The Saker

■ Russia appears to be openly shipping war materiel to Novorossiya forces in a bid to deter Ukrainian attack
■ Squabbles between Novorossiya commanders continue, some notable names are being sidelined
■ The Ukrainian side has strengthened its position for a possible attack but so have the opposing forces

There is an interesting word in Russian: вялотекущий. It can be translated as "creeping" or "sluggish". It is composed of the word вяло which means "lethargically", or "torpidly" or "apathetic" and текущий which means to flow, to progress.

This word comes to my mind when looking at the war in the Ukraine, it is progressing towards some kind of worsening, but it does so in a slouching, slowly creeping way.

Novorussian side - On the Novorussian side the recent elections did not solve the constant infighting between the various commanders. To my great regret, this nonsense is still going on.

Bezler was removed from his command, Mozgovoi was told that his brigade had to be incorporated into the Novorussian Armed Forces (NAF), which he gladly accepted, and that this would be done by breaking up his brigade into various units of the NAF, which he categorically rejected.

Then there was the news that Zakharchenko had decorated Strelkov and Borodai as with the Medal of "Hero of the Donetsk People's Republic". Strelkov denied that adding that he would not take that medal from Zakharchenko anyway. The news was then "corrected" to say that this decision had been made about Bezler and Borodai.

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Harry J. Bentham

With phantom Russians haunting the shores of Sweden and Britain, NATO still can’t explain its cavalier 70% of global military spending.

We can expect more Russian specters to haunt British shores in the coming years, as the valiant so-called “west” wages a fevered and completely unjustified Cold War 2.0 against enemies who don’t exist.

Recently, on 29 October, the Royal Air Force swept to the rescue when a supposed Russian bomber came into British airspace. The bomber, which the RAF even threatened to destroy, turned out to be a Latvian Soviet-era cargo plane, on a routine flight.

Latvia, which used to be part of the Soviet Union, is officially a member of NATO. Officially, that means, an ally of the United States and the United Kingdom. This seems to have been of little interest to the RAF, who threatened to shoot down the poor plane and thereby do more damage to their own supposed ally than the Soviet (now Russian) menace ever threatened to do.

The incident in British airspace follows a similarly pointless chase in the Baltic Sea for a Russian submarine that never materialized. Foolishly, Sweden’s navy wasted huge amounts of military spending chasing a supposed underwater intruder due to rumor and hearsay.

Media were quick to identify the intruder as a Russian vessel, despite there being no evidence to support the existence of any vessel whatsoever, and no reason for a dispute between Russia and Sweden. The sole beneficiary of the entire situation is the United States, which seeks to enlarge and continue its military occupation of Europe and will invent any excuses and any enemies it needs to justify its presence.

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