British state media confirms ‘Storm Shadow’ strike deep inside Russia

British state media confirms ‘Storm Shadow’ strike deep inside Russia

RT

Ukraine has reportedly fired British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles at targets in Russia’s Kursk Region, the BBC claimed on Wednesday. This report follows allegations that Washington has also granted Kiev permission to use its ATACMS missiles for long-range strikes against Russia.

While London has not officially confirmed allowing Kiev to use its missiles against targets deep inside Russian territory, the BBC claims to have received information from British officials indicating that UK Defense Secretary John Healey spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart on Tuesday night.

Prior to that, Healey informed Parliament that London was “doubling down” on its support for Kiev, adding that “Ukraine’s action on the battlefield speaks for itself.” The BBC noted that British ministers are likely to “exercise caution in their response to the reports” due to concerns about Russia’s potential reaction to such actions.

The broadcaster also pointed to several images shared on Telegram, which claim to show fragments of a Storm Shadow missile in Kursk. The outlet states it has consulted weapons experts who confirmed that the debris in the pictures matches parts of the British-supplied missile.

Earlier on Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that London had approved the use of Storm Shadows by Kiev’s forces in response to allegations that North Korean troops had joined the fighting in Russia’s Kursk Region.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller declined to comment on the UK’s alleged decision, telling the BBC that he would not “speak publicly to the use of another country’s weapons.”

While the Russian Defense Ministry has not yet confirmed the use of Storm Shadows in Kursk, several Telegram channels have claimed that up to 12 UK-supplied missiles were fired at the region on Wednesday afternoon, all of which were allegedly intercepted by air defenses.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky previously claimed to have received permission from multiple Western countries to deploy their long-range rockets against targets deep inside Russia.

Moscow has warned that such attacks would constitute NATO’s direct involvement in the conflict.

Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasized that the use of Western long-range missiles by Kiev would alter the nature of the conflict. On Tuesday, Putin revised Russia’s nuclear doctrine to include provisions allowing Moscow to consider the use of weapons of mass destruction in response to conventional attacks by proxies of a nuclear-armed state.

Misjudging the Bear: Is the West Underestimating Russia's Nuclear Threat?

Misjudging the Bear: Is the West Underestimating Russia's Nuclear Threat?

MICHAEL SNYDER

When it comes to the world of geopolitics, there is always far more going on than meets the eye.  

The long-range missiles that Ukraine is now firing deep into Russian territory are not going to change the course of the war.  But the Russian response to those long-range missiles might.  Hopefully the Russians will show restraint, because they may not even realize that they are being led into a trap.

Just two days after Joe Biden gave the green light, Ukraine fired six ATACMS missiles deep into Russian territory on Tuesday...

Ukraine hit a Russian weapons arsenal with US-made ATACMS missiles that it fired across the border for the first time, according to two US officials, in a major escalation on the 1,000th day of war.

The attack comes just two days after the Biden administration gave Kyiv the green light to use the longer-range American weapons against targets inside Russia.

The Russians possess the most sophisticated anti-missile systems on the entire planet by a wide margin, and they were able to shoot down five of the missiles and damage the sixth before it reached the target...

At 3:25 a.m. local time (7:25 p.m. ET) Tuesday, Ukraine fired six ballistic missiles at a facility in Bryansk, Russia's Defense Ministry said. It said that American-made ATACMS missiles had been used in the attack.

Russian air defenses said they shot down five of the missiles and another was damaged. Fragments from the damaged missile fell on the territory of a military facility, causing a fire that has since been extinguished. There were no casualties or damage.

Since there were no casualties and no damage, the Russians will hopefully not feel a need to respond to this particular strike.

But what is going to happen next time?

And how will they respond when Russian cities start getting targeted?

Following the attack, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov pointed out that the Ukrainians cannot operate these high-tech missile systems without U.S. assistance...

Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, responded to the attack, accusing the West of wanting to escalate the conflict.

"The fact that ATACMS were used repeatedly tonight in the Bryansk region is, of course, a signal that they in the West want escalation. And without the Americans, it is impossible to use these high-tech missiles," Lavrov said at a news conference at the G20 summit, according to comments reported by Tass and translated by Google.

To the Russians, when ATACMS missiles are fired into their territory it is a joint attack by Ukraine and the United States.

And we are being warned that the Russians could use nuclear weapons in response.

On Tuesday, Vladimir Putin signed a document which updates Russia's official nuclear doctrine...

The Kremlin has repeatedly warned the West against allowing Ukraine to use its long-range weapons to attack Russia directly. Moscow upped the ante Tuesday as Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree approving its updated nuclear doctrine, shifting the parameters on when Russia can use nuclear weapons.

The timing of this signing was meant to be a signal.

According to this document, Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons if there is a missile attack "by any non-nuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state"...

​"You will be able to read the paragraphs yourself, but in general it also states that the Russian Federation reserves the right to use nuclear weapons in the event of aggression with the use of conventional weapons against it or the Republic of Belarus, which creates a critical threat to sovereignty or territorial integrity," Peskov told reporters.

"Aggression against the Russian Federation by any non-nuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state is considered a joint attack."

That is clearly directed at us.

The Russians are trying to warn us that we are dangerously close to starting a nuclear war.

One Russian military official is even suggesting that the UK could be the first target...

Andrey Gurulev, reservist Russian army general, MP and pro-Putin TV propagandist, warned of a full-scale nuclear strike on Britain.

"There are individual targets that can be hit with....demonstrative warning strikes," he said.

"The first candidate to get a nuclear bludgeon....is the UK."

If the Russians decide to use nuclear weapons, Ukraine will likely be the first target.

If Russians cities get hit by long-range missiles, the Russians would be very tempted to respond by hitting Ukraine with a tactical nuke.

Of course the Biden administration has already strongly hinted that if the Russians use tactical nukes in Ukraine we will respond by using tactical nukes in Ukraine too.

That would mean a full-blown war between the United States and Russia, and that is precisely what the Ukrainians want, because that gives them the best chance of actually winning the conflict.

And could that be exactly what the global elite are wishing for too?

When he heard that Ukraine had been given the green light to launch long-range missiles into Russia, Alex Soros was absolutely thrilled...

Russia threatens to strike Kyiv with ‘massive’ new missile

Russia threatens to strike Kyiv with ‘massive’ new missile

Anna Conkling

Russia is threatening to strike Kyiv with a “massive” new missile in revenge for the use of Western weapons against its territory.

Vladimir Putin’s armed forces are preparing to fire RS-26 intercontinental ballistic missiles at the Ukrainian capital, local media reported.

Western nations including the United States shut their embassies on Thursday in anticipation of a large-scale air strike. The joint closure, also involving Italy, Spain and Greece, marked the gravest expression of concern from foreign embassies since the early days of the war.

On Wednesday, British Storm Shadow missiles hit a command post in the Kursk region in their first use against the Russian mainland. US-made ATACMS hit an ammunition dump in neighbouring Bryansk the day before.

According to Moskovky Komsomolets, a Moscow-based newspaper, the Russian military is readying to launch RS-26 missiles from a site in the city of Astrakhan by the Caspian Sea.

The RS-26 has not been used in combat before, according to Western missile experts. It is said to fly at five times the speed of sound, making it harder for Kyiv’s US-supplied Patriot missile systems to shoot down.

Kyiv has regularly been attacked by smaller, slower Iskander missiles since the war began.

The RS-26 is fired from a ground-based launcher and reportedly weighs 50 tonnes, with a warhead three times larger than the Iskander.

Kyiv was sent into a state of frenzy on Wednesday morning when the US embassy announced that it had closed for the day. In a statement, the embassy said its employees had been instructed to shelter in place after the US received information of a “potential significant air attack”.

Americans in the city were urged to pay special attention to the city’s regular air raid alerts.

The Looming Debt Crisis and What Lies Ahead

Doug Casey on the Looming Debt Crisis and What Lies Ahead

Via International Man

People have been observing this trend since the late 1960s; the idea of the federal debt getting irredeemably out of control isn’t new. But I think that we’ve finally reached a genuine tipping point.

In other words, when you keep racking up debt at interest, with growing deficits every year, bankruptcy is inevitable. But now it’s also imminent.

90% of the US government’s spending is baked in the cake. It’s not just that the spending is mandated by law and enthusiastically promoted by the agencies that dispense it. Government spending has totally corrupted the country, from welfare moms to giant corporations. They’ll all squeal like stuck pigs if the spending stops. I expect the accumulated distortions it’s caused to come unglued in the next few years.

I think that Trump is sincere, as are Elon and Vivek. But what we’re dealing with are absolutely massive entrenched programs. What’s worse, Trump has promised that he would not alter Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and military spending. Those things alone add up to something like 80% of the federal budget. It’s very hard to get the number exactly, because the US government’s accounting is so complex. I’m reminded of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s comment on 9/10/01, saying that the Pentagon couldn’t track $2.3 trillion of spending.

On top of those things, you have to add the interest on the official national debt, which is over a trillion dollars a year. That debt is absolutely going higher as the debt burden grows, compounded by rising long-term interest rates. I’m not even counting another perhaps $150 trillion of contingent liabilities and off-balance sheet debt.

Can Elon and Vivek do anything about this trend?

I suggest everybody visit https://www.usa.gov/agency-index. You’ll see hundreds of government agencies and departments listed—page through it. Few of them serve any useful purpose. In fact, almost all of them are wasteful and destructive. They’re bureaucracies employing drones (all of them with fat salaries, benefits, and pensions) to shuffle paper, basically to distribute tax dollars to favored entities. They should all be abolished.

Elon and Vivek should have a field day abolishing scores, even hundreds, of these departments and agencies. But will they be able to do it? I really question that, because individual Congress-critters have vested interests in their continuation—as do the other groups I mentioned earlier.

Can Trump do it by executive order? It’s highly questionable. Could he arm-twist the Senate and the House to abolish these agencies? Not much, especially since most of the Congress is not really ideologically aligned with Trump, even the Republicans. Forget about the Democrats.

The government’s running a $2 trillion per year deficit right now.

The only way out is to totally delete these agencies. Just replacing the personnel with “better people” is a mistake. Why? Because cutting costs means you’re just filling the piggy bank, so the next administration can gleefully empty it, and be heroes when they hire even more of the very same zombies that you fired.

The only way to solve this problem is to abolish these agencies. Don’t reform them, but make sure they cease to exist. Pull them out by the roots and sow Agent Orange in the soil where they grew.

The US Constitution has mostly been interpreted out of existence. Or blatantly ignored, like the 9th and 10th Amendments. The government is force and should be limited in a civil society. The implies a military, to protect citizens from force from abroad. Police, to protect them from domestic crime. And a court system to adjudicate disputes without reverting to force.

All the other requirements of society should, could, and would be handled by entrepreneurs. In fact, a good argument can be made that the “essential” tasks of government are too important to be left to the type of people who are inevitably drawn to governments.

Let me make a radical proposal that will shock almost everybody reading this now. I suggest defaulting on the debt, for several reasons.

Number one, it’s immoral. It’s criminal to impose the repayment of that debt on the next generations of unborn Americans. The debt is so large that they’ll be turned into serfs or indentured servants to pay it back.

And the question is: Pay it back to who? We don’t “owe it to ourselves,” which is what the liberals always used to say. It’s owed to particular people and institutions who have enabled the government to do all the destructive things that it does. They should be punished. I have no sympathy for the owners of government debt. In fact, these politically-wired people have enriched themselves at the expense of the average guy, who has few assets. It’s correct that they be punished.

There’s another reason. The debt the US government has is like a 100-story building that’s wobbling and is about to fall. There are two possibilities. You can wait for it to fall randomly and unpredictably. Or you can devise a controlled demolition. That’s the best alternative.

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Boris Johnson Spurs on War in Ukraine

Boris Johnson Spurs on War in Ukraine

Martin Armstrong

Former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson reemerges from the shadows whenever he hears word that a war may be winding down. He played an instrumental role in persuading Zelensky not to negotiate a peace treaty with Russia, and now he is proposing immediate NATO membership for Ukraine, which is the official onset of World War III.

A chip off the old block, Boris takes after his father, Stanley Johnson, who is from the same club as Bill Gates’ father and a eugenicist. Stanley worked for the Rockefeller Foundation in New York. Johnson and Rockefeller have the same population reduction goals as Gates. They somehow justify the need for a reduction of 70 million people from the population in Britain to 10 million to enhance economic growth. Stanley was also a proponent of climate change before it really gained traction in the mainstream community.

Back on June 3, 2020, I announced that I would not support Boris Johnson and that I saw him as a threat to Britain. I had my reasons behind the curtain, which I was unprepared to express fully. However, as they say, the apple does not fall far from the tree. Here, we have Boris following his father’s depopulation ideas, as is the case with Bill Gates following his father. Quite honestly, I do not understand that.

Johnson is the man who made that emergency trip to Ukraine when Zelensky was considering a peace deal with Russia, urging him to continue the endless war. All the neocons are in a mad rush to arm and fund Ukraine before Trump returns in January. Now, Johnson wants to give $500 billion in a “loan” and force NATO to enact Article V. At the same time, Zelensky is telling the press that he is willing to keep the war alive after 1,000 days of death and destruction. It’s past the point that Zelensky could even stop the war if tried. He sold out Ukraine and it is too late.

And here we have Boris resurfacing from the swamp once again to urge NATO to permit Ukraine to join.  “That means we must have the courage and logic to give the Ukrainians the security guarantee that they need and announce a date in the near future by which Ukraine will join NATO,” Johnson said, also adding that Ukraine needs another $500 BILLION–$500 BILLION. For what reason? He believes it can come in the form of a lend-lease obligation, but how can they expect Ukraine to pay off all of its debt without conquering Russia and amassing its fortune? That is what these neocons believe is possible – a Russian takeover.