Ukraine

Ukraine War: Selected news, views, & analysis

A few good sources of news & analysis
• Moon of Alabama, blog

• Antiwar.com, blog

• Consortium News, blog

• Caitlin Johnstone, blog

• Judge Andrew Napolitano, podcast

• Larry Johnson, blog & podcast

• Douglas MacGregor, interviews & articles

• Alastair Crooke, blog

• The Grayzone, blog

• Simplicius, blog

• SouthFront, video

• St. Pete for Peace, website

• The Duran, podcast

• The Automatic Earth, blog

Ukraine's top "disinformation" sources -- we respect and read many of them.

To understand we must think and compare. We do not agree with all the postings on all these sites. That would be an unrealistic expectation anywhere.

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updated 21 Apr 2026, 13:49 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: Jeffery Sachs: Two Centuries of Russophobia & Rejection of Peace, Consortium News, Dec 24, 2025
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.

Russia Ukraine War Master Class: Prof. Glenn Diesen, Prof. John Mearsheimer, Ambassador Chas Freeman, Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Aug 2024

Apr 21, 2026

Featured • Power Again Rebalanced in Europe Amidst Political Shake-Ups, Simplicius, Apr 20, 2026
Useful political overview from multiple angles. There remains a considerable danger of the Ukraine War spreading to the Baltics or elsewhere. EU nations are desperately moving to military Keynesianism. Also of considerable interest: evidence that U.S. battlefield intel with AI (Palantir's Project Maven) was deeply helping Ukraine from the opening days of the war.

• ‘Pandemic of fascism’ looming over West – Moscow, Apr 20, 2026

The West is being swept by a “pandemic of historical revanchism” as it seeks to erase the memory of World War II and rewrite the Soviet victory over Nazi ideology, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned. Zakharova made the remarks in an interview with TASS on Sunday on the occasion of Russia’s Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide of the Soviet People, which is being observed for the first time this year. The spokeswoman said that while for a time Russia was absolutely certain that WWII was “a sacred topic for the whole world,” many Western countries adopted a different approach.

Apr 18, 2026

Featured • PATRICK LAWRENCE: Iran & Ukraine — Two Theaters in the Non–West’s Single War for Parity, Consortium News, Apr 18, 2026

Featured • EU spied on Orban for years – former Slovak minister, RT, Apr 16, 2026

The EU spy campaign that helped bring down Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is a lesson to anyone who defies Brussels, former Slovak Interior Minister Vladimir Palko has warned. “What they did to Orban yesterday, they can do to you tomorrow,” he told the outlet ‘Marker’ on Monday. Orban’s Fidesz party suffered a landslide defeat to Peter Magyar’s Tisza on Sunday, with Tisza outperforming even the most one-sided polls to win a 54% to 38% over Fidesz. Magyar’s party now holds 137 of 199 seats in parliament, giving the incoming PM power to rewrite the country’s constitution as he – and his allies in Brussels – see fit.

That the EU wanted this result was obvious. Orban had been a thorn in Brussels’ side for 16 years and was an insurmountable obstacle to the bloc’s plans to approve a €90 billion loan package for Ukraine. Throughout the election, evidence of interference by the EU, Ukraine, and opposition-friendly Hungarian media trickled out of Budapest. With the election over, the full extent of the EU’s intelligence campaign against Orban – and its implications for populists across Europe – is slowly becoming apparent. “The defeat of Viktor Orban after 16 years of rule is not surprising at all,” Palko told Marker. “However, the tragedy is what happened in the election campaign.”

“Orban and his foreign minister were wiretapped by European intelligence for six years,” he continued. “Not Russian, not American. The secret service provided the content of phone calls to some journalists from several EU member states, and the members of the EU establishment used the content against Orban. This was an intervention into Hungarian elections.”

Palko, who served as deputy director of Slovakia’s SIS intelligence agency in the 1990s and interior minister between 2002 and 2006, confirmed information that had already surfaced in the runup to the election: namely that opposition journalist Szabolcs Panyi gave Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto’s contact details to an unnamed EU intelligence agency, that then wiretapped Szijjarto and leaked details of six years’ worth of his calls with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov back to Panyi and other pro-opposition reporters. Panyi’s outlet, Direkt36, derives 80% of its project costs from the EU.

• Russian security chief issues drone attack warning to four NATO states, RT, Apr 16, 2026

Russia would have the right to retaliate if Finland and the Baltic states are deliberately allowing Ukrainian drones to pass through their airspace, Security Council Secretary Sergey Shoigu said on Thursday. “Recently, there has been an increase in Ukrainian drone strikes against Russia via Finland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia,” Shoigu told journalists. “As a result, civilians are suffering and significant damage is being caused to civilian infrastructure.” Either Western air defenses are proving ineffective, or these four countries “deliberately provide their airspace, thereby becoming open accomplices in aggression against Russia,” he added.

In the latter case, Moscow has the right to self-defense in response to an “armed attack” under Article 51 of the UN Charter, the security chief stressed. In recent weeks, Kiev has intensified drone strikes on Russia in what Moscow has characterized as “terrorist attacks,” with the Russian military regularly reporting hundreds of UAVs downed in a single night. Late last month, Kiev attacked Russia’s Baltic Sea ports of Ust-Luga and Primorsk with swarms of UAVs. The raids resulted in fires in both cities, which house extensive petrochemical infrastructure.

Apr 17, 2026

Featured • Serious Escalation: Russian MOD Implies Threatening Consequences Against Europe for Being Party to Conflict, Simplicius, Apr 16, 2026

A new RT piece highlights the significance.
A dispersed European industry is powering long-range attacks – and reshaping the nature of the war.
The article implies that Ukraine’s domestic drone industry is essentially one of “assembly”—taking parts actually manufactured entirely in Europe for the battlefield.

Ukraine has been virtually hollowed out, has no more funding, and has its entire armed forces now hoisted up by the European and Western “strategic rear”, which produces Ukraine’s drone industry. If we are to believe the earlier statistic, this means Europe is now essentially providing for the vast majority of Russian casualties on the battlefield.

For Russia, this situation is thus existential. It needs to find a way to hinder this “untouchable” Ukrainian “rear”. And the only way may turn out to be via strikes. There is likely a reason we saw the Oreshnik used on Lvov, right on NATO’s borders, as Russia has been trying to send a message to Europe that it may soon be left with no choice but to take out this “strategic rear” by any means necessary, just as Iran was forced to do in its recent conflict.

What should Russia do?

Contra Simplicius in one detail only, Ukraine is about to have a lot more funding, from the EU "loan" that will no longer be blocked by Hungary. Well, the energy wars long predicted (e.g. by us, since 2006) have begun. Russia is playing a long game, determined to avoid being overextended in the manner hoped for by RAND and Brzezinski. That long game involves political change in Europe. Putin is strongly criticized by the Russian right for this, and they cite the factors discussed in this article. The Ukraine coup, the sanctions against Russia, the Iran War -- all of it -- can be seen as part of U.S. efforts to contain a rising China, following Wolfowitz's dictum.

Apr 10, 2026

• Putin announces Easter ceasefire, RT, Apr 9, 2026

Apr 8, 2026

• German ‘militaristic frenzy’ could end in tragedy – Moscow, RT, Apr 7, 2026

Germany’s continued military buildup could lead to another tragedy on a global scale, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has warned. Last week, German media reported that male citizens who remain abroad for more than three months without prior approval could face penalties in line with a new requirement under the Military Service Modernization Act. The rule, which came into force on January 1, 2026, obliges German males between the ages of 17 and 45 to obtain permission before leaving the country for an extended period. The Defense Ministry said the measure is intended to maintain a reliable registry of individuals eligible for military service.

In a post on Telegram on Monday, Zakharova noted that previously German men were required to register before going abroad only during a “state of tension” or a “state of defense,” but that the measure has now been expanded to peacetime “as part of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s strategy of militarizing the country.” Germany recently moved to reintroduce lottery-based conscription as Berlin is looking to increase the number of its active troops from 180,000 to more than 260,000 by 2035. The spokeswoman suggested that “in the heat of militaristic frenzy, Germany has completely forgotten the lessons of history.”

Apr 6, 2026

• EU acting like ‘suicide ship’ by keeping Russia sanctions – Slovak leader, RT, Apr 5, 2026

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has urged the EU to lift the sanctions on energy exports from Russia and resume dialogue, comparing the bloc’s policies to a “suicide ship.”Since the beginning of the US-Israel war with Iran in late February, oil prices have risen by 60% and gas prices by 70% in the EU, according to European Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen. The bloc previously experienced price hikes after deciding to phase out deliveries from Russia due to the Ukraine conflict. In a post on Facebook on Saturday, Fico blasted the EU for “ideological blindness and incompetence” and accused Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky of exacerbating the crisis.

“I am not calling for anything else – only for a return to common sense. The whole EU, and especially the European Commission, are beginning to look like a suicide ship when it comes to energy security,” Fico wrote. He called on the EU to lift “the absurd sanctions” and take “vigorous steps” to restore flows via the Soviet-era Druzhba pipeline, which delivers Russian oil to the EU through Ukraine.Kiev, which has long tried to pressure Slovakia and neighboring Hungary to abandon energy supplies from Russia, claimed that the pipeline was rendered inoperable by a Russian strike. Zelensky said last month that Ukraine would repair it if the EU prevents Hungary and Slovakia from blocking a $104 billion loan to Kiev.

Apr 1, 2026

• Zelensky claims Russia has issued Donbass ultimatum, RT, Mar 31, 2026

Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has claimed that Moscow has given Kiev two months to withdraw its forces from areas still under its control in Russia’s Donbass region. Zelensky made the comments ahead of scheduled talks with the US on Wednesday about resolving the conflict.

Zelensky stated that the upcoming negotiations with Washington are set to focus on a potential trilateral agreement to end the conflict and that one of the main issues remains the question of territory.

While Kiev continues to insist on freezing the conflict at the current battle lines, Zelensky claimed Moscow has told Washington that it expects to liberate all of Donbass within the next two months.

“Ukraine has two months to withdraw, and then the war will end. And if Ukraine doesn’t leave, then Russia will capture Donbass and the terms will be different,” Zelensky said, paraphrasing Moscow’s alleged comments to Washington.

...Donbass, along with two other former Ukrainian regions, overwhelmingly voted to join Russia in 2022, and Moscow has insisted that Kiev’s full withdrawal from the territory is a key condition for a sustainable peace.

The Kremlin has also said that it does not oppose security guarantees for Kiev in principle, but has insisted that they must not be one-sided or aimed at ‘containing’ Russia, and should only come after a peace deal is reached.

It also maintains any settlement must include Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, denazification, and recognition of the regions that voted to join Russia as its territory.