Time for Russia to Take Out Ukraine's Decision-Making Centers

by Stephen Lendman

In early June, Russia's Security Council Deputy Chairman, Dmitry Medvedev, said the following:

If Kiev forces strike Russian territory, "the armed forces of our country will have no other choice but to strike (the regime's) decision-making centers," adding:

It's "obvious what those decision-making centers are."

They include the regime's war "ministry, (its) general staff and so on."

"It should be understood that, in this case, the ultimate decision-making centers are regretfully not even on the territory of Kiev" — referring to hegemon USA and its NATO vassals.

"That is why it is certainly a threat that should be reckoned with."

On Wednesday as directed by its US master, two Ukrainian drones struck Russia's Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery in its Rostov Region.

According to its Governor Vassily Golubev:

"Under one version, fire erupted as a result of an attack by unmanned aerial vehicles that were of Ukrainian manufacture, according to preliminary information." 

"Specialists believe that one of the drones touched a lightning protection mast and fell onto the refinery's premises."

"The other drone was likely the cause of a fire that broke out in a heat exchanger."

The refinery in question produces  gasoline, fuel oil, marine, diesel and heating fuel.

It's owned by Ukrainian opposition politician/businessman Viktor Medvedchuk, his Opposition Platform party banned by the Zelensky regime, like virtually all others to enforce one-party rule.

Medvedchuk is a political prisoner — on phony charges of treason and financing terrorism — for opposing the scourge of Ukrainian Nazi-infested rule, along with supporting cooperative relations with Russia.

On June 20, the Zelensky regime confiscated his Opposition Platform party's property.

Months earlier, his assets were frozen — stolen — three television stations he reportedly owned shut down, based on phony claims about airing Russian propaganda.

Tyranny is the law of the land in Nazified Ukraine, the rule of law as it should abolished after the US 2014 Maidan coup.

Kiev's attack on the Novoshakhtinsk oil refinery is the latest in a series of cross-border strikes on Russia's territory — targeting its infrastructure and residential areas, causing deaths and injuries.

It's long past time for its military to eliminate Ukrainian decision-making areas once and for all.

Hard ball is the only language its ruling regime, its US paymaster and NATO vassals understand.

Separately in response to Lithuania's breach of what it agreed to observe years earlier — banning the transit of goods and persons between Kaliningrad and the rest of Russian territory, the policy now hardened to include rail and vehicular traffic — Russia's Foreign Ministry said the following:

Retaliatory "counter-steps are being worked out in an interdepartmental format."

"Both Lithuania and the EU (were) notified through their diplomatic missions in Moscow that such actions are inadmissible and that steps taken should be overturned and the situation put back on the legal, legitimate track."

Otherwise, "retaliatory moves will be inevitable. This was emphasized at all levels in Moscow."

"They will not be (solely) diplomatic. They will be practical" and will bite.

US vassal state Lithuania and the EU's so-called political chief, Josep Borrell, defied reality by falsely claiming that no blockade of Kaliningrad was imposed.

Acting in response to its higher powers in Washington and Brussels, Vilnius dubiously claimed that its war on Russia by other means is simply complying with sanctions by EU bloc regimes.

At the same time, Russian forces are systematically degrading Ukraine's made-in-the-USA/NATO war machine. 

Sustaining hundreds of casualties daily, it's just a matter of time before it collapses altogether.

Even the Russophobic, neocon-infested Institute for the Study of War (ISW) admitted the following on Wednesday, saying:

"Reinforced Russian air-defense systems in eastern Ukraine are increasingly limiting the effectiveness of Ukrainian drones, undermining a key Ukrainian capability in the war."

Use of Turkish Bayraktar attack drones was largely halted because Russia is destroying them when airborne, along with Ukrainian warplanes and helicopters in flight.

At the same time, the ISW downplays significant advances by Russian forces, refusing to admit what's clear and unequivocal. 

Russia is systematically triumphing over Ukraine's greatly weakened military, eliminating its capabilities, controlling more of its territory daily.