Trying to do everything from get a visa to India (torture) to a PCR test (quick) and from waiting for an hour for an operator to being hung up on by clueless clowns, Tuesday was a day to forget, personally. However the world woke up expecting the worst and ended up with even more terrible. The votes were counted by the officials in the Ukrainian regions who’ve been looking for a return to Russia for almost a decade. The voting took place under threat of or actual bombing by Ukrainian forces. That bit confuses me still. Ukraine wants to keep hold of her citizens so much she’s willing to murder them. A strange kind of Motherly love that Rose West would be proud of. However Volodya Zelensky did say last month that citizens of Donbas who consider themselves Russian can just go to Russia. It is the type of rhetoric I heard while on a sports show here where one person, who was respectful of Britons mourning the passing of their monarch, was told to go live in Britain as he wasn’t Russian enough. There is no passport for idiots.
One way, or another, Nordstream 2 will not move forward - Victoria Nuland, Jan 2022
There will be, no longer, a Nordstream 2 pipeline, we will bring that to them. I promise you, we’ll be able to do it - Joe Biden, Feb 2022
News broke of leaks in the Nordstream 1 + 2 pipelines. The same day the Baltic Pipe (bringing Norwegian gas to Denmark and Poland) was being inaugurated. While a White House spokesperson told that this is a great chance to turn to clean energy, US Congress upped their spend on Ukraine since February 24th to $67 billion, the most recent a $30 million+ for potential nuclear fallout in Ukraine. But what about the inactive pipelines leaking? An accident? Mad Vlad? A wayward whale? Not according to Polish MEP Radoslav Sikorski, married to extreme rightwinger Anne Applebaum, one of the cheerleaders for the Iraq War of 2003.
Radek Sikorski was recruited early to the UK and at Oxford University became a member of the Bullingdon Club, yes, that one David Cameron and Boris Johnson were in. As a newly minted British citizen he was sent to Afghanistan to report on the civil war, becoming known as the Polish Mujahdeen. He returned to Poland in 1992 to become deputy defence minister responsible for the push to join NATO. 10 years later he was appointed to a right wing think tank in Washington, before returning to Poland to bcome Defence Minister and later Minister for foreign Affairs. In the latter role he was present in Kiev with Victoria Nuland during the Maidan protests. In 2015 he was back in the US at another right wing think tank and Harvard University. Europe beckoned in 2019 when he was elected as an MEP. He is also on the steering committee of the notorious Bilderberg Group. When someone with his clearance is allowed to tweet what he tweeted, something is very much up.
As I write, there is debate as to who was involved in this. It is now accepted that 3 leaks aren’t an accident, with 2 explosions being felt. As methane flows into the sea, the impact on marine life and ecology will be severe. The fallout from this, in just one ignored area, will be massive. Insurance! The US government, in 2021, were ultra-determined to scare off companies from working on the $11 billion project. As one corporate insurance broker in Frankfurt told me in January:
You have companies, through other companies, through partners, through a shopfront in a Swiss or German village promising to, insuring these big projects with Russian companies, like the gas one (Nordstream 2) and they are hooked for billions of euros, billions. They already are paying out on confiscations, we just don’t hear it.
It seems as unbelieveable as Kipchoge’s marathon world record that the US or some affiliated group would have sabotaged the pipeline. It would have taken (from expert views) a submersible and trained divers, or a specialist unmanned submarine, with well laid plans, to place charges at such depth, with sufficient material, to rupture the pipe in 2 places. Rather than retract or delete his tweet, Sikorski followed up by stating Russia deserved it. The pipeline had been opposed by Ukraine, because it would gradually remove the transit of gas via Ukraine, a process Russia continues to pay Ukraine for. Yesterday 36.7 million cubic metres of gas went from Russia, through Ukraine to Europe. The Druzhba (Friendship) oil pipeline also flows from the collection point in Tartarstan to Europe via Ukraine, that has remained largely unaffected.
Meanwhile, voting closed in regions wishing to join Russia and both sides were well prepared. Russian media called it “historic” and “momentous”, the US pr company handling the response mailed out what words to use in reponse. “Sham”, “rigged”, “illegal” and “undemocratic”. Given I’ve used all the keywords mandated by both sides, I’m well hedged. When Kosovo declared independence from Serbia in February 2008, they had camps with 1000’s of US troops there to reinforce it. In 2004 I enjoyed a Whopper and fries at the Burger King in one of them (Camp Bondsteel), a place I later learned was one of the European Guantanamo’s. Now these regions of Ukraine, who have already declared independence, will join Russia. Safe in the knowledge that there are, like Kosovo in 2008, 1000’s of Russian troops to reinforce it. For a short while yesterday the referendum story disappeared from the headlines in favour of an act of eco-terrorism that begs the question - why? If it was Russia, USA, Poland, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, whomever - why?