Yves here. ZOMG, this is delicious. Duda spoke for over seven minutes to comedians pretending to be Macron. Duda made some admissions that aren’t going over so well.
You would think after Macron was naughty and had some reporters in the room with him during a conversation with Putin, that other national leaders might assume that a call with Macron was not private. That level of caution might have reduced the damage.
By John Helmer who has been the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to have directed his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. Originally published at Dances with Bears
In a telephone conversation on November 15, shortly after the Ukrainian missile explosion at Przewodów, Polish President Andrzej Duda (lead image, left) said in a secret telephone call with French President Emmanuel Macron: “Believe me, I’m very careful, I don’t blame the Russians. Emmanuel, this is war. I think both sides will blame each other for this war…Do you think I need a war with Russia? No, I don’t want that. I don’t want a war with Russia, I’m extremely careful, believe me. I am extremely careful.”
Duda was implying he did not believe the Ukrainian President, Vladimir Zelensky’s claim, which he also repeated to Macron, that the missile attack had been launched by Russia.
The telephone call lasted for 7 minutes 31 seconds and was conducted in English. Duda did not realise he was not talking to Macron until later. The Polish president took a week before revealing publicly that there had been a telephone call. That disclosure on the Chancellery’s twitter account did not disclose what had been said, and misrepresented how the conversation ended. This was triggered only after Vovan and Lexus, the two skilled Russian spoof artists, had published their tape-recording in Moscow.
The tape-recording can be listened to here; it was first aired on Tuesday, November 22, between 8 and 8:30 in the morning, Moscow time, with Russian subtitles and voiceover. Listen to the original English-language version here. The first Russian press report was published at 12:36 pm Moscow time. Duda’s office posted two tweets in succession at 1:52 pm, Moscow time.
Polish sources in Warsaw say the telephone call, and the week-long delay between Duda’s conversation and his disclosure tweets, raise grave questions about Poland’s national security and sovereignty. Duda, comments one of the sources, “seems to be lying. The Rutube tape shows a complete conversation, with goodbyes, and not an abrupt ‘end of the call’.”
In the absence of mainstream Polish media coverage, Stanislas Balcerac, an independent Warsaw analyst, says the Polish intelligence services are revealed as incompetent for failing to detect the impersonation before Duda began talking – or for allowing the president to be fooled into making his admissions in reaction to the Przewodów attack, particularly the dependence Duda acknowledged on US “experts” for knowing what had happened.
“The question arises,” Balcerac reported last August, “whether it is really impossible to find competent and intelligent people in Poland. Or is the problem deeper and lies in the assumptions of the Third Polish Republic, a country which, having ‘regained its independence’, was to be independent in theory, but in fact is played by the special services of stronger neighbours?” Balcerac was implying that the German BND and US CIA are running their own factions inside the Polish services.
A NATO military veteran comments that Duda was “definitely nervous. You’d think he’s worried that he’s talking to someone faking for Moscow or for someone else, or that that the CIA or someone else is listening in.”
Moscow sources have commented on the week-long delay before Vovan and Lexus made the tape public. Long enough, they suspect, for the Russian Stavka to analyse Duda’s remarks; decide if the president is being kept in the dark by the Polish military and security services; and arrange secret messages to Warsaw for as long as Duda was capable of keeping the secret.
The tape-recording reveals that President Duda accepted President Macron’s identity from the beginning to the end of the conversation. “Hello Emmanuel. Thank you, thank you for your call”, Duda opened. When the Macron voice said he was tired and concluded the conversation, Duda ended the call by saying: “Thank you. Thank you. Have a nice day.”
Duda’s tweet on November 22 that he “realized from the unusual way the interlocutor conducted the conversation that there might have been a fraud attempt and ended the conversation” is false.
Source: https://twitter.com
The acronym KPRP used in the tweet refers to the president’s committee for national security and defense affairs and is roughly equivalent to the US National Security Council (NSC).
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), reporting the Rutube recording and Duda’s tweet, claimed “eventually, as the caller continued to push Mr Duda on his thoughts on Mr Zelensky, the Polish president ended the call.” This is a lie.
Duda’s hesitancy was evident throughout the conversation; and he repeated himself to Macron for emphasis. The Polish president reads and speaks English but he is hesitant to use English in official conversation.
Duda began the call by telling Macron the missile had been “launched we don’t know by whom and launched somewhere in der, in der, in the East”. He described the weapon as a “probably Russian missiles produced by Russia.” Asked explicitly to say if US President Joseph Biden blames Russia for firing it, Duda replied: “Nooooh.”
He told Macron he had already spoken that evening to NATO Secretary-General, Jens Stoltenbereg, Biden, and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky; Duda referred personally to the latter two by their first names; the NATO official Duda identified by his full name. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” Duda replied to the question of who had fired the missile. He went on to say that Biden was sending US experts to Poland “to support and help our experts… I am waiting for the result of their [US investigation].”
Polish, NATO and Russian sources comment that Duda did not mention, nor did he appear to have been briefed on the Polish radar evidence of the missile launch, recorded at Labunie, about 40 kilometres from the missile strike at Przewodów. As the Polish air defence radars are also integrated with NATO and US regional commands, it appears that neither Stoltenberg nor Biden told Duda what their military intelligence reports were already showing from the radars, from the Germany-based NATO AWACS patrols, and from US satellites. “Headless Poland”, a Warsaw source commented.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/
“Volodymyr”, Duda said on the telephone, referring to Zelensky, “blames Russians and he is absolutely sure that it was [a] Russian missile launched by Russians, and, and, and he said that there is no possibility that, that, that it was, der, der, der, der missile launched by, er, launched by Ukrainians. That was what, er, he said that to me.”
“Emmanuel, I am — believe me — I am extra careful”, Duda replied to the question of whether he accepts Zelensky’s requests for more weapons. “I don’t blame Russian – Emmanuel, you know, believe me, this is war, and I think that both sides will, will, will accuse an other side of this war, yes.”
He added later in passing “there is no clear evidence this was S300, according to our [Polish] investigators.” When asked why the Polish foreign minister, Zbigniew Rau, appeared to be blaming Moscow for the missile attack, Duda corrected Rau by saying the missile was “Russian produced”.
Duda was emphatic there has been no attack on Polish territory to warrant invocation of the NATO Article Five provision. Explaining how this all-for-one-one-for-all proviso applied to the Przewodow incident, the Washington Post claimed on November 16 there was “speculation” that the Polish government might invoke either Article Five or Article Four. And that “as of Wednesday [November 16], there was no indication Poland had done so.” The Post’s US government sources were concealing what Biden and Duda had agreed two days before.
“Believe me, I’m very careful,” Duda repeated to Macron. “I think we don’t need an escalation, an escalation between NATO and Russia….I don’t want Article Five…We don’t need it…Do you think I want to have war with Russia. I don’t want a war with Russia, I’m extremely careful, believe me.”
Source: https://rutube.ru/
First Russian press source: https://www.rbc.ru/
The first German press source was the state public radio Deutschlandfunk which posted this on the evening of November 22. The German radio emphasized that Duda had been deceived by a Russian trick, and it omitted to quote most of what Duda had said. “The duo [Vovan and Lexus] fooled Duda in the conversation published on the platform Rutube that he was talking to French President Macron. The presidential administration confirmed this on Twitter.” Unlike the British propaganda organ BBC, the German radio gave its listeners the direct URL link so that they could listen to the Duda-Macron conversation for themselves. A Warsaw source commented late in the Warsaw evening: “One has to move to Germany to read about Duda's stunt”.
The Kremlin website indicates that President Vladimir Putin has said nothing publicly about the Polish incident.
In a state press agency report Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, responded on the evening of November 16 to US claims about what had happened: “Americans speak in the paradigm of ‘if there were no such-and-such, then there would not be this.’ Then it makes sense to rewind. And we will see the root cause of everything — this is NATO and the United States at the head.”
Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president now deputy secretary of the Security Council, announced on his Telegram channel, two days before the Council met on November 18: “Afterword to the hysteria of the Kiev vassals about their retaliatory strike against Poland. That’s what haunts me. If a Ukrainian anti–aircraft missile had hit the [US] Capitol directly, would it have been a zrada [Ukrainian word, “betrayal”] or a peremoga [Ukrainian, “victory”]?”. The official Russian Security Council communiqué, dated 1:30 pm on November 18, said “the participants discussed improving civil defence.” If this was intended irony by reference to Polish civil defence around Przewodów, it has escaped almost everyone.
Source: Left, RIA News Agency, November 16 at 10:53 pm. Centre: Foreign Ministry, November 17 at 5:56 pm. Right: Kremlin, November 18 at 1:30 pm.
The day after Peskov’s and Medvedev’s public comments, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ivan Nechayev, issued this comment, avoiding any referenceto Polish officials: “I want to stress that, immediately after the incident claiming two lives was reported, the Russian Defence Ministry issued a comment that the Russian Armed Forces had nothing to do with the missiles that fell on Polish territory. We noted the completely anti-Russia and Russophobic reaction from representatives of several NATO countries and media outlets. They immediately, as if at someone’s bidding (maybe they had been preparing), accused Russia, before any investigation was conducted and the cause of the incident was established. It was not the first time such a response had been given. The collective West is known for using this tactic, hurling unsubstantiated accusations at Russia without thoroughly investigating the incident. We want to note that Kiev also makes unsupported allegations against Russia whenever such opportunity arises, expressing its anti-Russia stance. Perhaps now the Kiev regime will think twice. Its Western curators are starting to get annoyed. Russia insists on a comprehensive investigation into this incident and disclosing its outcome. Russia insists on a comprehensive investigation into this incident and disclosing its outcome.”
In the same briefing, the Foreign Ministry issued this statement on the attack against the Russian Embassy in Warsaw which occurred on November 12, three days before the Przewodów attack. Note Nechayev’s reference to the proximity of President Duda’s residence.
“In the early hours of November 12, unknown individuals attempted to attack our diplomatic mission in Warsaw twice, by throwing flares and bottles with a combustible substance over the fence of the Embassy. The police watched passively what was happening and did not try to detain the attacker. The situation when a foreign diplomatic mission in the very centre of the Polish capital, in close proximity to other protected facilities such as the National Defence Ministry and the residences of the president and prime minister of Poland, is attacked in a very dangerous way and the attack goes unpunished, causes extreme concern and indicates a gross violation of Warsaw’s obligations stipulated by international law to protect the premises of diplomatic missions from any intrusion or damage. We call on Poland to ensure the safety of Russian diplomatic and consular missions in their country and guarantee the inviolability of our foreign missions from unlawful actions. We demand that the competent Polish authorities investigate the incident and bring those responsible to account.”
There is a debate in Moscow over how much of an American stooge (lead image, right) Polish officials like President Duda are in the present situation. A well-informed Moscow source believes that the telephone transcript confirms Duda’s impotence. “The only thing it tells is that Macron is the voice of scepticism and reason in the whole [NATO] group but that Duda does not react to the doubts about Zelensky. He is peddling Zelensky line.”
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Well, who’da thunkit?
At this rate, the U.S.A. can go on destroying European states (plural) with no consequences and with no limit on the time span. This also makes one wonder further about the speculation in the comments here at Naked Capitalism that the U.K. is taking revenge on the EU for Brexit. Yes, it’s convoluted reasoning, that the U.K., with U.S. “special relations” sponsorship, is devaluing the EU, but it seems to work as a tactic.
Noting:
[from the end of the posting] A well-informed Moscow source believes that the telephone transcript confirms Duda’s impotence. “The only thing it tells is that Macron is the voice of scepticism and reason in the whole [NATO] group but that Duda does not react to the doubts about Zelensky. He is peddling Zelensky line.”
Duda? Is it to win the elections? Scholz? Can anyone explain the German death wish?
And this all makes one wonder further about the sudden “need” of Sweden and Finland to join NATO, neither of which will be more secure in NATO. “Nice social state you have there. Wouldn’t want anything to happen to those famous Finnish baby boxes… If you catch my drift, Sanna.”
And the Swedes are still investigating the NordStream attack…
The only way any of it makes sense is if the “new left” leaders of Europe are completely mentally detached from the actual goings on in Europe.
According to Ukraine’s defence vice-minister Volodímir Havrilov, as reported by Sky News and reproduced elsewhere, Ukraine “would enter Crimea by the end of December and the war would end next spring” with total defeat of Russians of course. Western media, buying this bullshit. Negotiations won’t start until Russia faces the defeat and is ready to abandon all occupied territories says the same source. The Spanish outlet reporting this also quotes Milley’s in the sense that “it might be difficult for Ukraine to recover all occupied territories though she is now in better negotiation position”.
In my effort to understand what the hell the mainstream press is saying in Spain, (you find very little about the state of Ukrainian energy grid and economy) what it is said is that next step is the counteroffensive by Ukraine to Melitopol though they admit that some experts are saying Russia is playing attrition war, reinforcing positions and attacking the power grid “in some places” but the morale of the Russian soldier is low they say and a new defeat could be decisive. Yet the experts cited, Jack Watling and Nick Reynolds from the Royal United Services Institute admit Russia could counterattack next spring. And they say that Russia’s PR will try to convince the Western public that better spending money at home than in wars abroad. Meaning this that whoever states something like that will be signalled as Putin’s muppet as usual. So, even if they give prevalence to Ukraine PR there is some reporting on “well, things may not be as rosy as Ukrainians say”.
This is the sorry state of Spanish media, what we are feed in a daily basis I suppose very much the same as elsewhere in Europe and the US. By far the most repeated news piece it that Ukraine accuses Russia for shelling a maternity home in Zaporizhia. Nothing since February has changed: constantly fed with Russia hate, Russia stupidity and inability and the need to spend more and more in Ukraine. Well, there is the video on the killings of Russian POW as an exception but this doesn’t change the overview given.
I think I won’t repeat this exercise for a while. Regarding Sánchez, what a shame. In the 68th Parlamentary Assembly of the Nato held in Madrid (19-21th Nov), Sánchez “sent a resounding warning to Putin” to “leave Ukraine alone” admiring the fast, clever and determined response of the NATO” in the “defence of peace and an international rules based order”. Vomitive.
I wouldn’t pay too much attention to the pronouncements of General Milley. Just the other day I heard him say that the Ukraine had aerial superiority over their country.
You can be sure that I’m sceptical about anything written in the Spanish press. Yet I think that Milley’s leaks to the NYT and his later retraction were something interesting to watch. Hidden faults are there in the apparently monolithic Collective West. When the tide goes down…
I think he also said that Russia’s withdrawal from Kherson would take two weeks. The next day they had all gone. Sounds like his pronouncements on all topics have very little relationship to reality.
Two weeks ? General Milley’s estimate was obviously based on US Army withdrawal performance and the fact that he has not seen a single day of combat (per Col. Douglas McGregor).
The seemingly instant disappearance of the Russians and the astonishment of the speed and efficiency it was executed was really hilarious to watch. US Army should probably review their how-to manuals.
As for Mr. Duda, the “spoof conversation” revealed that Mr. President is a mouthpiece to deliver information. His discretionary power is so limited that Polish Army did not bother to provide him with a radar report of a missile that landed on Polish soil and killed two people.
Which is ironic. Apparently, the party that is wraps itself in obsessive “nationalism” and poofs up with imaginary Polish importance is de facto a client state of the US. and is assigned a role of promoting Russophobia while being scared of actually provoking a big bad Russia. Mr. Duda should be held to account why this government is promoting an image that entire Poland is simply hysterical with anti Russian hate. [to the point that it refused to buy gas from Russia only to buy the same gas in reverse flow from Germany, which is either idiotic or scam for some officials to make some extra cash)
For what it’s worth, Mrs. Socialist who still has the stomach to consume the daily media where we live, commented this morning that she thinks USA is preparing to dump Ukraine – she couldn’t put her finger on it, but she feels the undertone of the news has changed to that direction.
And yes, our news basically only reports what US media reports what Ukraine Dept. of Propaganda reports. And adds some lunacy of it’s own, like quoting today Estonian ex-president about the need to replace the whole Russian government, not just Putin.
Re Polar Socialist:
Almost all of the Canadian press is the Ukrainian propaganda you report. I still remember the reported one million man army massing to expel the Russians. Of course no such thing ever existed. I applaud the courage of Mrs.Socialist who is able to face the nonsensical onslaught.
Nonetheless the headline of the main Ukraine-related report in the Globe and Mail today is “Russian missiles hit water, power infrastructure, leaving much of Ukraine freezing and in the dark”. The headline does seem to reflect reality which seems to differ from what commenters in other countries are finding in their media. I’m afraid I can’t face the content of the article.
I was reading an ethnography of Ukraine recently and hit upon this interesting factoid: the country with the largest number of people fluent in Ukrainian, after Ukraine itself, is Canada.
There is a large emigre population there. Victoria Nuland grew up there, and is fluent in Ukrainian. A bit of a principal-agency conflict with her being Deputy SOS?
Similarly, Madeleine Albright was born in Czechoslovakia, Brzenski in Poland and Kissinger in E. Germany.
Which raises the question: why are there so many scarred emigres running our Foreign Policy? With so many refugees coming to the US due to our many endless wars, we’ll have tons more of them trying to gain influence and Foreign Policy careers over the next few decades. The MIC will see to that. (I guess I answered my own question at the start of this paragraph!)
Polar Socialist: For what it’s worth, Mrs. Socialist who still has the stomach to consume the daily media where we live, commented this morning that she thinks USA is preparing to dump Ukraine … she feels the undertone of the news has changed to that direction.
Mrs. Socialist is clearly correct inasmuch as over the weekend the initial setting of the scene for US to do its “we thought they were freedom fighters, but they’re terrorists” number occurred with, forex, a couple of pieces in Pravda On the Potomac —
“Videos Suggest Captive Russian Soldiers Were Killed at Close Range:Videos circulating online and reported on by Russian state media have raised questions about whether Ukrainian soldiers committed a war crime.’
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/20/world/europe/russian-soldiers-shot-ukraine.html
And Izvestia on the Hudson —
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/as-ukraine-war-drags-on-expect-more-cruelty-to-pows/2022/11/23/e398b390-6af4-11ed-8619-0b92f0565592_story.html
The Kiev regime shooting a missile into Poland so as to drag NATO forces directly into the war has focused a few minds in DC and the West on the fact that they don’t really have the full control of Zelenskiy and co. they might like. Options are obviously being prepared.
I’ve found trying to parse the western mainstream press coverage on Ukraine (and geopolitics in general) to be a low ROI effort, the “journalists” jettison editorial standards with alarming regularity and have the collective analytical capacity of a single cell amoeba. “You can write anything you want about Zelensky as long as it’s a reverential puff piece indistinguishable from anything his personal publicist might write, and you can write anything you want about Putin as long as it’s a vitriolic hit piece” is the operating editorial maxim in western newsrooms. The columnists have very weak opinions that are very strongly held.
the pro free traders, anti-brexit crowd still howls with rage over brexit. as bad as the U.K. leadership is, its their idiotic leaders that make the bad decesions, not some sovereignless Eunuch like the polish prime minister.
as the street looses its hold over the world, brexit may start to look better in the future.
Avarice, group think, and, in a pinch, blackmail are sufficient to explain European politicsl elite behavior.
whats astonishing to me is the layers upon layers of bullshit…and how effective the propaganda has been, since at least 2016.
brother and his golden horde arrived last night…mom of course had msdnc on.
so SIL asks what i think abt trump…and i issue a brief overview of my thoughts on all of this intertangled mess…from the perfidious dems necessitating a monkey wrench like trump in the first place…to the poking of the Bear, since Billary Time..
brother and her agreed that the dems have no back bench, and that even a newsome couldnt beat desantis…but they got nervous at any talk of ukranian nazis and the endless provocations by the fading empire.
such talk is alex jonesian, at best…at least tacitly.
all this was in low voices…as if by agreement,lol…so mom didn’t hear me speaking…she is adamant that putin is the imperialist aggressor, UKr has no nazis(putin is the nazi), that all of this is defending democracy, etc.
oh, and putin personally pushed the button launching that attack on poland…because he’s nuts and wants to go head to head with the virtuous and completely innocent nato/otan.
i cannot yet determine how much of all that Goodthink brother and SIL are subject to…brother’s always has half his brain at work(sales at a giant global enterprise software corps…upon arrival, laptop was first thing unpacked, so he could check in)…and SIL is Colombian, gets her news from spanish language sources(unknown to me, mostly)…and is from an upperclass bunch in bogata, with all that goes with that.
of note, perhaps…only people out here that are engaged enough to even notice Cold War 2 are the tiny faction of Hillfort Dem True Believers…local GOPtea partisans are all about Biden’s communism, etc.(“ChiComs” appear regularly in my virtual duckblind observations of that cohort)
everybody else is all about gas prices and putting food on their family.
since the local Hillfort Dems don’t really mingle in genpop, i don’t get a chance to eavesdrop or otherwise pick their brains…as if they’d talk to me anymore anyway,lol.
one Dem hillfort i pass when i take dirt roads home has a Ukr flag on the flagpole, tho…placed above the US flag,lol.
point is, the vast majority of usians…if this place is representative at all…care most about pretty much what Bernie ran on…and the cold War 2.0 is background noise, at best….and a TV show, at worst.
‘but they got nervous at any talk of ukranian nazis’
You mean like seen in this shopping mall in the Ukraine on Kiev’s Bandera Avenue?
https://twitter.com/Fishcak18433002/status/1594972359886258177
yes.
1. the “Russkies” stink at media manipulation.
2. Today makes 2002 pre-Iraq look like the Golden Age of journalistic integrity
Gas prices are the one thing that most USians will notice, as everything is oceans away.
And that is why Biden scrambled to attempt to drive down the price ahead of the midterm, or else the outcome could have been really nasty for the Dems.
Juicy indeed. I’m confused about one part:
What had they agreed? If the article references that, I couldn’t find it. Thanks for any clarification.
I wonder if Duda and his “minders” who are meant to vet calls often get scammed by people pretending to be their bank manager; or by people selling zero risk, high return crypto currency.
Maybe they all subscribe to Reader’s Digest and used to collect Encyclopedia Britannica volumes too.
The collective west is clearly a giant clown show. Albeit one that is creating tragedy on a grand scale. How do people this stupid get elected to high office?
Some things revealed by this article just don’t feel right. For example, don’t politicians use Caller ID on their phones? And aren’t they suppose to use secured lines when talking to other leaders? But that phone call by those pranksters really pulled back the curtain on how things stand with the Polish President. In a properly running country, as soon as those images of that crashed S-300 hit the net, Polish experts would have been able to identify them on sight and told their bosses who would have gotten on the blower and told Duda that it was a Ukrainian missile.
And Polish defence forces would have been able to confirm that as they would have tracked that missile as it approached Poland. And yet Duda seems to have been left in the dark and seems to want to rely on non-Polish agencies to tell him the truth. So maybe he does not trust his own military and spooks. Does he even know how many of his own people are fighting in the Ukraine at the moment?
On the lighter side, the Russians made the Poles an offer of setting up a missile defence system in Poland to stop any more “errant” Ukrainian missiles hitting them. But instead, the Poles have accepted Germany’s offer to send them Patriot missile system to protect their skies from any more Ukrainian, errr, Russian missiles-
https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2022/11/21/poland-accepts-germanys-patriot-offer-after-fatal-missile-strike/
Caller id is fundamentally broken. The landline system was set up when most nations ran national monopolies, as thus operate on a honor system. Poke the system the right way, and your caller id can be set to anything.
I thought they had like secure red BatPhones or something..
“red BatPhones”!! Hilarious!
Couldn’t stop laughing for a couple of minutes.
Thx for that.
Watched that series so much as a kid in the 90s. That’s how I imagine world leaders talking to each other. Pick up the phone and the picture swirls and you get that orchestral chaotic arpeggio sound.
Vovan and Lexus had no problems getting through to Ben Wallace, Britains defence minister, had a long chit chat while Wallace was on his way through Poland and Vovan pretended to be one of Zilinskys deputies. Should have heard it, Wallace told them (and us) everything! The main reason Truss got sacked was for talking on her iPhone about,,,,Ukraine of course. At least we found out that Duda isn’t the trouble maker in NATO.
I think most Eastern European militaries and intel services are run by NATO (US/UK) I think this should be obvious by now.
And I wonder how many actions by NATO originate from! The US blob which appear to damage the EU.
It strikes me as unwise to have a military force which is not controlled by the EU and answerable only to the EU itself.
This is hilarious. I’m assuming “Macron’s” voice was similarly distorted by the connection on the Polish end. Otherwise, I’m surprised they managed the con for the whole conversation.
Though I have no idea what detecting accents is like in a second language.
Unrecorded in that session is where Duda tested to see if it was really Macron on the other end of the phone line and it went like this-
Duda: ‘If you are really Macron, prove it!’
Macron: ‘I don’t know what to do. My mind is a blank. I can’t think.’
Duda: ‘Ahh, so it is you Macron.’
Duda: ‘Ahh, so it is you Macron. Your fake French accent suddenly turning into a distinct Russian accent, proves it beyond any reasonable doubt.’
meanwhile, back at the lair:
https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-military-superpower-poland-army/
Poland is set to be the EU’s superpower.
silliness passes everywhere.
I love the starting section where Poland is praised for not initiating WW3 in response to “that” errant missile.
The benchmark for sensible behaviour is definitely a depreciating currency.
25 meters long x 5 meters deep is indeed a very big hole. If this was just an errant anti-aircraft missle, presumably not designed to cause major ground devastation…. Just goes to show me I can’t comprehend the degree of violence and damage that I’m seeing in these war videos. Brutal.
An excerpt from an interesting interview with the head of the Veche group.
– Speaking philosophically, the NVO has changed many views on approaches to the use of the Armed Forces, not only in terms of drones, but also in terms of command and control. Flaws in the organization of communications, high-precision weapons became visible. I’ll give you an example. For example, the American HIMARS themselves are rather mediocre multiple launch rocket systems, they don’t shoot well, they don’t hit so far. But when satellite-guided precision munitions are used in this system, it turns from mediocrity into a first-class tool for suppressing and destroying enemy rear lines. All this works in the case when it can hit the given targets with high accuracy. We also have similar systems, such as Uragan and Smerch, which have precision-guided munitions, satellite guidance, and so on. The problem is that the Americans, in addition to high-precision guidance, have a satellite reconnaissance complex. It allows real-time tracking of targets on the surface of the earth. We have the components of multi-domain integration, communications and control, but, unfortunately, the components of multi-spectral spatial reconnaissance have not been given due attention. They thought that the Americans were spending crazy money, sawing the budgets into some kind of meaningless toys and pampering. But we will proudly open the combat manual of the ground forces of 1980, and everything will be fine with us. But it turned out that the gadgets work. It suddenly became obvious that the army also needed them.
https://www.business-gazeta.ru/article/572407
The problem is that the Americans, in addition to high-precision guidance, have a satellite reconnaissance complex. It allows real-time tracking of targets on the surface of the earth.
Yup. This is one area where the US retains superior kit, with toys like this —
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_X-37
FYI: a US missile wiped out a Kiev apartment block, if no one has mentioned it yet…
https://militarymonitoring.com/apartment-block-in-kiev-hit-by-us-made-aim-120c-for-nasmas-air-defense-systems/
photo evidence with the article..
of course, it was reported as a Russian strike..