updated 17 Jan 2025, 12:36 MDT

After our 11/15/22 emergency meeting on the Ukraine War we committed to providing near-daily updates of what we think are some of the most valuable news and analyses for fellow activists. This is that selection. If you find this page helpful please forward it to your friends and contacts. Beginning Nov 16, 2023 we will be updating this page on a semiweekly basis. Stopping this war is of critical, emergency importance. Please do whatever you can.

Unless otherwise noted, the italicized comments below are Greg Mello's.

Highly recommended resource: Judge Andrew Napolitano's video podcast on YouTube.

Highly recommended: Russophobia, Propaganda in International Politics, Glenn Diesen, 2022.
Provoked, How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, Scott Horton, 2024.

Master Class in the Ukraine War • The Ukraine War: Glenn Diesen, John Mearsheimer, Chas Freeman, Jeffrey Sachs, and Lawrence Wilkerson, Sep 2024

Jan 17, 2025

Featured • Biden talk at Council on Foreign Relations, 2016, video clips, X, Jan 16, 2025

 • Russia and Iran presidents sign partnership treaty in Moscow, Aljazeera, Jan 17, 2025

 • ‘Black Tuesday’ – How The AFU Strewn The Town With Corpses, South Front, Jan 17, 2025

 • Prepare for war – NATO chief, RT, Jan 15, 2025

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has called on members of the US-led military bloc to adopt a “wartime mindset” and significantly increase defense spending, citing supposed threats from Russia and other nations. Rutte noted on Wednesday that NATO members have increased defense investments and conducted more frequent military exercises. However, he argued that these efforts are “not sufficient to deal with the dangers coming our way in the next four to five years.” The bloc’s “future security is at stake,” Rutte claimed in his opening remarks at a meeting of the Military Committee in Chiefs of Defense in Brussels. He accused Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran of attempting to “weaken our democracies and chip away at our freedom.”

“To prevent war, we need to prepare for it. It is time to shift to a wartime mindset,” Rutte asserted, urging NATO states to allocate more resources toward defense and develop “more and better defense capabilities.” He also stressed the importance of providing increased support to Ukraine to “change the trajectory of the war,” and called for enhanced cooperation with global partners. Moscow has repeatedly denied assertions that it represents a threat to any NATO member states and has instead accused the US-led bloc of waging a proxy war against Russia and encroaching on its territory. Last month, President Vladimir Putin said that practically all NATO states are currently at war with Russia.

Iran and Russia do not threaten the US. The Middle East is full of problems for Iran, whose government doesn’t need problems with the US. Ukraine is Russia’s problem, not ours. Washington is responsible for the conflict. Trump should apologize and remove us from the conflict. The minute Trump stops sending money and weapons to Ukraine and Israel, peace will descend on the world. Trump should return to his original position that NATO is of no value to America. If NATO did not exist, Russia and Europe would be engaged in mutually beneficial economic ventures. These ventures would create financing and business opportunities also for Americans. All would prosper. It is Washington’s pursuit of hegemony–the control over others–that is suppressing economic activity worldwide and eroding the living standard of all Americans except the top one percent.

Kiev is maintaining its moratorium on direct negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andrey Sibiga confirmed in an interview with European Pravda published on Wednesday. Two years ago, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky signed a decree banning his government from any talks with Moscow. When asked if Russia should be involved in potential peace negotiations, Sibiga stated that at the moment, such a “modality” has not been considered. “Let us wait for official contacts with the US, where we will discuss further steps,” the diplomat added. Sibiga took up the post as Kiev’s chief diplomat in September, following the resignation of his predecessor Dmitry Kuleba, who stepped down amid a large-scale purge of Ukraine’s senior officials and took up a position at a Harvard-based research center.

As Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius proudly announced the delivery of RCH 155 self-propelled howitzers to Ukraine – even before the Bundeswehr receives them – Berlin’s priorities have once again come under scrutiny. The decision to ship this state-of-the-art artillery system to Ukraine highlights a glaring paradox: Germany’s commitment to modernizing its own armed forces seems secondary to its zeal in arming Kiev for a war increasingly serving as a proxy for Western interests against Russia. “We are standing by Ukraine in this existential fight. The RCH 155 represents not only our technical capabilities but also our steadfast support,” Pistorius declared. Yet, for many Germans, each such statement lands like a hammer blow to national confidence in their government.

Comments online have laid bare the growing resentment, with users describing each new arms shipment as “another 0.5% boost for the AfD.”

Jan 16, 2025

Featured • I’m gonna MAGA you, baby, Pepe Escobar, Strategic Culture Foundation, Jan 14, 2025

The facts on the ground already spell out the “rules-based international order” being replaced in a flash by a no-rules international disorder. After all, international law has already been abolished by the Empire of Chaos itself (that’s bipartisan) – when it comes to illegal, unilateral sanctions, theft of financial assets or legitimization of genocide and head-chopping “moderate rebels”.

Trump 2.0 will be nothing but enforcing a de facto phenomenon: a post-historical disorder. End of History – that was always for suckers.

All of this incendiary chain of events is on a roll essentially because of one single reason: the Empire of Chaos lost the proxy war in Ukraine. What remains to be discussed is the modality of the surrender. So it’s no wonder Trump had to come up with a seductive, but still fraught with danger, larger than life psy op to imperatively change the narrative.

Russian troops are young compared to those filling Ukrainian ranks. The following picture (taken from a video on X) shows the horrific state of Ukraine’s military. Here is an entertainer singing to a room full of Ukrainian recruits. Most appear to be at least 40 years old. There is a lot of grey hair in that auditorium. But despite their age, these troops are not experienced.

Russia’s situation is the polar opposite. Its ranks are filled with guys under 30 who arrive at the front with months of training under their belts and are mentored by combat veterans. According to Khairullin, the 45-year-old guys are being taken off the front and put into reserve units. No amount of training, no matter how superb, can match what a soldier learns in combat. Unlike Ukraine, who is unable to properly train reserves before tossing them into the meat grinder, Russia is training soldiers properly before sending them into battle. Once in the fight, graduate school is called to order and the green soldiers are transformed into combat veterans.

...The foundations of NATO are crumbling, brought about in large measure by the West’s foolish investment in the Ukrainian war. Hungary, Austria, Croatia, Slovakia and Romania are openly voicing opposition to continuing support for Ukraine. They can read the results on the battlefield and realize that Russia is defeating Ukraine despite unfettered, massive support from NATO. The big players in NATO — i.e., the UK, France and Germany — are facing economic and political chaos at home. None are in a position to shift to a war footing and risk challenging Russia.

Then there is Turkiye. Turkiye is embroiled in a new war in Syria and is focused on defeating the Kurds. It is not willing to provide troops or equipment should NATO take the suicidal step of confronting Russia.

As the sun sets on Joe Biden’s presidency, the Commander-in-Chief and his top staffers are using their final moments in power to convince the American people that we live in a safer and more stable world.

“The United States is winning the worldwide competition compared to four years ago,” Biden declared Monday. “America is stronger. Our alliances are stronger, our adversaries and competitors are weaker.”

The claims that America is winning and strong are as laughable as when the mainstream media repeatedly attempted to convince the American people that Biden is as “sharp as a tack.”

Americans have witnessed Joe Biden’s physical and cognitive decline over the past four years, which perfectly personifies the American empire. Rather than becoming stronger, the treasury and arms depots were exhausted for the benefit of Ukraine and Israel. America is bankrupt; economic prosperity is increasingly elusive for the average citizen and enjoyed only by an exclusive class with access to government power.

...history will remember the Joe Biden administration for creating wars when acceptable peace was on the table and the hundreds of thousands of corpses those conflicts produced.

“The Democrats have such a manner in American politics to spoil the whole thing for the next administration before the end of their mandate,” he said. Lavrov reminded that the same thing had happened before Trump’s first term when outgoing Democratic President Barack Obama “banished 120 [Russian] diplomats from the US and arrested five sites of [Russian] diplomatic property” just three weeks before his successor’s inauguration.

“This whole case did not help Russian-American relations” back in 2017, he stressed. Regarding the Biden administration, the minister suggested that after not winning reelection “from the moral point of view, you should just wait before the inauguration [of Trump on January 20]; you should understand that your people want a different kind of policy.” “No, they are unwilling to do so. They want to spoil the whole thing,” he stressed.

Jan 14, 2025

Featured • Trump, Iran and the Obama strategic blueprint, Alastair Crooke, Strategic Culture Foundation, Jan 13, 2025

However, Ambassador Chas Freeman has said that although a sustainable peace between the U.S. and Russia (theoretically) is possible, it will be “very difficult” to achieve. To which Ray McGovern has added repeatedly that Trump is ‘plenty smart enough’ to know that he holds a weak hand with regard to Russia in the Eurasian space, and that Trump, the realist, has “bigger fish to fry”.

Is this why Trump and Musk are stirring the geo-political ‘pot’ so blatantly: On the one hand, Canada, Greenland and Panama as part of the U.S.? These may be Trumpian ‘talking points’, but Greenland and Canada together could change the leverage calculus with Russia: Is Trump planning to use added leverage via the Arctic to threaten control over Russia’s northern borders? (It is the shortest flight time for missiles targeted at Russia).

And on the other hand, Musk, in parallel, has started a firestorm in Europe with his Tweets – and his invitation to a livestream with Alice Weidel of AfD. Germany is the heart of NATO and the EU. Were Germany to ‘flip’ away from war with Russia – in company with other European ‘flips’ already in the works – then Trump plausibly could end a major economic burden (troop deployment in the EU) weighing on the U.S. economy. As Col. Doug Macgregor says, how many times do we have to tell people: “Americans don’t live in Europe – we live in the Western hemisphere!”.

Musk effectively has lobbed a (free speech) grenade into the European media hegemony that both tightly controls discourse across the continent, and is in the pay of the Anglo Deep State.

Will this bring the settlement with Russia and the Asian Heartland that Trump seeks? We must see. (emphasis added)

Thus, failure now beckons from two directions. If Trump “appeases,” then Blue will launch him into the meme trajectory of “weak king, enemy comprador.” However, if his Peace Ship fails, and the war goes on, he will be fatefully captured by the War Party, and the conflict will become “Trump’s War.” He will then be well and truly stuck tight in their hand-crafted Tar Baby and its tender snare.

So how then can a new president thread a course between the Scylla and Charybdis of antagonists, foreign and domestic? Perhaps, like Odysseus, the best course might be to “choose the lesser of two evils.”

Here, the lesser evil is a settlement that both accommodates Russia and saves Ukraine. The greater evil is a continuation of the war, leading to the destruction of Ukraine and the breakup of NATO — and just possibly, another world war.

All this means taking on, and overthrowing, the grip of the War Party (Red and Blue) on this nation’s affairs. There is only one way, moreover, to do this: He must break the iron narrative of “Appeasement” — where the only strategic choice is between war and surrender. Thankfully, the hammer and chisel that will break it is at hand.

It means, simply, that the president must tell the whole truth, at long last, about this war.

I had the great privilege of speaking with Judge Napolitano about why the US misunderstands Russia. The US tends to conflate Russia with the Soviet Union and thus assumes that conflicts derive from Moscow’s pursuit of security through dominance and empire.

In reality, our conflicts with Russia derive from the failure to establish a mutually acceptable post-Cold War political settlement. We initially had agreements for an inclusive pan-European security architecture based on indivisible security, but this was abandoned in favour of hegemony through NATO expansionism. Many American leaders, such as George Kennan and US Secretary of Defense William Perry, therefore recognised in the 1990s that NATO expansion would betray and undermine the post-Cold War peace. Bloc politics was revived and deeply divided societies in the shared neighbourhood between NATO and Russia became pieces on a chessboard. Pulling Ukraine into NATO’s orbit was the ultimate red line for Moscow as it is considered to be an existential threat to Russia. If we can recognise the security concerns of our adversaries, then we can mitigate the security competition and establish peace.

Moscow is ready to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has announced.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, Lavrov emphasized, however, that any talks must take place within a broader Eurasian framework in order to address larger geopolitical issues.

“We are ready to discuss security guarantees for the country that is now called Ukraine, and parts of that country which have not yet determined their status, unlike Crimea, Donbass, and Novorossiya [the union of the Donbass republics],” Lavrov stated during the briefing.

Moscow considers the Crimean peninsula as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and the Donetsk, and Lugansk people’s republics as integral parts of its territory. Crimea joined Russia after a referendum following the Western-backed armed coup in Kiev in 2014, while the other regions were incorporated in 2022 after referendums supported by the local populations.

"An overnight attempt was made from the territory of Ukraine to launch a missile strike on targets in the Bryansk region using six US-made ATACMS operational-tactical missiles, six UK-made Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles and 31 aircraft-type unmanned aerial vehicles," the ministry said in a statement, adding that "all air attack weapons were shot down by air defense systems."

More important again is the fact that Trump has now publicly signaled understanding for Moscow’s refusal to accept Ukraine joining NATO. Since this has always been the single most important reason Russia went to war, Trump showing a new – if terribly belated – American readiness to finally acknowledge the issue’s make-or-break importance is essential for establishing a basis for meaningful talks.

These talks are now as good as certain to happen fairly soon and at the highest level: Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have both made it clear that they are ready to meet without fussy pre-conditions. Again, another sign that we are not dealing with mere PR moves but a genuine attempt to find a compromise. That does not mean that it will succeed. But it does mark a key change from the past, when all serious negotiations were blocked by the West’s obstinate refusal to face reality. If Russia and America should manage to mend fences comparatively quickly, not everyone will be happy, of course. It is true that an end to the fighting would save many Ukrainians from dying in a hopeless, unnecessary war for literally less than nothing, namely an even worse outcome for their country.

Jan 13, 2025

Featured • Total Kievan Debellation, The Russo-Ukrainian War: Year 3, Big Serge, Jan 9, 2025

In short, Ukraine is on the path to debellation - defeat through the total exhaustion of its capacity to resist. They are not exactly out of men and vehicles and missiles, but these lines are all pointing downward. A strategic Ukrainian defeat - once unthinkable to the western foreign policy apparatus and commentariat - is now on the table. Quite interestingly, now that Donald Trump is about to return to the White House, it is suddenly acceptable to speak of Ukrainian defeat. Robert Kagan - a stalwart champion of Ukraine if there ever was one - now says the quiet part out loud:

Ukraine will likely lose the war within the next 12 to 18 months. Ukraine will not lose in a nice, negotiated way, with vital territories sacrificed but an independent Ukraine kept alive, sovereign, and protected by Western security guarantees. It faces instead a complete defeat, a loss of sovereignty, and full Russian control.

Indeed.

None of this should be particularly surprising. If anything, it is shocking that my position - that Russia is essentially a very powerful country that was very unlikely to lose a war (which it perceives as existential) right in its own belly - somehow became controversial or fringe. But here we are.

Ukraine attempted to attack a TurkStream compressor station near Russia's Anapa in the Krasnodar Territory with the help of nine drones in order to stop gas supplies to European countries, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday.

"On January 11, 2025, the Kiev regime, in order to stop gas supplies to European countries, attempted an attack using nine aircraft-type UAVs on the infrastructure of the Russian compressor station in the village of Gai-Kodzor (Krasnodar Territory), which supplies gas through the Turkish Stream pipeline," the statement read.

Russian air defense units shot down all the drones, the ministry said, adding that a downed Ukrainian drone slightly damaged the equipment of a compressor station in Krasnodar Territory, there were no casualties.

On Sunday, crowds -- estimated in size from tens of thousands to more than 100,000 -- marched through the streets of Bucharest, with Reuters reporting that many left-wingers joined the protest. The slogans on their signs included "We Want Free Elections," "Bring Back The Second Round," "Freedom," and "Democracy Is Not Optional." In a country that is among the most religiously observant in Europe, many carried Christian Orthodox icons. According to video posted to social media, protesters also vented their aggravation with establishment media...

...He's also pushed for Romania to pursue a non-interventionist policy in the Ukraine war, and said US arms-makers were manipulating the conflict. Since Russia's invasion, Romania has facilitated Ukrainian grain exports and furnished military assistance including the donation of a Patriot missile battery. In addition to his broad theme of restoring Romanian sovereignty, Georgescu also ran on countering price inflation, addressing Romania's worst-in-EU poverty rate, supporting farmers and decreasing the country's reliance on imports.

However, now it is the sovereignty of the Romanian people themselves that is in peril. As a flag-wrapped economist named Cornelia told Reuters on Sunday: "At this rate we won't be voting anymore, they will impose a leader like in the old days."

Western sanctions imposed on Russia are “killing” German companies and enriching the American economy, Sahra Wagenknecht, the leader of Germany’s left-wing BSW party, said during an election conference on Sunday. The delegates of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – Reason and Justice (BSW) gathered in the city of Bonn to adopt the platform for the Bundestag election that will take place next month. During her speech, Wagenknecht refused to blame Russia for the ongoing Ukraine conflict. “The sanctions have nothing to do with morality, they have nothing to do with human rights, they have nothing to do with the love of peace, they are simply a stimulus program for the US economy and a killer program for German and European companies,” Wagenknecht said.

She called for the restoration of the gas imports from Russia. “We simply have to tie our energy imports with the criteria of the lowest price and not any kind of double standards or ideology,” she stated. The left-wing politician condemned Washington’s foreign policy, alerting the audience about “the blood trail of US proxy wars” around the globe. She stressed that the German chancellor must not be “a vassal” of the US. BSW co-leader Amira Mohamed Ali said that the party stands for “a strong, fair and sovereign Germany.” The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party held its conference in Riesa, Saxony on Saturday. The delegates rejected a motion condemning Russia and called for a diplomatic resolution of the conflict. The snap election was called after Germany’s ruling three-party coalition collapsed last month due to disagreements over the budget.

President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming national security advisor, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-FL), said Sunday that the Trump administration will ask Ukraine to lower the age of conscription so more troops can be sent to the frontlines.

Under Ukraine’s current mobilization laws, the minimum age for conscription is 25. The Biden administration has been calling for Ukraine to lower it to 18, and Waltz made clear the next administration will do the same thing.

It is not possible to “expel every Russian from every inch” of soil claimed by Ukraine, including the Crimean peninsula, incoming US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz has admitted. Acknowledging “that reality” has become a major step toward resolving the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, Waltz told ABC News in an interview on Sunday, adding that this idea is now in the process of being accepted by Ukraine’s backers. “Everybody knows that this [conflict] has to end somehow diplomatically. I just don’t think it’s realistic to say we’re going to expel every Russian from every inch of Ukrainian soil. Even Crimea – President[-elect Donald] Trump has acknowledged that reality, and I think it has been a huge step forward that the entire world is acknowledging that reality,” Waltz stated.

Waltz suggested that accepting the fact that returning to Ukraine’s original post-Soviet borders is unrealistic now opens the way to addressing the question of “how do we no longer perpetuate this conflict and how… we no longer allow it to escalate in a way that drags in the entire world.” The remarks appeared to be reminiscent of statements previously made by other close Trump allies, including his vice president, J.D. Vance. Shortly ahead of the November election, Vance suggested Kiev could end up in a situation where it decides to cede some lands to Russia.

The stance signaled by the incoming US administration sharply contrasts with the goal repeatedly proclaimed by Kiev of regaining the entirety of its post-Soviet territory. This has been accompanied by an explicit refusal by Ukraine to engage in any meaningful negotiations with Russia. Moscow, however, regards the five formerly Ukrainian regions, including Kherson, Zaporozhye, Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as Crimea, as integral parts of its territory. Crimea broke away from Ukraine in the aftermath of the 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev, joining Russia via a referendum shortly thereafter. The four other regions were incorporated into Russia in late 2022 after the local population overwhelmingly backed such a move during separate referendums. Last year, Moscow demanded that Kiev pull its troops out of the areas it still controls in its former regions in order to begin the long-stalled negotiation process.

Resentment over broken promises and making Ukraine NATO’s sacrificial lamb to the alliance’s expansion would easily fuel neofascist resentment and hatred towards the West in the event of Ukraine’s final defeat in the war. On the background of the great ruin of the country that the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War has wrought and the event of Ukraine being forced to capitulate to Moscow or sign a peace treaty that consigns all of the four Ukrainian regions that Russia claims as its own (Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhe, Kherson, and Crimea) to Moscow, it is highly likely that a segment of the Ukrainian population, perhaps a large one, is likely to turn against the West. This could occur whether or not the ‘nationalist revolution is completed’ in an overt way such as a coup, as ultra-nationalists and neo-fascists hope to come to power. Ukrainians have much to resent regarding the West’s abuse of the desire of many to join the West.

...Western backing of an outright neofascist regime of the kind a Yarosh or Biletskiy could head or strongly support seems a bridge too far even for today’s unprincipled West. An independent moderate regime or a Russian puppet regime seem more likely outcomes. The former could be formed only in conditions of a Russo-West peace agreement on Ukraine and Europe’s future security architecture. Ukrainian neutrality, which would have to be part and parcel of any such agreement, would hold the potential for a slow return of Ukraine to the east, maintaining self-interested and cordial relations with Moscow and the West, and Kiev’s joining the new Eurasian order.

Jan 12, 2025

Featured • The Fool's War: Useful Idiots at the Wheel of the Paddy Wagon, Simplicius, Jan 11, 2025
This dissection of the mental and intellectual state of top U.S. military leadership is spot-on, IMO. They are playing with much less than a full deck of cards, as far as knowledge of Russia and Ukraine goes. The callousness and arrogance are staggering, so far beyond the population norm that most people will find it incredible. But it's real. As Simplicius says, "Make sure you also check the actual precis document outlining the strategy for how the West can keep the war going by 'by imposing strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia'".

Featured • Can Trump save America from itself?, Alastair Crooke, Strategic Culture Foundation, Jan 10, 2025

“Absent Ukraine, Russia would never become the heartland power; but with Ukraine, Russia can and would [be a Heartland power]”, he [Brzezinski] insisted. Russia needed to be enmeshed in a similar Ukrainian cultural-identity quagmire, he advocated.

Why was this policy decision so damaging to the prospects of ultimate peace between the U.S. and Russia? It was because Kiev, egged on by the CIA, promoted the entirely false identitarian claim that ‘Europe ends at Ukraine’ – and that beyond it, lie ‘the Slavs’’.

This manipulation alone allowed Kiev to morph into an icon for total cultural-identity war on Russia, despite the fact that the Ukrainian language (correctly known as Ruthenian) is not a Germanic language. Nor is there any Viking (Germanic) DNA to be found among modern-day western Ukrainians.

In its desire to support Kiev and to please Biden, the EU jumped at this Ukrainian strategic revisionism: ‘Ukraine’ crafted as ‘European values’ defending against ‘Russian’ (Asian) values. It was a pole, albeit a false one, around which European unity could be forged at a time when the reality was that of EU unity dissipating.

...Are we – humanity – to continue teetering at the brink of annihilation if a Trump ‘deal’ – narrowly confined to Ukraine – is refused in Moscow? The urgency to halt the slide towards escalation is clear; yet the space for political manoeuvre continuously shrinks, as the compulsion of the Washington-Brussels hawks to land a fatal strike on Russia is not spent.

But seen from the perspective of Team Trump, the task of negotiating with Putin is anything but straight forward. The western public simply has never been psychologically conditioned to expect the possibility of a stronger Russia emerging. On the contrary, they have endured western ‘experts’ sneering at the Russian military; denigrating the Russian leadership as incompetent; and its leadership being presented on their TVs as purely evil.

The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has overwhelmingly voted against including in its 2025 election manifesto a condemnation of Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Ukraine conflict. The delegates gathered for a conference in Riesa, Germany on Saturday to decide on the platform for the snap parliamentary elections which will be held next month. Albrecht Glaser, a member of the Bundestag, proposed accusing Russia of failing to protect civilians in Ukraine and stating that the “AfD condemns the behavior of President Putin and once again calls on all warring parties to propose an immediate ceasefire and hold peace talks.” According to news channel N-tv, 69% of the delegates voted to reject the motion.

The draft program approved by the party leadership only briefly mentions the conflict, saying, “the war in Ukraine has disturbed the European peaceful order,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported. The draft reportedly says the AfD “sees Ukraine’s future as a neutral state outside of NATO and the EU,” and calls for the restoration of “undisturbed trade” with Russia. Known for its anti-immigration stance, the AfD is the second-most popular party in Germany, according to polls. The party has often been accused of parroting Russian narratives about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. The party has rejected the ‘pro-Russian’ label, insisting that continuing military support for Kiev and sanctions on Russian trade and energy exports are counter to German national interests.

Jan 10, 2025

 • Kiev hunting half a million draft dodgers – military, RT, Jan 9, 2025

Around half a million Ukrainian men are suspected of evading conscription, according to the country’s military. Media communications officer Natalia Kindrativ told Kiev FM radio on Wednesday that over 500,000 draft dodging warrants had been filed since the escalation of the conflict with Russia in February 2022. Since that time, Ukraine has declared a general mobilization, lowered the conscription age to 25, and toughened penalties for draft evasion to address troop shortages. However, the military has continued to face personnel challenges and recruitment officers are increasingly using harsh tactics.

“Enlistment offices have filed search notices for over 500,000 people,” Kindrativ said, adding that searches are carried out by Ukraine’s National Police, as conscription officers lack the authority to pursue individuals. She added, however, that “police resources are limited,” which makes it challenging to locate such a large number of people. In order to tackle the problem, law enforcement has been enlisting investigators and forming task forces to help in the effort.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has slammed the EU over what he called its inability to address economic fallout across the bloc and claimed that it could collapse. Fico issued the warning on Wednesday in a video message posted on Facebook about Ukraine’s recent decision to halt the transit of Russian gas to EU member states. Kiev refused to extend a contract with Russia’s Gazprom beyond 2024, effectively cutting off the flow of natural gas to Hungary, Austria and Slovakia. Fico accused Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky of “sabotaging the financial interests of Slovakia and the EU,” saying the transit stoppage could trigger an energy crisis across the bloc and result in some €70 billion ($72 billion) worth of damage.

“Neither Slovakia nor the EU is at war, we have no reason to tolerate Zelensky’s adventures, especially looking at the aid Slovakia and the EU are providing to Ukraine,” Fico said in the video as quoted by News Now agency. He further voiced frustration with the EU’s failure to take action, saying he would travel to Brussels to meet with the energy commissioner and would do everything he can “to wake him up from his sweet sleep, because we have a ‘bloody’ serious problem.”

Jan 9, 2025

Featured • US Always Knew NATO Expansion Led to War, Ted Snider, Antiwar.com, Jan 9, 2025

Reuniting the present with the context of its past is crucial, not for condoning Russia’s war against Ukraine, but for understanding it. More importantly, it will be crucial when it finally comes to resolving and ending it.

The incoming administration seems to have a more realistic image of the state of American hegemonial decline and wants to take proactive steps to try to counteract and reverse it, breathing new life into the American Global Empire.

In this context, it makes perfect sense for the US to increase pressure on its vassals. I am not using the term in a pejorative sense. The US does not have “allies” in the traditional meaning of the word. It has vassals with different levels of feudal obligations and elite integration, and different tasks. Extracting more value from vassals -- whether through tariffs, increased NATO budgets, meddling in local politics or potential territorial concessions -- is an absolutely logical step in cementing and renewing America's position as overlord of its sphere.

There are three ways America's European vassals can react to this: look for protection outside of the sphere, try to make themselves more useful/necessary & advance integration, or take it on the face. Were we in, I don't know, the 19th century, Denmark would just ask Russia for military support in Greenland in exchange for mild economic concessions and never worry again. As it is, the Royal Danish Army does not have any artillery anymore because they gave it all away for the purpose of firing cluster ammunition at Russian children in Donetsk. They did not receive anything in return for that and it did not help any Danish purpose. They cannot defend themselves if push comes to shove and they can't ask anybody to help because most of their fellow vassals have done the same. The most likely option is that they'll just take it on the face. Not just for pragmatic reasons, but also because they genuinely enjoy being dommed [dominated] geopolitically.

America has no obligation to treat its vassals better. I've seen Danish people complain on here about supporting the US after 9/11, participating in the American wars in the Middle East, etc. That's ridiculous. You know how a colony is rewarded for sending troops to its overlord's wars? It doesn't get beaten. That's the reward for a lackey. Any person who takes any of the NATO democracy liberalism pilpul [argumentation by hair-splitting] seriously is just not a serious person, it was never real, it was always just voluntary submission to be absolved from existing in History.

Jan 8, 2025

Featured • WaPo Editors - Ending The War Is Worse Than Losing, Moon of Alabama, Jan 7, 2025

It is however good to learn that the [WaPo] editors (finally) see the situation of Ukraine as unsustainable as it is:

Ukraine is also losing troops at a rate far beyond what it can sustain and continue fighting. The official casualty estimate of 400,000 killed or wounded is considered a vast undercount. Thousands of exhausted Ukrainian soldiers are deserting the front lines. [here]

The war is lost. A hasty settlement will be bad. Russia will be embolden[ed] and the Ukrainians will be sad.

But what else is there to do? The editors don't know. They thus close with a sentence that does not even ('cannot lose') make sense.

As Gilbert Doctorow remarks:

The logic I see is that a bellicose stand on produced-to-order conflicts that can be solved at little cost to Washington, the proverbial kicking ass that Ronald Reagan practiced to great effect, is intended to provide cover for what otherwise would look like a humiliating defeat for Washington should it cut military aid to Kiev and stand by passively while the Kremlin imposes capitulation on the Zelensky regime.

...Trump wants to avoid the larger potential conflicts as they are too difficult to manage and win. He is instead creating his own small conflicts right next to the U.S. backyard.

It is a nice trick and it may even see some success.

Panama will probably agree to some canal rebates or to a priority for U.S. ships. Canada may concede on trade issues. And the EU, which didn't even protest when the U.S. blew up its main energy supply, may well hand over Greenland without even making a fuzz about it.

All three potential wins which would be welcome by MAGA.

Washington should never have claimed that Kiev could join NATO, the US president-elect said on Tuesday.

US President Joe Biden’s inept handling of the tensions between Russia, Ukraine and NATO has led to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, President-elect Donald Trump told a press conference on Tuesday.

Had Washington not offered Ukraine the prospect of joining the US-led military bloc, war could have been avoided, Trump believes.

Washington’s desire to see Ukraine in NATO, despite Moscow’s legitimate concerns, is what has triggered the conflict, the president-elect told journalists, adding that he believes that Biden “broke” a deal that America had with Russia on how far the US-led military bloc could expand.

“Moscow has repeatedly stated even before President Vladimir Putin came to power that it does not want to see NATO in Ukraine,” Trump stated, adding that it “has been written in stone.” Biden nonetheless insisted that “they should be able to join NATO,” he added.

Jan 7, 2025

Featured • Russia, Trump, and the West: Is there a miracle cure for the Ukraine conflict?, Sergey Poletaev, RT, Jan 7, 2025

While Trump’s aversion to war may be genuine, it is unlikely to yield tangible results. Peace cannot be commanded into existence — it requires addressing the root causes of the conflict. Trump offers no solutions here and likely cannot.

Where Trump may differ from Biden is in his willingness to shift the burden of the conflict onto Western Europe, focusing instead on China. While this may benefit Russia strategically, it does not bring the conflict any closer to resolution, nor address the division of spheres of influence. Neither the globalist West nor Trump appears willing to negotiate seriously with Moscow.

...Moscow appears confident in its ability to sustain the conflict for at least another year, if not longer. It is betting on Ukraine’s eventual collapse under the weight of military and economic pressure. The Kremlin sees no need to engage seriously with the globalist West or Trump. Instead, it aims to impose peace on its terms, forcing Ukraine to relinquish its anti-Russian stance and securing its own long-term security.

While alternatives exist, they all depend on factors outside Russia’s control. For now, Moscow is content to keep pressing forward, confident that time is on its side.

The U.S. imperium is effectively spoiling for decisive confrontations with any power that threatens its crumbling primacy.

It is some years now since a lot of people began imagining the specter of World War III in the near or middle distance.

This kind of thinking has been especially common since the U.S., with determination and purpose, provoked Russia to intervene in Ukraine three years ago this coming February....

...The two world wars were waged in defense of democracy and ended with negotiations after decisive victories on battlefields. The wars we witness — let us be very clear about this — are destroying democracy, and those waging these wars make it bitterly plain they have no intention of negotiating anything with those they have turned into adversaries.

This bodes very badly for the character of the transformation that is to come.

...Yanis Varoufakis, that wise man of Athens, published a piece in Project Syndicate on Dec. 19 under the headline, “The West Is Not Dying, but It Is Working on It.” “Western power is as strong as ever,” Varoufakis begins. But he then argues that the U.S. and its trans–Atlantic clients are destroying themselves from within:

“What has changed is that the combination of socialism for financiers, collapsing prospects for the bottom 50%, and the surrender of our minds to Big Tech has given rise to overweening Western elites with little use for the last century’s value system.”

Democratic process, in other words, social or economic equality by any measure one chooses to apply, any thought of the commonweal, the rule of law — all have been foregone as no longer of use. This is not the triumph of the governing classes: It is the governing classes destroying their societies and so themselves. Such is Varoufakis’ case in sum.

...The question remains in the large just as it is in Ukraine: What happens when a great but declining power loses a war, the very most decisive war, it cannot afford to lose? We have not been here before. History is of little use as a guide.

Vladimir Zelensky’s claim that he told US President-elect Donald Trump that Kiev could use frozen Russian assets to buy American weapons is proof of “deep-rooted corrupt ties” between the Ukrainian leader and the West, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has claimed. During his three-hour-long interview with podcaster Lex Fridman on Sunday, Zelensky said he had proposed that Trump give Ukraine the $300 billion in Russian central bank funds that had been frozen by the US and EU after the escalation of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev in February 2022. The money would serve as one of the security guarantees to Ukraine during a possible diplomatic settlement of the conflict, he explained.

According to Zelensky, he told Trump to “take the $300 billion in frozen Russian assets. We will take it. Take money, what we need for our domestic production, and we will buy all the weapons from the US.” Such an arrangement “will be very good for your industry, for the US,” he added. Zakharova reacted to the claim in a post on Telegram on Monday, insisting that the fact that the Ukrainian leader “offered Trump ‘other people’s money in exchange for weapons’ testifies to Zelensky’s deep-rooted corrupt ties with the Anglo-Americans [the US and UK].”

US President Joe Biden has “firmly hooked the Kiev regime on: steal and kill, and then steal again – a bloody scheme in place since the time of Burisma,” a Ukrainian firm which employed the elderly politician’s son Hunter as a highly-paid director in the 2010s, she wrote. As for Zelensky’s interview as a whole, the spokeswoman described it as a “hellish mixture of neo-Nazism and terrorism with drug delirium.” The Ukrainian leader is “completely out of his mind,” Zakharova suggested.

During his conversation with Fridman, Zelensky, among other things, said that it was “bad” that Ukraine did not have nuclear weapons and confessed that he “despises” the Russian people. In late December, exiled Ukrainian opposition leader Viktor Medvedchuk claimed that the “corrupt nature” of Zelensky’s rule is the reason why his country is now ruined. Medvedchuk also suggested that the whole conflict between Moscow and Kiev is “based on one large corrupt scheme that involves leading parties and politicians in Europe and the US.” The Western politicians that support Ukraine are afraid of losing power because it could lead to the new leaders finding out “that they had been robbing their own people under the guise of helping Zelensky,” he said.

Let me remind you what Vladimir Putin said at the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022:

“The purpose of this operation is to protect people who for eight years now have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime,” he said, according to an English translation from the Russian Mission in Geneva. “To this end, we will seek to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, as well as bring to trial those who perpetrated numerous bloody crimes against civilians, including against citizens of the Russian Federation.”

Official Washington and most military analysts continue to ignore Putin’s words and insist that Russia’s goal was to capture all of Ukraine. As my old friend, Ray McGovern, repeatedly has emphasized over the past three years: pay attention to what Putin says.

Demilitarization entails two key objectives. First, ensure the safety of the Russian-speaking populations in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson from attacks from Ukraine...Second, destroy the ability of the Ukrainian military to pose a threat to Russia. This means the defeat of the Ukrainian army and the destruction of its ability to launch air strikes and missiles into Russian territory. This means ending NATO support for Ukraine, which includes an end to joint-NATO / Ukraine military exercises and the sale of military equipment. This also is a nonnegotiable term for Russia.

...What does it mean to denazify? Ukraine, if it wants to continue to exist as a nation (though shorn of significant portions of its territory), must hold new elections without the neo-Nazi elements that have kept Zelensky in power. This likely will include a requirement to draft a new constitution that proscribes extremist groups from being able to organize and participate in government. Books celebrating Stephen Bandera will be prohibited. I believe this also in a nonnegotiable issue for Russia.

Western analysts and politicians are slowly coming to the realization of Ukraine’s staggering losses. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense (MOD), Ukraine has suffered more than 600,000 casualties — killed and wounded — since January 1, 2024. Total casualties — per the MOD — are more than one million since February 2022. Ukraine does not have a recruitment and training regimen in place to replace these losses and will continue to bleed out the longer the war continues.

The French president also warned that there is “no quick and easy solution” in Ukraine, even though Trump has pledged to end the conflict swiftly once he takes office. Continued support for Kiev is vital for the “credibility” of the West, which would be “undermined” by any compromises brought about by “Ukraine fatigue,” Macron told the diplomats in Paris. “The new American president himself knows that the US has no chance of winning anything if Ukraine loses,” Macron said, adding that “capitulation of Ukraine cannot be good for Europeans and Americans.”

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has outlawed any talks with Russia so long as President Vladimir Putin is in office and has insisted on a “peace platform” that would see a unilateral Russian withdrawal from all territories claimed by Kiev, payment of reparations, and war crimes prosecutions. Moscow has dismissed Zelensky’s proposal as delusional. Russia’s terms for ending the hostilities insist on Ukraine becoming neutral, demilitarized and “denazified,” while accepting the “new territorial realities” on the ground and guaranteeing all the rights of ethnic Russians and Russian-speakers. Any peace will also require the removal of all Western sanctions on Russia as well, the Kremlin has said.

Jan 6, 2025

Featured • SITREP 1/5/25: Ukraine Launches Final Bargaining-Chip Offensive in Kursk, Simplicius, Jan 5, 2025

 • Ten Ukrainian tanks destroyed in Kursk Region – Russian MOD, RT, Jan 6, 2025

Russian forces have crushed Kiev’s latest attempt to expand its military foothold in the Kursk Region, destroying ten Ukrainian tanks along with several other armored vehicles in a counteroffensive, the Defense Ministry has said.

...In the past 24 hours, the Ukrainian military has lost a total 485 troops, ten tanks, seven infantry fighting vehicles, five armored personnel carriers, an artillery gun, an electronic warfare system and multiple other vehicles in Kursk Region, the statement reads.

...According to the Russian Defense Ministry’s estimates, since the start of its operation, Kiev has lost nearly 50,000 servicemen, 273 tanks, 209 infantry fighting vehicles, 153 armored personnel carriers, and hundreds of other pieces of equipment, including 13 US-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers.

Units of the Yug military group have taken control of the city of Kurakhovo in Donbass, according to the Russian Ministry of Defense.

"During active offensive operations, units of the Yug military group have completely liberated the city of Kurakhovo — the largest settlement in the southwestern part of Donbass," the statement reads.

As a result, Russian forces have gained operational freedom, which will allow for an increased pace in liberating the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic, according to the ministry.

"After capturing Kurakhovo, Russian forces have gained operational freedom. This will allow for an increased pace in liberating the territory of the Donetsk People's Republic," the statement read.

During the defense of Kurakhovo, Ukraine lost more than 12 thousand servicemen, which amounted to 80% of its personnel, as well as 40 tanks and other armored vehicles, the Russian Ministry of Defense added.

"As a result of the professional actions of Russian forces during the liberation of Kurakhovo, the enemy lost 80% of its personnel (over 12,000 individuals), approximately 3,000 pieces of various weapons and military equipment, including 40 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles. Over two months of combat operations near Kurakhovo, the daily losses of the Ukrainian army averaged between 150 to 180 servicemen killed and wounded," the statement reads.

“The people who attack us speak Russian. They attack people who were only recently told that this was actually in defense of Russian-speaking people, and this is why I respect neither the leader nor the director of today’s Russia, nor the people. I just… that’s it,” he said. Zelensky argued that he addressed Russians in their language back when the conflict escalated in 2022, but “they did not listen” and only “speak the language of weapons.” This is why I honestly despise these people, as they are deaf.

...The majority of Ukrainian citizens can speak or at least understand Russian, particularly in the east of the country. However, since the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev, the new authorities have abolished Russian as an official regional language and adopted policies aimed at its suppression. In 2019, the Ukrainian parliament passed a law requiring Ukrainian to be used exclusively in nearly all aspects of public life, including education, entertainment, politics, business, and the service industry.

Moscow has repeatedly denounced Kiev’s crackdown on Russian culture and language as discrimination, insisting that “forced Ukrainization” violates international law and infringes upon the rights of native Russian speakers, who make up around a quarter of the population. Kiev has sharply intensified its de-Russification efforts since the escalation of the conflict with Moscow in February 2022. Ukrainian lawmakers have since imposed blanket bans on Russian-language works of art, concerts and performances, as well as movies, books, and songs. The study of Russian in schools and universities has also been outlawed.

On Saturday, Russia said that Ukrainian forces fired more US-provided Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) into Russian territory and vowed there would be a response.

The Russian Defense Ministry said Ukraine fired eight ATACMS into the Belgorod Oblast and that they were all downed by Russian air defenses. “The crews of the S-400 and Pantsir-SM air defense systems countered the attack and shot down all the ATACMS missiles,” the ministry said.

The ministry added that the Ukrainian attack, “which is supported by Western curators, will be met with retaliation.”

Jan 5, 2025

Featured • Zelensky Sells Ukraine to BlackRock, Scott Ritter, X, Jan 4, 2025
For most of us, there's no point in quibbling about details. The U.S. and various EU countries have "used and abused" Ukraine, recalling the Roman phrase (utendi et abutendi) about what ownership of property allows the owner.

 • Russia repels Ukrainian counterattack in Kursk region – MOD, RT, Jan 5, 2025

Russian forces have successfully repelled a Ukrainian counterattack while advancing in Kursk Region, the country’s Defense Ministry has said.

...The Russian artillery and air force “have delivered defeat to the assault group of the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” it said.

Kiev lost two tanks, a mine clearing unit and seven armored combat vehicles in the failed attack, the military said. “The operation to destroy the Ukrainian units continues,” it added.

Over the past 24 hours, Kiev has lost up to 340 servicemen, four tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles, four armored personnel carriers and 12 armored combat vehicles in the fighting in Russia’s Kursk Region, the statement read.

...According to the Russian Defense Ministry, Kiev’s total losses in the five months since the launch of its incursion have reached over 49,000 servicemen, 273 tanks, 209 infantry fighting vehicles, 153 armored personnel carriers, and hundreds of other pieces of equipment, including 13 US-supplied HIMARS multiple rocket launchers.

Jan 4, 2025

Featured • Tech Surge of the SMO: AI, Drones, EW, Countermeasures, and More of the Latest Advancements, Simplicius, Jan 3, 2025
Fascinating to some, important to all. Autonomous weapons are here to stay. A multidimensional arms race in killer robots is underway, changing warfare from top to bottom.

Featured • Biden & Make-Believe Democracy, Jonathan Cook, Consortium News, Jan 3, 2025

The problem is that, subjected to a lifetime of elite propaganda, many are readier to believe that very propaganda than the evidence of their own own eyes. They are truly hypnotised.

Even now, many are listening to the “revelations” of Biden’s long decline and, just like the WSJ, not wondering how the U.S. has been functioning for the past four years with a president barely able to read a teleprompter, one whose mind is so vacant he can wander off in the middle of a conversation.

Does the U.S. run by itself? Does it need a president? Or is the president nothing more than a figurehead for a permanent bureaucracy that expects to wield power from the shadows, unobserved by voters and unaccountable to them? Is the U.S. a democracy, or is the democracy just a facade behind which a wealth elite maintains its power?

Biden has given us the answer. Were you listening?

Jan 3, 2025

 • EU state slams Ukraine for ‘betrayal’, RT, Jan 3, 2025

Slovak Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok has criticized Ukraine’s decision to halt the transit of Russian gas through its territory, calling it a “betrayal of trust” and a threat to European energy stability. Estok made the comments on Thursday in a Facebook post, noting Slovakia’s significant military, political, and humanitarian aid to Ukraine since the start of the conflict with Russia. He said his country had expected “solidarity” from Kiev in return. Ukraine refused to extend its transit contract with Russia’s Gazprom beyond the end of 2024, effectively cutting off the flow of natural gas to some EU countries, including Austria, Italy, and Slovakia. Landlocked Slovakia depends on Russian gas to meet about 60% of its demand.

...“It is therefore necessary to renew the dialogue and look for solutions and compromises that will ensure the stability of energy supplies in the coming years,” Estok said. Slovakia’s state-owned gas importer, SPP, estimated that finding a replacement for Russian gas this year alone could cost the country at least €90 million. In a video message on Thursday, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said his country is considering cutting electricity supplies to Ukraine and limiting refugee support in response to Kiev’s decision.

Jan 2, 2025

Featured • 2025 - Ukraine On The Verge Of Defeat, Moon of Alabama, Jan 1, 2025

The incoming U.S. president Donald Trump has promised to end the war in Ukraine in a short time. However, the only way to achieve that is to concede to all the demands the Russian side has made. The western pro-war factions and the deep-state will do their best to prevent that. They still demand a maximum pressure campaign to bring Russia to its knees.

But every measure they plan to introduced has already been tried. A further increase of sanctions on Russia will only further weaken U.S. allies. There are no more 'wonder-weapons' in U.S. arsenals that Russia can not immediately counter. Russia is outproducing western weapon manufacturers in all categories.

The Ukrainian army is on the verge of falling apart. The economy of Ukraine is faltering. Its people have lost the will to fight.

As the U.S., and NATO, are likely unwilling to concede their defeat the war will have to be decided on the battle field. In 2025 the Russian forces will continue to destroy the Ukrainian army. They will proceed to take whatever is needed to guarantee Russia's strategic security.

A year from now the discussions in western countries may well be about sending their own troops to the Ukrainian frontline. But the prospect of massive losses of their own soldiers is likely to prevent their populations from agreeing to that.

The west will concede because, aside from nuclear war, it will be the only option that is left on the table.

More disturbing for me though was the total breakdown of 'western' concepts that were, until recently, held high.

Liberalism, as an economic and societal concept, has broken down.

Globalism is no more. Free trade has been replaced with a myriad of tariffs and sanctions. The U.S. is forcefully pressuring its 'allies', especially in Europe, to buy its goods and to do its bidding. There is, astonishingly, no noticeable resistance to this.

The fake concept of 'fighting disinformation' is being used to implement outright censorship. Political activism gets threatened whenever it challenges the current Staatsräson as decreed from the top. Insulting politicians for their lack of consistency is now lèse-majesté that needs to be punished. Making fact based arguments is no longer seen as sensible reasoning but as taking partisan sides.

Most horrifying though is the breakdown of humanitarian concepts the 'west' once claimed to hold high.

Russia has officially ceased gas transit through Ukraine as of 8am Moscow time on January 1, confirming the expected end of contracts that have been in place since 2019. Russian energy giant Gazprom announced the halt after negotiations to extend the transit agreements with Ukrainian companies Naftogaz and the Gas Transmission System Operator of Ukraine fell through. In a press release issued on Wednesday, Gazprom said, “Due to the repeated and clear refusal of the Ukrainian side to extend these agreements, Gazprom was deprived of the technical and legal opportunity to supply gas for transit through Ukraine starting from January 1, 2025.” As a result, gas supplies to Europe via this route are now completely suspended. The gas pipeline that traverses Ukraine leads into Slovakia, which had hoped to continue receiving Russian gas and urged Ukraine to extend the transit agreements.

In response to Kiev’s decision to stop the gas transit, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico threatened last week to cut electricity supplies to Ukraine. The five-year contract for Russian gas deliveries through Ukraine expired despite ongoing long-term agreements between Gazprom and several European buyers. Ukrainian officials confirmed the cessation of transit, calling it a “historic event” in the interests of national security. Kiev has long denied the possibility of a new transit deal with Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed the finality of the situation during his annual press conference on December 19, stating, “This transit contract will not exist anymore, it’s clear. But we will manage; Gazprom will manage.”

Households and businesses in Germany should save gas to avoid shortages, Die Welt reported on Wednesday, citing the country’s energy regulator, the Federal Network Agency. According to an analysis by the agency, the country has been consuming significantly more gas this heating season than last year. The agency said total gas consumption in Germany rose by 5.8% from October to December 2024 against the same period the previous year, to 246 terawatt-hours (TWh). Industries recorded an increase in consumption of 9.1% compared to 2023, while the increase in households and businesses was more modest at 1.9%, the report noted.

Ukrainian forces have lost around 593,410 troops over 2024, according to Sputnik calculations of the Russian Defense Ministry’s data. The ministry’s weekly briefs over the year indicate that Kiev lost around 4,000 soldiers weekly in early 2024. By March, this figure increased to 7,000, before it experienced a slight decrease. Besides, in March, Ukrainian forces attempted to cross the Russian border in the Belgorod and Kursk regions, which resulted in losing around 3,000 troops more, Sputnik calculated on Wednesday.

After that, Kiev’s combat losses started increasing, reaching over 10,000 people per week in late May, after which the number did not go lower than that. Following the Ukrainian attack on Russia’s Kursk Region in August, the losses further escalated, the calculations revealed. The most significant weekly losses for Kiev’s troops occurred from October 26 to November 1, with approximately 17,000 Ukrainian fighters being lost.

That’s right—2024 was the year of unvarnished genocide, and what’s more: it was the total white-washing of said genocide by the bought-and-paid-for corporate media.

More than anything else, I declare year 2024 as the death of mainstream media. Never before was their bias, their criminality and total hostility to truth more openly obvious, more flagrantly flaunted by them. Scandal after scandal marred the last few remnant crumbs of credibility that remained, from covering up Biden’s clear dementia, presidential incompetence, and family crimes, to covering for Israel’s genocide all year long, with ‘creative’ formatting and syntax tricks, as well as lack of any impartiality or ability to question the State Narrative. They have exposed themselves as nothing more than an antiquated soapbox of disinformation and narrative control. This year was truly the long-overdue—and much-earned—death of mainstream media as an institution.

Virtually everything of note, any newsworthy revelation or exposé, was broken on either Twitter, Substack, or associated ‘citizen journalist’ haven.

Gas prices in Europe have shot up to $536 per 1,000 cubic meters during ICE trading, the highest since November 27, 2023, amid expectations of halted Russian gas transit through Ukraine starting January 1. Prices rose by over 4% since the day’s start. February futures at the Dutch TTF hub exceeded $536 per 1,000 cubic meters (€50 per MWh). The current transit agreement, allowing the transport of 40 billion cubic meters annually through Ukraine, expires on January 1. Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed that no new agreement would be signed before the New Year, and Kiev announced plans to halt Russian gas transit at 8:00 a.m. Moscow time on January 1.

Dec 31, 2024

 • Kiev announces US to transfer $15bn using seized Russian funds, RT, Dec 30, 2024

The US will provide Kiev with $15 billion, leveraging future revenues from frozen Russian central bank assets, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denis Shmigal announced on Monday. The Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has previously said about Washington’s purported illegal transfer of Russian funds to Kiev that Moscow may challenge it in court. The American funding is part of a broader $20 billion contribution under the G7’s $50 billion loan framework to Ukraine. The agreement was signed by Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance and the World Bank under the PEACE in Ukraine initiative, Shmigal claimed, in a post on his Telegram channel. The G7, comprising the US, Canada, Japan, the UK, France, Germany, and Italy, initially pledged the $50 billion loan in June 2022, using profits from frozen Russian assets as collateral. Of the estimated $300 billion immobilized, $213 billion is held in the Brussels-based clearinghouse Euroclear.

The Biden administration on Monday announced nearly $6 billion in new aid for Ukraine as it’s determined to escalate the proxy war as much as possible before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20, 2025.

The aid includes $3.4 billion in “direct budget support,” a form of assistance meant to pay for Ukrainian government services, salaries, pensions, and other types of spending. It has also been used to subsidize Ukrainian small businesses and farmers.

...Biden asked Congress for an additional $24 billion to spend on Ukraine, but the request was rejected by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who said any decisions on Ukraine aid would be up to Trump.

The Joe Biden administration believes that Ukrainian forces are on the verge of a total loss in Russia’s Kursk Oblast and is now advising Kiev to pull its troops back. Reporting on Kiev’s losses in Kursk, the AP reports the Ukrainian forces have become “demoralized.”

In August, tens of thousands of Ukrainian troops stormed across the Russian border and seized a large swath of lightly defended territory in the Kursk Oblast. Since then, Moscow has slowly won back over half the territory. Now, the White House says Ukraine must abandon its foothold in Russia before its troops become encircled.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Sunday that Moscow was “not satisfied” with reported proposals being discussed by President-elect Donald Trump and his transition team to end the war in Ukraine.

Recent media reports have said Trump’s team proposed the idea of Ukraine pledging not to join NATO for at least 20 years as part of a potential peace deal. Another report said Trump wants European troops to deploy to Ukraine to monitor a future ceasefire.

“Judging by numerous leaks and Donald Trump’s own interview with Time magazine on December 12, he is talking about ‘freezing’ hostilities along the line of engagement and transferring further responsibility for confronting Russia to the Europeans,” Lavrov said, according to the Russian news agency TASS.

“We are certainly not satisfied with the proposals made by representatives of the president-elect’s team to postpone Ukraine’s membership in NATO for 20 years and to deploy a peacekeeping contingent of ‘UK and European forces’ in Ukraine,” Lavrov added.

Dec 29, 2024

Featured • SITREP 12/28/24: Provocation Pressure Against Russia Heats Up in Both Air and Sea, Simplicius, Dec 28, 2024

Russia is entering a very dangerous time period. It may sound cliche to say this because for a long time now we’ve constantly spoken of Ukraine’s “collapse”, but this time it really is getting to that point where things are hitting the wall. Particularly depending on what Trump does, Ukraine may not last out the next year. Zelensky is now forced to embark on a major global operation to “fire all guns” in provoking Russia to the maximum, full tilt.

This is not just my speculation but has been supported by several reports that affirm Ukraine has activated such a wide-scale plan. It involves other countries in broadly increasing the pressure on Russia’s operations from every conceivable angle. The most obvious and overtly declared one has been the new announcement that the US and allies are declaring an elevated war on Russia’s “shadow tanker fleet”. This has created immediate results, such as a new provocation surrounding Russia’s ‘Eagle S’ ship which was seized yesterday under suspicion of allegedly cutting more undersea cables between Estonia and Finland.

...Again, they have lost the war on the ground, so now they have no choice but to make Russia bleed all over the globe.

Scott Ritter: Nothing's going to stop Russia from winning this war.

NATO is a parasite. It sucks the lifeblood out of the United States.

NATO is an organization that's outlived its usefulness.

NATO doesn't have the ability to meaningfully intervene.

Utah Senator Mike Lee has criticized the proposed allocation of a new lavish weaponry package for Kiev, calling it ‘money laundering.’ The Republican senator took to X on Sunday, responding to an AP post reporting on a looming $1.25 billion weaponry package, expected to be announced by the outgoing Biden administration shortly. “Please no more money to Ukraine. There’s only so much they can launder,” Lee wrote on his account with the ‘BasedMikeLee’ handle, accompanying the post with a picture of the Ukrainian flag bearing the “Universal symbol for money laundering” inscription. The upcoming package is expected to include a “significant amount” of various munitions, including missiles for NASAMS and HAWK anti-aircraft systems, munitions for Stinger MANPADs, as well as artillery shells in 155- and 105-mm caliber, AP reported, citing unnamed US officials.

Dec 28, 2024

Featured • Putin apologizes over deadly plane crash, RT, Dec 28, 2024

 • Ukraine heading for disaster – Slovak PM, RT, Dec 28, 2024

Robert Fico says it is “incomprehensible” for Kiev to refuse a ceasefire, and warns that it will pay a “huge price.”

The Ukrainian government is pushing the country towards ruin by trying to serve the interests of the West, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico claimed in a Facebook post on Friday.

Fico said that he finds it “incomprehensible” that Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky continues to refuse a ceasefire with Russia, and is instead “dragging the entire country into disaster.”

The Slovak premier predicted that Ukraine will pay “a huge price for this Western adventure in the form of the loss of territory and the presence of foreign troops.”

Fico stressed that he would personally never join Western politicians who “openly support war” and would “never agree to Slavs killing each other in the name of any geopolitical interests and efforts to weaken and distract Russia.”

In the video, he also hit out at Zelensky, who has repeatedly attacked Fico in public speeches and on social media. The prime minister argued that the West is only granting Zelensky’s requests for “selfish political and power reasons.”

The United States is expected to announce that it will send $1.25 billion in military assistance to Ukraine, U.S. officials said Friday, as the Biden administration pushes to get as much aid to Kyiv as possible before leaving office on Jan. 20.

The large package of aid includes a significant amount of munitions, including for the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems and the HAWK air defense system. It also will provide Stinger missiles and 155 mm- and 105 mm artillery rounds, officials said.

Dec 27, 2024

Featured • Germany is doomed because of this grave mistake, Nadezhda Romanenko, RT, Dec 26, 2024

For decades, Germany was the envy of the world: a shining example of how a war-torn nation could rise from the ashes to become Europe’s economic powerhouse. This success was no accident. Germany’s prosperity rested on three key pillars: access to cheap Russian energy, unfettered free trade with the United States and other Western allies, and minimal military spending thanks to American security guarantees during the Cold War. These factors allowed Germany to build an unparalleled industrial economy, maintain a generous welfare state, and dominate global markets.

But Germany’s decision to sever ties with Russia following the Ukraine escalation threatens to dismantle this carefully constructed foundation. By aligning itself entirely with the US-led NATO strategy against Moscow, Germany has unwittingly sealed its economic fate. The consequences are already visible, and the worst is yet to come. Germany is doomed because of this grave mistake. The German economy has always been a giant built on energy-intensive industries like chemicals, automobiles, and heavy manufacturing. These industries relied on one key advantage: affordable Russian natural gas. For decades, Berlin fostered a close energy relationship with Moscow, importing vast quantities of cheap gas through pipelines like Nord Stream. This mutually beneficial arrangement kept Germany’s factories humming and its export economy highly competitive.

That relationship is over. In response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Germany abandoned Russian energy almost overnight, shutting down Nord Stream and scrambling for alternatives. The result? Soaring energy prices and a manufacturing crisis that is crippling German industry. Without cheap energy, the very sectors that made Germany an industrial giant – automotive, steel, and chemicals – are no longer globally competitive. To make matters worse, Germany’s ideological commitment to a rapid green energy transition has only exacerbated the problem. While renewable energy has its merits, it is nowhere near ready to replace the reliable baseload energy that Russian gas provided. Germany’s decision to phase out nuclear energy – a reliable and carbon-free power source – further undermines its energy security. The result is an economy that is buckling under the weight of its own short-sighted policies.

Russian President Vladimir Putin fielded questions from journalists Thursday at the conclusion of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council meeting held outside St. Petersburg. The Russian-led EEU economic bloc includes member states Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Among the more interesting moments was when Putin revealed what President Biden previously offered him in order to avert the Ukraine conflict, regarding the question of Kiev’s NATO membership. The comments came in the context of a question over Trump’s reported peace plan and the idea of freezing the front lines. Putin described that such a plan is nothing new, and added the following per state media translation:

“I know that the current President Biden spoke about this, it’s no secret, back in 2021. He proposed exactly this to me – to delay Ukraine’s admission into NATO by 10-15 years, because [Kiev] is not ready yet,” Putin said, referring to the midsummer meeting he had with the US leader in Switzerland. He stressed that no matter the timeline, Ukraine’s admission into NATO would be unacceptable “whether it’s in one year or ten years.” “We, too, are striving to end the conflict,” Putin added, but stressed that this should happen by achieving all of Moscow’s military and political objectives, according to RT. Toward this end, Putin during the Q&A proposed Slovakia as a ‘neutral’ potential host country for future peace talks...

Dec 26, 2024

Featured • Truce in Ukraine Path to Nowhere, Russia Will Not Be Satisfied With Idle Talks - Lavrov, Sputnik International, Dec 26, 2024

Reaching a truce in the Ukrainian conflict is a path to nowhere, and Russia will not be satisfied with idle talks about settlement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Thursday.

"We cannot be satisfied with an idle talks. So far, all we hear is talk about the need to come up with some kind of truce... A truce is a path to nowhere, we need final legal agreements that will fix all the conditions for ensuring the security of Russia and the legitimate security interests of our neighbors, but in a context that will consolidate in an international legal way the impossibility of violating these agreements," Lavrov told a press conference for Russian and foreign media.

No one really hides the fact that the truce is necessary in order to gain time to pump Kiev with weapons, Lavrov said.

Russia is ready to hold consultations with the administration of US President-elect Donald Trump on Ukraine and hopes the White House will study the root causes of the conflict, Lavrov said.

"I very much hope that Trump's administration, including [Trump's special envoy to Ukraine and Russia Keith] Kellogg, will get to the root causes of the conflict. We are always ready for consultations," Lavrov told a press conference for Russian and foreign media.

France proposed to Russia through closed channels several times to establish a dialogue on Ukraine without Kiev's participation, Lavrov said.

"Our French colleagues have contacted us several times through closed channels asking to establish a dialogue on the Ukrainian issue. By the way, without Ukraine," Lavrov said.

Putin: Ceasefire 'Impossible' Until Peace Talks With Ukraine Begin, 4 July, 14:40 GMT.

Such signals from Paris came as if in violation of the Western rule about "not a word about Ukraine without Ukraine," the minister said, adding that at the same time, France is also the initiator of sending peacekeepers to Ukraine and is training Ukrainian soldiers.

"Such ambiguous behavior does not cause a desire to take seriously what is happening at the initiative of our French colleagues," Lavrov concluded.

Moscow selects the targets for destruction on Ukrainian territory based on threats to Russia, and these could also be decision-making centers in Kiev, Lavrov.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - On Thursday, Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that it had thwarted a series of assassination plots, orchestrated by Ukrainian intelligence, targeting high-ranking Russian defense officials involved in the military operation in Ukraine, as well as their family members.

"The Federal Security Service of Russia has prevented a series of terrorist attacks planned by the Ukrainian special services against high-ranking officials of the Russian Defense Ministry, taking part in the special military operation, and against their relatives. As a result of the measures taken, four Russian citizens involved in the preparation of the aforementioned assassinations were detained," the FSB said in a statement.

Additionally, a Moscow resident recruited by the Ukrainian special services to gather intelligence on the targets has been identified, the security service said.

The Ukrainian special services carried out the delivery of bomb components to Russia by concealing them in household appliances, tools, and car parts, the statement revealed. It also noted that homemade explosives and communication devices used in criminal activities were seized from the detainees who were taken into custody.

Dec 25, 2024

Featured • MSM Quietly Acquits Itself with Hushed Admissions of Major White House Coverup, Simplicius, Dec 24, 2024

But the fact is that the WSJ story is not really about Biden’s dementia or ‘slow mental decline’ as they make it seem—this is merely the distracting smokescreen they’ve utilized to paper over the far more sinister unspoken revelations. And those have to do with the centralization of power in the hands of a small clique of unelected compradors and bureaucrats, which is being mirrored in every major Western country.

With the recent tide of populist forces now crescent, the elites in power are losing control of the narrative and must rely on an increasingly heavy hand in redirecting Western nations back into alignment with the globalist vision. This means handing over the keys of their executive branches to small groups of infiltrators with deep connections to the top level wire pullers. It’s also about total information control, both to and from the president, prime minister, chancellor, et cetera. Everything should be filtered through the small group of aides who are typically appointed by other powerful handlers embedded within the state departments of these administrations.

..It is increasingly the case in the US, that each presidency becomes merely a proxy for the combined marriage that is the Donor Class and Security Apparatus as a kind of execrable blob.

Upon his inauguration as president, Donald Trump will become the leader of a United States executive branch mired in two major wars via its continuing pumping of money, weapons, and intelligence into support of the Ukraine and Israel governments. Trump has declared his opposition to the continuation of these wars. But, how can he end them? The means by which Trump can end the wars is simpler than many Americans think. This means just does not come to mind for many Americans because it is far removed from the course US presidents have tended to pursue over the last few decades. Righty tighty. That’s it. Taking the US out of these wars is as simple as turning off a standard outdoor water faucet. President Joe Biden has turned the handle all the way lefty loosey. Trump should just turn it back all the way. Shut off the money flow. Shut off the weapons flow. Shut off the intelligence flow.

And there is no good reason for Trump to take his time about it. He should turn off the flow of aid in all forms promptly in his presidency. Doing so would comport with Trump’s stated objectives regarding the Ukraine War and the Israel War during his campaign and since. Trump has repeated his promise to end the Ukraine War in a day. He has also commented on multiple occasions that he wants the Israel War over before he is even sworn in as president. Without US support, Ukraine and Israel lack the means to continue their wars. Deprived of the means to continue fighting in anywhere near the strength they have, both governments will immediately find themselves in a new situation where their best option is to seek peace. Without critical US support, the Ukraine government will negotiate what it will give up in its loss to Russia.

Meanwhile, Israel, also deprived of critical US support, will have to pare its ambition in its multifront war. Their only other option is suicidal fighting on in a lost cause. Sober military members would probably put a stop to that. No matter, it was never the cause — lost or otherwise — of America anyway. What about negative political repercussions for Trump from his ending US participation in the wars? Such participation lacks popular support, so ending it would seem a plus for Trump’s popularity. Further, since Trump won the presidential election portraying himself as the “peace candidate,” even people who dislike his extraction of the US from the wars would not be very convincing complaining of Trump acting inconsistently or hypocritically. Indeed, Trump could proclaim that his action is a promise kept.

There is even a political urgency for Trump to turn the faucet handle righty tighty. If he continues supporting the wars for weeks or, worse, months or even years, the wars will become Trump wars as they have been Biden wars. Americans would feel relief when Trump after significant delay terminates US involvement, but any effort then to praise him as a man of peace will be met with justified skepticism. There would be blood on his hands. If President Trump quickly turns off the faucet for the Ukraine War, the defeat of Ukraine will be accelerated. Trump can portray such as the much-needed termination of Biden’s deadly folly, reminding Americans as Trump has over the past couple years that the entire conflict would have been avoided had Trump been president. Trump can also claim victory in stopping the killing of people — Ukrainian and Russian — something he has pointed to as his primary objective.

In turning off the war support for the Israel government, Trump is in a different position as he has expressed his particularly strong support for this government. But, Trump, as with the Ukraine war, has also expressed his strong desire for the carnage in the Israel War to end. Trump, when shutting off the faucet, can declare victory for Israel. He can claim the defeat by Israel of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon. He can claim also Israel’s elimination of threat posed to it from Syria. The war is over and won can be his message. Trump will surely face difficult challenges as president, but on the major issues of the Ukraine War and Israel War, the solution is simple: righty tighty.

Lavrov dismissed the notion of a ceasefire in Ukraine, emphasizing that only legally binding agreements that address the conflict's root causes can pave the way for lasting peace.

“As for the talks we are hearing about, primarily from the West and Ukraine, they are centered solely on a ceasefire. The goal seems to be to give the Kiev regime time to regroup with Western support, before launching another attempt to carry out its handlers’ instructions to strategically defeat Russia,” Lavrov remarked.

"The President has mentioned this numerous times. For us, a ceasefire alone will not suffice. What we need are reliable, legally binding agreements aimed at addressing the root causes of the conflict, including general security in Europe, NATO expansion, and, of course, the rights of people living in the territories who have chosen to reunite with the Russian Federation. However, this does not mean that the demand for respecting linguistic and religious rights, which were legislatively prohibited by Zelensky, should not apply to the rest of Ukraine," the top diplomat added.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has accused the European Union of being in denial about its inability to secure a victory for Ukraine in the conflict with Russia. Speaking to the broadcaster M1 on Sunday, Orban criticized the bloc’s leaders for ignoring the reality on the ground and asserted that their current approach is merely prolonging the conflict without achieving meaningful results. In recent months, Russian forces have advanced rapidly in the Donbass region, steadily pushing westward since capturing the strategic town of Avdeevka in February. In October, they seized another key Ukrainian stronghold, the town of Ugledar, and are now close to taking control of Kurakhovo, a major Ukrainian logistical hub. “The reality is that Ukraine is not winning on the battlefield,” Orban said during the interview.

“Leaders in Brussels are living in a self-created bubble, refusing to acknowledge that this war cannot be won in the way they imagine.” He argued that continued military support and sanctions against Russia are counterproductive, harming European economies more than achieving their intended goals. “The sanctions have failed,” Orban claimed. “Instead of crippling Russia, they have weakened Europe. Yet, Brussels refuses to face this truth.”

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has confirmed that he offered money to Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico during their recent meeting in Brussels, amid a row between the two nations over the transit of Russian gas.Kiev intends to cut supplies of Russian fuel through its territory when a five-year transit contract expires at the end of the year, which Slovakia says would undermine its energy security. After a meeting of EU leaders with Zelensky last week, Fico claimed he had rejected an offer of €500 million ($520 million) in exchange for Bratislava’s backing of the Ukrainian bid to join NATO. Zelensky disputed the reason for his proposal in a post on X on Tuesday. “We offered him solutions regarding potential compensation for Slovaks – the Slovaks specifically – for losses from Russian transit, as well as alternatives for transit – any other gas, not Russian, at the request of the European Commission,” he wrote.

Dec 24, 2024

 • EU candidate’s president eyeing attack on Russian peacekeepers – Moscow, RT, Dec 23, 2024

Moldovan President Maia Sandu has openly discussed planning a military operation to seize control of the breakaway region of Transnistria, which hosts a Russian peacekeeping contingent, Moscow’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has claimed. According to the agency, Sandu became “emotionally unstable” at a recent meeting with government officials over Ukraine’s decision to cut the flow of Russian gas to Moldova, triggering fears of an energy crisis in the EU candidate state. Kiev has refused to reopen talks with Moscow on any future transit, prompting Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico to accuse Ukraine of graft. The news met with reported exasperation in Moldova, which is heavily reliant on Russian gas.

In a statement on Monday, the SVR claimed that Sandu’s government is preparing to escalate tensions in the region, potentially targeting the Cuciurgan power plant, which supplies around 75% of Moldova’s electricity. According to the agency, Sandu has discussed removing Russian peacekeepers and reasserting Chisinau’s control. EU officials were allegedly “clutching their heads” and “do not know how to calm down the emotionally unstable Sandu,” according to the agency. Sandu “categorically refused to discuss this issue with Ukraine and unequivocally pinned the blame on Russia,” threatening to “take it out on Transnistria” if Moscow fails to deliver gas to Moldova.

Ukrainian officials are “starting to believe” that the conflict with Russia will be resolved next year, a senior member of Vladimir Zelensky’s government has reportedly told the Washington Post. The shift in attitude is a direct result of US President-elect Donald Trump’s public talk of a settlement, the official added. Trump promised on the campaign trail to end the conflict within a day of taking office, although he has since admitted that doing so may take longer. The US president-elect has revealed few details about how he plans to achieve this, but media leaks and comments from his closest advisers suggest that he will push to freeze the fighting along the current line of contact, using the leverage of US military aid to Ukraine to force Zelensky into talks with Putin.

...However, the Ukrainian leader has recently abandoned his talk of “victory,” claiming instead that he wants a “just peace” coupled with security guarantees from the West in the form of NATO membership, with the status of the former Ukrainian regions undetermined. Moscow maintains that any settlement must begin with Ukraine ceasing military operations and acknowledging the “territorial reality” that it will never regain control of its former regions. In addition, the Kremlin insists that the goals of its military operation – which include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification – will be achieved. After meeting Zelensky in Paris earlier this month, Trump claimed that the Ukrainian leader “would like to make a deal and stop the madness.”

Zelensky immediately denied seeking a settlement, declaring that the conflict “cannot simply end with a piece of paper and a few signatures,” and that Putin “can only be stopped by strength.” Trump has since confirmed that he may cut military aid to Kiev once he takes office in January. “We’ve seen everybody’s narrative go from ‘As long as it [takes], blank check, don’t dare say anything else, or you’re somehow pro-Russian’ to ‘How do we get this to a deal?’” Trump’s nominee for national security adviser, Mike Waltz, said in an interview on Sunday. Expecting “every Russian off of every inch of Ukraine, including Crimea?” might not be a “realistic goal at this point,” he added.

Dec 23, 2024

Featured • Inaction over Ukraine would have been a ‘crime’ – Putin, RT, Dec 22, 2024

Russia should have launched its military campaign against Kiev earlier, after realizing that neither Ukraine nor its Western backers were committed to a peaceful settlement of the Donbass crisis, President Vladimir Putin has said. In an interview with Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin on Sunday, Putin acknowledged that while it is difficult to give the ideal date for the special military operation in hindsight, Russians “should have gotten our bearings earlier and understood that our opponents are not going to implement the Minsk agreements, that they are simply leading us by the nose, misleading us.” A crime, Putin continued, can result from either action or inaction. “Our inaction would have been a crime against the interests of Russia and those of her people,” the president stressed.

The now-defunct Minsk agreements, first signed in 2014 and brokered by Germany and France, were intended to give the Donetsk and Lugansk regions a special status within the Ukrainian state. However, former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.” After the conflict escalated in 2022, the same sentiment was echoed by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French President Francois Hollande. The Western leaders were doing their best to prepare Kiev for a further fight with Russia, Putin stressed. “And if they gave them the opportunity to prepare for future military actions, it means they were counting on them.

With this in mind, we should have acted more decisively and swiftly, should have prepared for this and chosen the right moment to start [the campaign], without waiting for the moment when it was no longer possible to sit on our hands,” he added. Russia has said that it sent troops to Ukraine to protect the people of Donbass from recurring Ukrainian strikes and cited Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, while Ukraine has insisted that the attack was completely unprovoked. Moscow has also consistently opposed Kiev’s aspirations to join NATO, viewing the expansion of the US-led bloc as an existential threat. In the autumn of 2022, the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye regions voted overwhelmingly to join Russia in public referendums.

No preparations have yet been made for a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President-elect Donald Trump, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. On Sunday, Trump reiterated that he wanted to resolve the Ukraine conflict, signaling that he would not rule out a sit-down with the Russian leader to stop the bloodshed.

...According to several media reports, one potential peace plan being considered by Trump would include the freezing of the conflict along the current front line without recognizing Russia’s sovereignty over territories claimed by Ukraine while suspending Kiev’s NATO membership ambitions. While Russia has designated Ukraine’s neutrality as one of its key goals, it has repeatedly ruled out the freezing of the conflict, arguing that this would only enable the West to rearm Kiev. Putin has also suggested that Moscow could immediately declare a ceasefire and start peace talks as soon as Ukraine leaves all Russian territory, including Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye regions.

Russia has repeatedly warned that the US and its Western sponsors’ assistance to the Kiev regime will only prolong the Ukraine conflict. Western financing of Ukraine reached a whopping $238.5 billion from February 2022 to the beginning of December 2024, which approximately corresponds to 87% of the country s budget expenses, Sputnik s research based on information from the Ukrainian Finance Ministry, the University of Kiel, and open data has shown.

Berlin is unable or unwilling to finally abandon a pernicious groupthink that subordinates its interests to Washington’s misguided political agenda.

...The reason for that odd blindness is purely political, because that cause is very easy to identify. It’s the “structural blow” of “the loss of cheap Russian energy,” as even Bloomberg acknowledges.

It is true: Germany has an abundance of problems, some long predating the war in and over Ukraine: demography, under-digitalization, the infamous “debt brake,” a public debt limit so primitively designed it makes reasonable deficits impossible, and so on. And yet, the politically produced and self-imposed (Russia did not cut off the cheap energy, the West did, including via violent sabotage as in the Nord Stream attacks) energy crisis is decisive.

Imagine Germany, if you wish, as a past-their-prime, somewhat out-of-shape middle-class type. In principle, there is no reason such a person cannot rebuild by pursuing a healthy diet and decent exercise. Except, of course, you also cut off their oxygen supply by strangling them.

The added irony: Germany – with plenty of help from its big brother “ally” America and its dependent sponger Ukraine – is strangling itself.

...Germany’s fundamental problem is not actually economic. The economy is in catastrophic shape, make no mistake. But the reason for that is political and even intellectual and moral: The inability or unwillingness to finally abandon a pernicious group think that subordinates obvious and vital German interests to the misguided political agenda of, ultimately, Washington and does not allow for what is obviously needed urgently: re-establishing and repairing a rational relationship with Russia.

Dec 22, 2024

Featured • SITREP 12/21/24: Things Heat Up in Kherson, Ukraine Losses Update, and More, Simplicius, Dec 21, 2024

We can see that, as is always the case, Trump appears to be backsliding on all campaign promises. Early reports claimed he was exploring options to support Israel striking Iran, and now the new reports about continuing military aid to Ukraine. It seems increasingly likely the swamp will slowly assimilate Trump’s second term leading ultimately to little difference in foreign policy from the Biden administration.

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to continue sending military aid to Ukraine, despite Trump earlier on the campaign trail mocking Zelensky for being the “greatest salesman on earth” for his getting tens of billions of US taxpayers’ money with ease. A new Financial Times report has cited European officials who say Trump’s team told them he plans to continue military aid to Kiev after his inauguration. He’s reportedly trying to calm fears of an immediate US withdrawal of support, and this is connected to an expected Trump policy for NATO member states to increase defense spending to 5% of their GDP. “Donald Trump’s team has told European officials that the incoming US president will demand Nato member states increase defense spending to 5% of GDP, but plans to continue supplying military aid to Ukraine,” FT writes.

Dec 21, 2024

 • EU state’s PM accuses Zelensky of trying to bribe him, RT, Dec 21, 2024

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky talks to media at the end of an EU Summit meeting in Brussels.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has accused Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky of attempting to bribe him €500 million to commit Bratislava to supporting Kiev’s bid to join NATO.

Fico made the revelation at a press conference in Brussels on Thursday, shortly after his behind-closed-doors meeting with Zelensky on the sidelines of an EU leader’s summit.

Western officials are concerned about British plans to potentially resume the training of Kiev’s troops inside Ukraine, The Times reported on Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. The UK is among the nations that have trained the Ukrainian military on their soil. Valery Zaluzhny, Kiev’s former top general who has been appointed ambassador to London, toured a boot camp in southern England last month to tell these recruits that they should not be afraid to die for their country. This week, British Defense Secretary John Healey said the UK could send military personnel to Ukraine. Such a move would help the Ukrainians “motivate and mobilize more recruits,” he suggested during a visit to Kiev. “The closer to the front, the more efficient the training is,” a Western official told The Times, discussing the merits and drawbacks of such a deployment. “But it’s fair to say the Russians would target any kind of Western assistance inside Ukraine.”

The US and the EU have provided over $300 billion in financial aid and military assistance to Kiev since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. Such a huge amount of money “could have done wonders” had it been spent to improve the lives of people within the EU, he said in an interview with Kossuth radio on Friday. Orban highlighted the evolving military situation, noting that “the balance of power on the frontlines is shifting day by day” in Russia’s favor. He also pointed to the political changes expected in the US when Donald Trump returns to the White House next month. The developments call for leaders in EU capitals to embrace a more pragmatic approach to ensuring stability and economic resilience within the bloc, Orban believes.

However, the prime minister argued that Brussels remains out of touch with global realities, pointing to a recent European Parliament decision to continue sending substantial funds to Kiev – a move he described as a clear example of misplaced priorities. “During the negotiation with the Americans, I received the figure that Europe and America together have spent €310 billion so far. Those are huge numbers!” the Hungarian prime minister stressed. He argued that the hundreds of billions of euros already spent to fund the conflict could have been used to bolster European infrastructure, to develop countries in the Western Balkans to the level of the EU, or beef up military capabilities. This “enormous” amount of money could have been given to Europeans to make people’s lives much better, the Hungarian leader concluded.

Washington has provided around $100 billion in financial aid and military assistance to Kiev since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said. The bulk of the money was spent inside the US on defense manufacturing, he told the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on Wednesday.

This comes amid recent efforts by the outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden to spend every dollar allocated by Congress before leaving office in January.

“We’ve spent a lot of money on Ukraine and defending Ukraine, about $100 billion. Our allies and partners, they’ve spent about $150 billion doing it,” the secretary of state said. Financial assistance to Kiev, according to Blinken, represents “the best example of burden sharing” between NATO members.

He went on to claim that American taxpayers have actually benefited from Washington’s efforts to arm Ukraine because many new jobs had been created in the US to make more weapons.

“Most of that was spent here in the United States in our own defense industrial base – manufacturing, building stuff that the Ukrainians need to defend themselves. Good American jobs have been a result of that,” Blinken said.

Dec 20, 2024

 • Putin challenges West to ‘technological duel’ with Oreshnik, RT, Dec 19, 2024

Russian President Vladimir Putin has challenged the West to put their modern air defense systems up against Moscow’s new hypersonic Oreshnik missile in what would be a “technological duel.” During his annual end-of-year press conference on Thursday, Putin was asked to comment on opinions expressed by some foreign military experts suggesting that the Oreshnik can easily be shot down by Western missile defense systems. “Well, if those Western experts you mentioned believe that, they should suggest to their employers in the West and the US to conduct a technological experiment. For instance, a high-tech duel of the 21st century. Let them identify a target in Kiev, concentrate all their air defense and missile defense systems there, and then we will strike it with an Oreshnik. Let’s see what happens. We are ready for such an experiment. Is the other side ready?” Putin asked.

The president explained that given the technical characteristics of the Oreshnik and the current missile defense systems deployed by the West, it would be impossible to stop the missile or its hypersonic warheads after it had been launched. Putin suggested that the results of such a “duel” would be of great interest to both Russia and the US, whose air defense systems are currently operating in Ukraine. Putin was also asked why the Oreshnik is named the way it is, to which he confessed that he doesn’t actually know.

Veteran Swiss diplomat Jean-Daniel Ruch has alleged that the US and UK “immorally” prevented Ukraine and Russia from sealing a truce back in April 2022 in the hope of dealing a blow to Moscow. The former official, who at the time served as Swiss ambassador to Türkiye, was in the country when peace talks were taking place. In Istanbul, Ukraine and Russia preliminarily agreed to a draft truce under which Kiev would have renounced its NATO membership aspirations, declared neutrality, and limited the size of its armed forces in exchange for international security guarantees. However, Ukrainian negotiators abruptly pulled out, with Moscow later claiming that then British Prime Minister Boris Johnson had urged the Ukrainian leadership not to sign any accord and to “just continue fighting.”

Dec 19, 2024

 • Ukraine uses US ATACMS to strike chemical plant in southern Russia – MOD, RT, Dec 19, 2024

Ukraine has launched a missile attack against a large chemical plant in Russia’s southern Rostov Region, the Russian Ministry of Defense has reported. According to the military, six American-made ATACMS tactical missiles and four air-launched Storm Shadow cruise missiles were used in Wednesday's assault.

Russian air defense units engaged the incoming missiles, successfully intercepting all ATACMS and three out of the four Storm Shadow missiles using S-400 and Buk-M3 surface-to-air missile systems, as well as the Pantsir air defense system. One of the Storm Shadows veered off course. However, it still impacted the facility, resulting in damage to a technical building on the premises, the ministry said.

Dec 18, 2024

Featured • The Science of Anti-Russian Propaganda, Glenn Diesen, Dec 18, 2024
A very useful review for many of us, perhaps revelatory for others.

Omitted here is, first of all, the very recent debasement of public consciousness -- the mass formation, or mass psychosis -- created by the totalitarian, society-wide covid-19 mandates that came from the evil nexus of military bioweapons programs, Big Pharma, captured government regulators-turn-promoters, and corrupt "scientific" NGOs.

The second factor omitted in this brief article is the critical transition from "normal" public debate, against which state propagandists must struggle, to the total control over public discourse regarding Russia which I think finally occurred in 2014 in connection with the violent, U.S.-run Maidan coup in Ukraine, that installed a U.S.-client government which promptly went to war against its own eastern provinces. There was some mainstream debate about the Iraq War, for example, but none about the Maidan coup and subsequent mass murder of protesters in Odessa, unleashing of military force on civilians in the Donbass, etc.

A third factor has been the shrieking madness of many liberals as regards Donald Trump and the populist political-cultural movement he represents, a multi-faceted assault on egos formed around ideologies previously thought to be universally normative.

 • NATO State Warns Against Western Troops In Ukraine: "Discussion Has Gone Off The Rails", ZeroHedge, Dec 18, 2024

One of NATO's two newest members, Finland, is urging caution as some European leaders are considering a negotiated end to the Ukraine war which would involve sending Western peacekeeping forces. The incoming Trump administration is reportedly keen on the idea.

President of Finland Alexander Stubb issued a warning Tuesday before a defense cooperation summit in Tallinn, saying "We should not get ahead of ourselves" on the issue of a future peacekeeping mission, cited in Finnish outlet Yle.

His main criticism focused on the huge numbers of European troops that such a mission would require. "The operation cannot be launched on a shaky foundation," he continued, explaining that an adequate peacekeeping force would have to have at least 150,000 soldiers on the ground.

"In rotation, that means three times that, or 450,000 peacekeepers per year. So perhaps this discussion has gone off the rails, so to speak," he emphasized.

“The enemy’s losses since the beginning of the special operation amount to about one million dead and wounded,” Gerasimov stressed.

Earlier, the head of the Russian defence ministry, Andrei Belousov, gave similar figures. According to the Defence Ministry, the AFU lost almost a million people during the entire period of the special operation. These are those who were killed, captured or wounded in the period from the beginning of 2022 to the end of 2024, making them unfit for further participation in combat operations. This figure does not include Ukrainian servicemen who have suffered minor injuries that will allow them to return to duty after treatment.

During the same period, the AFU lost some 20,000 tanks and combat vehicles, more than 19,500 artillery pieces and over 1,500 rocket launchers.

Dec 17, 2024

Featured • Key Revelations Slain Gen. Kirillov Exposed About Pentagon’s Biolabs Scheme, Svetlana Ekimenko, Sputnik International, Dec 17, 2024
While I never had time to review all of these specific allegations, some have been in the public domain for many years and the original documents can be found on-line. So the overall picture is undoubtedly accurate, with a variety of corroborating sources. These allegations, in the main at least, are not "conspiracy theories." They are conspiracy facts. In today's U.S. government and the associated "deep" and "shallow" states, heinous activity and massive corruption are so commonplace that the mind boggles and courage fails.

Featured • What we know about Russia’s chemical defense chief killed in Moscow blast, RT, Dec 17, 2024

Lieutenant General Igor Kirillov, the head of Russia’s Radiological, Chemical, and Biological Defense Forces (RChBZ), has died in a blast together with his aide. According to investigators, an explosive device hidden in a scooter was detonated on Tuesday morning near the entrance of a residential building in Moscow’s south-east.

Here’s what is known about Kirillov...

Update (2:30pm ET): Canada’s CTV News reports that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is considering interrupting Parliament (prorogation) or resignation according to unnamed sources. The sources say he has spoken to his cabinet and plans to address Parliament later on Monday. This comes after finance minister Chrystia Freeland resigned earlier on Monday citing disagreements over how to deal with tariff threats from US president-elect Donald Trump. If confirmed, it would mean government collapse in 4 of the staunchest, and most developed “non-banana republic” Western democracies: France, Germany, South Korea and now Canada. And, of course, we use the term “non-banana republic” sarcastically. As for Turdeau, his odds of being Tru-done just spiked to 88% on Polymarket.

Germany is approaching a point of no return amid a deepening economic downturn and political uncertainty, Bloomberg reported on Monday. Facing a second year of zero growth, the EU’s largest economy is on a path to decline that threatens to become irreversible, the outlet warned. Estimates show that after five years of stagnation, the German economy is now 5% smaller than it could have been if the pre-pandemic growth trend had persisted. The global economic slowdown, along with years of “poor” decisions has hit Germany hard, the article stated. Its export-driven industry, accounting for about 30% of its GDP, faces structural challenges, such as the loss of cheap Russian energy and the struggles of automotive giants Volkswagen and Mercedes-Benz, hit by soaring energy costs and increased competition from China.

Europe is disintegrating as legacy political regimes are collapsing over across the world. Just one week after Marine Le Pen precipitated the collapse of the French government, on Monday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a confidence vote in the German Parliament on Monday, a defeat that effectively ended the increasingly unpopular government he has led since 2021 and ushered in elections early next year. German lawmakers voted to dissolve the existing government by a vote of 394 to 207, with 116 abstaining. The collapse of the government just nine months before elections had been scheduled was an extraordinary moment for Germany, once Europe’s powerhouse but now a laughingstock at the mercy of both China and Russia.

This will be only the fourth snap election in the 75 years since the modern state was founded, and it reflected a new era of more fractious and unstable politics in a country long known for durable coalitions built on plodding consensus.

Western countries continue to act as if they are God’s representatives on Earth by trying to maintain their global dominance through imposing duplicitous rules, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. Speaking at a meeting of top Russian Defense Ministry officials on Monday, Putin noted that the military and political situation in the world remains complicated and unstable, pointing to the bloodshed in the Middle East and other regions of the world. The president stated that the current US administration, as well as most other Western governments, are still trying to preserve their global hegemony and force the international community to play by their “so-called rules” that constantly change and distort in a way that is convenient for them.

“In fact, there is only one stable rule: no rules for those who make the rules, for those who consider themselves to be at the head of the whole world, those who consider themselves to be representatives of God on Earth, although they themselves do not believe in God,” Putin said. He said that those who refuse to play by the West’s rules are subjected to hybrid wars and a “policy of containment,” as has been done in respect to Russia. “In an effort to weaken our country, to inflict a strategic defeat on us, the US continues to pump the de facto illegitimate ruling regime in Kiev with weapons and money, send mercenaries and military advisers and thereby encourage further escalation of the conflict,” the president explained.

Dec 16, 2024

Featured • West’s mask is off in fight for the soul of humanity – Roger Waters, RT, Dec 16, 2024

The US and its allies are openly brutalizing oppressed peoples around the world, the legendary musician and activist has said.

“Criminal lunatics” in the West want to bring about a future in which genocide is permitted, and it’s up to people who don’t agree with that to make a stand, Pink Floyd frontman and human rights activist Roger Waters has said.

The rock legend is well known for his support of the Palestinian cause and criticism of Israel and its supporters. The 81-year-old discussed the escalation of violence in the Middle East and revealed what gives him strength to keep campaigning during an interview on the program Going Underground.

”We are watching the machinations of possibly the end of an empire, the Western empire. The mask is off. We, the West, behave with unbearable brutality towards oppressed peoples all over the world,” he said. “We, the people, hate it. We hate the brutality of our governments.”

This is “an existential battle for the soul of the human race,” Waters added. He believes his side has billions of like-minded supporters.

If the empire wins this battle, our children and grandchildren and any survivors of this stuff will have to live in a future where we’ve just all agreed that a genocide is OK.

Waters mocked activists who cheered the fall of the Syrian government earlier this month. The government in Damascus never had a chance to make things better for the Syrian people because of Western sanctions and the partial military occupation of the country, he said. The US has effectively been “stealing” Syrian oil for a decade, Waters claimed.

”We are a gang of powerful gangsters here, and we are going to steal everything that there is in the world that is worth stealing,” he said of the West’s policy.

One, the U.S. and its trans–Atlantic allies are now thoroughly committed to mass violence. This means it is difficult to avoid concluding that the Western powers and Israel will turn to Iran once Syria as a functioning polity has been thoroughly disabled.

What has prompted the U.S. and Israel to exercise caution to date has been the risk of what would without doubt be a cataclysmic conflict that could tip into another world war.

With a six-decade history of mass violence behind them, these powers now appear willing to take this risk. There is little ground left to continue questioning this.

Two, we now witness the reinvention of a viciously intolerant terrorist given to waging holy wars as an acceptable presence at the head of what was a secular nation until earlier this month.

We must read this as the outcome — the successful outcome — of an eight-decade campaign to render the citizens of the Western powers grotesquely ignorant of the world in which they live.

Let’s start with the situation in Ukraine. There is a growing atmosphere of desperation and panic among Western leaders as they watch Ukraine’s military collapse along the entire front and cast about for a strategy to stave off Ukraine’s defeat. But there is no viable solution. Russian military operations that are closing in on the formerly critical logistics center of Pokrovsk is emblematic of the dire situation confronting the Ukrainians:

...Even if Ukraine had a viable pool of potential reserves, it does not have the infrastructure and time required to effectively train new recruits — i.e., before new soldiers should be sent to the front, they ought to have at least six months of training under their belts. The graphic above, which mirrors an hour-glass, is an apt metaphor — Ukraine’s manpower is disappearing at a steady rate and there is no way to reverse the trend.

During the last years it has become obvious to even shallower minds that 'western values' are just a marketing slogan used to hide the enormous brutality with which the 'west' is trying to bend the world to its will.

Evidence can be found in many recent international news items: The genocide in Gaza - transmitted live for anyone to see, the baseless annulling of democratic elections in Romania, the applauding of the Jihadi takeover of secular Syria. Israel's creating of 'buffer zones' by stealing Syrian land is seen with sympathy while Russia is condemned for fighting NATO's decade old attempts to destroy its natural buffer zone of a neutral Ukraine.

All this has led to confusion. It necessitates that the rulers sell black as white, depict destruction as rebuilding, argue that sheer tyranny is an expression of democratic values.

"Under the pretext of a so-called Russian threat, [the US] frightens its population by claiming we are planning to attack someone," Putin said. "The tactic is simple: they push us to the red line, beyond which we cannot retreat, and when we respond, they escalate fears of a Russian threat."

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has called on his fellow G7 leaders to “continue maximizing Putin’s pain” through economic sanctions on Russia and increased military aid to Ukraine. During a video conference on Friday, “the Prime Minister said that with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin showing no sign of relenting, it is vital that we bolster our support to put [Ukraine] in the best possible position for the future,” according to a readout released by his office. “He called on fellow G7 leaders to continue maximizing Putin’s pain by increasing military support to the Ukrainians and ramping up economic pressure, including via further sanctions where possible,” the statement continued. Two days earlier, the US and UK announced a new round of sanctions on Moscow, targeting what the British government called Russia’s “illicit gold trade.”

At the same time, EU ambassadors agreed on a 15th package of economic penalties, this time targeting Russia’s petroleum industry and Chinese companies allegedly producing drones for the Russian military. Repeated rounds of sanctions have failed to “crater” the Russian economy, as US President Joe Biden predicted they would in 2022. Instead, the Russian economy grew by 3.6% this year, while Britain’s grew by 1.1%, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). ”We learned a lot after the sanctions started,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told American journalist Tucker Carlson earlier this month. “But what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, you know. They would never kill us, so they are making us stronger.”

Amid an historic decline in living standards at home, the UK has given £8.34 billion ($10.52 billion) in military aid to Ukraine since February 2022, according to figures from Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which tracks Western aid to Kiev.Starmer claimed last month that this outpouring of arms and ammunition will help the Ukrainians “secure a just and lasting peace on their terms.” However, the Kremlin has argued that any future peace terms will be worse for Ukraine than those rejected by Kiev during peace talks in Istanbul in April 2022. While Russia was prepared to settle the conflict in 2022 with Ukraine agreeing to stay out of NATO and grant autonomy to the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk, Kiev must now accept the “realities on the ground,” Lavrov told Carlson, referring to the fact that Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye are now parts of the Russian federation and will not be ceded back to Ukraine.

Yes, many obstacles, all created directly or indirectly by the U.S. and its NATO mafia. So many, in fact, that it appears Russia will see little practical choice, if its security is not to be compromised, but to continue the war. Yes, stopping the war right now, today, would be wonderful, but that is not how the Russian military or the Russian president or the bulk of the Russian people will see it. Indeed little has changed in the attitudes of the U.S. since 2021, before the war: Russia must be destroyed. Russia delenda est. Anything that could inflict strategic defeat, or set the stage for doing so in the future, is "good," no matter how many Ukrainians are killed and no matter how much the economies of Europe are damaged. The U.S. foreign policy Blob, notwithstanding Trump's desire to be different as regards Russia, is 100% in favor of decreasing Russian security by any means necessary, and ALL diplomacy advanced by the U.S. vis-a-vis Russia is at present 100% dishonest. Trump might be sincere, but he is ephemeral. The Blob is the permanent State. Unless and until the U.S. understands its role in the world very differently, the U.S. simply cannot be trusted.

Dec 15, 2024

Featured • Peace In Ukraine, ZeroHedge, Dec 15, 2024

There’s no denying that Russia is obliterating not just the AFU, but also Ukrainian society. Russian troops are advancing rapidly, and the air raids over the weekend of 16-17th of November 2024, implied that the Kremlin is ready to push Ukraine into darkness. Moreover, Russia struck the Ukrainian city of Dnipro with new hypersonic intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) “Oreshnik” carrying a non-nuclear payload on early morning of 21st November. These entail that there is only one (non-nuclear) endgame in Ukraine: capitulation of the AFU, either through negotiated peace or surrender.

For these reasons, the path to peace needs to be sought from the original aims of Kremlin. The publicly stated aims of the Special Military Operation (SMO), which commenced on February 24, 2022, were four:

1. Defending the people of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics under the Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.


2. To clear “neo-Nazis” from Ukrainian leadership.


3. To stop the nuclear weapons program of Ukraine.


4. To stop and remove the NATO infrastructure being build, threatening Russia, from Ukraine.

In simplified terms, and as is widely known, the aim was a “demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine.

...The ‘void’ of European leadership became epitomized in the peace negotiations during the March and April 2022 torpedoed, reportedly, by the U.S. and U.K. War should have ended during the Spring of 2022, but it was let to continue and even escalate on reasons mostly unclear. Due to the failures of our leaders, we are at the brink of yet another continental war.

Peace in Ukraine and strengthening the European security structure can be achieved without pushing our continent into a cycle a re-armament, which has always presided a continental war. Realities on the ground need to be acknowledged alongside meeting the demands of Kremlin. (emphasis added)

The outgoing administration of US President Joe Biden is preparing a significant surge in weapons deliveries to Ukraine in the final weeks of his tenure, a senior official told CNN on Thursday. President-elect Donald Trump has repeatedly criticized Biden’s handling of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev, and campaigned on a promise to resolve the hostilities “within 24 hours.” However, since his election victory in November, he has not disclosed any detailed plans for achieving that goal. The US Department of Defense “is undertaking a historic effort to move massive quantities of weapons into Ukraine in the next five weeks,” the unnamed official told CNN. Washington reportedly plans to deliver “hundreds of thousands of artillery rounds, thousands of rockets, hundreds of armored vehicles, and other critical capabilities” between now and January 20, when Trump returns to the White House.

According to the source, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan is leading an interagency effort to facilitate the deliveries. In November, he directed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to “accelerate” the movement of various arms, including armored vehicles and missiles. The unnamed official stressed that despite the increased military support, there are no American troops deployed in Ukraine, and that this situation will not change. Since the start of the conflict, US weapons have been transported to Ukraine via Europe, but the upcoming surge will reportedly involve a substantial number of flights and sea vessels to ensure swift arrival. On Thursday evening, Biden authorized a new $500 million weapons package for Ukraine, which includes air defense, artillery, drones, and armored vehicles.

Since the escalation of hostilities in February 2022, the US Congress has approved over $174 billion in aid to Kiev. Biden has also given the greenlight for Ukraine’s strikes deep into Russia using US-supplied missiles. Trump has slammed the decision as “a very big mistake”

The Russian Federation could welcome more territories into the country in the future, former President Dmitry Medvedev suggested on Saturday during the ongoing United Russia party congress. Commenting on the ruling party’s efforts in helping to incorporate and develop the new regions that have joined the country, Medvedev, who currently serves as the deputy chairman of the nation‘s security council and the head of the United Russia party, suggested that this experience could one day come in handy again. “This experience may be in demand in the future if new regions very close to us appear in our country, because this is possible,” he noted.

In 2022, four former Ukrainian territories, including the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk as well as Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions, held public referendums where they decided to break with Kiev and become part of Russia. Before that, in 2014, the citizens of Crimea, a historically Russian region, had voted to leave Ukraine and return to Moscow. Ukraine and its Western backers have refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of these referendums; Kiev has continued to claim authority over these territories and vowed to retake all of them. Moscow however, has repeatedly urged Kiev to accept the new realities “on the ground,” with President Vladimir Putin calling the complete withdrawal of all Ukrainian forces from all Russian territories a key prerequisite for peace talks.

Having failed thus far to ignite Nuclear Armageddon, what’s up next for the U.S. military industrial complex? I’ll tell you: New bases in Europe, 47 of them, to be exact, in Scandinavia in coming years. That’s Joe Biden’s legacy, a blood transfusion to NATO’s moribund carcass by adding Finland and Sweden and thereby ballooning the Empire’s global military footprint, a footprint of over 800 imperial foreign military bases already bankrupting us Welp, we’re gonna get 47 more, per journalist Patrick Hennigsen, and they’re gonna be near Russia. If you’re a Finn or a Swede, you might want to consider emigrating, since the pusillanimous NATO to which you now belong has set you up as a tripwire for the Atomic Apocalypse. That’s Biden’s legacy. Don’t think for a minute these bases make anyone safer. Quite the contrary. Besides being hugely provocative and thus endangering the local population, the bases’ U.S. soldiers are in harm’s way.

Dec 14, 2024

 • Ukraine to block Russian gas transit to EU, RT, Dec 13, 2024

Ukraine will stop the flow of Russian natural gas via its transit network on January 1, Energy Minister German Galushchenko has confirmed. A key gas transit agreement between Moscow and Kiev is due to expire on December 31, and the Ukrainian leadership has repeatedly warned that it has no plans to extend it. Several EU countries continue to rely on Russian gas, despite the sharp drop in supplies due to sanctions on Moscow and a push by Brussels to sever energy ties with Russia.

...The EU still receives around 5% of its gas from Russia via Ukraine, according to the latest data.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said that there is still time to consider his proposal for a Christmas ceasefire and a major prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine. Speaking about the offer he made to Moscow and Kiev earlier this week in an interview with Kossuth Radio on Friday, Orban said “one side accepted it, the other rejected it.” Judging by comments coming from Ukraine, it is Kiev that is currently reluctant to support Budapest’s initiative. ”But there are still a few days until Christmas [December 25], and this may change,” he stressed. The Hungarian proposal is aimed at making sure that “no one should die, at least, on Christmas. If the parties can come to an agreement, there could be a ceasefire on Christmas – as was the case in the First World War,” the prime minister explained. “And if a large prisoner exchange could be agreed, then hundreds… of families could be made happy,” he added.

Dec 13, 2024

 • Six major NATO states sign document on Ukraine’s accession plans, RT, Dec 13, 2024

Six European members of NATO have released a joint statement backing Ukraine’s plan to join the US-led bloc, and promising to support the peace terms offered by Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky to Russia. Moscow has previously rejected Zelensky’s insistence on restoring Ukraine’s 1991 borders as unacceptable. The foreign ministers of the UK, France, Spain, Germany, Italy and Poland signed a declaration after meeting with the Ukrainian leader in Berlin on Thursday. “The goals of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace for Ukraine and durable security for Europe are inseparable. Ukraine must prevail,” the statement said. The countries pledged to support an end to the conflict in accordance “with full respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.” “We reaffirm our commitment to President Zelensky’s Peace Formula, as a credible path towards a just and lasting peace,” the statement read.

Overnight missile strikes on critically important Ukrainian facilities were conducted in response to Kiev’s recent ATACMS attack on a military airfield near the city of Taganrog, the Russian Defense Ministry reported on Friday.

The ministry stated that all the goals of the retaliatory strike had been achieved and that all targeted facilities have been hit.

“In response to the use of American long-range weapons, Russia’s Armed Forces launched a massive strike with high-precision long-range air and sea-based weapons and UAVs on critical fuel and energy infrastructure facilities in Ukraine that support the operation of the military industrial complex,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement published on its official Telegram channel.

...Ukraine’s state-run energy company, Ukrenergo, has warned that 50% of the general population could be left without power on Friday due to the attack.

Dec 12, 2024

Featured • Strikes deep into Russia ‘big mistake’ – Trump, RT, Dec 12, 2024

Ukrainian attacks using Western medium-range missiles are making things worse, the US president-elect has said.

US President-elect Donald Trump has criticized Ukraine’s strikes deep into Russia using Western-supplied weapons, saying that they only escalate the conflict between Kiev and Moscow.

Trump made the statement on Thursday in an interview with Time magazine, which named him the 2024 Person of the Year.

“I disagree very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia. Why are we doing that?” he asked rhetorically.

According to the president-elect, such attacks are “just escalating this war and making it worse.”

“That should not have been allowed to be done… And I think that is a very big mistake, very big mistake,” he said of strikes deep into Russia’s internationally recognized territory.

Trump returned to the issue later in the interview, saying that “the most dangerous thing right now” is the fact that “[Ukrainian leader Vladimir] Zelensky has decided, with the approval of, I assume, the President [Joe Biden], to start shooting missiles into Russia.”

“I think that is a major escalation. I think it is a foolish decision,” he stressed.

Russian nationals should avoid making non-essential trips to the US and allied countries, the Russian Foreign Ministry has said, warning that they could be “hunted down” by the American authorities for political reasons. Travelling to the US poses “serious risks” due to “the increasing confrontation in the Russian-American relations,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said during a regular press briefing on Wednesday. She stated that more Russian nationals were being “hunted down by American authorities, especially by secret services,” with Washington utilizing “fraudulent schemes” to lure Russians abroad in order to prosecute them for “political reasons.” “For the upcoming holidays and beyond, we strongly advise to avoid non-emergency visits to the US and allied countries, especially Canada and, with rare exception, the countries of the European Union,” Zakharova said.

Strategically, the situation for Ukraine is rapidly deteriorating. According to former parliamentarian and AFU soldier Yegor Firsov, Kiev is facing the prospect of losing five cities at once. Chasov Yar, Kurakhovo, Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk), Mirnograd (Dimitrov) and Velykaya Novosyolka could be lost in the near future. “You have no idea how many drones, money, troops, sweat, and above all our blood and lives we have lost defending these cities and positions,” Firsov summed up gloomily. (emphasis in original)

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has claimed that his country’s refusal to conform to liberal ideology will yield considerable benefits in the future. “The liberal world order is over,” he declared during a speech in Budapest on Tuesday. The conservative nationalist politician has been in power since 2010, winning successive elections on a platform of defying what he considers to be authoritarian rule by Brussels. EU leaders have accused Orban of undermining democracy in Hungary and harming the economic bloc’s solidarity on the Ukraine conflict. He has argued that Brussels’ policies have been disastrous for EU member states.

“As the changes come, only those nations can be winners that can bring the most out of themselves,” Orban told a gathering of university students, as quoted by his office. “Those who assimilate, fall into line, are unable to show their own values or discover the strength inherent in their national character will soon become irrelevant,” he added. Hungary is “the westernmost Eastern and the easternmost Western nation,” and it seeks to “connect to all the economic powerhouses of the world,” Orban said.

Budapest claims that the West’s response to the Ukraine conflict, including its attempts to punish Russia with economic sanctions, has caused a decline in living standards and other problems in Europe. Unlike other national leaders, who intend to support Kiev “for as long as it takes” to defeat Moscow, Orban has refused to send any military assistance and has attempted to mediate peace talks. Earlier this year, the prime minister made visits to Ukraine, Russia, China and the US during what he called a peace tour in a bid to facilitate negotiations. Orban expects US President-elect Donald Trump, whom he supports, to bring about radical changes on Ukraine after he is inaugurated in January. (emphasis added)

The disbursement by the US of a $20 billion loan to Ukraine funded by Russia’s frozen central bank assets could be classified as theft, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov has said. The US loan is part of a broader $50 billion G7 loan deal, which includes a separate $20 billion commitment by the EU and $10 billion to be split by G7 members Great Britain, Japan, and Canada. On Tuesday, the US Treasury Department announced the money had been transferred to a World Bank fund that will send it on to Kiev. “I can say that this act falls under the classification of robbery [on the part] of an organized group, I mean [on the part] of the Group of Seven,” Ryabkov told journalists on Wednesday. The US and its allies froze an estimated $300 billion in assets belonging to the Russian central bank following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022.

Dec 11, 2024

 • After U.S. ATACMS Strike On Strategic Target Russia Announces To Retaliate, Moon of Alabama, Dec 11, 2024

 • US Disburses $20 Billion Loan for Ukraine That Will Be Repaid Using Russian Assets, Dave DeCamp, Antiwar.com, Dec 10, 2024

The step marks a significant escalation of the US economic war on Russia.

On Tuesday, the US announced that it disbursed a $20 billion loan for Ukraine that will be paid back using interest earned on frozen Russian Central Bank assets, a step that marks an escalation of the Western economic war against Russia.

The $20 billion is part of a total $50 billion loan being provided by the Group of Seven (G7) nations. The entire loan will be paid back using the Russian assets.

“These funds — paid for by the windfall proceeds earned from Russia’s own immobilized assets — will provide Ukraine a critical infusion of support as it defends its country against an unprovoked war of aggression,” US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.

Dec 10, 2024

 • Ukrainian Garrison Flees From Kurakhovo, South Front, Dec 10, 2024

 • Zelensky rules out lowering draft age, RT, Dec 10, 2024

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has rejected the idea of lowering the military mobilization age in his country, dismissing calls from the West to do so. Earlier this year, Ukraine lowered the mandatory conscription age from 27 to 25. Some former Western officials have urged Kiev to drop it further to 18, and the administration of outgoing US President Joe Biden has reportedly pushed for this behind closed doors. “The priority should be providing missiles and lowering Russia’s military potential, not Ukraine’s draft age,” Zelensky said, commenting on the idea in a post on X on Tuesday morning. “We must focus on equipping existing brigades and training personnel to use this equipment. We must not compensate the lack of equipment and training with the youth of soldiers,” he wrote.

Georgia has prevented an attempted overthrow of the government orchestrated by foreign powers, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has said. He compared the scenario allegedly prepared for the nation with the situation in Ukraine in 2014. Speaking on Monday, Kobakhidze referred to the US-backed Maidan coup in Kiev a decade ago, which ousted Ukraine’s democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovich, and precipitated the current conflict between Moscow and Kiev. “It took the [Georgian] Ministry of Internal Affairs exactly five days to neutralize the resource of violence of the radical opposition,” Kobakhidze said at a cabinet meeting, thanking the head of the ministry, Vakhtang Gomelauri, and police officers. He added that the ministry had acted in accordance with standards “higher than the American and European ones.”

“This is how the attempt of Maidan in our country was stopped in exactly five days,” Kobakhidze concluded. The Georgian capital, Tbilisi, has been rocked by anti-government and pro-EU rallies since late November, when Kobakhidze announced that the country would halt negotiations on potential accession to the bloc until 2028, citing “blackmail and manipulation” from EU officials. Brussels has since imposed personal sanctions against members of the Georgian government. Protestors have repeatedly clashed with law enforcement, shot fireworks, and thrown Molotov cocktails at riot police, who have deployed tear gas and water cannons in an effort to disperse the demonstrators.

Dec 9, 2024

 • Syria Is Absorbed Into the Empire, Caitlin Johnstone, Consortium News, Dec 9, 2024

And tomorrow the imperial blob will move its crosshairs on to the next unabsorbed nation. That’s the underlying dynamic behind all the major conflicts on earth.

This dynamic gets redacted from the mainstream western worldview with the assistance of the western propaganda services known as the mass media, as well as the western indoctrination system known as schooling.

This dynamic is redacted from our worldview and hidden from our attention by the plutocrats and empire managers who work to manipulate our information systems, because otherwise we would realize that the U.S. empire is the most tyrannical and abusive power structure on this planet today.

And it unquestionably is. No other power structure has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions in wars of aggression while circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and working continuously to crush any group which opposes its dictates anywhere on earth.

Not China. Not Russia. Not Iran. Not Cuba. Not Bashar al-Assad. Only the U.S. empire has been tyrannizing and abusing the world to this extent in modern times.

And now the imperial blob rolls on to absorb its next target, having grown one Syria-sized increment larger after spending years digesting that nation via proxy warfare, sanctions, relentless bombing campaigns from Israel, and a military occupation designed to steal its food and fuel.

Our world cannot know peace as long as we are ruled by an empire that is fueled by endless rivers of human blood. Here’s hoping the end of that empire comes sooner rather than later.

There was a time, just before and just after the war began, that Ukraine might have lost no territory but Crimea and few lives. But America said no.

In December of 2021, Putin presented the U.S. and NATO with a proposal on security guarantees. Then NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that the “promise [of] no more NATO enlargement… was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine.”

The U.S. was not then, nor are they yet, willing to offer NATO membership to Ukraine. Ukraine was then willing to abandon its pursuit of NATO membership, as signaled by both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and by his advisors. According to polls, only 24%-39% of Ukrainians even wanted NATO membership. But the U.S. said no.

...One day, when after all the death and debility, Ukraine negotiates a peace with Russia that it could have negotiated in the first days of the war minus all the vast land it has lost since then, Ukrainians may come to hate the States for blocking the peace, pushing the counteroffensive and sacrificing a generation of young people.

Why did Gabbard meet with Assad? Likely because our policy toward the region was deeply immoral and strategically counterproductive. And we know this because the man serving as Washington’s chief diplomat at the time of Gabbard’s meeting was caught on tape admitting as much. Here is a transcript of then Secretary of State John Kerry in September 2016 admitting the US led ISIL run wild in the hope that it would topple Assad:

…And we know that this [ISIL/Daesh] was growing, we were watching, we saw that Daesh was growing in strength, and we thought Assad was threatened…We thought, however, we could probably imagine that Assad might then negotiate, but instead of negotiating he got Putin to support him.…The reason Russia came in is because ISIL was getting stronger. Daesh was threatening the possibility of going to Damascus at some point and that’s why Russia came in. Because they didn’t want a Daesh government and they supported Assad.“

They, the Russians, didn’t want a Syrian government controlled by ISIL/ISIS.

The question remains: Why did we?

What Gabbard knew then and so few else did or claimed not to (the argument over the nature of the Islamist beast attacking Syria was particularly venomous among publications on the left, as I remember all too well from my time at The Nation) was that Assad – dictator that he might have been – had been the target of a decade long coup attempt perpetuated by some of the most violent religious fanatics in the Middle East.

One hardly expects someone like Wasserman-Schultz, who would flatline an electroencephalogram, to understand the difference between an Alawite ophthalmologist and a Salafi-jihadist. But for the US Senators now tasked with considering Gabbard’s confirmation, there is no excuse.

There are indications that the president-elect may intend further escalation.

That Kellogg was appointed to such a sensitive position in the first place should worry those who supported Trump on the assumption that he would bring much needed change to the conduct of US foreign policy. Reasonable people might ask: Where are men of experience and imagination, like the retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor, senior fellow at The American Conservative? Unlike Macgregor, Kellogg knows nothing about Russia or its interests, let alone its historic sensitivity to Ukraine’s strategic importance. Macgregor has decades of scholarship invested in Russo-German relations and Moscow’s role in Europe and Asia. But Macgregor is nowhere to be found among the incoming team. Perhaps Howard Luttnick and Linda MacMahon were too busy campaigning for cabinet appointments to do what they should have been doing: selecting the most competent men and women for the most sensitive positions.

Alas, we will have to leave for another time the question of why the president-elect has staffed his national security team with a veritable roster of Fox News personalities and a recent immigrant with suspected ties to foreign intelligence such as Sebastian Gorka. The British-Hungarian Gorka has claimed that Trump will “force” Putin to the negotiating table by threatening a massive increase in military aid to Ukraine. Faux-machismo aside, there is little to indicate that—even if Trump pursues such a plan—there is much left to provide. Indeed, there is little evidence Putin is likely to be swayed by inducements from Washington.

With regard to Ukraine, the playbook of the bipartisan Washington blob still rules. And while it has only been a month since the election, the president-elect has provided few signs that he plans on deviating from the script left by Joe Biden and Jake Sullivan.

Dec 8, 2024

Featured • Pepe Escobar: The Syria Tragedy and the New Omni-War, Sputnik International, Dec 6, 2024

Until recently, a serious geopolitical working hypothesis was that West Asia and Ukraine were two vectors of the standard Hegemon modus operandi, which is to incite and unleash Forever Wars. Now both wars are united in an Omni-War.

A coalition of Straussian neo-cons in the US, hardcore revisionist Zionists in Tel Aviv and Ukrainian neo-nazi shades of grey is now betting on a Final Confrontation – with several overtones ranging from expanding lebensraum to provoking the Apocalypse.

What stands in their way is essentially two of the top BRICS: Russia and Iran.

China, self-protected by their collective lofty dream of “community of a shared future for mankind”, warily watches on the sidelines, as they know that at the end of the road, the true “existential” war by the Hegemon will be against them.

Meanwhile, Russia and Iran need to mobilize for Totalen Krieg. Because that's what the enemy is launching.

The invalidation of Romania’s presidential election results by the country’s top court is a formalized coup d’etat, according to independent candidate Calin Georgescu, who clinched a surprise win in the first round last month. Georgescu outperformed the other candidates in the first round of the election with 22.94%, beating out liberal leftist candidate Elena Lasconi, who received 19.18%, and the country’s Social Democrat Prime Minister Marcel Ciolacu, who finished third with 19.15%. On Friday, Romania’s Constitutional Court dismissed Georgescu’s victory, citing a clause in the nation’s laws that emphasizes the need to ensure the correctness and legality of the election. The judiciary body announced that the whole process would be resumed later.

“Essentially, this is a formalized coup d’etat. The rule of law is in an induced coma, and justice subordinated to political orders has practically lost its essence. It is no longer justice, it obeys the orders,” Georgescu, a known critic of Romania’s pro-NATO and pro-Ukraine policy, said on Friday, as cited by Realitatea TV. The politician also stressed that the court’s decision represents more than a legal controversy, adding that “the corrupt system in Romania showed its true face by making a pact with the devil.” Georgescu also said that the power of the people is the basis for a democratic state, and the authorities are obliged to respect the results of the national vote. He stated that the current Romanian government is afraid of losing power and facing revelations.

Many Ukrainian teenagers are planning to leave the country and never return as the US increases pressure on Kiev to lower the mobilization age, the Times has reported. Earlier this week, outgoing US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said it was not right that “18 to 25-year-olds are not in the fight” against Russia. “Getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary,” he stressed.In an article on Thursday, the British paper quoted a teenager from the city of Kharkov, who said that “many” of his friends are now choosing to study abroad because “it is safer there.”“There is no risk of being taken into the army at a foreign university,” he explained, adding that he plans to study in Poland, and may not return after graduation.

“When I have finished, I will decide whether to return to Ukraine or stay there. It will be safer there, there are no bombs falling and there is no danger that I will be mobilized for the war without my consent,” he said. Another teenager who spoke to The Times said he also wants to attend higher education in a foreign country. Ukrainian lawmaker Aleksandra Ustinova told the paper that a decision to lower the mobilization age to 18 would be met with “huge opposition inside Ukraine and we would not get the results [on the battlefield] that we want because this is not such a large amount of people.”“It would also be a clear signal for families to get their children out. So, if we want to lose our future generation, then, yeah, this is the thing to do,” Ustinova stressed.

Dec 7, 2024

Featured • Craig Murray - The End of Pluralism in the Middle East, Moon of Alabama, Dec 7, 2024
Doesn't directly concern Ukraine, but indirectly it does and it is too important not to post.

Featured • JCS Chief General Charles Brown Just Proved that Nothing Short of Ukraine's Surrender is Negotiable with the US — That's Capitulation, Not Negotiation, John Helmer, Dances with Bears, Dec 5, 2024

The head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), General Charles Brown (lead image, right), has just revealed by press leak that he and the chief of the Russian General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, had talked by telephone last week, on November 27, and agreed not to disclose the contents of their call. If that was the point of agreement the two generals reached, Gerasimov has honoured it. Brown has just now decided to break his word. “At the request of General Gerasimov, General Brown agreed to not proactively announce the call,” the New York Times has reported Brown’s spokesman saying “after he was approached by a reporter about the call”. The newspaper omitted to say that Brown had leaked information about the call in advance, in order to prepare reporters to publish the exchange.

As an exchange of positions between the two generals, the Russian assessment is that once again the American side proves that nothing it says in private, agrees to in public, or signs on paper can be trusted. Sources say in Moscow that Gerasimov and the General Staff will dictate the terms for the end of the Ukraine war “proactively”; that is, when the battlefield is ready, and there is nothing left for Brown to fight or leak.

...“Brown spilled the beans as part of a warfighting exercise to show light between Gerasimov and Putin,” a NATO military veteran comments. “It was underhanded, but typical.” A source close to Moscow speculates that Putin and Gerasimov had agreed they would try to sound out Brown, just as they have been sounding out President-elect Donald Trump.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko asked Russian President Vladimir Putin to deploy the latest Russian weapons, including the Oreshnik system, on Belarusian soil on Friday following a meeting of the Supreme State Council of the Union State.

"The decision to deploy the Oreshnik system on the territory of the Republic of Belarus was made in response to the actions taken by the United States and Germany regarding the deployment of intermediate-range missiles in Europe. The Americans and Germans have repeatedly stated this before," the Belarusian Ministry of Defense's Telegram channel quoted Sergei Lagodyuk, deputy chief of staff of the Belarusian Armed Forces, as saying on Saturday.

US interference triggered the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said. His comments come after Moscow accused Washington of lacking “common sense and restraint” in its approach to the conflict. In an interview with public broadcaster Kossuth Radio on Friday, Orban said the United States had played a decisive role in the conflict. ”America is one of the main players in this war. Without America, this war would never have happened. Ukraine would not have been able to resist without America’s support,” the prime minister said, as quoted by the Magyar Nemzet newspaper. According to official figures, as of September 30, Washington had allocated a total of nearly $183 billion in aid for Ukraine, with $130.1 billion committed and $86.7 billion disbursed.

The backbone of Washington’s action will be the same. For now, despite the changing world, the empire is still the empire.

The approval by the Washington Administration and immediate execution by the Nazi regime in Kiev of the launch of U.S.-produced tactical missiles known as ATACAM against Russian territory is a sign of the desperation that NATO and the Western world are going through in the face of the perceived military defeat, once again, now on Ukrainian territory.

The most tragic and dangerous element of this decision by the real head of NATO to directly involve the alliance in the war against Russia is the fact that it was taken by a defeated and transitional U.S. president, senile and admittedly demented – always a sociopath – considered incapable of running for re-election but not of creating an imminent situation of nuclear war.

This is how the West works today: despair in the face of military defeat ... leads to decisions calling into question the survival of the eight billion people, as many as there are on the planet, to be taken (or at least announced) by a single sick individual, with cognitive capacities visibly and admittedly reduced to the tiniest species – but still enough for the warmongering and murderous impulses that marked his long life in the dominant imperial structures to come to the fore.

...And the empire does not admit defeats in its strategic objectives, under penalty of ceasing to be so. So, the Russian Federation has to be torn to pieces, as happened with the Soviet Union, China has to be put in order on the trade, military and infrastructural aid fronts to needy countries on all continents, Iran will have to change regime to the lap of the West and Israel will have to continue to expand “Western civilization” in the Middle East by occupying the territories it wants. slaughtering and banishing hundreds of thousands of people.

So, it was with Bush father and son, Clinton, Obama, Trump, Biden – to name the most recent ones – and so it will be with Trump II.

Dec 6, 2024

Featured • Full Lavrov-Tucker Interview: US & Russia Need To Cooperate 'For The Sake Of The Universe', ZeroHedge, Dec 6, 0224

(0:00) Is the US at War With Russia?; (12:56) Russia’s Message to the West Through Hypersonic Weapons; (17:47) Is There Conversation Happening Between Russia and the US?; (23:18) How Many Have Died in the Ukraine/Russia War?; (28:21) What Would It Take To End the War?; (36:11) What Happened to Alexei Navalny?; (39:45) Boris Johnson Wants the War to Continue; (45:43) Sanctions on Russia; (56:31) The Chinese/Russian Alliance; (1:02:18) Who Is Making Foreign Policy Decisions in the US?; (1:05:05) Biden Pushes the US Toward Nuclear War Before Trump Takes Office; (1:08:52) What’s Happening in Syria?; (1:13:08) Lavrov’s Thoughts on Trump.

Payed, trained and coordinated by the British military, the Armed Fores of Ukraine are upgrading their unmanned boats, trying different attack strategies. This time, the groups of their boats had a well coordinated structure, with speedy attackers, who were aimed to reach the target when they were cowered with boats armed with machine guns. However, all the efforts of the Ukrainian and NATO militaries are yet to bring results. After a prolonged pause, they definately accumulate large reserves of unmanned boats (if not destroyed by Russian strikes throughout the Odessa region), and more waves of massive strikes on the Crimean Bridge and Russian military infrastructure in Crimea should be expected, especially since the Ukrainian military refrains from strikes with NATO missiles in Russian rear regions after the Oreshnik medium-range missile was presented in action.

What Putin is saying – very politely – to the West is that: You still ‘don’t get it’. To seek a deal on Ukraine is to treat the symptom and to ignore a cure. The West has its policy back-to-front, in other words. Putin is clear: A definitive solution would be to delineate the frontier between Atlanticist security ‘interest’ and the security interests of the ‘World Island’ (in Mackinder’s terminology): i.e. to settle the security architecture between the ‘Heartland and the Rim-land’. Once that is done, Ukraine falls naturally into its place. It’s at the end of the agenda, not first.

One highly-regarded foreign policy sage, Professor Sergei Karaganov, explains (original only in Russian):

“Our [Russian] goal is to facilitate the U.S.’s incipient retreat, as peaceably as possible, from the position of global hegemon (which it can no longer afford) to the position of a normal great power. And to expel Europe from being any international actor. Let it stew in its own juices …The conclusion is obvious. We must end the current phase of direct military conflict with the West, but not the broader confrontation with it. Trump will offer to ease pressure on Russia (which he cannot guarantee) in exchange for Russia refraining from a close alliance with China. The Trump administration will propose a deal, alternating threats with promises … but the U.S. already understands that it cannot win. America will remain an unreliable partner for the foreseeable future. Fundamental normalization of our relations with the U.S. should not be expected in the coming decade. Trump’s hands are tied by the Russophobia fanned by liberals for years. The inertia of the Cold War is still quite strong, and so are anti-Russian feelings among most Trumpists”.

US President-elect Donald Trump’s plans to resolve the Ukraine conflict could soon become a reality and Budapest intends to help the Republicans achieve that goal, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Peter Szijjarto has said. Following a meeting in Washington on Wednesday with Trump’s candidate for National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, Szijjarto noted that the current US administration under President Joe Biden appears to only wish to prolong the Ukraine conflict and is trying to make it harder to establish peace after Trump takes office in January. Szijjarto stated that in the US, the Democrats appear to be “on the side of war” while the Republican party is “on the side of peace.” Because of this, the issue of establishing peace in Ukraine became one of the key topics in his conversations with Waltz, the Hungarian diplomat said.

Lavrov also reiterated that Moscow welcomes any constructive initiatives to bring the Ukraine conflict to an end. However, Russia does not believe any Western-based organizations will be of any help, and is seeking to strengthen security for everyone in “our whole continent” of Eurasia, he said.

“All those initiatives floated by our partners on different continents, which are aimed at finding a political solution, they, of course, must take into account the issue of ensuring the security interests of each country and, of course, the issue of respecting human rights,” the top diplomat stressed. Relations between Russia and the collective West have changed and will not return to the situation prior to the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in early 2022, Lavrov warned. “All the previous years after the end of the Cold War, the West agreed on some right things, rhetorically praised these right things, but in reality grossly violated all the agreements and did everything to suppress the legitimate interests of Russia,” Lavrov said.

And although relatively few prominent analysts are willing to admit it, the fact remains that the Russian military is now the single most potent and battle-hardened fighting force on the planet. The Russians will dictate the terms of surrender in this war because their strength affords them that privilege, and there is nothing the US and its impotent European vassals can do to alter that reality. That said, a decisive strategic defeat is going to be a very bitter pill to swallow for this second Trump administration. Hopefully they won't opt to set the world on fire in a fit of humiliated madness.

Dec 5, 2024

Featured • The West’s Lies About Ukraine Are Refuted by Their Own Words, Ted Snider, Antiwar.com, Dec 5, 2024

The strategy of constructing a narrative of lies to justify going to war is certainly nothing new. There is a long history in the U.S. that appeared to reach its apogee with the lie that Iraq had a stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. That false narrative was reused with various faces with chemical weapons in Syria and, currently, with nuclear weapons in Iran.

“T]ruth is invariably the first casualty of war, but,” as Richard Sakwa, Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent and this generation’s most distinguished specialist on Russia, says in his soon to be published book, The Culture of the Second Cold War, “propaganda in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict is exceptionally intense.” Sakwa argues that “[a]t its heart” the Second Cold War, “is the struggle to control narratives, to shape popular perceptions of reality. This is an age-old endeavour,” he says, “but in Cold War 2 the misrepresentation of situations is exacerbated by the decline of high modernist ideals of fact-based journalism and impartial scholarship.”

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken repeated the US government’s new position that Ukraine needs to start sending 18 to 25 year-olds to fight in its war with Russia, telling Reuters on Monday that “getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary.” This comes even as polls have begun showing that Ukrainians favor making a deal with Russia to end this war as quickly as possible.

This is one of those things that looks more evil the longer you stare at it. They’re pushing for teenagers to be thrown into the fires of an unwinnable war like it’s nothing — like a corporation saying they need to hire more staff to accommodate their growing business. And why? To tie up Russia so that Syria can be turned into a smoking crater and allow the US war machine to focus its crosshairs on Iran and China, with the end goal of total planetary domination. All because some swamp monsters decided after the fall of the Soviet Union that the US must maintain unipolar global hegemony no matter the cost.

Ukraine barely even has anyone in the country from ages 18 to 25 for various reasons (many of which predate this war), but the managers of the US-centralized empire are pushing to scrape out the few they do have and toss them into the landmines and artillery fire just to keep this unwinnable war going for a few more months. Whether they succeed or not, the fact that they even tried is so profoundly psychopathic it’s actually hard to wrap your mind around.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the U.S. poured military aid into Ukraine in defense of the “core principles” of sovereignty, territorial integrity and the “sovereign right” every country has “to determine for itself with whom it will choose to associate in terms of its alliances.”

As Western support for military aid became harder to maintain, the warning of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imperialism rose from a background note to a dominant message. Putin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained, has “made clear that he’d like to reconstitute the Soviet empire.” “If Ukraine loses the war,” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky said, “other countries will be attacked. This is a fact.” He warned that “this aggression, and Putin’s army, can come to Europe.” “[A]t the moment,” he said, “it’s us, then Kazakhstan, then Baltic states, then Poland, then Germany.”

This narrative was effective on U.S. President Joe Biden. Biden is, by his nature, an old cold warrior who looks out from the White House on a Manichean world of democracy versus autocracy. “If Putin takes Ukraine,” he told Congress, “he won’t stop there… He’s going to keep going. He’s made that pretty clear.”

But support for military aid to Ukraine is getting softer and Biden’s time in the White House is setting. Trump is a new president. Zelensky’s team followed him from television to government: they are masters of marketing. A new president needs a new message. They see Trump as less of a cold warrior and more of a transactional business man. So, the message for selling the war to the West is taking on a new tone.

The new message made a quiet debut in the Ukrainian Victory Plan that Zelensky pitched to Washington. The new note went largely unnoticed underneath the louder notes of NATO membership and permission to fire U.S. supplied long-range missiles deeper into Russia. But behind those notes came a new point: “[j]oint protection by the US and the EU of Ukraine’s critical natural resources and joint use of their economic potential.” In exchange for sustained and increased military aid, Zelensky offered the U.S and EU “an agreement… that would allow for joint investments and use of Ukraine’s natural resources, which Zelenskiy said were worth trillions of dollars.” As part of that agreement, Zelensky advertised “uranium, titanium, lithium, graphite and other strategically valuable resources that will strengthen either Russia and its allies or Ukraine and the democratic world in global competition.”

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova had her visa already issued by Malta canceled on the eve of the meeting of OSCE foreign ministers, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday. “An unprecedented case [of non-issuance of visas to members of the Russian delegation] was the cancellation on the eve of the event of the visa already issued by the Maltese Presidency to the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Vladimirovna Zakharova, with the wording ‘due to circumstances beyond their control,” the statement read. The current OSCE crisis was the result of the destructive actions of a number of Western countries using this platform in their own interests, the statement read.

“Let me remind you that this a ministerial event of the very same OSCE that claims to advocate for freedom of movement. Previously, they talked about the ‘three baskets’ of the OSCE that defined the basic principles of cooperation and interaction within the organization. Now, there is neither cooperation nor interaction, and instead of principles, there is a lack of principles.

The US House of Representatives will not consider President Joe Biden’s request to include $24 billion in additional aid to Ukraine in a government funding bill, Speaker Mike Johnson has said. In the absence of a formal budget, the US government has been funded through “continuing resolutions” periodically approved by Congress. The White House has requested the $24 billion as part of its latest proposed legislation, which the House would need to adopt before adjourning for Christmas holidays. “I’m not planning to do that,” Johnson said on Wednesday, at a press conference on Capitol Hill. “It is not the place of Joe Biden to make that decision now.” The Louisiana Republican reminded reporters that he had predicted Donald Trump’s election would change the dynamics of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and make further US funding unnecessary, adding that this is precisely what’s been happening in recent weeks.

“We have a newly-elected president and we’re going to wait and take the new commander-in-chief’s direction on all of that,” Johnson said. “So I don’t expect any Ukraine funding to come up now.”

Donald Trump’s advisers have presented him with three plans for resolving the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Reuters has reported, citing several sources close to the US president-elect.

Despite certain differences, all of the proposals include Kiev ceding territory to Moscow and giving up on its aspiration to join NATO, the agency said in an article on Wednesday.

A former Trump national security official, involved in the ongoing government transition in the US, has told Reuters that one of the plans came from the president-elect’s incoming Russia-Ukraine envoy, retired Army Lieutenant-General Keith Kellogg.

The other two were authored by Vice President-elect J.D. Vance and Trump’s former acting intelligence chief, Richard Grenell, respectively, according to the official.

Trump’s advisers reportedly intend to try to pressure the two countries into negotiations by using a “carrots and sticks” strategy, Reuters said. It would see Washington halting military aid to Kiev if Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky refuses to negotiate, and more arms deliveries if Russian President Vladimir Putin expresses an unwillingness to engage in diplomacy, the outlet explained.

As of last week, Trump had yet to convene a central working group to flesh out a unified peace plan, four advisers told the agency on condition of anonymity.

It's no secret that the Biden administration has been pressuring Ukraine's Zelensky behind the scenes to drop the age of conscription down to 18 from the current age of 25. But now the White House is becoming much more direct and out in the open about it.

With less than 50 days to go of Biden in office, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has called on Kiev to make "hard decisions" about expanding mobilization efforts to fight the Russians. He's urging that younger men be forced into the fight.

"Getting younger people into the fight, we think, many of us think, is necessary" Blinken stated in a NATO press conference on Wednesday. "Right now, 18- to 25-year-olds are not in the fight," he explained.

... If Zelensky pulls the trigger it would be hugely unpopular among Ukrainians, and could result in internal dissent and mass protests, even as the war rages in the east.

Dec 4, 2024

 • US embassy in Kiev blocking Zelensky interview – Tucker Carlson, RT, Dec 4, 2024

American journalist Tucker Carlson has said the US government has been blocking his attempts to organize an interview with Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky for more than a year. On Wednesday, Carlson published a video on X in which he previewed the upcoming release of an interview with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The journalist said the conversation with Russia’s top diplomat was aimed at providing a perspective on how close Washington and Moscow could be to a direct clash, after the administration of outgoing US President Joe Biden granted Ukraine permission to fire American-made long-range weapons deep into Russian territory.

President Putin faces the possibility of a second Ukraine, a second war front that could result from Washington’s success in staging a coup d’etat in Georgia with a color revolution. Riots ongoing since the “Russian party” defeated the “Western party” by 54% to 34% have convinced the Prime Minister of Georgia that the West is in the process of launching a color revolution to overthrow, as was done in Ukraine, the democratically elected government. Putin is silent and consequently could find himself fighting on two fronts. Then the West will open a third front. This is what Putin can expect from consistently presenting himself as a non-interventionist unless Russia is attacked. Russia, certainly the most powerful military entity on earth, carries no weight in Western councils. Georgia, the country, became a part of Russia in early 1800. In 1917 Georgia became one of the provinces of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine will not accept any kind of security guarantees as a substitute for NATO membership, according to a Foreign Ministry statement published on Tuesday. In the document issued ahead of the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels this week, Kiev blasted the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Ukraine gave up its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal for security guarantees from Russia and the West. The Foreign Ministry called the pact a “monument to short-sightedness in strategic security decision-making,” and urged its Western backers to issue it an invitation to the US-led military bloc during the meeting in Brussels. “Having the bitter experience of the Budapest Memorandum behind us, we will not settle for any alternatives, surrogates, or substitutes for Ukraine’s full membership in NATO,” the ministry said in a statement, marking this week’s 30th anniversary of the memorandum’s signing.

The EU approach to the Ukraine conflict has ultimately weakened the bloc “a lot,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said, branding the decision to blindly follow Washington’s polices a “big mistake.” The top diplomat made the remarks while speaking exclusively to RT’s Saskia Taylor in an interview on Monday. Comparisons between EU and US aid to Ukraine by the bloc’s leaders are a “very bad and harmful approach from the European perspective,” Szijjarto said. While the US is hardly affected by the enduring hostility between Moscow and Kiev, the conflict has taken a heavy toll on the EU, according to the minister. “There is destruction taking place in Europe, and the European economy is faced with the impacts and the consequences of this war. So therefore, following the US policies without any kind of criticism, that’s a big mistake and I do believe that the strategy the European Union has been following in the recent 1000 days is a failed one,” Szijjarto said.

Dec 3, 2024

Featured • SCOTT RITTER: Congress Must Prevent Nuclear War, Consortium News, Dec 3, 2024

Today is the gravest danger of nuclear war than at any time in the nuclear era. This is a reality so stark and intimidating that many people feel powerless to do anything about it. But something can be done.

A Call to Action: Congressional intervention is needed to prevent a nuclear war with Russia.

Democracy works when we make it work.

Today Americans from all walks of life are confronted with the real threat of nuclear war — many experts, me included, believe that there is a greater danger today that at any time in the nuclear era for a nuclear war — greater than during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

This is an overwhelming reality, one so stark and intimidating that many people feel powerless to do anything about it.

But there is something that can be done.

Stop the ATACMS

When one breaks down the myriad of factors that contribute to the risk of a nuclear conflict between the U.S. and Russia, one issue emerges as the principle trigger for conflict — the decision by President Joe Biden to authorize Ukraine to fire U.S.-made ATACMS missiles (with assistance of U.S. personnel and satellites) against targets on Russian soil.

If you are looking at the war in Ukraine, the attempted Maidan coup in Georgia and the Salafist jihadi offensive in Syria as separate, unconnected events, you are mistaken. The United States, with the collaboration of several NATO countries — the UK in particular — has embarked on a desperate campaign to try to salvage victory from looming defeat.

...The fascism that is at the heart of the American establishment — i.e., a cozy, corrupt relationship were corporations grow wealthy from supplying over-priced military technology by bribing the Congress to pony up billions of dollars — continued to look for enemies abroad and launched meaningless, but profitable, wars of expedition in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Serbia and Syria. None of those ventures succeeded in bringing peace and stability to those nations.

Why fight these wars? To what purpose? The answer is simple: gain control of the vast resources controlled by Russia, China and Iran.

...Unfortunately, most Americans are still willing to accept the propaganda and will support these efforts until there is an economic or military crisis that inflicts pain and suffering on the US.

The Biden administration on Monday announced a new $725 million weapons package for Ukraine, which includes anti-personnel mines, ammunition for the HIMARS rocket systems, and other equipment.

President Biden just recently approved the provision of anti-personnel mines for Ukraine, a step that goes against his own policy meant to limit the use of the indiscriminate weapon. In 2022, Biden re-implemented an Obama-era policy that prohibited the transfer and use of US anti-personnel mines outside of the Korean Peninsula.

Biden’s decision to send the mines has been condemned by arms control groups and many countries that are signatories to a treaty banning the weapon. The mines, which are designed to kill or maim people, have been banned by 164 countries under the Ottawa Treaty. The US and Russia are not signatories, but Ukraine is and has been in violation of the treaty.

According to The Associated Press, the purpose of the mines is for Ukraine to use them inside Russian territory in the Kursk Oblast, where Russian troops are gradually pushing out an invading Ukrainian force.

The provision of ammunition for the HIMARS systems means the US could be sending more Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of about 190 miles and are fired by the HIMARS. Two US officials who spoke to the AP wouldn’t confirm if the new package includes ATACMS.

...The Biden administration is looking to flood Ukraine with as many weapons as it can before President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20, 2025. President Biden has asked Congress to authorize another $24 billion for the proxy war before he leaves office, which would bring total US spending on the conflict to at least $210 billion. (emphasis added)

The European Union has morphed into an “aggressive political bloc” and a “war union,” the Vice Speaker of the Russian parliament’s upper chamber, Konstantin Kosachev, has said. The senator criticized the EU in a Telegram post on Tuesday, pointing to the bloc’s support for the ongoing turmoil in Georgia, which has been hit by mass anti-government, pro-EU protests. The unrest has been going on since Thursday, when Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze announced that he would freeze accession talks with the bloc until 2028. He accused Brussels of persistent “blackmail and manipulation” of Georgia’s internal affairs in justifying the decision.

“The first Molotov cocktails were thrown by protesters at Georgian police immediately after the new EU foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, publicly called the crowd’s protests legitimate and the response of the authorities – illegal,” Kosachev wrote. The vice speaker was apparently referring to remarks made by Kallas during her visit to Kiev, where she threatened Georgia with “consequences” and openly took the protesters’ side. “It is clear that using violence against peaceful protesters is not acceptable, and the Georgian government should respect the will of the Georgian people,” she stated.

Members of the bloc’s foreign service are acting as “instigators” of the unrest, according to the Russian lawmaker. Kosachev recalled the 2020 Capitol Hill rioting in the US, stating that the EU kept silent on it at the time and did not mention any “citizens’ right to protest.” The bloc has grown out of its original economic cooperation framework into an “aggressive political bloc with military inclinations,” acting as the main divisive force in Europe, Kosachev said. “The contemporary European Union is the main factor in dividing Europe and provoking conflicts. [It’s] a union of war,” he stressed.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s influence in global affairs is growing, new EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has said. Speaking to reporters in Kiev during her first official visit on Sunday, Kallas, who stepped down as Estonia’s prime minister to take the EU post, reiterated that the European Union “wants Ukraine to win this war.” She doubled down on support for military aid to Ukraine, insisting that providing the country more weapons is not “charitable aid,” but an investment in the security of the EU, since Russian President Vladimir Putin “shows no signs of abandoning his goals.” Kallas has advocated tougher sanctions on Russia and is known for her strident stance against Moscow. She also stated Sunday that supporting Ukraine is in the interests of the US.

“If America is worried about China, it should be worried about Russia first,” Kallas claimed, according to the outlet Suspilne, adding that Russia, Iran, North Korea and China are working together. She also admitted that despite Western efforts to isolate Russia and its leader, Vladimir Putin’s political influence has been amplified. “And we also see what Putin is doing in other countries, really increasing his influence. So, if the United States wants to be the strongest state in the world, they will eventually have to deal with the Russian Federation. And the easiest way to deal with this is to support Ukraine so that it wins the war,” the diplomat concluded. Kallas also did not rule out sending Western troops to Ukraine.

Dec 2, 2024

Featured • The Long War to reaffirm Western and Israeli primacy undergoes a shape-shift, Alastair Crooke, Strategic Culture Foundation, Dec 2, 2024

Over the years, that (1940s Kennan) doctrine has ossified into an entire network of security understandings, based on the archetypal conviction that America is strong, and that Russia was weak. Russia must ‘know that’, and thus, it was argued, there could be no logic for Russian strategists to imagine they had any other option but to submit to the overmatch represented by the combined military strength of NATO versus a ‘weak’ Russia. And should Russian strategists unwisely persevere with challenging the West, it was said, the inherent contrariety simply would cause Russia to fracture.

American neocons and western intelligence have not listened to any other view, because they were (and largely still are) convinced by Kennan’s formulation. The American foreign policy class simply could not accept the possibility that such a core thesis was wrong. The entire approach reflected more a deep-seated culture, rather than any rational analysis – even when visible facts on the ground pointed them to a different reality.

So, America has piled the pressure on Russia through the incremental delivery of additional weapons systems to Ukraine; through stationing intermediate range nuclear-capable missiles ever-closer to Russia’s borders; and most recently, by shooting ATACMS into ‘old Russia’.

The aim has been to pressure Russia into a situation where it would feel obliged to make concessions to Ukraine, such as a to accept a freezing of the conflict, and to be obliged to negotiate against Ukrainian bargaining ‘cards’ devised to yield a solution acceptable to the U.S. Or, alternatively, for Russia to be cornered into the ‘nuclear corner’.

American strategy ultimately rests on the conviction that the U.S. could engage in a nuclear war with Russia – and prevail; that Russia understands that were it to go nuclear, it would ‘lose the world’. Or, pressured by NATO, the anger amongst Russians likely would sweep Putin from office were he to make significant concessions to Ukraine. It was a ‘win-win’ outcome – from the U.S. perspective.

Unexpectedly however, a new weapon appeared on the scene which precisely unshackles President Putin from the ‘all-or-nothing’ choice of having to concede a bargaining ‘hand’ to Ukraine, or resort to nuclear deterrence. Instead, the war can be settled by facts on the ground. Effectively, the George Kennan ‘trap’ imploded.

For almost three years, NATO countries have boycotted diplomatic contact with Russia, even as hundreds of thousands of men die on the Ukraine conflict's battlefield. The decision to reject diplomacy is morally repugnant. Diplomacy could have reduced violence, prevented escalation, and even opened a path to peace. Instead, political and media elites skillfully presented this rejection as a sign of moral righteousness, labeling dialogue as treason and war as virtuous.

More than twice as many Ukrainian soldiers have been charged with desertion this year than in 2022 and 2023 combined, the Financial Times has reported. The spike in desertions has hampered Kiev’s ability to replenish its thinned-out ranks. Ukrainian prosecutors opened 60,000 cases against deserters between January and October of this year, the British newspaper reported on Saturday, noting that those convicted face prison terms of up to 12 years. For some of these men, desertion is seen as the only way of getting off the front lines to rest. Ukrainian lawmakers dropped a provision from a bill earlier this year that would have allowed the country’s longest-serving conscripts to be demobilized in the coming months, and service members told the Financial Times that the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) lacks the manpower to give troops shorter four-week rotations off the front lines for rest and retraining.

"They’re just killing them, instead of letting them rehabilitate and rest,” one officer told the newspaper. Those killed are replaced by ill-trained and unfit draftees. In an earlier article, Ukrainian commanders told the Financial Times that on some busy sectors of the front, 50 to 70% of these new conscripts are killed or wounded within days of starting their first rotation. Those who survive often go AWOL as soon as they can, the newspaper reported. Some choose to desert while at training camps in NATO countries. An anonymous Polish security source told the Financial Times that around 12 Ukrainian men abscond from training centers in Poland every month. Earlier this week, a Ukrainian MP told the Associated Press that as many as 200,000 soldiers may have deserted since the conflict with Russia escalated in 2022.

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November 2022

 • "Peace in Ukraine -- How Do We Get There?" A discussion in Los Alamos with Scott Ritter and Dmitri Trenin, Jan 7, 2025
 • Stop the War in Ukraine While We Can, Greg Mello, LASG Vlog, Jun 24, 2024
 • What we’re up to, and reflections on some opportunities and dangers at hand, Greg Mello, VFP Webinar, Jun 20, 2024
 • Can U.S. seize the moment for peace?, Greg Mello, Santa Fe New Mexican, Jun 16, 2024
 • Bulletin 346: Momentous events, and two op-eds, Jun 16, 2024
 • Press backgrounder: U.S. Considers Expanding Its Nuclear Arsenal, Jun 10, 2024
 • Bulletin 345: Ukraine strikes Russian early-warning radar against nuclear attack, May 25, 2024
 • "Russophobia, the Ukraine war, and nuclear weapons," LASG presentation, Peter Kuznick, Steven Starr, & Greg Mello discuss the dangerous phenomenon of "Russophobia" in the West in the context of the potentially widening war in Ukraine, with its attendant nuclear dangers, video, Apr 16, 2024
 •Bulletin 342: Russophobia, the Ukraine war, and nuclear weapons," panel discussion in Santa Fe Tuesday April 16, 6 pm / Pit production: myths and contradictions, Apr 10, 2024
 • LASG friends ltr: "Russophobia, the Ukraine war, and nuclear weapons" -- panel discussion Tuesday April 16, 6 pm, St. John's United Methodist Church, Santa Fe, Apr 8, 2024
 • Bulletin 341: Pit seminar materials available; Russophobia seminar postponed; big jump in FY24 warhead spending as arms race takes hold; Ukraine losing war sparking panic in West, Mar 4, 2024
 • Bulletin 340: "Year in Pits;" Zoom update & discussion on pits 2/27; rich opportunities in the land of nuclear (dis)enchantment; end the Ukraine carnage and genocide in Gaza, Feb 22, 2024
 • The Real Purpose In Making The Bomb Was To Subdue The Soviets. Now Its Happening Again, On A Vast Scale. Why? July 22 At Fuller Lodge, Los Alamos Reporter, Jul 19, 2023
 • LASG friends ltr: Ukraine over the tipping point; more on July 22 event in Los Alamos; comment on generic "nuclear disarmament," Jul 12, 2023
 • Bulletin 330: "'The real purpose in making the bomb was to subdue the Soviets.'* Now it's happening again, on a vast scale. WHY?" A conversation with acclaimed historian Peter Kuznick and Greg Mello in Los Alamos, July 22, Jul 7, 2023
 • Ukraine War Makes it Harder to be a Nuclear Dove | Our Land, Laura Paskus, New Mexico in Focus, Jun 30, 2023
 • Bulletin 329: Russia rules out nuclear disarmament negotiations; second week of Ukrainian offenses fail; what will US and NATO do? Build 60 projects in LANL's Pajarito Corridor?, Jun 17, 2023
 • LASG friends ltr (06/15/2023) Pit production zoom today; halt military "aid" to Ukraine, which just kills more Ukrainians, accept peace
 • Ukraine; Biden's Manicheism; the U.S. cannot even conduct a nuclear arms race, let alone win one, LASG friends ltr, Mar 16, 2023
 • Ukraine protest and updates, pit production delays and cost increases in NNSA's new budget, LASG friends ltr, Mar 14, 2023
 • Antiwar rally 2 pm Saturday in Albuquerque; LANL pits delayed, endorse the "Call for Sanity"; Ukraine update; the Nordstream investigation (and likely impeachment) "imperative" LASG friends ltr, Mar 11, 2023
 • Ukraine losses mount toward critical point; ANSWER rally against the war is now 2 pm (not 1 pm), March 18, Albuquerque; nearly half U.S. citizens believe WWIII is near, LASG friends ltr, Mar 7, 2023
 • Ukraine news and views; antiwar rally March 18; pending guest editorial; pit production precis, LASG friends ltr, Mar 3, 2023
 • Bulletin 325: Understanding the Nordstream sabotage and punishing those responsible, Feb 18, 2023
 • Ukraine news with comments and excerpts; bookmark for future reference if desired,LASG friends ltr, Feb 8, 2023
 • Bulletin 324: Opposition to Ukraine war gains visibility in New Mexico and via our web site, more broadly, Feb 6, 2023
 • Anti-nuclear activist opposes helping Ukraine, encourages peace, Santa Fe New Mexican, Feb 5, 2023
 • Bulletin 323: "Nuclear Hotseat" interview / Ukraine war updates, Feb 4, 2023
 • Bulletin 322: Right and Left To Join in D.C. Protest: Not One More Penny for War in Ukraine / Bulletin of Atomic Scientists resets clock, blames Russia, Jan 25, 2023
 • $10 Trillion for Nuclear War: Racing to the Nuclear Cliff, The Socialist Program with Brian Becker, Jan 10, 2023
 • Bulletin 321: Last day for 2022 donations! / A few quick updates, Dec 31, 2022
 • Bulletin 320: Neocon humiliation -- or nuclear exchange / The centrality of war resistance in moral politics / 3 days left for 1:1 donation match!, Dec 29, 2022
 • Bulletin 319: Ukraine; NDAA: omnibus appropriations bill; fundraising --thank you; some matching funds still available, Dec 21, 2022
 • Stop the war now, Jean Nichols, The Taos News, Dec 19, 2022
 • Bulletin 318: Speak out now against further U.S. escalation in Ukraine; daily updates for your use, Dec 14, 2022
 • Agenda for tonight's emergency Ukraine meeting in Albuquerque, and by Zoom, Nov 15, 2022
 • Bulletin 314: Reminder re next week's antiwar, disarmament, & nuclear safety events: come if you can or tune in, outreach needed; pit interview on KNME tonight 7 pm; fundraising drive continues; erratum, Nov 11, 2022
 • Bulletin 313: Important meeting about Ukraine next week; DNFSB hearing in Santa Fe; more, Nov 7, 2022
 • Biden Administration releases aggressive nuclear strategy envisioning "first use" of nuclear weapons in wars like Ukraine, press release, Oct 27, 2022
 • Bulletin 310: Speak up! We urge you to take up the call for peace in Ukraine, Sep 25, 2022
 • Pope Francis: "World War III has been declared." We agree. Stop LANL's pit factory; Stop the U.S. war against Russia, presentation, Jun 15, 2022
 • Bulletin 301: Oppose the war! Demand and create accountability for lawmakers who fund and promote more war in Ukraine, May 16, 2022
 • Grave dangers loom in Ukraine war votes and escalations; opportunities open for journalists and citizens; We urge news media to widen debate, pose questions, create accountability, press release, May 16, 2022
 • LASG friends ltr: Thursday evening public discussion in Albuquerque: Ukraine, propaganda, progressives supporting Nazis and war, May 10, 2022
 • Escalation in Ukraine: The Nuclear War Danger is Real, Brian Becker & Greg Mello discuss the U.S. policy of waging proxy war on Russia, BreakThrough News, May 4, 2022
 • Bulletin 299: Emergency call to action: stop Biden's proposed $33 billion war escalation, Apr 28, 2022
 • Bulletin 298: Talk on pits & renewed U.S. nuclear weapons production Tuesday evening 4/26/22; antiwar billboard; what you can do, Apr 25, 2022
 • The core debate, Searchlight New Mexico, Mar 23, 2022
 • Bulletin 294: Please consider forwarding this fine statement from UNAC re Ukraine, Mar 23, 2022
 • Nuclear expert speaks on the dangers of war between the US and Russia, World Socialist Website, Mar 15, 2022
 • A Proposed Solution to the Ukraine War, Consortium News, Greg Mello, Mar 7, 2022
 • Bulletin 293: Ukraine conflict: If you want a ceasefire (as we do), stop firing, Mar 5, 2022
 • Bulletin 292: Statement on the Ukraine conflict and war with Russia, Mar 1, 2022
 • "What can we in New Mexico do?," LASG letter, Feb 23, 2022
 • Bulletin 288: US nuclear weapons since 2020: continuity and change, Dec 7, 2021 (see discussion of US, NATO, and Russia)
 • Nuclear experts speak on the dangers of war between the US and Russia, World Socialist Web Site, Apr 15, 2017
 • US Leaders Reject “Nuclear Winter” Studies, Ignore Existential Danger of Nuclear War. Turn a Blind Eye towards Armageddon, Steven Starr, Global Research, Nov 1, 2016
 • The Ukraine Conflict: What's Behind It? Why Is It Important?, Sep 26, 2015
 • Bulletin 200: Warhead budget bloat; U.S.-caused Ukraine catastrophe at the brink; hello peak oil, Feb 8, 2015