he said. Continued conflict is the only thing that delays the reckoning for the president, the politician believes.
Last January Viktor Medvedchuk also said that Vladimir Zelensky is carrying out the West's plan of conflict with Russia, and is a dictator sacrificing the country on behalf of Western powers.
When Zelensky claims Ukraine is united, he omits that this unity was forced at gunpoint, Medvedchuk asserted in his January 2023 publication.
Today’s Ukraine violates every provision of its own Constitution, Medvedchuk argued, and “ceased to be independent and sovereign” after the February 2014 coup, when it “passed completely under external control of the West.”
It should be added: current Ukrainian regime as a dangerous HE mine placed under European and global security.
3. Sunak: the UK to ship long-range arms to Kiev, to begin training its pilots
The UK will expand training for Ukrainian servicemen by starting to train jet pilots, and will ship longer-range weapons to Kiev, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said in a statement on February 8. "I am proud that today we will expand that training from soldiers to marines and fighter jet pilots," Sunak said.
According to the Prime Minister’s office, Ukrainian pilots will develop skills that will allow them to be able to "fly sophisticated NATO-standard fighter jets in the future."
Earlier, the Prime Minister’s Office noted that the shortest jet pilot training course in the UK will last 36 months.
Moscow responded that it has a firm desire to destroy all new NATO arms deliveries to ultra-Nazi regime in Kiev.
4. Nord Streams: The report of investigative journalist Seymour Hersh
The report on Washington's involvement in the explosions at Nord Streams has once again pointed to the need for an open international investigation into the incidents and punishment for those responsible, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on February 9.
On Wednesday, Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize winner, published a report saying that US Navy divers during NATO Baltops Naval exercises in the summer of 2022 planted high explosives to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, which Norway activated three months later. According to the report, US President Joe Biden decided to sabotage the Nord Streams after more than nine months of secret discussions with the US national security team.
"The appearance of such materials once again shows the need for an open international investigation of this unprecedented attack on critical infrastructure, international critical infrastructure. It is impossible to leave this without revealing the perpetrators and without their punishment," Peskov told reporters.
It is remarkable for the depth of analysis, the official put it, noting that it would be at least unfair to ignore it, especially for such a country as Germany, which, in fact, as a result of this terrorist act, was deprived of a very important energy facility.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov at a press conference on February 9 in Moscow has warned the USA about unspecified consequences for this action despite prompt denial from Washington.
On December 22, 2022 President Vladimir Putin has labelled the explosion as the act of “state terrorism”.
Written by Vladimir P. Kozin
