Introduction – Sept 13, 2024

The West is inexorably pushing toward direct military confrontation with Russia. Arming Ukraine with long-range missiles was only the first step. The next is to give Ukraine the go-ahead to use those missiles to strike targets inside Russia.

This amounts to nothing less than a declaration of war against Russia. Only using Ukraine to do the fighting and dying.

In April 2022, Boris Johnson made a surprise visit to Kiev to ensure that President Zelensky didn’t sign any peace deal with Russia. Click to enlarge

Starmer’s claim that Russia “can end this conflict straight away”, ignores the fact that when Russia and Ukraine were close to agreeing terms of a ceasefire in April 2022 former prime minister Boris Johnson rushed to Kiev to sabotage the agreement.

He did so by promising Ukraine would get all the military help it needed to deal with Russia. According to Swiss intelligence officer, senior United Nations official, and NATO advisor Jacques Baud, the West is using Ukraine in a longstanding campaign to weaken Russia.

The plan is to keep Russia so wrapped up in internal conflicts with former Soviet states that it will be unable to challenge the West’s growing global hegemony.

Unfortunately for the West things haven’t quite gone to plan. Ukraine’s offensive last summer made little progress and Russia’s counter offensive this year has been steadily gaining ground, leaving Ukraine’s forces bruised and battered. To the point now that West has been forced to offer more direct support both in terms of weapons and manpower.

Indeed, according to Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, it is an “open secret” that Western forces are on the ground in Ukraine.

Even the BBC has acknowledged the presence of Western Special Forces in Ukraine.

This includes British troops, U.S. troops and troops from other Western nations.

Of course the troops being there unofficially allows Starmer to claim that Russia “can end this conflict straight away”. When he knows that Russia cannot end the conflict when the West is so determined to pursue it to its bloody conclusion.

The likes of Starmer are actually helping to prolong the war in Ukraine even as they argue that Russia can end it. Such cynicism carries a heavy price, which ordinary people in the West are ultimately going to end up paying for. Ed.

Starmer tells Putin Russia started Ukraine war and can end it any time

Dan Sabbagh – The Guardian Sept 13, 2024

Keir Starmer has told Vladimir Putin that he started the war in Ukraine and could end it at any time after the Russian leader warned that any use of long-range British missiles into Russian territory would put Nato at war with his country.

The prime minister spoke en route to Washington to see US president Joe Biden as he sought to justify a western decision made behind closed doors that would allow Ukraine to attack inside Russia with partly British-made Storm Shadow missiles.

Responding directly to threats earlier by the Russian president, Starmer told reporters: “Russia started this conflict. Russia illegally invaded Ukraine. Russia can end this conflict straight away. Ukraine has the right to self-defence.”

The UK, he added, had provided “training and capability” – a reference to weapons – to help Ukraine repel the Russian invasion and said that he was visiting the US president partly because “there are obviously further discussions to be had about the nature of that capability”.

A day earlier, the Guardian revealed that the US and UK had agreed, in conjunction with other allies, to allow Ukraine to strike military targets inside Russia with Storm Shadow missiles, which have a range of at least 190 miles, a longstanding demand of Kyiv’s.

On Thursday, Putin said any western move to let Kyiv use such longer-range weapons against targets inside Russia would mean Nato would be “at war” with Moscow – a dramatic escalation of his rhetoric about the war which began with the Russian invasion in February 2022.

“This would in a significant way change the very nature of the conflict,” Putin told a state television reporter. “It would mean that Nato countries, the US, European countries, are at war with Russia,” he said, adding that Russia would take “appropriate decisions based on the threats that we will face” as a result.

Starmer was speaking on a plane to Washington DC as he headed for a special foreign policy summit with Biden on Friday. The prime minister said that he would not comment on Storm Shadow directly, but added he wanted to ensure that “all the decisions we made are within the strategic context” by discussing the issues with his US counterpart at the White House on Friday afternoon.

“There are really important developments likely in the next few weeks and months, both in Ukraine and the Middle East, and therefore a number of tactical decisions ought to be taken,” the prime minister said.

David Lammy, the foreign secretary, appeared to go a step further on Thursday night, saying Britain and the US should give Ukraine the weapons it needs to defeat Russia. “This is a crucial period in the fight because you are setting things up to stop Russia getting the advantage over winter,” he told the Daily Telegraph while ­visiting Kyiv.

“We are here also, of course, at a time when it is crystal clear Russia is escalating with its friend Iran, taking a consignment of ballistic missiles. Ballistic missiles that will be used in the winter, sadly, against the Ukrainian people and which will cost lives.

“So, of course, we’re here to strategise, to understand how we can put Ukrainians in a position to win and what is needed.”

Ukraine has been lobbying to use Storm Shadow and US-made Atacms missiles for many months, complaining that while Moscow has been able to repeatedly bomb targets across Ukraine since the start of the war, it has been prevented from hitting military targets inside Russia.

Continues …