Russian cruise missiles - Picture:Getty
At the start of this week newly minted Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced The UK plans to provide Ukraine with classified technology to allow the neo - Nazi regime in Kiev to build their own version of the British/French-designed SCALP (Storm Shadow) air-launched cruise missile. This is a piece of political theatre that will have no effect on the progress of the war and could possibly backfire disastrously on the UK.
You may recall a couple of years ago when another Nazi collaborator, Keir Starmer, gave the first batch of British Storm Shadow missile to Zelensky's corrupt cronyocracy they were hailed as the weapon that would shift the war in Ukraine's favour. They didn't, in fact they were, and will be,next to useless because they have to be launched from an aircraft and the Ukies do not have the right kind of aircraft to launch from.
Ukraine has used all its domestic-made and designed Neptune cruise missile to strike oil refineries and military sites deep inside Russian territory. A domestic-made SCALP would present the likelihood of Ukraine then using this Western-designed missile to directly attack Russia, which only increases the chances of an eventual Moscow-NATO clash because the crazy Banderites behind Zelensk how repeatedly shown they will go to any length to provoke a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO, and thus start World War III. Ukrainian forces already appeared to have used the missile on Donetsk and other locations closer to front lines in the Donbass.
From the very start of the Ukraine war, the United Kingdom has consistently been among Kiev's most open and ardent military supporters, time and again transferring heavy weaponry, including cutting edge long-range missiles like the Storm Shadow while British politicians, who must be aware of the depleted state of our armed forces, have given every impression they are eager to get UK forces directly involved in combat with Russia.
In response to Burnham's stupid posturing, on Thursday the Kremlin has issued one of its strongest warnings and threats aimed at London to date, accusing the UK of "fully taking part in the war on Kiev's side" - and thus thwarting any chance of peace talks while adding fuel to the fire.
Moscow is now saying that the UK's own military facilities could become fair game for direct attacks.
Kremlin spokesperson Maria Zakharova said in a Thursday press briefing, "We have repeatedly warned that the response to Ukrainian strikes using British weapons against Russian territory could be directed against any British military facilities and equipment in Ukraine and beyond."
Zakharova urged "all residents of the United Kingdom to think about the inevitable, catastrophic consequences of the hostile steps taken by their own authorities."
Ironically this performative nonsense comes right after a visit by the CIA Director to Moscow. US officials claim the Tuesday meeting between John Ratcliffe and top Kremlin intelligence officials was to convey a warning to President Putin to not attack any NATO member. However, many analysts are skeptical that this was the real reason.Andy Burnham is handing over British classified information which would permit Ukraine to one day manufacture its own Storm Shadow missiles. But Burnham’s handover of “blueprints” is in fact a political gesture, aimed at other countries: particularly the US. And it is known that a significant portion of the weapons and technology handed to the corrupt Ukies has been sold on to unknown buyers by the corrupt oligarchs in Kiev.
It isn’t as though Britain has much to do with making the Storm Shadow in any case. We Britons like to pretend that it was jointly British and French developed, but in fact – as analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC bluntly state – it is “French-made” and we bought it from France rather than co-developing it.
Storm Shadow is a version of the 1980s-vintage, entirely French made Arme Planante à Charges Éjectables (Apache), updated in the 1990s as the Système de Croisière conventionnel Autonome à Longue Portée (Scalp). The only significant British part of it is the warhead, and even that is partly French. Ukraine, in the event of deciding for whatever reason to build its own Scalps, could (and might well) choose to use a different warhead.
But Ukraine has no real reason to be building Scalp (“Storm Shadow”), which has to be launched from a fighter jet and only has 150-odd miles of range. To give just one example, the much bigger Ukrainian-made Flamingo FP-5 is conveniently ground launched, carries a warhead three times as heavy and has a range of almost 1,900 miles. Ukraine was reportedly producing seven Flamingos a day as of last year, and plans were in hand to scale this up massively although in Ukraine plans announced in public are usually very different from anything likely to happen.
What has been happening is the NATO are outsourcing the production of the weapons used against Russia to their proxies in Ukraine. How can that not make the factories that are producing those weapons targets since the weapons are being used against civilians in Russia?
All of this way of conducting geopolitics is sickening. It amounts to one countries people dying and suffering for other nations to satisfy their economic interests (via whatever international institutional infrastructure renders all this viable) and the only thing that explains it is the compromised, comprador, nature of the Ukrainian state and the rest of those in western Europe. What people in Europe have any interest in this war which is being fought for the benefit of global corporations and banks?
None, UK and Germany, need to be allied with Russia, not America, they need alliance to obtain cheap energy that can be the basis of economic and industrial reconstruction. It is only because European politicians are compromised that these policies make any sense.
On the other hand The USA worked hard and long to create this proxy war with Russia and has been the ring leader of the mob that keeps it going. Ukraine remains in the grip of a Nazi puppet regime that was put into power by the US / EU engineered regime change. These animals have enjoyed murdering Russian speaking Ukrainians and are corrupt to the core.
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