updated 20 Feb 2025, 15:28 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

Feb 20, 2025

Featured • Ukraine’s Zelensky Forgets the First Rule of Crisis Management — If You’re in a Hole, Stop Digging, Larry C. Johnson, SONAR21, Feb 19, 2025

Don’t be surprised in a few months when Attorney General Pam Bondi announces criminal indictments against Zelensky for theft of US government property. Assuming that Zelensky is not assassinated or jailed by disgruntled Ukrainian military officers, his chances of finding a safe haven outside of Ukraine will dim dramatically. Zelensky fails to understand that he is nothing more than a pawn in a Western-led game of global chess. He ain’t essential, he’s expendable.

It appears that Trump’s goal in reviving relations with Russia has little to do with Ukraine and its future. As a result of Tuesday’s meeting in Saudi Arabia between the US and Russian delegations, there was agreement on forming six working groups that will address the following issues...

Ending the war in Ukraine is not necessarily a top priority. Trump’s team has made it clear that this is a problem for the Europeans and the Ukrainians to resolve if they are intent on continuing the war. Trump is looking at a bigger picture and keeping Zelensky happy is not part of that vision.

It’s the “end of an era" and Germany is “in disarray.” And not just Germany: “Pandemonium” rages in Europe; the continent is under “assault.” Its elites are “shaken, anxious, and sometimes aghast,” as an “ideological war” has been declared against their fiefdom, which is being “left in the dust.” A big “boom” has sounded, and a “ferocious reckoning” is underway. In short, it’s a “European nightmare.”

The above are quotes from (in order of appearance), the Financial Times, The Telegraph, and The Economist (all three from Britain), Le Monde (France), Bloomberg (US), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Bild (both Germany), and, finally, the (German) head of the Munich Security Conference Christoph Heusgen himself. Later, Heusgen, a beyond-middle-aged man and experienced bureaucrat, just cried, literally. For which he was applauded.

What happened? Have “the Russians” finally done what whole divisions of NATO-EU politicians, generals, admirals, think tankers, media talking heads and careerist intellectuals have been feverishly promising for years already? Are their tanks rolling down the Kudamm in Berlin and the Champs Elysees in Paris already? Not that Moscow has given any sound reason to believe it wants to do such things (who’d want to conquer a heap of economic misery, demographic malaise, and cultural pessimism, really?) But that has never mattered to European “elite” fantasies.

No, it’s not that: The Russians are not coming. Indeed, it’s the other way around. As in that 1970s Hollywood horror movie where “the call comes from inside the house,” the sum of all fears for NATO-EU Europe is now emanating from Washington. How ironic.

...And yet, in reality, the other Munich Europeans should actually recall now is that of 2007. That’s when they were warned, extensively and in detail, by none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Many remember his speech then as above all a warning regarding Russia’s security interests – one that was flippantly disregarded, which is one reason the West has now lost a war against Moscow. But Putin’s 2007 Munich speech was more than that, namely a fundamental if short analysis of the enormous dangers inherent in US power and especially American domination. A wiser Europe would have listened and balanced against this obvious threat. A very, very unwise Europe decided to instead throw in its lot with Washington as never before, come what may. Now a reckoning is due.

Moscow and Washington need to “clean up the legacy” left by the former US President Joe Biden’s administration that ruined the ties between the two states, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said. Speaking at the Russian State Duma on Wednesday, having returned from talks with US diplomats in the Saudi capital on Tuesday, Lavrov described the meeting in Riyadh as a first step toward rebuilding relations between the countries. The bilateral negotiations were led by Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and aimed to lay the groundwork for ending the Ukraine conflict and normalizing ties between Russia and the US. “We have started to move away from the brink of the abyss to which the Biden administration had led us, but these are only the first steps,” Lavrov told lawmakers, commenting on the talks.

“For now, we need to ‘clean up’ the legacy of the Biden administration, which did everything to destroy… the foundation of a long-term partnership between our countries,” he added. According to the diplomat, “the movement towards normalizing relations in all areas is beginning.” “There is, at least, a declared readiness to start on this course. And to resolve not only the Ukraine crisis, but to create conditions for the restoration and expansion of partnership in trade, economic and geopolitical spheres,” Lavrov stated. He noted that Washington’s representatives expressed marked interest in removing “artificially created” obstacles to potential joint initiatives with Russia in many areas, including economic and foreign policy. Among other things, the sides agreed to restore embassy staffing and form high-level teams to begin work on the potential Ukraine peace settlement.

More and more it begins to seem that Trump’s ‘sudden’ flare up against Zelensky has the note of premeditation in it. As I’ve previously posited, it’s possible that Trump has been setting up Ukraine for a fall, but he simply had to prep the ground first, by making reasonable overtures toward peace that he knew all along Zelensky would be incapable of agreeing to or honoring. Now the feigned indignation merely marks the transition to Phase Two of the planned demolition of the deep state’s Ukraine project.

And as we further discussed here, this itself is part of a much larger planned reimagining of the entire European security architecture, which includes the US’ relationship to post-war Europe. As part of this, rumors now abound of Trump’s plan to oust the increasingly troublesome Zelensky in order to set the stage for an amenable peace:...

And BILD, amongst others, is now reporting that Trump intends to withdraw US troops from all post-1990 NATO countries...

Discussions about the withdrawal of US troops from all NATO states that joined the alliance after 1990 are one of the goals of the talks between Russia and the US, an Eastern European security official tells BILD

An Eastern European Official has told the German Newspaper, BILD, that discussions are ongoing in regards to the withdrawal of U.S. Troops from all Countries in Europe that joined the NATO Alliance after 1990, which is reported to have been one of the Goals of recent Negotiations between Russia and the United States. This would include Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czechia, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and Sweden. Additionally, preparations are said to be ongoing in Italy, for the possible withdrawal of U.S. Forces from Kosovo.

...The other issue almost no one has mentioned is that ongoing events have virtually ensured that any mass mobilization of the 18+ cohort would fail, or would not even be attempted. Imagine issuing such a call up during the peak of a morale-degrading rupture with your only benefactor, when the future seems more hopeless than ever before, with no further guarantees of any kind of victory.

It’s why the entire pre-18 population is now fleeing...

According to The Washington Post, he ordered plans to cut the budget by 8% each year for five years, which would cut spending by about $290 billion.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has ordered Pentagon leaders to develop plans to make sweeping cuts to the Defense Department’s budget, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.

According to a memo obtained by the Post, Hegseth’s order calls for an 8% cut to the Pentagon budget each year for five years. The Pentagon budget for 2025 is about $850 billion, and an 8% cut for five years would bring it down to roughly $560 billion, a reduction of $290 billion.

Hegseth wants the proposed cuts to be drawn up by February 24, and the memo included a list of 17 categories that would be exempt from the spending cuts.

The Post report said the exemptions include operations at the southern border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense, and acquisition of submarines, one-way attack drones, and other munitions.

The Pentagon has also been targeted by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that the Trump administration ordered the Pentagon to hand over a list of its probationary employees with the expectation that many may be fired, which came as DOGE workers arrived at the Pentagon.

The news of the plan to cut the Pentagon budget comes after President Trump suggested he wanted a major reduction in US military spending, saying he wanted to cut it in half as part of a deal with Russia and China.

While the Pentagon budget for 2025 is about $850 billion, total US military and national security spending for the year is expected to reach $1.77 trillion, according to veteran defense analyst Winslow Wheeler.

Wheeler’s estimate accounts for military-related spending from other government agencies not funded by the National Defense Authorization Act, such as the Department of Veteran Affairs and Homeland Security. It also includes the national security share of the interest accrued on the US debt and other factors.

President Trump in an afternoon press Q&A from Mar-a-Lago went off on those attacking his Ukraine peace initiative, which saw Secretary of State Rubio and national security advisor Walz lead a delegation in 4+ hours of talks with FM Lavrov and the Russians in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia earlier in the day. “I want to see peace. Look, you know why I want it? Because I don’t want all these people killed anymore. I’m looking at people that are being killed — and they’re Russian and Ukrainian people, but they’re people,” Trump emphasized. His tone on Zelensky was decidedly negative, and he defended his administration’s stance on holding Kiev to new elections, saying this is necessary if the Ukrainians want a seat at the table.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has shared his perspective on Tuesday’s high-level Russia-US talks held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Speaking to journalists in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, Putin described the discussions as “the first step” toward normalizing relations between Moscow and Washington, and expressed hope that the process will pave the way for cooperation in various areas, including arms control, space exploration, and energy. Putin also criticized the reaction from the EU and Kiev, calling it inappropriate and entirely unwarranted. He emphasized that the primary goal of the Riyadh meeting was to initiate the restoration of US-Russia relations, adding that the two countries do not need any “intermediaries” to resolve their differences.

Putin said he had been briefed on the talks in Riyadh and assessed them positively. He identified several areas of potential mutual interest for Moscow and Washington, including cooperation in the Middle East – particularly on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the situation in Syria – as well as economic collaboration, joint efforts in international energy markets, and space exploration. He also acknowledged that the ongoing conflict in Ukraine remains a key focus for both nations. The primary goal of Tuesday’s meeting was to “restore US-Russian relations,” Putin stated, when asked to comment on why the absence of Ukrainian and European delegations in Riyadh had sparked “panic” in Kiev and Brussels. “Does anyone want to act as an intermediary between Russia and the US? Such demands are excessive,” the president said, emphasizing that Moscow and Washington do not require mediation.

He stressed that rebuilding trust between Russia and the US is essential for addressing “a number of pressing issues, including resolving the Ukraine conflict.” “There is no reason for such a reaction to the US-Russia meeting,” Putin added, stating that “hysteria is inappropriate” in this situation. “Russia has never refused contact with EU nations or withdrawn from negotiations with Ukraine,” Putin stated. He recalled that it was Kiev that pulled out of the Istanbul talks in the spring of 2022 and later banned its officials from engaging in any dialogue with Moscow. The Russian president reiterated that Moscow is ready to return to the peace process at any time, but the decision ultimately lies with Kiev and Brussels. “I’ve said this 100 times: if they are willing, they are free to engage in such talks. We are ready to return to the negotiating table,” he emphasized.

Russian and US officials held high-level talks in the Saudi capital Tuesday, outlining each side’s position on bringing about a resolution to the conflict in Ukraine as the greatest security crisis in Europe since WWII nears its third anniversary. Sputnik reached out to a leading independent US international affairs observer for comment. “The approach that the Europeans want and Ukrainians want” for ending the Ukrainian proxy conflict through victory on the battlefield against Russia has “just proven not to work, and they don’t seem to be capable of defending themselves,” Michael Maloof says, noting that the meeting in Riyadh signals a tectonic shift in global geopolitics.

“I envision that this is going to be the beginning of the end of NATO, that this is going to mean that ultimately you’re going to see Europe maybe go into a series of defense alliances, regional alliances, rather than one cohesive entity of 32 countries,” the former DoD senior security policy analyst noted. “32 countries will never be able to arrive at a unanimous decision on anything, given the realities on the ground today. And we see that now. There is no cohesiveness in NATO nor in the EU,” the observer explained.

Feb 19, 2025

Featured • End in Sight for Ukraine War After Riyadh Meeting, Joe Lauria, Consortium News, Feb 19, 2025

At a meeting in the Saudi capital that included the U.S. and Russian top diplomats, the way was paved for talks to end the Ukraine war and to improve bilateral relations, while Europe is furious, reports Joe Lauria.

...Mercouris called the sidelining of Europe, brought about by the breathtaking change in U.S. policy towards Russia and the eventual end of the war, a major event in the past six centuries of European history.

“The end of the Ukrainian conflict is going to result in a significant rearrangement of the geopolitical pieces around the world,” Mercouris said. Though it isn’t clear yet how extensive that change will be, he argued it was “fair to say that the United States, Russia and China are indisputably emerging as the great powers. Europe, which has been the core continent in global affairs since the 15th century, and which dominated international affairs in the 20th century, is now definitely in eclipse.”

EU lawmakers are set to discuss the creation of a new fund aimed at raising money for more military aid to Ukraine, the Polish Press Agency (PAP) reported on Monday. The initiative would reportedly be funded in part by proceeds generated from frozen Russian assets. The report comes amid concerns in Brussels that US President Donald Trump will begin cutting financial and military support to Ukraine. The Trump administration has demanded that Kiev reimburse the US for aid provided since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Discussion of the new EU initiative is reportedly scheduled for Tuesday. The main goal of the potential fund is to address Ukraine’s most urgent military needs, including artillery ammunition, air defense systems and long-range missiles, according to a document obtained by PAP.

The EU has no plans to lift sanctions against Russia even if the US decides to do so, and is working on the next raft of measures, EU Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis has said. The bloc has proposed a 16th round of sanctions on Russia to be imposed next week for the third anniversary of the start of the Russian military operation against Ukraine on February 24. Along with the US, the EU has slapped numerous rounds of sanctions on Russia since 2022 in a bid to isolate the country, cutting it off from the Western financial system and freezing its foreign reserves. Asked if the EU would lift its sanctions on Russia if the US eases its restrictions in exchange for a potential ceasefire in Ukraine, Dombrovskis stated that Brussels would pursue an independent sanctions policy.

The day of a high-level and much anticipated US-Russia meeting toward achieving the end of the war in Ukraine was held in Saudi Arabia, hailed by Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, as “successful” after about four-hours-and-a-half hours of talks. However, Ukraine’s President Zelensky was sidelined as were the European allies. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov led the Russian delegation meeting US officials, including Rubio and National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. Both sides have said they are looking forward to the meeting paving a way for a near-future bilateral summit between Presidents Trump and Putin. Secretary Rubio issued a statement in the wake of the meeting, which most interestingly included an agreement for election to be held in Ukraine, which Zelensky certainly isn’t going to like (and probably won’t agree to), given also he just recently argued that martial law prevents this.

According to what was agreed to based on Rubio’s readout:
• Two sides agree to broadly to pursue three goals: allowing back staffing at their embassies in Washington and Moscow and to establish respective high-level teams to support Ukraine peace talks.
• And three: Explore closer restored relations and economic cooperation between the US and Russia
• Rubio stressed that any agreement must be “acceptable” to US, Russia, Ukraine and Europe.
• The plan has three stages: a ceasefire, elections in Ukraine and signing a final agreement, according to Fox reporter Jacqui Heinrich on X
• Lavrov has said: We have agreed that a mechanism for a settlement of the Ukraine conflict will be formed in the near future, and ambassadors will be appointed ASAP to lead these efforts.
Inside the room…

Pushing back against critics, Rubio emphasized that Ukraine has not been sidelined, though Zelensky nor any Kiev representative was invited to the talks in Riyadh. “He’s the only leader in the world that could have started this process here today,” he said. The State Department readout said Tuesday’s meeting puts the two sides “on a path to ending the conflict in Ukraine as soon as possible in a way that is enduring, sustainable, and acceptable to all sides.” More details via Bloomberg: They also agreed to “address irritants” in US-Russia relations to restore the work of their diplomatic missions, and to “lay the groundwork for future cooperation on matters of mutual geopolitical interest” once the war ends, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.

Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said they discussed a summit between Trump and Putin but it was unlikely to take place next week. “It’s hard to say yet that we’re getting closer, but there was a conversation,” Ushakov said of the US and Russian positions after the meeting, according to the state-run Tass news agency. Ushakov and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov represented the Kremlin at the talks that included White House National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan was also present. Trump is determined to “move very quickly” on securing a permanent settlement in Ukraine, Waltz said in a briefing by the US side. Rubio said he was convinced Russia’s willing to engage “in a serious process” on Ukraine, while Witkoff called the meeting a “very, very solid session.”

Feb 18, 2025

Featured • “The Threat From Within”: J.D. Vance Delivers a Historic Defense of Free Speech, Jonathan Turley, Feb 17, 2025

In “Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis,” J.D. Vance wrote, “I don’t believe in transformative moments, as transformation is harder than a moment.” Despite that profound point, on Feb. 14, Vance found that transformative moment. Speaking to European leaders at the Munich Security Conference, he shocked his audience by confronting them over their attacks on free speech in the West. For the free speech community, it was truly Churchillian — no less than the famous Iron Curtain speech in which Churchill dared the West to confront the existential dangers of communism. Roughly 80 years after Churchill’s speech, Vance called our allies to account not for the growing threat from countries like Russia or China, but from themselves.

To a clearly shocked audience, Vance declared that he was not worried about “external actors” but “the threat from within the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.” Vance then pulled back the curtain on the censorship and anti-free-speech policies of the European Union and close allies ranging from the United Kingdom to Sweden. He also chastised one of the most vehemently anti-free speech figures in Europe, Thierry Breton, who led the EU efforts to control speech with draconian measures under the infamous Digital Services Act. Vance called out the hypocrisy of these nations asking for greater and greater military assistance “in the name of our shared democratic values” even as they eviscerate free speech, the very right that once defined Western Civilization. The point was crushing.

...In perhaps the greatest single declaration uttered by an American leader since John F. Kennedy in Germany declared “Ich bin ein Berliner,” he added: “If you are running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people that elected me and elected President Trump.” The reaction of the European diplomats was one of astonishment. Few even offered the usual polite applause. Instead, rows of smug leaders looked straight ahead with the same level of disgust as if Vance were the second coming of the Visogoths threatening the Pax Romana, or Roman Peace.

In a single speech, Vance shattered the hypocrisy of our allies’ calling for a defense of the West while abandoning Western values. They did not like it, and many in the American press joined in dismissing his address. He was called a “wrecking ball” for bringing up the anti-free speech movement that has swept over Europe. One German official declared “This is all so insane and worrying.” This is a diplomat from a nation that shredded free speech for decades, to the point of arresting people over their ringtones. Of course, our own anti-free speech voices were in attendance, too. Politico quoted one “former House Democratic staffer” who bravely attacked Vance anonymously: “I was aghast … He was blaming the victim. What the f— was that? I had my mouth open in a room full of people with their mouth open. That was bad.” No, it was not bad. It was glorious.

...In the midst of this crackdown, Vance spoke with a quintessentially American voice. It was clear, honest and unafraid. There was no pretense or evasion. It was a speech about who we are as a nation and the values that still define us — and no longer define our allies. They saw him as a virtual hillbilly, an American hayseed who does not understand transnational values. For the rest of us, it was a true elegy — part lament and part liberating.

Bravo, Mr. Vice President, Bravo.

Christoph Heusgen, chairman of the Munich Security Conference (MSC), has described the results of last week’s gathering as a “nightmare” for Washington’s European allies. He claimed that the US under President Donald Trump “lives on another planet,” referencing comments made by American Vice President J.D. Vance at the Germany-hosted event. Vance criticized EU nations for increasingly mirroring the USSR in their suppression of dissent and the detachment of elites from voters. He cautioned that if the trend continues, the US could withdraw its support for its European allies.

During an interview with ZDF on Sunday — his final day as MSC chairman — Heusgen noted that, at the very least, Europeans now have clarity about the Trump administration’s stance. He added that while some Republican senators expressed commitment to “trans-Atlantic unity” in contrast to Vance, they were also cautious in their public statements. EU officials reaffirmed their pledges to support Kiev at the MSC, while Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky called for a united European army, asserting that Ukraine could play a significant role in such an initiative. Heusgen advised Europeans to “do what Zelensky says” and stand together. However, skepticism remains among certain EU member states, such as Poland, regarding the concept of a transnational military force to serve as a European counterpart to NATO.

The Trump administration has signaled no intention of involving either NATO or the US in any future security arrangements in Ukraine following a potential ceasefire with Russia. Additionally, Washington has expressed interest in recouping expenditures related to the Ukraine conflict through privileged access to mineral resources under Kiev’s control. Zelensky has previously advocated various forms of security for Ukraine that even his staunchest supporters deem exceedingly ambitious — from full NATO membership to deploying a 200,000-strong foreign military contingent, the mass placement of Western missiles, and even a Ukrainian nuclear capability. As he concluded his closing remarks at the MSC on Sunday, Heusgen became emotional, having to cut himself short. He was addressing the mounting pressures on the “rules-based order,” urging EU politicians to uphold it despite a visible rift with the US.

Vladimir Putin’s June 2024 terms to start negotiations remain intact:

1. Ukraine must withdraw its troops from the territories of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, which Russia has annexed136.

2. Ukraine must formally renounce its intention to join NATO167.

3. Ukraine must accept the loss of Crimea and parts of Donbas4.

4. Ukraine must undergo “de-militarization,” which implies drastic disarmament4.

5. Ukraine must agree to “de-Nazification,” suggesting potential regime change and restrictions on expressing Ukrainian national identity4.

6. Ukraine must legally guarantee the rights and interests of “Russian-speaking citizens” in the remaining parts of Ukraine4.

I think the US delegation is in for a rude awakening when they discover that Russia is not likely to compromise on any of these points in light of being scammed under the Minsk II agreement.

Russia and the US have agreed to establish a framework for ending the Ukraine conflict in the near future, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has announced.

Top Russian and US diplomats met in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to explore ways to restore diplomatic ties, lay the groundwork for a summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, and advance efforts toward resolving the Ukraine conflict.

Kiev will not take part in the US-Russia negotiations in Riyadh and considers them meaningless, Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has said. Teams led by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet on Tuesday in what will be the first high-level talks between the two countries over Ukraine since 2022. “Ukraine will not participate,” Zelensky told reporters on Monday, adding that Kiev “didn’t know anything” about the upcoming talks. “Ukraine views any negotiations about Ukraine that are being held without Ukraine as having no results,” he said. “We will not recognize such agreements.” Zelensky insisted that his own visit to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday has “no connection” to the meeting between US and Russian negotiators the same day. “The visit to the region was planned long before the US decided to meet Russia there,” he said, as quoted by Politico.

Putin’s top foreign policy aide, Yury Ushakov, confirmed on Monday that the negotiations with Americans will not involve third parties. Speaking to journalists on the tarmac in Riyadh, he said the talks aim to lay the groundwork for ending the Ukraine conflict and serve as a step toward “real normalization” of relations with the US. While the administration of former US President Joe Biden maintained unconditional military and financial support for Kiev, President Donald Trump has rejected his predecessor’s campaign to “isolate” Russia on the global stage and promised to end the conflict as soon as possible through a lasting ceasefire. Ukrainian and EU officials have said they were blindsided by Trump’s phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on February 12. They also criticized Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for ruling out NATO membership for Kiev and refusing to commit to the restoration of Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders.

But the elites who gather at the MSC are not there to be lectured to, or to learn, but rather to promulgate the strategic objectives of the U.S. by disguising them as European initiatives born of European values.

Except, as anyone who has studied the dynamics of the MSC knows — there are no true European values anymore. The once laudable goal of avoiding a repeat of the Second World War on European soil has been replaced by a mindless, slavish echo chamber of American imperial warmongering.

Serbia. Libya. Afghanistan.

Ukraine.

The MSC has become nothing more than a rubber stamp for American foreign and national security policy.

European values today are nothing more than a veneer of artificiality, the equivalent of a spoon full of sugar to help Europeans swallow the bitter reality of their collective servility.

Any student of America, however, would have picked up on a growing discontent among the American people with the endless wars being promoted and promulgated by the so-called Military Industrial-Congressional Complex (MICC) that President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned about in his farewell address of January 1961.

The American establishment allowed itself to be consumed by the predatory practices of the MICC.

The American people did not.

In recent days, an incident involving a drone attack on the Chernobyl nuclear plant has generated controversy and debate. According to Ukrainian authorities, a Russian drone allegedly struck the facility, damaging the structure around the reactor. Ukraine’s illegitimate president, Vladimir Zelensky, was quick to blame Russia, stating that the situation reflected a Russian assault on Ukraine’s nuclear infrastructure. However, Russian authorities, including Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, denied these claims, labeling them as yet another provocation by Kiev. More than that, even some Ukrainians question the regime’s official narrative.

Peskov categorically rejected the idea that Russia had attacked any nuclear facility, especially Chernobyl, stating that such claims were unfounded. He argued that any accusation of Russia attacking nuclear power plants was fabricated, asserting that Russia would never target such sensitive locations due to the risks involved. He suggested that the attack was, in fact, an attempt at manipulation and disinformation orchestrated by the Ukrainian government. The Kremlin spokesperson also pointed out that there were interests in Kiev aiming to sabotage any negotiation efforts, indicating that certain factions within the Ukrainian regime would take any actions to prevent the progress of peace talks.

The European leaders that answered French President Emmanuel Macon’s call for an ‘emergency summit’ to discuss how to respond to being sidelined by US President Donald Trump are “warmongers,” Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has warned. Moscow and Washington have announced the beginning of bilateral talks on Tuesday in Saudi Arabia ahead of a possible summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump in Riyadh. Macron called EU leaders for an emergency summit on the Ukraine conflict in Paris on Monday after Washington made it clear that the bloc would not be at the table when the US and Russia discuss peace. Speaking at a press conference in Kazakhstan on Monday Szijjarto said “We trust that the American-Russian negotiations will be successful, and we hope that this will lead to peace in Ukraine as soon as possible… However, we must also see that in Europe, those who do not want peace are organizing,” he added.

“Those who have been constantly adding fuel to the fire for the past three years are gathering in Paris today,” Szijjarto said, branding the participants “war-mongering countries that have followed a misguided strategy.”

Volodymyr Zelensky insists he won’t accept a US-Russia deal on Ukraine without Kiev’s input. But does his opinion matter?

• Ukraine today is a devastated country, deserted by much of its people and critically dependent on foreign aid.

• Over 6.1 million Ukrainian refugees had been registered in Europe by mid-2024, according to UN estimates. One can only guess how many Ukrainians opted not to register their refugee status out of fear of being deported and press-ganged into armed service.

• With the Ukrainian economy on its last legs, Kiev has received over $30 billion in US budget aid just to pay salaries to state employees.

• Foreign companies like Vanguard and BlackRock swept in to profit from this crisis, buying assets in Ukraine at bedrock prices. Much of Ukraine’s agricultural land is now Ukrainian in name only.

• Large proportions of Ukraine’s most valuable assets, such as natural resource deposits and industrial facilities, were located in the territories that chose to join Russia rather than submit to the rule of neo-Nazis in Kiev.

• Ukraine has been saddled with an enormous external debt due to all the credit it has been receiving from abroad. Now, Kiev faces the prospect of losing half of its natural resources to the US as repayment for the financing that turned out to be a loan.

• Foreign black market transplantologists have been operating in Ukraine for months now, harvesting organs from injured Ukrainian soldiers.

• US biowarfare experts treat Ukraine as their own playground where they can conduct dangerous research without the risk of a containment breach endangering American lives.

• US and British intelligence agencies took charge of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) since 2014, making it subservient to the West.

• And although no one has said anything about deciding Ukraine’s fate without Kiev’s input, the question remains: how much does Zelensky’s opinion matter in this context?\

To overcome the considerable obstacles that the MICC will put in the way of Trump making any progress on this bold world-saving initiative, the president will need to turn to the same allies he relied upon to win the White House back from the deep state that blocked his reelection in 2020—the American voter. From a domestic point of view, Trump faces a two-front war. The first is against a deeply entrenched nuclear war establishment whose budget and underlying justification thereof have gone unquestioned and unchallenged for decades. The second is a fight over public opinion which has been shaped by decades of domestic propaganda that make nuclear weapons, and their underpinning mission of global annihilation, appear to a normal part of the American national fabric.

To win on the first front, President Trump will need to combine the tried and true lessons drawn from the experiences gained by implementing previous arms control treaties, especially in the field of compliance verification, with a bold new approach which alters the scope and scale of disarmament so that the world breaks free of dogma which makes nuclear-based deterrence the norm, and instead puts the US and the world on a path of implementing the vision set forth in the nuclear nonproliferation treaty of a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons.

To prevail on the second front, President Trump will have to take his case to the American people, holding a series of massive outdoor rallies in states where the nuclear weapons enterprise has fortified itself politically. Such rallies, when combined with town hall meetings and targeted media appearances, can build a foundation of popular support for arms control that can overwhelm the prejudices that have been ingrained in the political DNA of most Americans by the propaganda machine of the MICC.

These campaigns should be conducted in concert, so that each feeds off the success of the other, creating the kind of political synergy that will be needed to achieve the kind of sweeping changes necessary to walk America away from a nuclear weapons enterprise that could only be sustained by making America an enemy of peace and stability, a nation constantly in search of enemies to justify the enormous expenditures nuclear weapons capability incurs.

...one of the main impediments to meaningful arms control is the US arms control community, which has stopped working to eliminate nuclear weapons and instead seeks to justify their continued existence in the name of arms control.

Feb 17, 2025

Featured • U.S. Questions For European Governments - Another Wake-up Call, Moon of Alabama, Feb 17, 2025

Today U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Saudi Arabia. They will talk like grownups, EU be damned, and find ways to achieve peace in Ukraine and elsewhere.

The Europeans are aghast that they are not invited to take part in the talks.

But why would one invite parties to peace talks when they want nothing more than to sabotage those? The EU's foreign representative Kaja Kallas, a former mayor of Baltic villages, dreams of breaking up Russia into smaller states. How could Russia ever seriously negotiate with such people?

Today the Europeans will huddle in Paris to find some, any, way to get out of the mess. It won't work unless they acknowledge that the war in Ukraine has been lost.

The U.S. has recognized that there aren't enough troops, money or will to achieve a better negotiation position for what's left of Ukraine. The European 'elite' still fails to get that.

Any prolongation of the war will lead to more losses of land to Russia. Will it take the fall of Odessa for the Europeans to be finally ready for talks?

There are still dreams of 'security guarantees' which would be given to Ukraine after it files for peace or surrenders.

No such guarantees would make any sense. When peace is achieved there will be only one manner that can prevent a new outbreak of war: good behavior towards Russians and Russia by what will be left of Ukraine.

So to sum up, the US position is that Europe should stay out of negotiations that will fundamentally affect their security architecture - yet bear the primary responsibility and cost for the negotiations' outcome.

And on top of that, it’s quite clear from previous Trump declarations (like here: https://nypost.com/2025/02/10/us-news/trump-says-ukraine-has-essentially-agreed-to-allow-the-us-access-to-500b-in-rare-earth-minerals/) that the U.S. will be looking in the deal to take control of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals as payment for the military aid it has provided, leaving presumably nothing to Europe.

I’ve repeatedly warned that Europe was fast walking towards its own century of humiliation if it continued on its current path. I think it’s now pretty damn clear that we’re very much there already.

If this goes through, this would possibly be unprecedented in European history - never before, to my knowledge, has Europe's security architecture been redrawn without any European power at the table. Even during Europe's darkest moments - including the Mongol invasions, the Ottoman expansions, or the Yalta Conference - European powers always had some voice in negotiations affecting their future.

To be clear, the primary culprit here isn’t the U.S. or Trump: any student of history knows that we live in a deeply unfair world where, as ancient Greek historian Thucydides wrote 2,500 years ago, “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." As such the blame lies almost entirely on us Europeans, or more precisely on our immensely incompetent leaders. And I want to stress this last point: they are literally incompetent on a millennia scale, given that they've managed to reduce Europe to a position that lacks any historical parallel, where it's expected to simply accept and implement whatever security arrangements others decide for it.

Trump himself does what’s best for the U.S. - “America first”, remember? - and to be fair to him the Biden administration left him with a pretty bad hand. It’s crystal clear that Russia won in Ukraine, despite all of NATO’s efforts, and as such the U.S. very much risked coming out of it looking like the loser that it objectively is.

Faced with this, Trump’s strategy clearly is to reframe this defeat into an “art of the deal” victory by securing U.S. access to Ukraine's natural resources while offloading the costs and responsibilities of the post-war security arrangement onto Europe. Meanwhile Europe, which has failed to develop any meaningful strategic autonomy over the past decades (in fact it’s moved in the opposite direction), finds itself with little leverage to prevent this.

President Donald Trump said Thursday that he wants to restart nuclear arms control talks with Russia and China and that eventually he hopes all three countries could agree to cut their massive defense budgets in half.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump lamented the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in rebuilding the nation’s nuclear deterrent and said he hopes to gain commitments from the U.S. adversaries to cut their own spending.

“There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many,” Trump said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”

“We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully much more productive,” Trump said.

While the U.S. and Russia hold massive stockpiles of weapons since the Cold War, Trump predicted that China would catch up in their capability to exact nuclear devastation “within five or six years.”

He said if the weapons were ever called to use, “that’s going to be probably oblivion.”

If Pete Hegseth’s Wednesday gut punch was not enough to rile up the European grifters, JD Vance jumped into the ring and did a body slam in a speech today at the opening of the Munich Security Conference. It lasted approximately 20 minutes and was met with mostly stony silence. The Eurocrats were not a happy lot. Vance made the following key points:

1. Internal Threats: Vance argued that the primary threat to Europe comes “from within,” not from external actors like Russia or China.
2. Free Speech: He accused European governments of censoring free speech and retreating from fundamental democratic values.
3. Immigration: Vance described immigration as the most “urgent” challenge facing European nations2.
4. European Defense: He briefly mentioned that Europe must significantly enhance its own defense capabilities1.
5. Ukraine Conflict: Vance touched on the Ukraine war, expressing hope for a “reasonable settlement” following President Trump’s announcement about initiating peace talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Vance made a point of chiding European hypocrisy on the issue of free speech....

Another highlight from the Oval Office press conference was when the president called on China and Russia to join the United States in agreeing to cut their enormous defense budgets in half. He said in the context of also urging the three major powers to restart nuclear arms control talks.

"One of the first meetings I want to have is with President Xi of China, President Putin of Russia. And I want to say, ‘let’s cut our military budget in half.’ And we can do that. And I think we’ll be able to," Trump declared.

According to an Associated Press summary of the comments:

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump lamented the hundreds of billions of dollars being invested in rebuilding the nation’s nuclear deterrent and said he hopes to gain commitments from the U.S. adversaries to cut their own spending.

"There’s no reason for us to be building brand new nuclear weapons, we already have so many," Trump said. “You could destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over. And here we are building new nuclear weapons, and they’re building nuclear weapons.”

“We’re all spending a lot of money that we could be spending on other things that are actually, hopefully much more productive,” Trump continued.

US President Donald Trump has dismissed Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s claim that Russian President Vladimir Putin wants a temporary pause in the conflict with Kiev to regroup and launch a full-scale war against NATO. Moscow has repeatedly ruled out any short-term truce, insisting on a permanent, legally binding agreement that addresses the root causes of the Ukraine conflict. However, Zelensky has insisted that he knows “for sure” that Putin wants a brief pause to “prepare, train, take off some sanctions” before launching an attack not only on Ukraine but also on NATO states. “It can happen in summer, maybe in the beginning, maybe in the end of summer. I don’t know when he prepares it, but it will happen,” Zelensky said in an interview with NBC News’ Meet the Press on Saturday.

Trump, however, has brushed aside Zelensky’s warning, telling reporters on Sunday that he does not agree with the Ukrainian leader’s assessment at all. “No, I don’t agree. Not even a little bit,” Trump said, adding that he believes what Putin truly wants for his country is to “stop fighting.” “They’ve been fighting for a long time. They’ve done it before… They have a big, powerful machine. They defeated Hitler and they defeated Napoleon,” Trump added. “But I think he would like to stop fighting.” Trump also said he expects to meet Putin in person “very soon,” following their “long and hard” phone conversation last week, which was their first known direct interaction since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. He also called Zelensky to “inform” him of the discussion, during which the Ukrainian leader allegedly reaffirmed that Kiev is also prepared to seek a resolution to the conflict.

Europe will not be included in peace talks for Ukraine, President Donald Trump’s Ukraine envoy said on Feb. 15 after sending a questionnaire to European capitals asking what they could offer in security guarantees for Kyiv. As The Epoch Times’ Jacob Burg reports, on Sunday, France said it will host a summit of European leaders on Monday to discuss the Russia–Ukraine war and European security after retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia, didn’t include Europe in negotiations over Ukraine’s future following years of war with Russia. France President Emmanuel Macron “will convene the main European countries to discuss European security,” Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told France Inter radio. Barrot described the meeting as a working session and emphasized it should not be “overdramatized.” The office of the French presidency has not yet announced the meeting.

Macron has invited at least Britain, Germany, Poland, Italy, and Denmark, representing the Baltic and Scandinavian countries, the European Union leadership, and the NATO secretary general, according to six European diplomats. They said the purpose of the meeting is to discuss what immediate help can be given to Ukraine and the role Europe can play in providing both security guarantees to Kyiv and Europe at large. Trump called Russian President Vladimir Putin last week before consulting European or Ukrainian leaders, saying peace talks had begun. The Trump administration is pushing European allies in NATO to take a primary role in security guarantees for the region as the United States prioritizes border security and counters Chinese political and military influence.

At a global security conference in Munich, Kellogg said the United States would act as an intermediary in talks between Ukraine and Russia. “I’m [from] a school of realism,” Kellogg said, regarding Europe having a seat at the table during negotiations. “I think that’s not going to happen.” In trying to reassure Europeans, Kellogg said it doesn’t mean “their interests are not considered, used, or developed.” Some European leaders pushed back on being sidelined for talks. “There’s no way in which we can have discussions or negotiations about Ukraine, Ukraine’s future or European security structure, without Europeans,” Finland’s President Alexander Stubb told reporters in Munich. “But this means that Europe needs to get its act together. Europe needs to talk less and do more.”

The questionnaire Kellogg sent to Europeans “will force Europeans to think,” Stubb said. Kaja Kallas, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice-President of the European Commission, was more explicit stating that “if somebody agrees something and I mean, everybody else says ‘okay fine!’ you have agreed, but we will not follow this!” She added that EU’s position is “our importance” trumps any peace! NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte urged Europeans to get involved.

State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said the Munich Security Conference suggested that the EU and its international institutions are in for serious changes. “Analyzing what happened in Munich, we can say with certainty: There are serious changes in store for the EU and its international institutions, including parliamentary ones,” he wrote on Telegram. “They will be difficult and painful.” According to Volodin, US Vice President JD Vance gave an accurate assessment of the situation in European countries at the conference. “He was not supported. Conference participants were not ready to hear the truth about themselves,” the lawmaker said.

The Duma speaker also said the institution of democracy in the EU was in a poor state. “Democratic procedures in many EU countries have become window dressing. They have long been forgotten and ignored in pan-European structures,” he said. “Therefore, the healthy forces that want to meet the public demand for the renewal of power will wage an uphill battle. They will face all kinds of hurdles meant to prevent them from going through the election procedure. Just like it happened in Romania during the presidential campaign. Or in France and Germany, when undesirable political parties won. But change is inevitable,” Volodin said.

The administration of US President Donald Trump is pushing for a ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict by April 20, Bloomberg wrote on Sunday, citing anonymous sources. A US peace plan could be forthcoming within weeks or even days, Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy on Russia and Ukraine, said on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference on Saturday. ”The Trump administration has told European officials that it wants to secure a ceasefire in Ukraine by Easter,” Bloomberg said, citing sources briefed on the talks. According to the outlet, some European officials felt the pace of the negotiations was ambitious and possibly unrealistic. Talks are reportedly set to kick off with a meeting of Russian and US representatives in Saudi Arabia in the coming days.

Europe will not be given a place in the negotiations, Kellogg told top European diplomats on Saturday. Despite this, UK and EU officials fear the US expects them to shoulder the burden of Ukraine’s post-war security, Financial Times wrote on Thursday. The envoy justified the exclusion of Europe, citing the legacy of the Minsk-2 agreement between Ukraine and now Russian Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in 2015. Germany and France stood as guarantors to the failed accord, which then German chancellor Angela Merkel later admitted was just meant to buy Kiev time to strengthen itself. “When you looked at Minsk-2, there was a lot of people at the table that really had no ability to execute some type of peace process, and it failed miserably. So we are not gonna go down that path,” Kellogg said.

While the end of the Ukraine conflict has never been so close, European “pro-war” elites are seeking to sabotage the process, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has warned. Speaking to Hungarian broadcaster DTV on Friday, the top diplomat expressed cautious optimism regarding a solution to the conflict between Moscow and Kiev. Szijjarto welcomed recent discussions between US President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, and the fact that they had agreed to meet in person in the near future. “Now we can not only see the light at the end of the tunnel, but that it gets closer and shines brighter and brighter,” Szijjarto stated, adding that the prospect of peace is now more tangible than ever before.

However, Szijjarto cautioned that achieving peace would not be straightforward and anticipated resistance from European pro-war liberal elites. He believes these groups will make concerted efforts to prevent an agreement, but remains confident that strong US leadership can secure a deal with Russia, regardless of opposition from other leaders and bureaucrats. “The European pro-war, liberal elite will try to do everything in its power to ensure that the peace agreement that ends the war in Ukraine is not reached, which is currently closer than ever,” the top diplomat said.

US defense stocks took a sharp dive this week after President Donald Trump announced that he could slash military spending in half. The announcement came amid a wider cost-saving push by his administration. Companies which saw share prices fall this week include aerospace manufacturers Lockheed Martin (-4.86%) and Northrop Grumman (-6.58%) as well as General Dynamics (-5.30%), according to Friday’s trading data. Speaking at a White House press conference on Thursday, Trump said he planned to discuss a potential reduction in defense budgets with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. “At some point, when things settle down, I’m going to meet with China and I’m going to meet with Russia… and I’m going to say there’s no reason for us to be spending almost $1 trillion on the military… and I want to say let’s cut our military budget in half,” Trump said.

The Russian military does not target nuclear infrastructure, including what remains on the site of the destroyed Chernobyl power plant, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Friday. Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky had alleged earlier in the day that a Russian drone had attacked the containment structure built over what remains of the Soviet power facility which was devastated in a 1986 disaster. Zelensky reported “significant damage” in the incident. Peskov stated that any claims that Russia is targeting nuclear facilities are false by default. He said he has no verified information about the situation, but assumed that most likely it was “the latest provocation, a frame up” orchestrated by Kiev. He added: “This is what they love doing.”

Western mainstream political parties blaming Russian meddling for electoral failures are increasingly out of touch with voters, US Vice President J.D. Vance has said. EU politicians would rather suppress dissent than reflect on their actions, he told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. Ahead of attending the Munich Security Conference on Friday, Vance urged Western politicians to embrace the rise of anti-establishment politics. He criticized attempts to dismiss viewpoints on issues such as traditional values and immigration by those who attribute them to “misinformation.” “If your democratic society can be taken down by $200,000 of social media ads, then you should think seriously about how strong your grip on or how strong your understanding of the will of the people actually is,” Vance said.

The biggest obstacles to a rational European foreign policy are American pressure, the internal crisis of Western European elites, and the continent’s neo-colonial economic model. Western Europe’s current antagonism toward Russia is not a natural state of affairs—it is a function of relentless US coercion. If this external pressure weakens, a shift in rhetoric and policy could come swiftly, transforming the political landscape of the continent. Regardless of how long the conflict in Ukraine continues, Russia cannot ignore its relations with its immediate Western neighbors. While Moscow has expanded its global partnerships, Europe remains a geographic and historical constant. The region’s role in world affairs, however, is changing fundamentally, with its influence declining under American dominance....

Nowhere is this decline more visible than in Western Europe’s three most powerful states—Britain, Germany, and France. Each has suffered a slow erosion of its global standing. Each has surrendered strategic autonomy to Washington. Each now dutifully executes even the most irrational dictates from across the Atlantic, receiving nothing in return that enhances either national security or economic strength.

...The idea that Washington would risk its own survival to defend European states from Russia is laughable. Even those who have sacrificed much of their sovereignty—such as Germany, Britain, and Italy, which host US nuclear weapons—have no real guarantee of American intervention. Their servility has bought them nothing but subjugation. This reality is well understood in European capitals, though few admit it openly. Instead, Western European leaders continue to act in ways that serve American rather than national interests. Washington views Europe as little more than a base for operations against Russia—its primary value being its geographic location. The US will never sacrifice its own security for the sake of its European vassals.

The phone call between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump marks the formal beginning of peace negotiations between the US and Russia, EMP Task Force scholar and former US Department of Defense officer David Pyne tells Sputnik. Trump’s decision to appoint Secretary of State Marco Rubio to lead negotiations with Russia, rather than his Special Envoy to Russia and Ukraine Keith Kellogg, underlines the importance Washington places on the talks, Pyne said.

That, “combined with his invitation for Putin to visit the US and acceptance of Putin’s invitation to visit Moscow, show that Trump is assigning the highest possible priority both to repairing all the damage Biden did to US-Russia relations [and] ending the war in Ukraine within the next few months,” stressed Pyne, a Republican Party activist. Trump’s statement today telling Volodymyr Zelensky he will start bilateral talks with Russia – without Ukraine – also demonstrates that he recognizes Zelensky as the chief obstacle to peace, the expert said.

Officials in European NATO states are reluctant to shoulder Ukraine’s security without US backing, The Financial Times reported on Thursday. This week, the US President Donald Trump administration signaled its desire for minimal involvement, once a possible truce is achieved. According to the FT, Washington’s transatlantic allies “fear they will have to bear the cost of postwar security and reconstruction” and are frustrated by Trump’s negotiations with Russia conducted without their input. One source indicated that a scenario where “the US says, ‘We did the ceasefire, and all of the rest is for you to clean up’” wouldn’t work for the EU. The diplomat further noted: “There is a limit to what the EU alone can realistically provide in terms of money, arms, and perhaps boots on the ground.”

It would cost NATO’s European allies an additional $3.1 trillion over ten years to fund Ukraine and expand their own defense capabilities if President Trump left the burden to them, US business media have calculated. Sputnik asked a leading Brussels-based observer of international affairs to comment. Europe simply “does not have the wherewithal to continue” the proxy war with Moscow, and would “be obliged to strike its own separate peace with Russia,” even if it tried to sustain the conflict for some time after a hypothetical withdrawal of US support, Dr. Gilbert Doctorow says. Trump has “driven a stake through the heart of EU solidarity by essentially withdrawing the United States from the conflict and leaving it to Europe to cope as best they can,” Doctorow explained.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump discussed Ukraine, the Middle East, energy issues, and the exchange of citizens in a telephone call that lasted for one and a half hours, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov revealed. The phone conversation between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump has triggered a litany of reactions from European politicians. Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Lammy posted a joined statement by several European states that read: “Our shared objectives should be to put Ukraine in a position of strength. Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations.” UK Defense Secretary John Healey claimed that no peace talks could be done “about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

Boris Pistorius, Germany’s defense chief, lamented the development as “regrettable” arguing that the Trump administration had made “concessions” to Russia, while asserting that “it would have been better to speak about a possible NATO membership for Ukraine or possible losses of territory at the negotiating table.” Joining the bandwagon, Germany Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock added that “peace can only be achieved together. And that means: with Ukraine and with the Europeans.” In addition, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared that “All we need is peace… Ukraine, Europe and the United States should work on this together.”

President Donald Trump has announced that “high-level” US representatives will meet their Russian counterparts at the Munich Security Conference on Friday to discuss a resolution to the Ukraine conflict. President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart spoke for nearly 90 minutes by phone on Wednesday, marking the first known direct interaction between the Russian and US heads of state since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. On Thursday, Trump said the phone call paved the way for further direct contacts between American and Russian officials. “They’re having a meeting in Munich tomorrow. Russia is going to be there with our people,” Trump told journalists at the White House on Thursday. Trump added that “Ukraine is also invited, by the way,” but did not specify the format of the meeting or clarify whether it would be a three-way dialogue or a series of bilateral talks.

“Not sure exactly who’s going to be there from any country, but high-level people from Russia, from Ukraine, and from the United States,” the US leader added. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier on Thursday that the fact that both presidents had expressed a willingness to engage in dialogue was a “very important achievement” that has “set in motion an apparatus of aides, ministries and so on, that will now gradually begin dialogue and prepare the next contacts.” “Now that the leaders have demonstrated political will and provided their aides with the necessary instructions to initiate communication, we ask for a bit of patience. These discussions need time to gain momentum,” Peskov said.

“Trump appears to have a better understanding of the causes and conditions of the Ukraine-Russia and US/NATO versus Russia conflict,” retired US Air Force Lt. Col and ex-DoD analyst Karen Kwiatkowski told Sputnik, commenting on Wednesday’s lengthy telephone conversation between the Russian and US leaders and its focus on Ukraine. “His tendency to be practical (something we are not seeing in his Israel-Gaza policy) is apparent here. The signal is one of deal making and practicality,” Kwiatkowski said. The call comes at a decisive moment, the observer stressed, pointing out that Congress will be teeing up a new package of aid to Ukraine shortly, with current commitments to run dry in March, as Trump, Elon Musk and the DOGE sniff out “the fraud and corruption of the Biden Ukraine project.”

“I suspect this cannot be kept under the lid much longer, so this may explain the urgency of a settlement,” Kwiatkowski said. “Whether Trump gets a settlement he likes from Russia” or not “is not clear, but I think Trump realizes Russia has already won, and Europe/NATO, in agitating for a long costly wasteful war, needs to start dealing with what it has wrought,” the analyst said. Earlier in the day Wednesday, President Trump took to Truth Social to announce that he had a “lengthy and highly productive” phone call with President Putin, and that the leaders had discussed an array of issues, focusing on Ukraine.

Feb 14, 2025

Featured • Trump Calls For Trilateral Arms Reduction - Party On 80th Victory Day?, Moon of Alabama, Feb 14, 2025
Heads are exploding already. Better than nuclear weapons. Will any of this spaghetti stick?

Feb 13, 2025

Featured • Musk calls for complete overhaul of NATO, RT, Feb 12, 2025

NATO should be thoroughly revamped, tech billionaire and US government efficiency tsar Elon Musk, has argued. US President Donald Tump has recently expressed dissatisfaction with the level of defense spending by the bloc’s European members, which he views as a drain on American resources, going so far as to threaten underpaying allies with the withdrawal of US protection. In a post on X on Wednesday, Republican Senator Mike Lee wrote that the “Cold War is over. NATO’s anachronistic.” Trump appointed Musk as a ‘special government employee’ to lead the newly-created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) following his victory in the November 5 election, aiming to slash government spending. Commenting on Lee’s message, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO concurred, suggesting that “NATO needs an overhaul.”

Over the weekend, the DOGE chief also took aim at two long-standing state-funded propaganda outlets, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA). The two CIA cutouts were prominently used by Washington to counter Soviet influence in Europe during the Cold War. “Shut them down. Europe is free now (not counting stifling bureaucracy). Nobody listens to them anymore. It’s just radical left crazy people talking to themselves while torching $1B/year of US taxpayer money,” Musk wrote in a post on X. Trump has insisted that NATO member defense spending “should be 5%, not 2%” of GDP, accusing some European nations of taking “advantage of us.” The US is spending “billions and billions of dollars more … than Europe,” he claimed, having previously warned that Washington would not defend those NATO countries that fail to meet their financial commitments.

Earlier this month, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stated that Berlin “could neither afford that nor spend” 5% of its GDP for this purpose while NATO chief Mark Rutte has urged countries to reduce their social support spending to boost military budgets. Against this backdrop, Italian news agency ANSA, citing EU diplomatic sources, claimed in January that President Trump was considering scaling back the number of American troops stationed in Europe by 20%. In recent years, multiple senior officials from European NATO member states have alleged that Moscow was harboring aggressive plans toward the US-led military bloc. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly rejected this speculation, describing it as “nonsense” and “utter rubbish.” He suggested that Western officials employ scare tactics in order to justify increased military spending.

The EU is unable to fulfill Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky’s request for 200,000 peacekeepers to enforce a potential ceasefire with Russia, a senior bloc official has told the New York Times, in an article published on Tuesday. Zelensky has advocated for a substantial European peacekeeping force of some 200,000 troops to uphold a potential ceasefire and deter future Russian offensives. Analysts cited by the New York Times consider this figure unattainable, noting that deploying even 40,000 troops would be challenging and could still fall short of providing an effective solution. “A senior European official said that the continent doesn’t even have 200,000 troops to offer, and that any boots on the ground must have American support, especially faced with the world’s second-largest nuclear power, Russia,” the NYT reported.

...Earlier this week, Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia stated that any deployment of peacekeepers to Ukraine without Moscow’s consent would be “illegal,” warning that they would be considered legitimate targets.

In an interview with RIA Novosti, he called the rumors about the possible deployment of peacekeepers “bizarre,” noting that they cannot operate without a mandate from the UN Security Council, which Russia is a part of and where it holds the right of veto. Russia remains opposed to a freezing of the Ukraine conflict and the introduction of peacekeeping forces, insisting that the only way to resolve it is to address the root causes of the conflict. Moscow insists that Kiev must commit to permanent neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification, while acknowledging the territorial realities on the ground.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte warned Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday that the US-led military bloc would deal a crushing blow to Moscow if it attacks any of its member states.In recent years, senior officials from European NATO member states, including Rutte, have alleged that Russia is harboring aggressive plans toward the military bloc. Putin has repeatedly dismissed this speculation, calling it “nonsense” and a ruse to justify increased military spending. Answering reporters’ questions at a press conference in Brussels on Wednesday, Rutte said, “At the moment, if Putin would attack NATO, the reaction will be devastating. He will lose. So, let him not try it, and he knows this. The deterrence and defense is very strong.” However, NATO needs to spend more on defense to be able to defend itself four or five years from now, he added.

Rutte urged member states to make “some difficult decisions this year about… defense spending, doing much, much more than the 2% we pledged.” He went on to say that while the West has “fantastic” arms manufacturers, “they are not producing enough,” which needs to be urgently addressed. The question regarding supposed Russian aggression was prompted by a report issued by Denmark’s Defense Intelligence Service on Tuesday. According to the document, within five years of ending or freezing the Ukraine conflict, Moscow would be ready to conduct a large-scale onslaught on Europe, based on the assumption that NATO’s defense spending remains at the current level. “Russia is likely to be more willing to use military force … if it perceives NATO as militarily weakened or politically divided,” the intelligence agency claimed, adding that “this is particularly true if Russia assesses that the US cannot or will not support the European NATO countries in a war.”

Feb 12, 2025

Featured • NO NATO membership, NO return to pre-2014 borders and NO more relying on US: America's bombshell blow to Ukraine as Trump agrees to begin negotiations with Putin immediately, James Reynolds and Charlie Spiering, Daily Mail, Feb 12, 2025

Featured • Trump Tells Ukrainian War Party That The Game Is Up, Moon of Alabama, Feb 12, 2025

Featured • Europe told to brace for flood of Ukrainian soldiers with PTSD, RT, Feb 11, 2025

Ukrainian soldiers returning from the front could pose a threat to civilians across Europe due to untreated mental health issues, Polish military psychiatrist Radoslaw Tworus has warned. In an interview with Wirtualna Polska published on Sunday, Tworus, who heads the department of psychiatry, combat stress, and psychotraumatology at the Military Medical Institute in Warsaw, said trauma from the battlefield may lead to serious psychological problems, potentially endangering society. His warnings come amid growing concerns in the region that Ukrainian soldiers will emigrate en masse to neighboring countries after the conflict. “These extreme experiences related to stress, threats to life, witnessing injuries, destruction, hunger, and exhaustion will have great significance not only for Poland but for Europe. Because these people are in Europe,” Tworus stated.

“We have to prepare,” he added. Tworus emphasized that post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is among the major concerns, but is only part of the issue. “If we are talking about the battlefield, we are talking about a very stressful environment… a person can face a number of different problems: adaptation issues, psychosis, depression, addictions. The spectrum of these disorders is very wide.” He warned that the most problematic cases involve individuals who are unaware of their mental health issues and therefore do not seek help. “There may be depression, but there may also be euphoria, agitation, and aggressive states. There are many of these symptoms,” Tworus said, noting that any problems related to sleeping, eating, nervousness, quick mental fatigue, exhaustion or euphoric states “require consultation.”

He cautioned that soldiers with unresolved mental health issues might project their struggles onto family members or even the countries hosting them, potentially leading to unpredictable consequences. Tworus’ comments follow a recent report by Personnel Service, a Polish recruitment company, which claimed that up to one million Ukrainians could emigrate to Poland after the conflict ends. Based on a poll conducted in December, the report indicated that one in four Ukrainian men and one in five Ukrainian women are considering leaving Ukraine post-conflict. The primary reasons cited were Ukraine’s economic difficulties and lack of security.

There are many delusions in all of this. Those rare earth and other valuable deposits in Ukraine which are economically viable to explore have already been sold to various businessmen and international companies (machine translation)...

The whole argument from either side is thus a scam. There are no minerals for Ukraine to hand over to Trump. There is no price Trump will accept to further support Ukraine or hand it some guarantees.

U.S. attempts to get to some ceasefire are stillborn. Trump is unwilling to give Russia what it has demanded. Knowing that the U.S. can not to be trusted Russia is not willing to accept anything less than that...

There will be no peace deal.

This outcome of this war will have to be decided on the battlefield.

US President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he will be sending Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Ukraine. The trip, which could take place as soon as this week, will include discussions of a potential deal for rare-earth minerals in exchange for aid to Kiev, according to various media reports. Trump recently demanded that Kiev must ensure a return on “America’s $300 billion” in aid by providing the US with critical minerals. He told Fox News on Tuesday that it would be “stupid” to keep funding Ukraine without tangible benefits. Rare-earth metals, which are essential for producing the magnets that convert power into motion in electric vehicles, smartphones, missile systems, and other advanced electronics, have no viable substitutes, and their demand is expected to rise significantly in the coming years. Bessent will be the first cabinet-level official in Trump’s administration to visit Kiev.

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine could end “in a month or two,” Kiev Mayor Vitaly Klitschko claimed on Tuesday, warning that a potential peace deal could be “very painful to every Ukrainian.” US President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to seek a swift end to the hostilities. He has not revealed his peace plan, but it reportedly involves freezing the conflict along the current front line, establishing a demilitarized zone patrolled by European soldiers, and suspending Kiev’s bid to join NATO. Russia has said it remains open to negotiations but insists that any agreement must include “reliable, legally binding agreements eliminating the root causes of the conflict” instead of just freezing it.

“I am sure that it would be difficult to call it a positive result,” Klitschko said, commenting on the peace prospects at a forum in Kiev. “The so-called compromise could turn out to be very painful for every Ukrainian.” The mayor believes that the end of the conflict could lead to social tensions and political strife that would lead to a “war of extermination” inside the country. Kiev is unlikely to be able to keep its wartime army after the conflict ends, he stated, adding that around a third of the current armed forces personnel would have to be discharged and reintegrated into civilian life. The end of the conflict would also mean the start of an election contest, the mayor said, adding that this could also spiral out of control.

Feb 10, 2025

Featured • Trump’s USAID purge has revealed US scheming in Kiev, but won’t stop it, Tarik Cyril Amar, RT, Feb 8, 2025

In practice, Ukraine is a perfect illustration of how such media dependency-across-borders can easily end in catastrophe: Anyone who knows Ukrainian well enough – as I do – can have a look for themselves.

What they will find is a Potemkin village of pseudo-diversity, at best, with very few and embattled exceptions. In reality, the Ukrainian public sphere has been massively manipulated by a monotonous diet of pseudo-”patriotic” messaging. The single most urgent question concerning Ukraine’s own national interests, however, has been systematically maligned and made taboo: namely, if serving as proxy war cannon fodder for the West has been worth it. The second manner in which USAID has promoted this devastating war was, if anything, even worse, in the sense of more drastic and hands-on: It’s now almost forgotten, but when Ukraine’s current past-best-by-date leader Vladimir Zelensky actually did face and win an election in 2019, his single concrete – and sensible – promise was to seek peace through negotiations.

Clearly, at the time, that promise was a major factor in his unprecedented landslide victory. Once in office, for a very short moment, it seemed as if Zelensky was trying to keep that promise. But then – years before the 2022 escalation – he made a 180-degree turn and emerged as an uncompromising and shortsighted nationalist and a tool of the US – if a very expensive and occasionally capricious one. It is likely that he will soon be discarded, as tools can be. But the damage he has already done to his country is enormous. Many observers have long been puzzled by early Zelensky’s terrible turn. Was it fear of the powerful and aggressive Ukrainian far-right? Was it a misconceived play for even more popularity? Was it money? Was it Western pressure? We still don’t know the whole story, but we do know one important new thing: a wave of “popular” resistance “from below” and by “civil society” against Zelensky’s initial attempts to look for peace was not genuine.

Instead, it had massive Western backing, including from USAID. In particular, the organization was one of the key sponsors of a “joint statement” which presented a concerted threat to Zelensky in 2019, that is, almost immediately after he assumed office. On the surface the product of 70 Ukrainian NGOs, this was, in reality, a massive affront to democracy and the rule of law: Its sole purpose was to unconstitutionally constrain the newly elected president with so-called “red lines” and, in particular, nullify what so many of his voters wanted, namely an honest search for peace. None of this means that Zelensky is innocent. On the contrary, it was his duty and, literally, his job to resist such shameless pressure tactics and their foreign backers and stand up for his voters and the country as a whole. His failure to do so is his and will remain so forever.

The French authorities have unquestionably supported the rise of neo-Nazism in Ukraine, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said. She emphasized that the Kiev regime has turned into an international terrorist cell with the connivance of its Western backers. Moscow has repeatedly accused the current Ukrainian government of embracing Nazi ideology, and listed the denazification of the country as one of the key objectives of its military operation, along with demilitarization and enforcing neutrality. “Paris is officially supporting some kind of incredible and insane force of neo-Nazism, which has flourished in Ukraine,” Zakharova said in an interview with RIA Novosti published on Sunday. “Moreover, the neo-Nazism in Ukraine has already turned into terrorism, it has mutated.”

The spokeswoman mentioned a series of atrocities allegedly conducted by Ukrainian soldiers in the village of Russkoye Porechnoye in the Russian region of Kursk, which are currently being probed by the country’s Investigative Committee, in the latest instance of what she branded “a fusion of Nazism and fascism with new technological capabilities and a terrorist nature.” Earlier this year, Russian investigators reported multiple incidents related to the village, located 10km north of Sudzha, which had been occupied by the Ukrainian army since last August. The officials charged that Ukrainian soldiers raped, tortured, and murdered local residents. Some of the allegations have been confirmed by Ukrainian soldiers captured during the liberation of the settlement.

Feb 9, 2025

Featured • Trump reveals he’s spoken with Putin by phone, says Russian president ‘wants to see people stop dying’ in Ukraine war, Miranda Devine, New York Post, Feb 8, 2025

President Trump has spoken to Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the phone to try to negotiate an end to the Ukraine war, he told The Post in an exclusive interview aboard Air Force One Friday.

“I’d better not say,” said Trump when asked how many times the two leaders have spoken.

But he believes Putin “does care” about the killing on the battlefield. “All those dead people. Young, young, beautiful people. They’re like your kids, two million of them – and for no reason.”

The three-year-old war “never would have happened” if he had been president in 2022, Trump asserted.

“I always had a good relationship with Putin,” he said, unlike his predecessor.

“Biden was an embarrassment to our nation. A complete embarrassment.”

Trump said he has a concrete plan to end the war.

“I hope it’s fast. Every day people are dying. This war is so bad in Ukraine. I want to end this damn thing.”

Addressing National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who joined him in his study aboard Air Force One Friday night, the president said: “Let’s get these meetings going. They want to meet. Every day people are dying. Young handsome soldiers are being killed. Young men, like my sons. On both sides. All over the battlefield.”

Feb 8, 2025

Featured • Ukraine Inches Closer to Final Call-Up, Simplicius, Feb 7, 2025
One of the best treatments of the so-called "leaked" peace plan. And the rest, to bring us up to date.

 • Mainstream Media Boost 'Independent' Media Which Depend On U.S. Assistance, Moon of Alabama, Feb 8, 2025

 • Russian Army Won Battle For Toretsk, South Front, Feb 8, 2025
What it's like. The legions of laptop liberals (and arms control DC Blob appendages) who have been supporting this war need to get new computers. Theirs are soaked in (mostly Ukrainian) blood.

 • The hunt continues: Zelensky extends forced conscription and martial law again, REMIX, Feb 7, 2025

Ukraine has long stopped being a democracy and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky just made sure to keep it that way for another 90 days by signing a decree to extend martial law and continue general mobilization effort. The measures in force so far were due to expire on Feb. 7. Parliament voted to extend the provisions on Jan. 15. Ukraine was supposed to have a new vote long ago, but due to the war, Zelensky argued that it was not possible. Ukraine declared a nationwide state of general mobilization on Feb. 24, 2022, and has since extended it several times. Due to staffing problems in the army, a bill on tightening mobilization rules came into force on May 18, 2024. Martial law and conscription come despite the majority of Ukrainians saying they want to end the war and are willing to accept territorial losses in order to do so, according to the independent Gallup Polling agency.

This sends a clear message to the folks in Ukraine and the rest of NATO — i.e., the US is no longer going to take the lead in boosting Ukraine’s defenses. Trump has done the equivalent of handing a live grenade to Starmer and crew. Talk about dark humor. The Brits are now on the hook. Neither the Brits nor the rest of NATO have warehouses full of weapons, ammunition and tanks that they can send to Ukraine. How is the UK supposed to marshal nonexistent resources? When project Ukraine collapses, its their fault, not Trump’s. I suspect the Brits are not too thrilled about their new role. It is like being named captain of the Titanic after the iceberg struck.

A US-Russian war would be advantageous to Ukraine in the current conflict with Moscow, according to Vladimir Zelensky’s top aide, Mikhail Podoliak. In an interview with local media on Wednesday, published by RBK Ukraine he discussed the possibility of a US troop deployment in the country under President Donald Trump. When asked about the likelihood of US troops coming to Ukraine, Podoliak expressed skepticism but said that pressuring Russian President Vladimir Putin “does not necessarily require pushing for a direct confrontation” between the US and Russia, however such a conflict “would certainly be good for us.” This week, the US leader announced a plan to turn Gaza into a “riviera” owned by the US, not ruling out deploying US soldiers to implement it.

The US risks major defeat in the country’s next war unless it urgently reforms its outdated weapons programs, Elon Musk has warned in a stark assessment of the nation’s defense capabilities. Musk, who heads SpaceX and Tesla, has been appointed as a “special government employee” to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) under US President Donald Trump and is now among his key advisers. “American weapons programs need to be completely redone. The current strategy is to build a small number of weapons at a high price to fight yesterday’s war. Unless there are immediate and dramatic changes made, America will lose the next war very badly,” Musk wrote on X. The billionaire has long been a vocal critic of inefficiencies within the US defense sector, arguing that excessive bureaucracy and outdated military strategies undermine national security.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has declared that he will implement measures ensuring the transparency of aid from the United States to non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and media outlets critical of his government. Speaking on state radio on Friday, Orban emphasized the need to “eliminate these foreign networks” that meddle in the country’s domestic affairs, referencing US Agency for International Development (USAID) programs. An ally of US President Donald Trump, Orban highlighted the Trump administration’s plan to integrate USAID into the State Department, aligning it with the “America First” policy. “In America, we would call them agents, as they do not serve their own country but accept money from another power… We don’t call them agents… but these are people and organizations paid from abroad whose job is to overthrow the Hungarian government,” the prime minister said.

Feb 7, 2025

Featured • The greatest (geo-political) showman’s “inside out” political solution, Alastair Crooke, Strategic Culture Foundation, Feb 6, 2025

The U.S. needs to always to ‘win’. So does Trump understand that the ineluctable dynamics of this war militate against presenting any transactional outcome as a clear ‘win’ for the U.S.? Of course he does (or will do, when professionally briefed by his team).

The logic of the Ukraine situation, to be blunt, suggests that President Putin should quietly advise President Trump to walk away from the Ukraine conflict – to avoid taking ownership of a western débacle.

Putin hinted this week that the Ukraine conflict could end in weeks, so Trump may not have a long wait.

Should Trump want a ‘win’ (highly likely), then he should be steered by Putin’s many hints: Intermediate missile deployments by both parties are creating heightened risk and ‘cry out’ for a new limitation agreement. Trump could say that he saved us all from WW3 – and there could be more than a grain of truth to it.

Feb 6, 2025

Featured • Why Was USAID Kicked Out of Russia?, Ilya Tsukanov, Sputnik International, Feb 3, 2025

USAID was expelled from the country after post-election street protests in Moscow verging on an attempted color revolution, with the agency accused of using its grant network to try to influence politics and civil society after the 2011-2012 Russian parliamentary and presidential elections.

...USAID first entered Russia in 1992, immediately after the USSR's collapse, and spent nearly $3 bln over 20 years on ‘democracy, human rights and civil society promotion’ programs.

In reality, USAID’s work in the 90s was aimed at cheerleading the gutting of Russia’s social and economic system during the painful transition to a market economy, and meddling in politics in support of liberal, pro-West politicians against conservative, populist and neo-communist forces.

...In the 90s, USAID ambitiously outlined 14 “strategic objectives” for Russia, from fiscal, monetary, social service and energy reforms to US “joint ventures,” civil and legal training, environmental programs and even women’s reproductive health.

Political stabilization and the maturing of the modern post-Soviet Russian state ultimately sealed USAID's fate.

But perhaps the greatest damage done by USAID to Russia has been in its backyard, where billions of dollars spent over the past 35 years helped to put neighbors on a path to NATO and EU membership, and literally rewrite history books to cast Russia as an enemy. Nowhere has this effort paid off more than in Ukraine.

Moscow is ready for talks with Kiev even though Vladimir Zelensky currently has no legal right to lead Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. On Tuesday, Zelensky told British journalist Piers Morgan that he could hold talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The comments marked a significant shift from the stance Zelensky adopted in the autumn of 2022, when he signed a decree banning any negotiations with the Russian leadership. “If that is the only setup in which we can bring peace to the citizens of Ukraine and not lose people, definitely we will go for this setup, for this meeting,” Zelensky told Morgan. Asked to comment on Zelensky’s remarks on Wednesday, Peskov said there is “no place for emotions” when it comes to the settlement of the Ukraine conflict.

“What is needed here is legal analysis and absolute pragmatism… Zelensky has significant de jure legitimacy issues within his own country,” the spokesman pointed out. Peskov referred to the Ukrainian leader’s refusal to hold a presidential election and the fact that his term expired last May. Moscow maintains that the legitimate power in Ukraine now lies with the parliament and its speaker. “Despite this, the Russian side remains open to negotiations,” Peskov stressed, arguing that Moscow’s successes on the battlefield “clearly suggest that Kiev should be the one to demonstrate openness and interest in such negotiations.” Peskov also weighed in on Zelensky’s suggestion that the West could give Ukraine nuclear weapons as a substitute for NATO membership to guarantee its protection.

“In general, such statements are borderline madness. There is a nuclear non-proliferation regime,” the spokesman said. Peskov suggested that EU politicians, despite their flaws, should understand the “absurdity and potential danger of discussing such a topic.”Ukraine agreed to relinquish its nuclear arsenal inherited from the Soviet Union in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, the US, and the UK as part of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum. Ukraine has repeatedly accused Moscow of violating the deal after Crimea voted to join Russia following the 2014 Western-backed coup in Kiev. Russia has argued that the deal was fundamentally undermined by NATO’s expansion towards its borders. Putin has said that Russia would not allow Kiev to create or obtain nuclear weapons “under any circumstances.”

Feb 5, 2025

 • Zelensky caves in on talks with Putin, RT, Feb 4, 2025

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has expressed his willingness to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin if it is the only way to bring the Ukraine conflict to an end. He made the remarks during an interview with British journalist Piers Morgan, with excerpts published on Tuesday. Asked if he is prepared to meet with the Russian president, Zelensky indicated that he is.

...The remarks appear to reflect a shift in Zelensky’s stance. He has refused to negotiate with Putin in the past and even signed a decree banning any negotiations with Moscow, and Putin specifically. Last month, Zelensky said the ban applies to all Ukrainian officials except himself, while the original 2022 decree only stated that negotiations are “impossible” without specifying any individuals or entities prohibited from engaging in them. Last week, Putin reiterated Moscow’s position that Zelensky lacks the legitimacy to sign agreements, given that his presidential term expired in May 2024 and no constitutional mechanism exists to extend it. However, the Russian president said he is willing to send negotiators to talk to Zelensky if he is open to discussions.

Feb 4, 2025

Featured • USAID Absorbed Into State Department Under Rubio After DOGE Crusade, ZeroHedge, Feb 4, 2025

About one day after the US Agency for International Development’s website went dark and its official X account disappeared, President Donald Trump addressed reporters Sunday night, declaring, “It’s been run by a bunch of radical lunatics. And we’re getting them out.” By midnight, Elon Musk—who oversees the government efficiency initiative “DOGE”—provided taxpayers with an update on USAID’s status during a live X Spaces session. Musk told the more than 682,000 listeners who tuned in that the president “agreed we should shut it [USAID] down.” This would be one of the largest planned cuts to date, and the fate of USAID is likely that it will lose its independence and be rolled into the State Department.

“As we dug into USAID it became apparent that what we have here is not an apple with a worm in it, but we have actually just a ball of worms. If you have an apple with a worm in it, you can take the worm out. If you have a whole ball of worms, it’s hopeless. USAID is a ball of worms. There is no apple. And when there is no apple you just need to get rid of the whole thing. That’s why it’s got to go. It’s beyond repair,” Musk explained. Musk wrote on X, “USAID is a criminal organization. Time for it to die.” The move to end USAID as a stand-alone agency comes as the DOGE creator revealed: “Did you know that USAID, using YOUR tax dollars, funded bioweapon research, including COVID-19, that killed millions of people?”

AP noted: “Musk’s comments come after the administration placed two top security chiefs at USAID on leave after they refused to turn over classified material in restricted areas to Musk’s government-inspection teams, a current and a former US official told The Associated Press on Sunday. Members of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, eventually did gain access Saturday to the aid agency’s classified information, which includes intelligence reports, the former official said. Trump has already ordered a freeze on foreign aid as part of his “America First” foreign policy. As some note, USAID has effectively served as a laundering scheme for the Deep State. [..] “Like I said before, USAID is a front for the CIA. And together with NGO’s like the Open Society Foundation, they have been using US tax dollars & govt resources as their personal piggy bank. It has been infuriating to watch. Hopefully now the whole truth will come out,” journalist Lara Logan wrote on X.

Ukraine has lost the armed conflict with Russia, primarily due to the inability of the Ukrainian people to take personal responsibility for their failures, Aleksey Arestovich, a former aide to Vladimir Zelensky, has argued. He expects the US, Russia, and China to decide on a resolution without consulting Kiev. Arestovich resigned from his government post in early 2023 after making claims about a missile incident that contradicted the official narrative. He is now a sharp critic of the Zelensky administration. In a Telegram post on Sunday, he argued that the changing tone of Western discourse about Ukraine signals a significant policy change. US President Donald Trump will sort things out with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping “without consulting us, because engaging with those who deny reality is futile,” he wrote.

“We have lost the war due to our own stupidity, pride and stubbornness. In truth, we have defeated ourselves,” Arestovich added. “We have created a society of mutual hatred and intolerance, in which every individual is right and everyone collectively is to blame.” He cited several recent news stories, calling them a wakeup call for Ukrainians to acknowledge defeat and their role in it. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for the Ukraine conflict, has called on Kiev to resume presidential and parliamentary elections, which Zelensky suspended under martial law. Conservative US political commentator Tucker Carlson branded the Ukrainian leader “a dictator” during a debate with British television host Piers Morgan. Additionally, Washington’s decision last month to suspend foreign aid programs has forced many Ukrainian NGOs and media outlets to solicit for private donations to avoid shutdown.

NATO is considering trying to facilitate the removal of Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky from power by discrediting him ahead of potential elections next fall, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) claimed in a statement on Monday. The agency believes that Western officials see Zelensky as a key obstacle to peace talks with Moscow. Zelensky remains in office despite his term having officially expired last May. He has refused to step down and postponed presidential elections, citing the martial law imposed in 2022 following the escalation of the conflict with Russia. Western leaders are looking to “freeze” the conflict by pushing both Moscow and Kiev toward negotiations, but Zelensky is seen as a barrier, the SVR said.

“Washington and Brussels agree that the main obstacle to the implementation of such a scenario is Zelensky, who is referred to in Western circles as nothing more than ‘expendable material,’” the agency said in the statement, adding that “even NATO understands that Zelensky’s time is up.” To address this, the bloc is reportedly preparing a campaign to discredit Zelensky ahead of Ukraine’s next presidential elections, which the agency said could take place next fall. The SVR claimed that Western officials plan to release information linking Zelensky and his team to the embezzlement of over $1.5 billion in funds intended for purchasing military equipment.

Additionally, the report alleged that Zelensky’s administration was involved in schemes to divert the salaries of 130,000 deceased Ukrainian soldiers who remain listed as active service members. The SVR also claimed that Zelensky was implicated in the illegal sale of Western-supplied weapons to armed groups in Africa. The SVR suggested that the return of Donald Trump to the White House has created uncertainty over future Western support for Ukraine, which could accelerate efforts to replace Zelensky. According to the agency, NATO’s broader goal is to maintain Ukraine as an anti-Russian foothold, regardless of the situation on the battlefield. Neither NATO nor Ukrainian officials have responded to the SVR’s claims so far.

Feb 3, 2025

Featured • NATO Expansionism and the Collapse of Pan-European Security, Professor Glenn Diesen, Feb 3, 2025

Feb 2, 2025

 • Kiev's Existential Trajectory: Western Tone Shifts Again, Simplicius, Feb 1, 2025
Good summary of the state of play. Ukraine is truly in dire straits. The notion that Russian tanks might roll down the street in Kiev seems far-fetched to me however. Why would Russia want to do that? Why would Russia need to do that? But as Musk has warned, if Ukraine doesn't make peace instead of war, Odessa could be in play, with the associated chance that Ukraine could become a landlocked state. But as for Russia wanting to control the Russophobic western Ukraine, forget about it.

 • The Chihuahua Energy Policy: it’s a gas, gas, gas, Pepe Escobar, Strategic Culture Foundation, Jan 31, 2025

As highlighted before, the U.S. – via fracking – has enough gas for domestic consumption, but not enough to export en masse to the EU, because of liquification problems. That explains why even buying more American energy for exorbitant prices, the EU de facto remains largely dependent on Russian LNG – and non-U.S. sources – since the sabotage of the Nord Streams, unveiled in detail by Sy Hersh. Even at full capacity, the Empire of Chaos simply cannot deliver all the gas the EU needs; add to it virtually no investment in both badly needed extra exploration plus the infrastructure necessary to meet increased EU demand. On the domestic U.S. oil market, things do get positively Kafkaesque. U.S. trucking – a massive service industry – is dependent on imported Russian diesel, which needs to be mixed with Made in America oil in order to be suitable for trucks.

The new US administration and the EU leadership have different approaches to the conflict in Ukraine: Washington now favors a peaceful settlement, while Brussels wants to continue the war, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said during a Kossuth radio broadcast. “The Europeans are saying that sanctions must be maintained and even tightened in order for the Ukrainians to win the war against Russia. Yesterday US Secretary of State [Marco Rubio] said in a big interview that it would be unfair to fool everyone by saying that the Ukrainians can win this war. Well, thank him for that interview, because it showed that the Americans want peace, not sanctions, and the Europeans want sanctions, not peace,” the prime minister said.

He emphasized that now “the European logic is completely different from the American logic: one is the logic of war and the other is the logic of peace.” Orban reiterated that the Hungarian government still favors a negotiated settlement of the Ukrainian conflict, and is counting on US President Donald Trump in this endeavor.

Feb 1, 2025

Featured • Potpourri Friday — Tulsi Gabbard, Aerial Collision, Ukraine and Genocide in Palestine, Larry C. Johnson, SONAR21, Jan 31, 2025

Ukraine has lost more than 700,000 personnel (i.e., KIA, WIA and AWOL) in the last six months:

• Over the past six months, the monthly sanitary and irreplaceable losses of AFU manpower have consistently amounted to about 50,000 people and more (January 2025 – 51960 people, December 2024 – 48470 people, November 2024 – 60805 people, etc.).
• At the same time, the number of new recruits in the AFU training centers, even taking into account the “activation” of TCCs throughout Ukraine, has been barely reaching 30,000 people per month for about half a year, who are sent to the line of contact without proper training, which leads to a reduction in the number of AFU personnel.
• According to official data, about 100,000 Ukrainian military personnel have left their military units unauthorized and gone on the run.

Ukraine’s military is literally bleeding to death. These are unsustainable losses. Making matters worse is the political chaos unfolding in Kiev. A criminal case alleging corruption has been opened on Ukraine’s Defense Minister Umerov while Ukraine’s SBU has opened a criminal case against Kirill Budanov, Chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. Budanov is being investigated after media reports appeared detailing his warning to members of the RADA that if peace talks do not begin soon Ukraine will not survive the summer. Looks like it is a crime to tell the truth in Ukraine.

US President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday that he expects something “significant” to happen once he speaks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, confirming that serious discussions with Moscow are already underway. Trump, who took office last Monday, has repeatedly stated that he is ready to speak with his Russian counterpart as soon as possible to negotiate an end to the Ukraine conflict. The Kremlin previously said it was awaiting clear signals from the Trump administration. “We’ll be speaking, and I think we will, perhaps, do something that will be significant,” Trump said on Friday. “It’s just a senseless situation, and it’s got to stop. So whatever I can do to stop it… and we are having discussions, yes.”

All that is solid melts into air,” Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels famously proclaimed almost 180 years ago. Their Communist Manifesto was published against the backdrop of the European revolutions of 1848. But they should have seen 2025 – we are beginning to witness a mighty melting of what is un-solid about EU-NATO Europe. This time, the backdrop is not (yet) a typical revolution – street fighting, barricades, and all. But there are two historic events that, in their combined geopolitical impact, will be revolutionary, though they have been anything but unforeseeable. These are, in order of importance, Russia’s defeat of the West in Ukraine, and America’s doubling down on Trumpism. The two developments have made the sands on which the EU-NATO Europeans have built their rickety policy edifice not merely shift but cave in.

Ukraine is being destroyed by the fighting with Russia and the conflict must be swiftly settled through negotiations, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said. In an interview on Sirius XM’s The Megyn Kelly Show on Thursday, Rubio reiterated US President Donald Trump’s willingness to find a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, saying that Trump believes the conflict “needs to end now.” “It needs to end to a negotiation. In any negotiation, both sides are going to have to give something up,” Rubio stated. Even a growing number Democrats who vowed to support Kiev for “as long as it takes” under the previous administration of US President Joe Biden “would now acknowledge that what we have been funding is a stalemate, a protracted conflict, and maybe even worse than a stalemate, one in which incrementally Ukraine is being destroyed and losing more and more territory,” the secretary of state said.

“What the dishonesty that has existed is that we somehow led people to believe that Ukraine would be able not just to defeat Russia, but, you know, destroy them, push them all the way back to what the world looked like in… 2014,” Rubio added. As a result of the conflict, Ukraine is “being set back a hundred years. Their energy grid is being wiped out… And you know how many Ukrainians have left Ukraine, living in other countries now? They may never return. I mean, that is their future, and it is endangered in that regard,” Rubio warned.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has renewed calls on the EU to lift its sanction on Russia in order to realign the bloc’s policies with the new US government. Budapest has long criticized Brussels’ approach to the Ukraine conflict as being incapable of ending hostilities and damaging to the bloc’s member states. On Monday, the EU extended its existing sanctions until the end of July. Hungary refrained from blocking the measure despite its declared opposition. In a weekly interview with state-owned Kossuth Radio, Orban said Budapest has to consider the positions of other members of the economic bloc who favor the restrictions, imposed on Russia in response to the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022.

”The Hungarian interest is clear: we have lost 19.5 billion ($20bn) in three years,” Orban stressed, adding that Kiev’s behavior has become more “impudent” recently, referring to Ukraine’s refusal last year to extend a contract that had been allowing the supply of Russian natural gas to European consumers, including to Hungary. Budapest has been assured that the matter would be addressed, the prime minister explained, which contributed to its decision on Monday not to block the sanctions.Given Kiev’s total dependence on foreign aid, Orban said, “we just need to get on our heels and say: dear Ukrainian friends, we understand everything, but we need this. Let the Russian gas through.”

Norway’s coalition government collapsed on Thursday after the Euroskeptic Center Party rejected EU energy policy regulations advocated by Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store. The move would subject people to an electricity price hike, the party leader and finance minister, Trygve Slagsvold Vedum, warned. It leaves Store heading a minority Labor Party government. The cabinet can govern until the next elections, which are scheduled for September, but has lost its majority in the parliament and could struggle to pass legislation. At the heart of the dispute is the fourth EU energy package, which is also known as “clean energy for all Europeans.” Adopted in 2019, it introduced a set of policies with a focus on renewables and “energy efficiency,” including reduced CO2 emissions, as well as a “robust governance system” for energy in the bloc.

...“What we were clear about all along is that beginning the process of linking ourselves more closely to the EU’s dysfunctional electricity market and energy policy is completely out of the question,” the Center Party leader told a press conference following the decision to leave the cabinet.

The development drew criticism from Brussels. “We are not happy with Norway. The sentiment is as bad as I have known it,” an EU ambassador to Oslo told the Financial Times on Thursday, calling the Nordic nation “selfish” for “trying to keep this electricity for itself,” and profiteering off the EU through its gas exports.

European Union officials are discussing the possibility of resuming Russian gas imports as part of a potential peace agreement in Ukraine, according to the Financial Times. The issue of Russian gas deliveries to the EU has proven contentious for the bloc, especially after Brussels stepped up efforts to reduce dependence on cheap Russian energy following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022. Advocates of the proposal, including officials from Germany and Hungary, argue that reinstating Russian gas imports could lower Europe’s energy prices and encourage Moscow to engage in negotiations, the FT wrote, citing sources familiar with the matter. They believe that such a move would provide incentives for parties to the conflict to uphold a ceasefire.

Calin Georgescu, the politician whose first-round victory in the Romanian presidential election was overturned by the Constitutional Court, has argued that the borders claimed by Ukraine were artificially drawn and are subject to inevitable change. The staunch critic of Western policies made the remarks on Wednesday in an interview with political analyst Ion Cristoiu on YouTube. He was discussing the adjustments of European borders after World War II, which resulted in a transfer of territories to Soviet Ukraine. Georgescu said he expects Ukraine to be fragmented as part of a peace deal with Russia, along historical lines. ”This will happen 100%. The path to an outcome like that is inevitable,” he asserted. “Ukraine is an invented state.”

Parts of the historic areas of Bukovina and Bessarabia, which were ceded from Romania to Ukraine during the post-war settlement, are “of interest” to Bucharest, Georgescu said, adding that Hungary and Poland could also claim their historic lands in a hypothetical breakup of Ukraine. Georgescu made headlines in November when he unexpectedly garnered 23% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election in Romania, a NATO member. However, the Constitutional Court annulled the results shortly before the second round, citing intelligence documents alleging ‘irregularities’ in the campaign. Subsequent media reports revealed that Georgescu’s candidacy was boosted by a firm closely linked with the pro-Western National Liberal Party (PNL), seemingly to undermine another candidate.

The Romanian government has claimed that Russia was behind the interference scheme. Georgescu leads in opinion polls and is projected to get 38% of the vote in the upcoming election re-run in May. Russian President Vladimir Putin previously warned about the threat of potential separatism in Western Ukraine, driven by ethnic minorities’ wish “to return to their historic homeland,” with potential support from foreign governments. ”In that sense, only Russia could serve as a guarantor of Ukrainian territorial integrity,” he claimed in late 2023. “If [Ukrainians] don’t want that, so be it. History will set things straight. We will not stand in the way, but neither will we relinquish what is rightfully ours.”

Ukrainian lawmakers have appealed to non-US donors to fund local media outlets and NGOs following the suspension of Washington’s foreign assistance programs that has reportedly drastically impacted the sector. Last week, President Donald Trump halted cash flows from the US and ordered a 90-day review of aid schemes. Many affected programs were run by USAID, Washington’s soft power agency that distributes billions of dollars each year for projects that promote US interests around the world, under the premise of humanitarian development. It spent over $60 billion in 2023 alone.Ukrainian recipients of American grants were hit “worse than it may seem,” a statement by the parliamentary committee on humanitarian affairs said on Wednesday.

Russia may expand its arsenal of nuclear weapons if the US goes ahead with a major missile defense program that’s been ordered by President Trump, Russia’s TASS news agency reported on Thursday.

Trump signed an executive order on Monday to develop an “Iron Dome for America” that can intercept ballistic, hypersonic, and other types of advanced missiles, unlike Israel’s Iron Dome, which is designed to intercept short-range crude rockets. The order also calls for an improvement in missile defense to protect US troops deployed in other countries and the territory of US allies.

Writing in the Russian journal International Affairs, Grigory Mashkov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s special ambassador, said the US’s global missile defense posture was already a threat to Russia and said expanding it further “puts an end to the prospects of strategic offensive arms reduction and preservation of strategic stability on the previous terms.”

...Mashkov warned that an arms race was already underway. “A missile arms race is already in full swing. So is the large-scale modernization of nuclear arsenals and WMD delivery vehicles. The militarization of space is gaining momentum, which, in the near future, is likely to become another scene of military confrontation,” he said.

Jan 30, 2025

Featured • PATRICK LAWRENCE: Where Have All the Liberals Gone?, Consortium News, Jan 29, 2025
Lawrence says it, but it needs emphasis. It's worse than he says, since he is writing just a short essay and doesn't want to make unsupported sweeping generalizations. They never amounted to anything. Hedges said it many years ago. In a different way, so did Thomas Frank. Alastair Crooke says it over and over in the foreign policy and cultural context -- here, for example.

If you puncture an empty liberal balloon, using facts and logic, they will hate you. (That is not true, in general, for conservatives.) If you disagree with these messianic liberals you are by definition a bad person.

To save the country and our own souls, we have to do that, as firmly and adroitly as possible. Who wants enemies? Not us. But the insistence that "we must all get along" is just another way of saying "shut up and do what I want you to do. Don't bother me with facts. I'm in a tribe (or career) and it makes me feel good."

Bonhoeffer said that only changes in material circumstances will cure mass stupidity among the class of true believers. That's coming.

 • Zelensky wanted protocol signed before meeting took place – Slovak PM, RT, Jan 29, 2025

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky wanted Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico to sign a protocol promising to support Kiev’s bid for NATO membership before meeting to discuss crucial gas transit through Ukraine, the Slovak prime minister has claimed. Fico had sought to meet Zelensky on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos following weeks of barbed messages between Kiev and Bratislava, in the wake of Ukraine’s decision to block the flow of Russian gas to Slovakia. The invitation was openly mocked by Zelensky, and the proposed meeting did not take place. Fico revealed details of the failed attempt to meet Zelensky with members of his SMER-SD party on Tuesday. “I was ready to meet [with Zelensky] in Davos. And what did he do? Zelensky sent me a protocol for the meeting, and I was supposed to sign it. The meeting hadn’t even taken place yet, but there was already a prepared protocol.

“That protocol outlined what we would do for Ukraine, including supporting its NATO membership.

Jan 29, 2025

Featured • SCOTT RITTER: Trump’s Doomed Plan for Ukraine, Consortium News, Jan 28, 2025

Russia can ride out $45/barrel oil far longer than the U.S. can.

Donald Trump would do well to pay the wildcat oil producers of the Permian Basin — the ones who have sunk everything they own into a business venture that hinges on the promise of $78/barrel for the foreseeable future, and ask them how they feel about $45/barrel oil.

The bottom line is that if Keith Kellogg and Donald Trump made such a trip, they’d quickly understand the errors of their way.

Because if Donald Trump opts to go the route of “the hard way” with Russia, the consequences for him and the American people will be among the hardest imaginable.

Volodymyr Zelensky signed a decree outlawing peace negotiations with Moscow in 2022, months after the West sabotaged a ready peace treaty to pursue an all-out proxy war against Russia. President Putin has expressed readiness to find negotiators to speak directly with Volodymyr Zelensky. “If he wants to take part in negotiations, I will select such people, it’s not an issue. The question is about the final signing of the documents,” Putin said in a TV interview Tuesday, noting that Zelensky’s legitimacy has expired, and he therefore “does not have the right to sign anything.” Under Ukrainian law, the end of the president’s term means his powers are transferred to the chairman of the Verkhovna Rada parliament, and in accordance with the Constitution, even martial law does not give him the right to extend his authority, Putin said.

Zelensky’s powers officially ran out last spring, but he remained in office after cancelling elections, citing martial law. “On the question of the final signing of the documents…there cannot be a single mistake or wrinkle. Everything must be polished,” Putin emphasized. Furthermore, direct talks cannot start if Zelensky does not lift his self-imposed ban, Putin said. “If there is a desire, any legal question can be resolved. So far, we simply don’t see such a desire” from the Ukrainian side, the president said. “Negotiations factually began immediately after the start of the Special Military Operation. Initially, we told the Ukrainian leadership at the time that the people of the Lugansk and Donetsk People’s Republics don’t want to be part of Ukraine. Leave these territories, and that’s it, that’s where it ends. No fighting, no war,” Putin said.

The Ukrainian side rejected these terms, but Russia nevertheless agreed to talks. “This was at the end of February 2022,” Putin recalled. Russia was prepared to implement the peace deal reached in Istanbul in the spring of 2022, “even though there were things [in the draft deal, ed.] which we had issues with,” Putin revealed. “Nevertheless, I agreed that we were ready to implement this document. And on March 15 or 16 we informed Kiev that we were ready to refine and sign this document. There was practically nothing to change there,” he said. “Somewhere near the end of March [2022, ed.] we received a proposal from Kiev – the one with the signature of the head of the Ukrainian negotiations group, Mr. Arakhamia. And it was these Ukrainian proposals – I want to emphasize this, it’s very important, that formed the basis of the draft peace treaty developed at Istanbul,” Putin said.

The U.S. practically owns the whole Ukrainian media scene (machine translation):

Approximately 90% of Ukrainian media outlets have become dependent on American grants since the outbreak of a full-scale war.

This was stated by Oksana Romanyuk, head of the Institute of Mass Information, which is also a recipient of foreign grants, to Public Radio.

...

Political analyst Kostya Bondarenko responded to this statement with irony in his Telegram channel, doubting the lack of engagement of the press.

"Almost 90% of Ukrainian media survived thanks to grants," says Oksana Romanyuk, director of the Institute of Mass Information. I translate it into a normal language: 90% of Ukrainian media was controlled by the West through grants. Independence of the media and freedom of speech, you say?" - wrote Bondarenko.

The dozens of 'independent' U.S. financed pro-war media outlets in Ukraine are just some of a total of 112 official USAID projects in Ukraine (machine translation):

..."And there are dozens of such projects – Maybe someone needs it. But I don't quite understand why American taxpayers should do this. And why don't we ask for funds for something obviously more necessary?" Zablotsky asked himself.

USAID projects in Ukraine (and elsewhere) include the promotion of Neo-Nazi ideology:...

In a very unexpected development Denmark is now working directly with Russia’s Gazprom to do environmental mitigation on the damaged Nord Stream pipelines, in the wake of the multiple underwater blasts that took them offline on September 26, 2022 – leading to years of accusations against Moscow and a Russia-West tit-for-tat. Denmark’s energy agency has granted Nord Stream 2 AG (which is under Gazprom) permission to engage in preservation work on Nord Stream 2 in the Baltic Sea. The agency described that there remain serious safety risks after the natural gas pipeline was filled with seawater and the remnants of natural gas. “The work aims to preserve the damaged pipeline by installing customized plugs at each of the open pipe ends to prevent further gas blow-out and the introduction of oxygenated seawater,” Denmark’s energy agency said.

The Ukraine conflict could end in two months of Kiev is deprived of the money and ammunition it depends on to continue fighting, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said. Speaking to reporter Pavel Zarubin on Tuesday, Putin was asked about the possibility of a negotiated end to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. “They can’t exist without their Western sponsors. They won’t last a month if the money and ammunition run out,” Putin told Zarubin. “Everything can be over in a month and a half to two months. Ukraine practically has no sovereignty, in that sense,” the Russian president added. According to Putin, if Kiev’s western backers truly want peace, “this is very easy to do,” adding that Moscow has already spelled out its terms very clearly.

Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is reportedly nearing collapse following sustained Russian attacks, according to a report by Forbes on Monday. The article by energy analyst Gaurav Sharma suggested that the country’s power grid has suffered severe damage and will require billions of dollars to repair. Russia has been targeting Ukraine’s energy infrastructure since October 2022, shortly after the bombing of the Crimean Bridge, for which Kiev claimed responsibility. Moscow has since conducted a number of large-scale strikes on the country’s power grid with the aim of crippling Kiev’s military-industrial complex, according to the Russian Defense Ministry, which has maintained that its strikes are not directed at civilians.

Jan 28, 2025

Featured • Weak and worthless: Western Europe’s elites have sent it into historic decline, Timofey Bordachev, RT, Jan 28, 2025

There are two major fears for Western European elites when dealing with the new American administration. Surprisingly, the most serious challenge isn’t the potential decision by the Trump administration to pursue a military confrontation with Russia in Ukraine while cutting financial spending. The root of their anxiety lies elsewhere.

It is naïve to believe that the inauguration of a new American president signifies a revolutionary shift in Washington’s domestic or foreign policies. Most of the loudly proclaimed goals will either prove unattainable or be spun as victories despite their failures. Nevertheless, even the stated objectives of President Donald Trump’s team are enough to provoke strong emotions in Western Europe, the region most humiliatingly dependent on America and, at the same time, the most parasitic actor in contemporary global politics.

For decades, ‘the old world’ has been stuck in a state of strategic ambiguity. Its military and political backbone was shattered during the Second World War. First, the crushing victory of Russian arms destroyed the last vestiges of continental militarism. Second, the consistent post-war American policy ensured that Western Europe was systematically stripped of its ability to determine its own place in global affairs. Britain, the only major Western European power that avoided defeat, retained some fighting spirit, but its material resources have long been too limited to act independently, leaving it tethered to American power.

For countries such as Germany and Italy, the process was straightforward: they were defeated and placed under direct external control by the US. In other states, Washington relied on fostering political and economic elites that would serve its interests. Over time, this policy has reached its logical extreme: Western European leaders today are little more than middle managers in America’s system of global influence. There are no genuine statesmen left in power across the region.

Any outcome of the Ukraine conflict framed as a ‘compromise’ would be celebrated in the West as a victory and perceived as a failure by Russia. This must be avoided at all costs.

First, Russia must openly confront Western Europe’s historical culpability. It’s not the ‘garden’ its elites imagine but a field of fat weeds thriving on the blood of hundreds of millions it has enslaved, murdered, and robbed. Calling Western Europe out for its crimes – from colonialism to warmongering – legitimizes our potential use of nuclear deterrence as a justified response to aggression.

Second, Russia must emphasize the inevitability of nuclear escalation in any conflict between NATO and Russia. This message is essential not only to limit an arms race but also to underscore the futility of stockpiling conventional weapons that will be rendered irrelevant in a nuclear confrontation. NATO’s leaders must understand that they cannot avoid the consequences of their actions.

...Finally, Russia must offer the United States a dignified exit from its self-inflicted Ukrainian disaster. We have no desire to humiliate America but are prepared to help it extricate itself from this quagmire, provided it abandons its destructive policies. At the same time, Western Europe must be sidelined from global decision-making. It has become the primary threat to itself and the world.

...True peace will only come when Western Europe’s backbone is broken once more, as it was after Russia’s victories over Napoleon and Hitler. The current elites must be replaced by a new generation capable of engaging in constructive dialogue. Only then can Europe rejoin the world as a responsible partner, not a source of perpetual conflict. The stakes are clear: This is not just a battle for Russia’s future, but for the survival of human civilization as we know it.

[Quoting] The director of Poland’s Auschwitz Museum, Piotr Cywinski, has expressed his reluctance to allow a Russian delegation to participate in the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, the notorious Nazi death camp that was freed by the Red Army in 1945.

Since 2022, following Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine, Poland has barred Moscow from attending commemorative events at the site, despite the undeniable role of Soviet soldiers in liberating Auschwitz.

Cywinski stated that “it is hard to imagine” Russia’s presence at the event, accusing Moscow of allegedly not understanding “the value of freedom.” He went further, calling the potential inclusion of Russia “cynical,” and dismissing any possibility of their attendance within the next four months.

The Holocaust cult in the West takes great pride in pushing the narrative that US and British soldiers liberated the death camps. That is not true. They liberated concentration camps in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia (i.e., Flossenbürg and Theresienstadt). There is a significant difference between the camps in Western Europe and those that operated in Poland.

Credit for putting an end to the mass extermination centers–all of which were located in Poland–goes to the Soviets. Here are the other camps in Poland where mass executions of Jews occurred:

...Between 2.5 and 3.1 million Jews died in these camps. Frankly, more would have died were it not for Soviet victories over the Nazis. Now we have come full circle. The Poles are sending money and weapons to Neo-Nazis in Ukraine, where Stepan Bandera is celebrated as a national hero for his role in overseeing the slaughter of more than 100,000 Poles during World War II. The hypocrisy and irony are overwhelming.

Speaking of irony, on the day that Israelis celebrated the liberation of Auschwitz, almost 1.5 million Palestinians moved north in Gaza to reoccupy their shattered homes and businesses. A truly sad irony.

Ukraine could face collapse by summer if it does not agree to peace negotiations with Russia, the country’s top intelligence official has told lawmakers in Kiev, according to a report on Monday by local outlet Strana.ua. According to the website’s sources, Kirill Budanov, the chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence, made his remarks during a closed-door meeting in the Ukrainian parliament. One of the people present at the conference told the outlet that there were sensitive briefings by top military officials, including officers of the General Staff. However, the source singled out Budanov’s account. “Someone asked him: ‘How much time do we have left?’ He responded, with his signature cold smile: ‘If there are no serious negotiations by summer, very dangerous processes could begin for the very existence of Ukraine.’”

Jan 27, 2025

 • Unauthorized peacekeepers in Ukraine will be targeted – Russian diplomat, RT, Jan 27, 2025

Any Western peacekeepers deployed to Ukraine without Moscow’s approval would become legitimate military targets, senior Russian diplomat Rodion Miroshnik has said. The statement was made in response to EU Military Committee Chairman Robert Brieger’s interview on Saturday with Die Welt, in which the general suggested that a ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict could be enforced by EU and international peacekeepers under a UN mandate. “Any contingent entering the territory of Ukraine without the consent and permission of Russia is a military target with quite understandable consequences,” Miroshnik wrote on Telegram on Sunday.

In short: the deal above is a non-starter should it actually appear in even a remotely similar form; it is the mere deluded fantasy of the West to even think Russia needs to stop fighting any time soon, at a time when major Ukrainian strongholds are folding like cheap lawn chairs on a daily basis.

The fact is also this: Ukraine now represents something far more dangerous than previously imagined, even with a ‘neutered’ military as per the original “Istanbul deal” from April 2022. You see, for decades Russia feared NATO creeping up to its borders due to the ability to inflict various unexpected surprise first-strike attacks on Russian early warning systems and other defenses which would cripple Russia’s ability to detect or respond to a full-fledged American decapitation attack, like a nuclear first strike.

Ukraine has already perversely demonstrated its brazenly unscrupled ability to hit Russian strategic level assets like Tu-95 bases, early warning systems, and other infrastructure, like targeting nuclear power plants. This means that even with a ‘reduced’ armed forces, Ukraine would still pose an unacceptable threat because launching new high-tech drones and various missiles does not require a large armed forces in the sense of a manpower pool or armor fleet.

For this fact alone, no kind of negotiations is possible without Ukraine’s total disarmament or capitulation—this issue is absolutely an existential one for Russia.

Several US diplomats have urged the State Department to make an exception for Ukraine-related programs after President Donald Trump ordered a sweeping suspension on foreign aid, the Financial Times reported on Saturday. Trump’s order potentially jeopardizes support for Ukrainian schools, hospitals, and infrastructure development, although military aid remains intact, according to the newspaper. Acting on behalf of the US president, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued instructions on Friday to suspend any new foreign aid expenditure for 90 days. Contracting and grant officers from the State Department and USAID were directed to “immediately issue stop-work orders… until such time as the secretary shall determine, following a review,” according to a leaked cable cited by the FT.

The newspaper claimed that by Saturday evening, several organizations in Ukraine had received orders to stop their operations until further notice. However, USAID in Ukraine has generally chosen to defy Rubio’s decree to issue “stop work” orders until it receives more clarification from Washington, the FT claimed. American diplomats campaigning for aid to Kiev to be unfrozen reportedly hope that they will be able to win Rubio over. “We do not know at this time whether this request will be approved — in whole or in part — but there are positive signals thus far out of Washington,” an email sent to USAID staff in Ukraine on Saturday said, according to the newspaper. The outlet claims that Rubio’s order endangers support for the development of Ukrainian infrastructure, energy, and economy projects, while not affecting American military assistance. The FT quotes an unnamed Ukrainian government official as saying that “military aid to Ukraine is intact. At least as of now, and it is certainly not part of this 90-day freeze.”

This – both the Obama tale, as told by David Samuels, and Walter Kirn’s story of California – augment Aurelien’s point about Ukraine and European military incompetence and lack of professionalism on the field: It is one of allowing a schism to open up between contrived narrative and reality – “which”, Samuels warns “is to say that, with enough money, operatives could create and operationalize mutually reinforcing networks of activists and experts to validate a messaging arc that would short-circuit traditional methods of validation and analysis, and lead unwary actors and audience members alike to believe that things that they had never believed; or even heard of before: Were in fact not only plausible, but already widely accepted within their specific peer groups”.

It constitutes the path to disaster – even risking nuclear disaster in the case of the Ukraine conflict. Will the ‘Competency Crisis’ reaching across such varied terrain trigger a re-think as Walter Kirn – a writer on cultural change – insists?

Jan 26, 2025

 • Jeffrey Sachs, 6 minute compilation on the origins of the Ukraine war, X, Jan 25, 2025

 • Kiev seeking to boost enlistment of under-25 cohort – Zelensky aide, RT, Jan 25, 2025

The office of the Ukrainian president will propose amendments in the coming days that offer incentives for males between the age of 18 and 25 to sign voluntary contracts with the armed forces, an adviser to the office’s military department, Nikolay Schur, has told local media. Men in that age range are currently not subject to mandatory mobilization under Ukrainian law. The prospect of further tightening of draft laws has become a source of significant controversy in Ukrainian society. According to the adviser, “a whole range of amendments” to existing legislation and presidential decrees have been prepared by a working group that includes representatives of the Defense Ministry, General Staff and public organizations. “Technical details are being agreed upon at the moment and some things may still change,” he said. The amendments are expected to be presented to the public “in the coming days,” Schur added.

Facing losses, huge debts, and layoffs, Gazprom is now turning to Russian citizens to help it out of its financial woes, writes “Rzeczpospolita.” Gazprom’s management is reportedly demanding that the Kremlin raise gas prices threefold on the domestic market. Alexey Sakharov, head of Gazprom’s strategic department, spoke about the company’s difficult situation: “The current level of regulated wholesale gas prices in Russia does not ensure the creation of financial resources in sufficient quantities to make the necessary capital investments in the maintenance and development of gas infrastructure in the interests of Russian customers. And this cannot but affect the reliability of gas supplies in the long term,” he warned during a meeting of the Council of Experts in the State Duma.

...Gas in Russia used to be cheap, but everything changed after the invasion of Ukraine. “Since the beginning of the war, the Russian government has carried out a record indexation of gas tariffs for citizens in over 10 years. Last year, gas prices increased by 11.2 percent, in 2022 — by 3 percent in the summer and 8.5 percent in December. A new increase of 10.2 percent is planned from July 1, 2025, (the cumulative increase in gas prices will be 37 percent since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine),” they state. Back in December, Putin admitted that Russia’s economic growth measured in GDP in 2025 will be half of what it was in 2024, growing less than 4 percent this year, and, according to the Kremlin’s official estimates, it will slow down to 2-2.5 percent in 2026. The Russian president said the task for the authorities next year will be to “stabilize inflation,” which is soaring despite the efforts of the Russian central bank, which raised the interest rate to the highest level in 20 years.

Jan 25, 2025

Featured • Triumph Of Meanness And Apogee Of Despair: “Father-Commanders” Become Serial Killers, South Front, Jan 25, 2025

Featured • Did Trump Halt Aid to Ukraine?, Larry C. Johnson, SONAR21, Jan 24, 2025

Yes, you are reading that correctly. Russia received the bodies of 49 soldiers and, in turn, delivered the remains of 757 Ukrainian troops. In other words, for every dead Russian soldier there were 15 dead Ukrainians. That data tells you everything you need to know about the true extent of Ukrainian losses and exposes the prevarication of the New York Times reporters.

However, the Times makes one damning admission:

Western intelligence agencies have been reluctant to disclose their internal calculations of Ukrainian casualties for fear of undermining an ally. American officials have previously said that Kyiv withholds this information from even the closest allies.

Yes, the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency are not reporting the real Ukrainian losses because of politics. Just one more example of the politicization of intelligence.

Financial aid (for budgetary and social spending): $43.3 billion
Humanitarian aid: $13.4 billion
Military aid: $133.4 billion
Who gave what?
The US contributed 54% ($103.8 billion), making it the largest donor. The United States also provided the majority of military aid ($68.9 billion), humanitarian aid ($3.7 billion), and budgetary support ($31.2 billion).

The Trump State Department on Friday halted spending on almost all foreign aid grants for 90 days, which also appears to apply to funding for military assistance to Ukraine, Politico reports. The guidance, issued by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was sent to all diplomatic and consular posts, and orders all department staffers to issue “stop-work orders” on nearly all “existing foreign assistance awards.” It appears to go further than President Donald Trump’s recent executive order, which instructed the department to pause foreign aid grants for 90 days pending review by the secretary. It had not been clear from the president’s order if it would affect already appropriated funds or Ukraine aid.

“The new guidance means no further actions will be taken to disperse aid funding to programs already approved by the U.S. government, according to three current and two former officials familiar with the new guidance.” -Politico.

NATO’s efforts to spread itself all over the world are increasing the possibility of a global military conflict, the diplomat said, specifically pointing to bloc chief Mark Rutte’s call to raise defense spending to 3% of members’ GDP. “In fact, this has nothing to do with the real security situation,” Grushko explained. “This is over-armament, this is an attempt to achieve those geopolitical and military goals that they have recorded in their strategic documents, primarily American ones, to achieve military superiority in all operational environments, as they say, meaning land, air, space, cyberspace, and in all possible theaters of military operations, which now includes Asia.”

US President Donald Trump’s administration is not interested in taking part in the reconstruction of Ukraine after the conflict is resolved, Bloomberg reported on Friday. Trump’s team has signaled that it doesn’t intend to engage directly in rebuilding the country, suggesting that this responsibility would be handled by the private sector, the outlet said, citing a senior diplomat. The stance marks a significant shift from the policies of Joe Biden’s administration, which has spent around $100 billion on financial aid and military assistance to Kiev since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, and pledged support with the post-conflict reconstruction. Kiev has ramped up its privatization efforts to draw in foreign capital as it seeks private investors to support the country’s reconstruction.

Jan 24, 2025

Featured • Russian Casualties and the Russian Economy — A Memo for President Donald Trump, Larry C. Johnson, SONAR21, Jan 23, 2025

According to Mediazona’s latest data, there are 88,726 confirmed Russian combat deaths since February 2022. Mediazona estimates, using probate registry data, that the number may be as high as 120,000. This is a far cry from the numbers claimed by Ukrainian intelligence, which forms the basis of CIA estimates.

It is essential that you understand that Russia views this war as vital to its continued existence. Russia is not fighting to reconstitute the Soviet Empire. It sees Ukraine as a Western-proxy being used to attack Russia with US-and NATO-supplied weapons and intelligence, with the ultimate goal of destroying the current government. Accordingly, the only satisfactory outcome for Russia is to end this threat. President Putin is willing to accept a negotiated settlement provided that Ukraine is stripped of its capacity to launch future attacks on Russia and that NATO ends any consideration of making Ukraine a member of NATO.

...If you consider Russia’s perspective on the war in terms of casualties and the economy, Vladimir Putin is under no pressure to reach a negotiated settlement that does not address Russia’s strategic concerns that it will no longer face a military threat from NATO. If you fail to understand this and adjust your strategy to make a deal, your efforts to negotiate an end to war in Ukraine will not succeed.

Moscow wants to resume disarmament negotiations with the US as soon as possible, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Friday.

He stressed that the legal framework for arms control has been “significantly undermined,” and that this is not the fault of Russia, but of the United States – which has unilaterally severed all contacts with Moscow.

“In the interest of the entire world and of our countries’ people, we are interested in starting a negotiation process as soon as possible,” Peskov stated.

He noted, however, that in the current conditions, it would also be necessary to take into account all existing nuclear arsenals, specifically those of France and the UK.

“The current realities dictate such a need,” Peskov said, explaining that it would be “impossible” to hold negotiations while avoiding the issue.

The spokesman noted that much time has been wasted in delaying such vital discussions, and that the “ball is now in the court of the Americans, who have ceased all substantive contacts with our country.”

US President Donald Trump is considering reducing his country’s military contingent in Europe by 20% as he reviews Washington’s commitment to the continent, Italian news agency ANSA has reported, citing EU diplomatic sources. If the pullout occurs, the number of US service personnel in Europe will decrease from around 100,000 to 80,000, the agency reported on Wednesday. In recent conversations with European leaders Trump has “consistently” expressed a desire to downsize the US military presence on the continent, the sources said. “Furthermore, for those [US troops] who remain, he would like financial contributions from European countries, because these soldiers are a deterrent, and the costs cannot be borne solely by American taxpayers,” one of ANSA’s sources claimed.

Earlier this month, Trump said NATO member states in the EU should be spending 5% of their GDP on defense, way beyond the current goal of 2%. “They can afford it,” he claimed.

The chances of a peace deal in Ukraine are suddenly a lot higher under President Donald Trump only because he has a realistic sense of a nuclear Third World War happening between the United States and Russia if that conflict is not ended promptly.

Peter Kuznick, an esteemed American professor of history, says that the Biden administration brought the world closer to a nuclear conflagration than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. Biden did this by relentlessly arming Ukraine with weapons to strike deeper and deeper into Russia instead of trying to find a peaceful resolution to the conflict. Indeed, there was no diplomatic effort from Washington under Biden. It was ideologically and propaganda-driven for confrontation, as was the Democratic presidential candidate, Kamala Harris.

Kuznick points out that Trump is no John F Kennedy in terms of the latter’s depth of historical and philosophical knowledge. But in comparison with Joe Biden, Trump has shown more humanity and common sense by not insulting Putin and in reaching out for a peaceful end to the slaughter in Ukraine.

Jan 23, 2025

Featured • Trump's Opening Cry To Russia Falls Flat, Moon of Alabama, Jan 23, 2025

In May 2017 the Russian president Vladimir Putin had an interview with Le Figaro. He explained his experience with policy preferences forwarded by U.S. presidents:

I have already spoken to three US Presidents. They come and go, but politics stay the same at all times. Do you know why? Because of the powerful bureaucracy. When a person is elected, they may have some ideas. Then people with briefcases arrive, well dressed, wearing dark suits, just like mine, except for the red tie, since they wear black or dark blue ones. These people start explaining how things are done. And instantly, everything changes. This is what happens with every administration.

It took only two days for that to happen with the second presidency of Donald Trump. Instead of seeking better relations with Russia to end the war in Ukraine, as he had promised during the campaign, Trump initiated a public 'dialog' with Russia that seems to make both of these aims impossible.

...Senseless barking at Moscow, as Trump has done so far, will be responded to with a rather bored yawn:

The Kremlin is not impressed by United States President Donald Trump’s threat to impose new sanctions against Russia if it does not agree to strike a peace deal with Ukraine.

"We do not see any particular new elements here," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told Russian media Thursday. Peskov added that Trump “liked sanctions” and used them often during his first presidential term.

“Russia is ready for an equal and careful dialogue with the United States, which we had during Trump's first term," Peskov said, according to Russian independent media outlet Meduza. "We are waiting for signals that have not yet been received."

No government can survive when it fails to control the cost in blood on the battlefield and the cost of potatoes, butter and bread on the home front. The combination at the same time is politically lethal. US President Lyndon Johnson learned this between 1965 and 1968, when the rate of domestic inflation was quadrupling and the Killed in Action (KIA) numbers in the Vietnam War jumped ninefold. On March 31, 1968, Johnson announced he was withdrawing from the presidential election later that year.* President Vladimir Putin has managed the KIA half of the lethal equation by fighting a limited expeditionary campaign in the Ukraine, restricting the General Staff’s resources, plans, targets and operations; attacking with standoff, mostly airborne weapons; shifting the casualty burden of ground fighting to socially marginal groups; and keeping the majority of voters out of the line of fire. His success is in high and stable voter support.

For the time being, the president has escaped public blame for the inflationary surge in food prices over 2024. According to one report, beets were up by 71%; potatoes by 65.4%; eggs by 48.5%; garlic by 41%; salt by 27%; vegetable oil by 24%; butter by 22%. According to the AB Centre calculation, the price of potatoes jumped 65.2%; olive oil, 35.5%; butter, 35.2%; garlic, 24.7%; beets, 22.7%. The state statistics agency Rosstat claims that the overall, official inflation rate for the country was 8.6% for 2024, while retail food price inflation, according to Rosstat was 9.5%. No one believes this, according to consumer polling and expert analyses. Consumer anticipation and expert forecasts are for the surge in food prices to continue this year at rates, depending on the food item, of between 50% and 100%.

Sergei Glazyev, a well-known public economist, presidential candidate in 2004, and a senior official of the Eurasian Economic Commission, is blunt on his attack. “Rising prices are hitting everyone’s pockets and making everyone poorer. Both citizens and businesses. Only banks are swollen with money. “The Bank of Russia’s policy is driving the economy into a stagflationary trap, in which falling production, devaluation of the ruble and rising inflation are mutually reinforcing: an increase in the key rate [21%] compresses production lending, which leads to lower volumes and higher production costs, the technical level and production efficiency decline, the competitiveness of the economy decreases, which is offset by the devaluation of the ruble. That then causes a new surge of inflation, which the Bank of Russia is trying to pay off with another increase in the key rate. After ten years of ineffectual targeting of inflation, it is clear that the continuation of this insane policy has no prospects.”

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban is blocking the extension of sanctions the European Union imposed on Russia over the Ukraine conflict, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday. The penalties, set to expire on January 31, require unanimous approval from the bloc’s 27 member states every six months. No alternative plan currently exists to extend the sanctions if Hungary continues its protest, the publication has said, citing several unnamed diplomats. Orban is a frequent critic of the EU’s sanctions regime. He reiterated on Tuesday his position that the fifteen rounds of restrictions imposed on Moscow are causing more harm to the bloc’s economies.

“It is time to throw sanctions out the window,” he said in an interview with Kossuth Radio last Friday, adding that the goal for the EU in 2025 should be to “establish a sanction-free relationship with Russia.”

US President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued a thinly-veiled ultimatum to Russia, urging it to bring the Ukraine conflict to an end and strike a “deal,” or face new sanctions and high import tariffs. Trump issued the warning in a post on his Truth Social online platform, proclaiming his “love” for the Russian people and insisting he was “not looking to hurt Russia.” “We must never forget that Russia helped us win the Second World War, losing almost 60,000,000 lives in the process,” he wrote, exaggerating the estimated Soviet Union losses more than twofold. “All of that being said, I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE,” Trump asserted.

Should no “deal” on the matter materialize “soon” enough, Trump would “have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries.” The US president also reiterated that the Russia-Ukraine conflict “never would have started” if he had been in office. “We can do it the easy way, or the hard way – and the easy way is always better,” Trump warned Moscow. Earlier in the day, Trump reiterated his readiness to engage in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin, insisting he’d had a “very strong understanding with” the Russian leader before. Asked when exactly the talk could happen, Trump said “anytime they want – I will meet.”

Jan 22, 2025

Featured • Zelenski, Having Failed, Blames His Sponsors, Moon of Alabama, Jan 22, 2025

It [the 2019 RAND report] also listed risks:

Alternatively, Russia might counter-escalate, committing more troops and pushing them deeper into Ukraine. Russia might even preempt U.S. action, escalating before any additional U.S. aid arrives. Such escalation might extend Russia; Eastern Ukraine is already a drain. Taking more of Ukraine might only increase the burden, albeit at the expense of the Ukrainian people. However, such a move might also come at a significant cost to Ukraine and to U.S. prestige and credibility. This could produce disproportionately large Ukrainian casualties, territorial losses, and refugee flows. It might even lead Ukraine into a disadvantageous peace.

The risks described by RAND are now the obvious outcome of the war.

All this was known and available through readily accessible sources.

Why Zelenski, or any other Ukrainian, had ever expected anything different is hard to conceive.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who was sworn in on Tuesday, has said the war in Ukraine needs to end and that the new Trump administration would work to bring it to a close, although it’s still unclear how that will happen.

On the campaign trail, President Trump vowed to bring the war to an end within “24 hours,” but fighting continues to rage along the frontlines, and Russia and Ukraine traded heavy drone attacks overnight Monday into Tuesday.

Ahead of his swearing-in ceremony, Rubio was asked in an interview about Trump’s promise and the situation in Ukraine. “The promise the President made, really if you look at it, is it’s going to be the priority – it’s going to be the official policy of the United States that the war in Ukraine needs to come to an end. It is a stalemate,” he said.

Jan 21, 2025

Featured • The Competency Crisis Proliferating The West, Alastair Crooke, Strategic Culture Foundation, Jan 20, 2025

The essayist and military strategist, Aurelien, has written a paper entitled: The Strange Defeat (original in French). The ‘strange defeat’ being that of Europe’s ‘curious’ inability to understand Ukraine or its military mechanics.

Aurelien highlights the strange lack of realism by which the West has approached the crisis —

“ …and the almost pathological dissociation from the real world that it displays in its words and actions. Yet, even as the situation deteriorates, and the Russian forces advance everywhere, there is no sign that the West is becoming more reality-based in its understanding – and it is very likely that it will continue to live in its alternative construction of reality until it is forcibly expelled”.

The writer continues in some detail (omitted here) to explain why NATO has no strategy for Ukraine and no real operational plan:

“It has only a series of ad hoc initiatives, linked together by vague aspirations that have no connection with real life plus the hope that ‘something [beneficial] will occur’. Our current Western political leaders have never had to develop such skills. Yet it is actually worse than that: not having developed these skills, not having advisers who have developed them, they cannot really understand what the Russians are doing, how and why they are doing it. Western leaders are like spectators who do not know the rules of chess or Go – and are trying to figure out who is winning”.

“What exactly was their goal? Now, responses such as ‘to send a message to Putin’, ‘complicate Russian logistics’, or ‘improve morale at home’ are no longer allowed. What I want to know is what is expected in concrete terms? What are the tangible results of their ‘messaging’? Can they guarantee that it will be understood? Have you anticipated the possible reactions of the Russians – and what will you do then?”

The essential problem, Aurelien bluntly concludes, is that:

“our political classes and their parasites have no idea how to deal with such crises, or even how to understand them. The war in Ukraine involves forces that are orders of magnitude larger than any Western nation has deployed on operations since 1945 … Instead of real strategic objectives, they have only slogans and fanciful proposals”.

Coldly put, the author explains that for complex reasons connected with the nature of western modernity, the liberal élites simply are not competent or professional in matters of security. And they do not understand its nature.

President Biden spent hundreds of billions of dollars supporting Ukraine in its war with Russia, but according to a report from Time Magazine, a Ukrainian victory was never his goal.

Throughout the nearly three-year proxy war, the Biden administration never set any clear goals and only repeated mantras, such as the promise to support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”

Eric Green, who was on Biden’s National Security Council at the time of the invasion, told Time that the administration never gave any promises to help Ukraine take back the land Russian forces had captured.

“We were deliberately not talking about the territorial parameters,” Green said. “That was not going to be a success story ultimately. The more important objective was for Ukraine to survive as a sovereign, democratic country free to pursue integration with the West.”

...“It’s unfortunately the kind of success where you don’t feel great about it,” Green told Time. “Because there is so much suffering for Ukraine and so much uncertainty about where it’s ultimately going to land.”

Former White House strategist Steve Bannon has warned that US President-elect Donald Trump could become entangled in the Ukraine conflict if he doesn’t take immediate steps to limit Washington’s involvement. In an interview with Politico published on Monday, Bannon compared the situation to former US President Richard Nixon’s handling of the Vietnam War, in which he inherited a conflict from the previous administration and was ultimately defined by it. “If we aren’t careful, it will turn into Trump’s Vietnam. That’s what happened to Richard Nixon. He ended up owning the war and it went down as his war, not Lyndon Johnson’s,” Bannon, who is no longer a key figure in the Trump team, said. He argued that unless Trump clearly commits to stopping military aid to Ukraine, the conflict could overshadow his presidency.

...Peskov has said that Putin is open to negotiations with the US president without any preconditions, while noting that there have so far been no substantial preparations for talks.

The new US administration’s policies will largely determine the world order, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday. Moscow is open to contact with Washington, according to the top diplomat. Lavrov made the remarks during a meeting of the Russian National Security Council hosted by President Vladimir Putin. The Russian FM stated that in light of Donald Trump’s return to the White House as the 47th US president, speculation is growing about his influence on the Middle East and Ukraine conflicts, among other issues. “Therefore, much depends on the US, first of all, because the Europeans and Asian allies of the US – Australia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand – are fully oriented to the position of the White House, and in this sense, they are waiting to see what this position will be in its final form,” Lavrov explained.

The minister also said that it remains unclear whether Trump’s promises will coincide with his actions. Trump has repeatedly vowed to bring an end to ongoing conflicts and has criticized the Biden administration for policies that he claimed led to the escalation of global tensions and pushed the world closer to the brink of World War III. Last week, while discussing the transition in Washington, Lavrov said that the outgoing administration was trying to “spoil the whole thing for the next administration before the end of their mandate.” He denounced the perceived sabotage as inappropriate “from the moral point of view.” Trump has also signaled his intent to engage in talks with Putin, particularly with the aim of bringing the Ukraine conflict to an end.

During his campaigning and after his election win, Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to “demolish the deep state,” overhaul federal departments and agencies, and “clean out the corrupt actors.” A host of senior career diplomats are quitting the State Department as Donald Trump makes a clean break with the Joe Biden administration, The Washington Post reported. The resignations, effective at noon on Monday, just before the inauguration, were on instructions from Trump’s aides, claimed unnamed US officials. Trump has authorized over 20 “senior bureau officials” to take over vacated posts, with some of the newcomers having formerly served in key roles during his first term, insiders added.

Among those departing are John Bass, the under secretary for management and acting undersecretary for political affairs, Geoff Pyatt, the assistant secretary for energy resources, and top diplomat for East Asia, Dan Kritenbrink.

The Trump team made clear the marching orders were not personal, said one resigning diplomat. “It is entirely appropriate for the transition to seek officials who share President Trump’s vision for putting our nation and America’s working men and women first. We have a lot of failures to fix and that requires a committed team focused on the same goals,” a spokesperson for the transition team said.

Jan 20, 2025

Featured • Americans say US spends too much on Ukraine – poll, RT, Jan 20, 2025

The majority of Americans believe the US government is spending too much on aid for Ukraine, a recent New York Times/Ipsos opinion poll suggests.

According to the findings, 51% of respondents say the country is “spending too much” on Kiev, while 28% believe the current amount is appropriate. Only 17% say the country should boost spending on Ukraine.

Similarly, 53% of those surveyed say US aid to Israel is excessive, with 30% considering it adequate. The survey, conducted from January 2 to 10, involved 2,128 people nationwide.

Public sentiment reflected in the survey suggests that most Americans want Washington to prioritize domestic issues over foreign aid. Among the respondents, 60% say the US “should pay less attention to problems overseas and concentrate on problems here at home,” while only 38% believe the country should continue to be active in global affairs. The poll also indicates that 60% believe the US government is “almost always wasteful and inefficient,” while 72% say it is “working to benefit itself” and its own agenda, not the people. (emphasis added)

Antony Blinken spent his last two weeks in office giving media interviews defending his record as America’s top ‘diplomat’. But it was under Blinken’s watch that the US sparked the worst security crisis in Europe since WWII, and fueled the most severe fighting between Jews and Palestinians since Israel’s creation in 1948. Let’s review his legacy...

Journalists from the New York Times spoke to representatives of the outgoing administration of Joseph Biden and the incoming administration of Donald Trump. Both believe that Russia will keep at least the territories it has seized since the beginning of the Special military operation. US officials are reverting to their preferred ‘Korean scenario’. The question of security guarantees is up in the air. The participation of European forces to keep the peace on the demarcation line is being considered. Washington would like to see the British, Germans and French as peacekeepers. But such ideas are unlikely to be accepted by the Russians.

‘The Russians, of course, want a far larger deal – one in which the United States would pull its arms and troops out of Europe. And on that, Mr. Trump has been silent,’ the NYT journalists note.

This conclusion is quite correct. Moscow did not launch the military operation to make NATO troops appear in Ukraine under the guise of peacekeepers. The Kremlin has in mind the recent example of the occupation of Kosovo (KFOR) and the de facto occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUFOR) under the guise of a peacekeeping operation. Kiev’s refusal to join NATO is irrelevant if Ukraine is allowed to join the European Union. In July 2024, Ursula von der Leyen promised to transform the EU into a defence alliance. This is completely unacceptable to Russia. The Russian Federation has a certain minimum plan for achieving the goals of the current war.

• The first is to establish control over all the territories listed in the Constitution. This means the complete reunification with the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions.

• Secondly, ensuring Ukraine’s complete neutrality and reducing its armed forces to a minimum.

• Third, the creation of a new security architecture in Europe. This means respecting Russia’s national interests and lifting all sanctions, not temporarily ‘softening’ them. The Kremlin remembers how Iran’s ‘nuclear deal’ with the previous US administration ended.

It is hard to say now whether Donald Trump would agree to such terms. The Ukrainian crisis is a product of the foreign policy ‘creativity’ of the Democrats and Joe Biden personally. As we know from American history, Republicans are not too respectful of Democrats’ foreign policy adventures. And Democrats are not too respectful of Republicans’ international projects. The Vietnam War was started by the Democrat Lyndon Johnson and ended by the Republican Gerald Ford. The intervention in Afghanistan was the work of Republican George Bush Jr. The withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan was carried out by Democrat Joseph Biden.

Ukraine is not a priority for Trump and his team. The Euromaidan of 2014 was initiated by the State Department during Barack Obama’s presidency. Biden, as Vice President, was actively involved in the destruction of Ukraine. The war that began in 2022 was a consequence of Biden and Blinken’s foreign policy. Trump is serious about ending this conflict. However, as a competent businessman, the new president will try to get the best out of negotiations with Russia. One thing is certain: there will be no more financial aid for Kiev. This means a gradual dismantling of the Ukrainian military machine. The speed of the degradation will depend on how quickly the financial flows are cut off.

Much of the foregoing may feel redundant, given the common themes previously rehashed here. But given the historic nature of tomorrow’s inauguration it somehow felt necessary to at least pen some words as a send off. And though Trump himself may not be the main or even most momentous of the coming global disruptions, he certainly is the herald or agent of change signifying this new dawn. The global momentum is too great for Trump alone to be the central player—rather in the years to follow load-bearing points will begin giving out in domino fashion.

The Ukraine war certainly stands to be chief amongst the clarifying junctures set to rewrite the script for the global order. And depending how Trump plays his cards there, he could be an agent of positive change to usher in a more equitable and fairer world, or one representing a barbarous return to the old scheme of cudgel and prod, using coercion, threats, and economic violence to try and bend the world to the whims of his supreme vanity. But should he take that path, he will soon find himself woefully out of step with a world no longer cowed and powerless to the Empire’s bullying tactics, one that has spent years building networks of support amongst its most oppressed members to foster resilience in the face of US aggression—a world no longer deferent, but rather defiant to the now shopworn and predictable imperial tactics.

In this great coming torrential storm of change, Trump can choose to swim upstream, or with the current toward now-preordained historical certainties; his choice will determine whether the United States again emerges as a leading nation, or is swept away by the errant tides of history.

Outgoing US State Secretary Antony Blinken urged Ukraine to continue its military efforts against Russia rather than pursue peace negotiations in 2022, the New York Times reported on Saturday. In late 2022, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley advised Kiev to capitalize on its battlefield successes by seeking peace talks with Moscow. However, Blinken insisted that Ukraine should press on with its military campaign, the newspaper wrote. “Less a peacemaker than a war strategist,” the US diplomat frequently argued against more “risk-averse Pentagon officials,” lobbying for advanced American weaponry to be sent to Ukraine, NYT wrote.

....Russia and Ukraine initially engaged in peace negotiations in early 2022 in Istanbul. Both sides provisionally agreed to a truce under which Kiev would renounce its NATO membership ambitions, adopt neutrality, and limit its military size in exchange for international security guarantees.

However, Ukraine later withdrew from the talks at the urging of then-UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, according to David Arakhamia, a Zelensky-allied MP and chief negotiator for Kiev. Last month, Swiss diplomat Jean-Daniel Ruch similarly accused the US and UK of derailing peace talks between Kiev and Moscow. Speaking to the French-language media outlet Anti-Thèse, Ruch claimed that Johnson acted “on duty for the Americans.” Moscow has reiterated its willingness to resume peace negotiations, provided they are based on the Istanbul draft agreements and reflect the “new territorial realities,” including the accession of four former Ukrainian regions to Russia and recent battlefield developments.

Donald Trump’s team is preparing a phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which could come shortly after the president-elect’s inauguration, CNN reported on Sunday, citing sources. According to people familiar with the matter interviewed by the network, the primary aim of the call would be to discuss a face-to-face meeting in the coming months to explore ways to resolve the Ukraine conflict. Officials within Trump’s national security team reportedly began planning for the call several weeks ago, CNN reported, adding that it remains unclear whether a date for the conversation has been finalized. The network noted that the phone call would be a significant shift from President Joe Biden’s approach, who has not spoken directly with Putin for nearly three years.

Earlier this month, Trump confirmed his intention to speak with Putin, stating that the Russian leader “wants to meet, and we are setting it up.” The president-elect, who has been critical of US aid to Kiev, has repeatedly vowed to swiftly end the Ukraine conflict. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said that Putin is open to negotiations with the US president without any preconditions. However, he stressed that there have been no substantial preparations for talks, while suggesting waiting until Trump is sworn in. Commenting on the potential Ukraine talks, Putin foreign policy aide Yury Ushakov suggested that the incoming US president would be the one to initiate a dialogue. “We are calmly waiting for Trump’s team to take over. After that, let’s see what happens,” he said.

In recent weeks, US media outlets have reported that Trump’s team is mulling a peace plan for Ukraine which could include a ceasefire along the current front lines and the creation of an 1,300-km (800-mile) demilitarized zone patrolled by European troops. Additionally, Ukraine would agree to delay its aspirations for NATO membership for at least 20 years. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has criticized parts of the reported plan, saying Moscow “is of course not satisfied” with the proposals to postpone Ukraine’s NATO ambitions and deploy a Western peacekeeping contingent to Ukraine. Moscow has also rejected a freezing of the conflict, insisting that it must achieve all of the goals of its military operation, including permanent Ukrainian neutrality, demilitarization, and denazification. Russia has also signaled that it would immediately declare a ceasefire once Kiev begins withdrawing from Russian territory, including the regions of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye.

Recent damage to undersea cables in the Baltic Sea was likely caused by maritime accidents, not by Russian sabotage as many Western officials have alleged, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.

NATO has used recent incidents to justify an increase in its military presence in the Baltic Sea and launched a new mission called “Baltic Sentry” just last week, a move that ratchets up tensions with Russia. The Guardian reported on Sunday that a NATO naval flotilla has assembled off the coast of Estonia to “protect” undersea infrastructure.

The Post report, which cited US and European intelligence officials, said that “investigations involving the United States and a half-dozen European security services have turned up no indication that commercial ships suspected of dragging anchors across seabed systems did so intentionally or at the direction of Moscow.”

US officials said “clear explanations” in each case indicated the incidents were likely accidents, and no evidence suggested that Russia was involved. In some cases, ships dragging their anchors damaged cables underwater.

Jan 19, 2025

 • Atrocities Against Civilians in Russia's Kursk Region Confirm Terrorist Core of Kiev Regime - Moscow, Sputnik International, Jan 19, 2025

Neo-Nazi atrocities in the Kursk region defy any logical explanation and understanding, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.

"The heartbreaking footage that has appeared in the media is really difficult to comment on. Of course, it defies any logical explanation and understanding. These atrocities are yet another blatant statement of the terrorist and neo-Nazi gut of the Kiev regime, which in its evil military and political impotence against the background of defeats at the front has once again organized a cannibalistic massacre of civilians," Zakharova said in her commentary published on the Russian Foreign Ministry's website.

Servicemen from Russia's Battlegroup Sever told Sputnik earlier that Russian fighters had found the bodies of civilians tortured by the Ukrainian Armed Forces, particularly old people who had also been tied up, in the basements of houses in the village of Russkoye Porechnoye in the Kursk region's Sudzha district, which was liberated from the Ukrainian military.

Ukrainian forces tortured old people who did not have time to evacuate the village. They were forced into the basement, and several grenades were thrown at them.

Ukrainian Armed Forces militants in Russkoye Porechnoye, Kursk region, killed at least seven civilians who were sheltering in the basement of a residential building in January, the Russian Investigative Committee said. A criminal case against the Ukrainian troops involved in the killing of civilians in Russkoye Porechnoye has been opened under the article on terrorism, the Investigative Committee said.

Ukraine’s halt to the transit of Russian gas, combined with sanctions imposed by the US on Russian oil and gas companies, pose a significant risk of plunging Europe into a new energy crisis. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban raised these concerns during his visit to Belgrade, where he held talks focused on energy challenges with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. “Recent developments in Europe’s energy supply are alarming,” Orban said in a video message aired on Hungarian television. “Ukraine has blocked a pipeline that supplied gas to Hungary, and the US administration has introduced sanctions that have driven up energy prices across Europe. The continent is hurtling toward another energy crisis,” Orban said.

The outgoing US government imposed sanctions on Russia’s oil and gas sector on January 10, targeting companies like Gazprom, Neft and Novatek, 183 tanker vessels and top executives. Serbia’s NIS, partly owned by Gazprom, was also affected, with the US demanding the cancellation of Russian investments by February 25. Combined with Ukraine’s block on Russian gas transit on January 1, the actions have disrupted supplies to Austria, Italy and Central Europe, raising energy prices and prompting regional efforts to minimize the impact.

Calin Georgescu rightfully has a huge grievance against what passes for “Western democracy.” He is the clear first-round winner in the Presidential elections held in Romania late last year. Yet his projected even more resounding victory in the second round, scheduled for early December 2024, was scrapped (as the BBC indelicately put it) following a Romanian Supreme Court ruling that the electoral process was marred by alleged hybrid warfare interference conducted by Russia on Georgescu’s behalf.

How do you “scrap” elections in a vibrant democracy such as Romania, which also happens to be a member in good standing of NATO and the European Union, which are bastions of liberal freedoms and the rule of law? Well, you do it by making up a bogus dossier on the political candidate that you dislike and by ordering the local judiciary to act on it as if it were genuine evidence. The dossier purporting to document the alleged interference was so patently phony that at its first sitting to consider the matter the Romanian Supreme Court dismissed it out of hand. This show of integrity did not sit well at all with the paladins of the rules-based order. So they ordered the judges to reassemble forthwith in their chambers and to get it right this time. On 6 December the distinguished Romanian jurists did just that and obediently reversed their ruling issued just four days previously.

Jan 18, 2025

 • EU faces up to €1 trillion loss over cutting Russian gas – Moscow sovereign wealth fund, RT, Jan 17, 2025

“Europe is suffering from not receiving Russian gas, with expected losses of more than €1 trillion,” Dmitriev stated. He previously attributed these losses to the high cost of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which the EU has imported in greater quantities to replace Russian supplies. Dmitriev added that neither losing the EU as a gas buyer, nor sanctions aimed at destabilizing the Russian economy, have had a significant effect on it, while the EU has borne the brunt of the economic fallout. “The Russian economy is in good shape, with growth expected at 4% by the end of 2024, while Europe showed 1% or less.

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.

December 2024

November 2024

October 2024

September 2024

August 2024

July 2024

June 2024

May 2024

April 2024

March 2024

February 2024

January 2024

December 2023

November 2023

October 2023

September 2023

August 2023

July 2023

June 2023

May 2023

April 2023

March 2023

February 2023

January 2023

December 2022

November 2022

 • Peace in Ukraine - How Do We Get There?, LASG virtual discussion with Scott Ritter and Dr. Dmitri Trenin, Jan 15, 2025
 • "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