Category: Russia

  • On 22 July, Tehran hosted a high-level trilateral summit with senior officials from Russia and China to coordinate nuclear and sanctions strategies ahead of Iran’s scheduled negotiations with the European Troika in Istanbul today.

    All three delegations reaffirmed their commitment to maintaining close coordination on the nuclear file and pledged to expand consultations aimed at countering western policies, particularly US-led sanctions.

    The trilateral meeting followed a sharp escalation in nuclear tensions. Just last month, the US and Israel launched coordinated airstrikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure, prompting Tehran to suspend cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

    The post Iran Confronts Europe’s Trigger Mechanism With Eurasian Allies appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.


  • This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Increasing evidence emerges that confirms what ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern suggests was a classic off-the-shelve intelligence operation initiated during the last year of Obama’s presidency against the Trump campaign by employees of, and others associated with, the CIA, FBI, and the NS. Yet the public is being counseled to ignore possible proof of state misconduct.

    The historic and unprecedented timing of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s indictment of twelve Russia military intelligence officers on the eve of Trump’s meeting with Putin, was clearly meant to undercut Trump’s authority.

    The post High Crimes And Misdemeanors; Not By Trump But Obama And Democrats appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • With the Trump imperium passing the half-year mark, the posture of the US empire is ever clearer. Whether animated by “America First” or globalism, the objective remains “full spectrum dominance.” And now with the neocon capture of the Democrats, there are no guardrails from the so-called opposition party.

    Call it the “new cold war,” the “beginning of World War III,” or – in Trump’s words – “endless war,” this is the era that the world has entered. The US/Zionist war against Iran has paused, but no one has any illusions that it is over. And it won’t likely be resolved until one side decisively and totally prevails. Ditto for the proxy war with Russia in Ukraine. Likely the same with Palestine, where the barbarity of war worsened to genocide. Meanwhile, since Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” the empire is building up for war with China.

    In Latin America and the Caribbean, the empire’s war on the world assumes a hybrid form. The carnage is less apparent because the weapons take the form of “soft power” – sanctions, tariffs, and deportations. These can have the same lethal consequences as bombs, only less overt.

    Making the world unsafe for socialism

    Some Western leftists vilify the defensive measures that Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua must take to protect themselves from the empire’s regime-change schemes. In contrast, Washington clearly understands that these countries pose “threats of a good example” to the empire. Each subsequent US president, from Obama on, has certified them as “extraordinary threats to US national security.” Accordingly, they are targeted with the harshest coercive measures.

    In this war of attrition, historian Isaac Saney uses the example of Cuba to show how any misstep by the revolutionary government or societal deficiency is exaggerated and weaponized. The empire’s siege, he explains, is not merely an attempt to destabilize the economy but is a deliberate strategy of suffocation. The empire aims to instigate internal discontent, distort people’s perception of the government, and ultimately erode social gains.

    While Cuba is affected the worst by the hybrid war, both Venezuela and Nicaragua have also been damaged. All three countries have seen the “humanitarian parole” for their migrants in the US come to an end. Temporary Protected Status (TPS) was also withdrawn for Venezuelans and Nicaraguans. The strain of returning migrants, along with cuts in the remittances they had sent (amounting to a quarter of Nicaragua’s GDP), further impacts their respective economies.

    Higher-than-average tariffs are threatened on Venezuelan and Nicaraguan exports to the US, together with severe restrictions on Caracas’s oil exports. Meanwhile, the screws have been tightened on the six-decade US blockade of Cuba with disastrous humanitarian consequences.

    However, all three countries are fighting back. They are forming new trade alliances with China and elsewhere. Providing relief to Cuba, Mexico has supplied oil, and China is installing solar panel farms to address the now-daily power outages. High levels of food security in Venezuela and Nicaragua have strengthened their ability to resist US sanctions, while Caracas successfully defeated one of Washington’s harshest migration measures by securing the release of 252 of its citizens who had been incarcerated in El Salvador’s torturous CECOT prison.

    Venezuela’s US-backed far-right opposition is in disarray. The first Trump administration had recognized the “interim presidency” of Juan Guaidó, followed by the Biden administration declaring Edmundo González the winner of Venezuela’s last presidential election. But the current Trump administration has yet to back González, de facto recognizing Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

    Nicaragua’s right-wing opposition is also reeling from a side-effect of Trump’s harsh treatment of migrants – many are returning voluntarily to a country claimed by the opposition to be “unsafe,” while US Homeland Security has even extolled their home country’s recent achievements. And some of Trump’s prominent Cuban-American supporters are now questioning his “maximum pressure” campaign for going too far.

    Troubled waters for the Pink Tide

    The current progressive wave, the so-called Pink Tide, was initiated by Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s landslide victory in 2018. His MORENA Party successor, Claudia Sheinbaum, won by an even greater margin in 2024. Mexico’s first woman president has proven to be perhaps the world’s most dignified and capable sparring partner with the buffoon in the White House, who has threatened tariffs, deportations, military interdictions, and more on his southern neighbor.

    Left-leaning presidents Gabriel Boric in Chile and Gustavo Petro in Colombia are limited to a single term. Both have faced opposition-aligned legislatures and deep-rooted reactionary power blocs. Chilean Communist Party candidate Jeanette Jara is favored to advance to the second-round presidential election in November 2025, but will face a challenging final round if the right unifies, as is likely, around an extremist candidate.

    As the first non-rightist in Colombia’s history, Petro has had a tumultuous presidential tenure. He credibly accuses his former foreign minister of colluding with the US to overthrow him. However, the presidency could well revert to the right in the May 2026 elections.

    Boric, Petro, Uruguay’s Yamandú Orsi, and Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva met in July as the region’s center-left presidents, with an agenda of dealing with Trump, promoting multilateralism, and (we can assume) keeping their distance from the region’s more left-wing governments.

    With shaky popularity ratings, Lula will likely run for reelection in October 2026. As head of the region’s largest economy, Lula plays a world leadership role, chairing three global summits in a year. Yet, with less than a majority legislative backing, Lula has triangulated between Washington and the Global South, often capitulating to US interests (as in his veto of BRICS membership for Nicaragua and Venezuela). Regardless, Trump is threatening Brazil with a crippling 50% export tariff and is blatantly interfering in the trial of former right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, accused of insurrection. So far, Trump’s actions have backfired, arousing anger among Brazilians. Lula commented that Trump was “not elected to be emperor of the world.”

    In 2021, Honduran President Xiomara Castro took over a narcostate subservient to Washington and has tried to push the envelope to the left. Being constitutionally restricted to one term, Castro hands the Libre party candidacy in November’s election to former defense minister Rixi Moncada, who faces a tough contest with persistent US interference.

    Bolivia’s ruling Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) Party is embroiled in a self-destructive internal conflict between former President Evo Morales and his former protégé and current President, Luis Arce. The energized Bolivian right wing is spoiling for the August 17th presidential election.

    Israeli infiltration accompanies US military penetration

    Analyst Joe Emersberger notes: “Today, all geopolitics relates back to Gaza where the imperial order has been unmasked like never before.” Defying Washington, the Hague Group met in Colombia for an emergency summit on Gaza to “take collective action grounded in international law.” On July 16, regional states – Bolivia, Cuba, Colombia, Nicaragua, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – endorsed the pledge to take measures in support of Palestine, with others likely to follow. Brazil will join South Africa’s ICJ complaint against Israel.

    At the other end of the political spectrum are self-described “world’s coolest dictator” Nayib Bukele of El Salvador and confederates Javier Milei of Argentina and Daniel Noboa of Ecuador. As well as cozying up to Trump, they devotedly support Israel, which has been instrumental in enabling the most brutal reactionaries in the region. Noboa duly tells Israel’s Netanyahu that they “share the same enemies.”

    In February, the US Southern Command warned: “Time is not on our side.” The perceived danger is “methodical incursion” into our “neighborhood” by both Russia and China. Indeed, China has become the region’s second-largest trading partner after the US, and even right-wing governments are reluctant to jeopardize their relations with Beijing. The empire’s solution is to “redouble our efforts to nest military engagement,” using humanitarian assistance as “an essential soft power tool.”

    Picking up where Biden left off, Trump has furthered US military penetration, notably in Ecuador, Guyana, Brazil, Panama, and Argentina. The pandemic of narcotics trafficking, itself a product of US-induced demand, has been a Trojan Horse for militarist US intervention in Haiti, Ecuador, Peru, and threatened in Mexico.

    In Panama, President José Mulino’s obeisance to Trump’s ambitions to control the Panama Canal and reduce China’s influence provoked massive protests. Trump’s collaboration in the genocide of Palestinians motivated Petro to declare that Colombia must leave the NATO alliance and keep its distance from “militaries that drop bombs on children.” Colombia had been collaborating with NATO since 2013 and became the only Latin American global partner in 2017.

    Despite Trump’s bluster – what the Financial Times calls “imperial incontinence” – his administration has produced mixed results. While rightist political movements have basked in Trump’s fitful praise, his escalating coercion provokes resentment against Yankee influence. Resistance is growing, with new alliances bypassing Washington. As the empire’s grip tightens, so too does the resolve of those determined to break free from it.

    The post Trump’s Latin American Policies Go South first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.


  • This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • As early as next Tuesday, Congress will vote on two bills that will make it easier for the U.S. government and U.S. arms makers to push weapons out the door to foreign clients more quickly, with less time for congressional scrutiny, and, in some cases, with Congress not even being informed that the sales are happening. At a time when arms sales are a centerpiece of U.S. foreign policy…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev warned on 17 July that Moscow must be prepared to deliver preemptive strikes against the west if necessary.

    Speaking to TASS on the 80th anniversary of the Potsdam Conference, Medvedev said, “The west’s treacherous nature and its warped sense of superiority are still evident. And we should therefore act accordingly, responding in full or even delivering preemptive strikes if need be.”

    Reflecting on the historical lessons of 1945, Medvedev added that the conference – attended by the leaders of the USSR, US, and UK after their victory in World War II – revealed that relations with the west must not be based on illusions.

    The post Medvedev Condemns Western ‘Treachery’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Berlin, July 18, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by a bill under consideration in the Russian State Duma that would introduce fines for accessing or searching for “extremist” online content, threatening to further restrict press freedom and access to information. 

    The bill, which passed its second reading on July 17, 2025, is the “most serious step in censorship and the fight against dissent since 2022,” when lawmakers introduced penalties of up to 15 years in prison for disseminating “fake” news about the Russian army, according to the online independent news outlet The Bell. If lawmakers pass the bill and President Vladimir Putin signs it into law, it would take effect on September 1.

    “Punishing people for seeking information online is a direct barrier to the free flow of information and an assault on access to independent news,” said CPJ Europe and Central Asia Senior Researcher Anna Brakha. “This vaguely worded, fast-tracked bill shows a clear disregard for open debate and create an even more repressive environment for the media and the public.” 

    The bill provides for fines from 3,000 to 5,000 rubles (USD$38 to USD$64) for accessing or searching content that is either included in Russia’s federal list of extremist materials or that calls for or justifies extremist activities.

    Russian authorities maintain a list of over 5,400 banned “extremist” materials, including books, religious texts, songs, and films. To date, while independent media have been widely branded as undesirable and foreign agents, none have been labeled as extremist.

    “Nothing prevents the authorities from declaring media outlets ‘extremists’ — which will allow them to effectively ban reading such publications,” independent media outlet Meduza said, calling the bill a step toward the “criminalization of reading.” 

    A representative from digital rights group Setevye Svobody, who spoke to CPJ on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, told CPJ he expects “the most massive example of chilling effect in the history” of the Russian internet. 

    Fines for reading online articles featuring so-called extremist content “will make tens of millions of users prefer to unsubscribe from the channels and stop visiting sites with information of any unofficial nature,” the representative said. 

    CPJ emailed the State Duma’s press service but did not immediately receive a reply. 


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • In the first six months of his second term, President Donald Trump has demonstrated his love for three things: deals, tariffs, and ultimatums.

    He got to combine these passions during his Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Monday. Only moments after the two leaders announced a new plan to get military aid to Ukraine, Trump issued an ominous 50-day deadline for Russian President Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire. “We’re going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don’t have a deal within 50 days,” Trump told the assembled reporters.

    The threat is unlikely to change Putin’s calculus, however, or bring the conflict to a near-term conclusion.

    The post Trump’s 50-Day Deadline Threat Against Putin Will Backfire appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Three years into Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine is now the most heavily mined country in the world. As United States-led ceasefire negotiations continue to stall, the amount of ordnance buried in Ukrainian soil is only increasing as the war drags on. In April 2025, I embedded with the Ukrainian Association of Humanitarian Demining (UAHD) at an undisclosed location on the outskirts of…

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    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • On July 5th, Bloomberg reported that a BlackRock-administered multibillion-dollar fund for Kiev’s reconstruction, due to be unveiled at a dedicated Ukraine Recovery Conference in Rome July 10th/11th, had been placed on hold at the start of 2025 “due to a lack of interest” among institutional, private, and state financiers. The summit is over, lack of investor enthusiasm persists, and “the project’s future is now uncertain.” It’s just the latest confirmation the West’s long-running mission to carve up Ukraine for profit verges on total disintegration.

    BlackRock’s Ukraine Development Fund has been in the works since May 2023. It was originally envisaged as one of the most ambitious public-private finance collaborations in history, which would rival Washington’s Marshall Plan that rebuilt – and heavily indebted – Western Europe in World War II’s wake.

    The post Ukraine’s Corporate Carve-Up Collapses? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The 2018 Skripal Attack Case

    The current orchestrated Western policy of total Russophobia, directed by Collective West, can be recorded to start by the British Cabinet of Theresa May – the focal servant-dog to US global imperialism, followed by the creation of the War Cabinet of the US President Donald Trump (first administration), was a nothing else than a jumping to the new stage of the post-WWII Cold War (2.0) which was originally started (1.0) by the US and never was over as its main task of total economic, political, and financial subordination or/and occupation of Russia still is not realized. The Russian, at that time just diplomatic, an exodus from the Western jaw was a “punishment for Russia’s alleged nerve gas poisoning of a former Russian/MI6 double-agent, Sergei Skripal (66) and his daughter Yulia (33), who was visiting her father from Moscow”i (March, 2018).

    However, it was quite obvious that “blaming Russia for Skripal attack is similar to ‘Jews poisoning our wells’ in the Middle Ages”.ii In other words, the 2018 Skripal Attack Case was just another Western “false flag” in international relations with a very precise geopolitical purpose – to continue the Cold War 1.0 against revived post-Yeltsin’s Russia. We have to remember that originally American administration started the Cold War 1.0 as it was “the Truman administration (1945−1953) used the myth of Soviet expansionism to mask the nature of American foreign policy, which included the creation of a global system to advance the interests of American capitalism”.iii However, the current Western virus of total Russophobia (the Cold War 2.0) is a natural continuation of historical Western anti-Russian policy, which looked like to be over with the peaceful dismemberment of the USSR in 1989−1991.

    S. P. Huntington’s Warnings and International Relations (IR)

    Samuel P. Huntington was quite clear and correct in his opinion that the foundation of every civilization is based on religion (i.e., on metaphysical irrational beliefs).iv S. P. Huntington’s warnings about the future development of global politics that can take the form of a direct clash of different cultures (in fact, separate and antagonistic civilizations) are, unfortunately, already on the agenda of international relations. Here we came to the crux of the matter in regard to the Western relations with Russia from both historical and contemporary perspectives: the Western civilization, as based on the Western type of Christianity (the Roman Catholicism and all Protestant denominations) has traditional animosity and hostility toward all nations and states of the East Christian (Orthodox) confession. As Russia was and is the biggest and most powerful Christian Orthodox country, the Eurasian geopolitical conflicts between the West and Russia started from the time when the German Teutonic knights and the Sweds from the Baltic were constantly attacking northern Russian territories up to the fateful battle in 1240, which the Sweds lost to the Russian Prince of Novgorod Alexander Nevski at the Battle of Neva. However, only three decades later, the ruler of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Algirdas (1345‒1377), started to occupy the Russian lands – the process to be continued by the Roman Catholic common state of the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania when it launched its confessional-civilizational imperialistic wars against the Grand Duchy of Moscow at the very end of the 14th century; i.e., after 1385 when Poland and Lithuania became united as a personal union of two sovereign states (the Union of Krewo).v

    A Role of the Vatican

    The present-day territories of Ukraine (which at that time did not exist under this name) and Byelorus (Belarus, White Russia) became the first victims of Vatican policy to proselytize the Eastern Slavs. Therefore, the biggest part of present-day Ukraine became occupied and annexed by Lithuania till 1569vi and after the Polish-Lithuanian 1569 Lublin Union by Poland. In the period from 1522 to 1569, there were 63% of the East Slavs lived on the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania out of its total population.vii From the Russian perspective, an aggressive Vatican policy of reconversion of the Christian Orthodox population and their denationalization could be prevented only by military counterattacks to liberate the occupied territories. However, when it happened from the mid-17th century till the end of the 18th century, a huge number of the former Christian Orthodox population had already become Roman Catholics and the Uniates, losing their original national identity.

    A conversion to the Roman Catholicism and making the Union with the Vatican on the territories occupied by the Polish-Lithuanian common state till the end of the 18th century divided the Russian national body into two parts: the Christian Orthodox, who remained to be the Russians and the pro-Western oriented converts who, basically, lost their initial ethnonational identity. This is especially true in Ukraine – a country with the biggest number of Uniates in the world due to the Brest Union signed in 1596 with the Vatican.

    The Uniate Church in (West) Ukraine openly collaborated with the Nazi regime during WWII and for that reason, it was banned after the war till 1989. Nevertheless, it was exactly the Uniate Church in Ukraine which propagated an ideology that the “Ukrainians” were not (Little) Russians but instead a separate nation who are in no ethnolinguistic and confessional connection with the Russians. Therefore, a way was opened to the successful Ukrainization of the Little Russians (and Minor Russia), Ruthenians, and Carpatho-Russians during Soviet (anti-Russian) rule. After the dissolution of the USSR, the Ukrainians became an instrument of the realization of the Western anti-Russian geopolitical interests in Eastern Europe.viii

    The unscrupulous Jesuits became the fundamental West European anti-Russian and anti-Christian Orthodox hawks to propagate the idea that a Christian Orthodox Russia is not belonging to a real (Western) Europe. Due to such Vatican propaganda activity, the West gradually became antagonistic to Russia, and Russian culture was seen as disgusting and inferior, i.e., barbaric, as a continuation of the Byzantine Christian Orthodox civilization. Unfortunately, such a negative attitude toward Russia and the East Christianity is accepted by a contemporary US-led Collective West for whom Russophobia has become an ideological foundation for its geopolitical projects and ambitions.ix Therefore, all real or potential Russia’s supporters became geopolitical enemies of a Pax Americana, like the Serbs, Armenians, Greeks, Byelorussians, etc.

    Western Defeats and Russian Blowback

    A new moment in the West-Russia geopolitical struggles started when the Protestant Sweden became directly involved in the Western confessional-imperialistic wars against Russia in 1700 (the Great Northern War of 1700−1721) which Sweden lost after the Battle of Poltava in 1709 when Russia of Peter the Great finally became a member of the concert of the Great European Powers.x

    A century later, that was a Napoleonic France to take a role in the historical process of “Eurocivilizing” of “schismatic” Russia in 1812, that also finished by the West European fiascoxi, similar to Pan-Germanic warmongers during both world wars.

    However, after 1945 up to the present, the “civilizational” role of the Westernization of Russia is assumed by NATO and the EU. The Collective West, immediately after the dissolution of the USSR, by imposing its client satellite Boris Yeltsin as the President of Russia, achieved an enormous geopolitical achievement around Russia, especially in the territories of the former Soviet Union and the Balkans.

    Nevertheless, the Collective West started to experience a Russian geopolitical blowback from 2001 onward when the B. Yeltsin’s time pro-Western political clients (Russian liberals) became gradually removed from the decision-making positions in Russia’s governmental structures. What a new Russia’s political establishment correctly understood is that a Westernization policy of Russia is nothing else but just an ideological mask for economic-political transformation of the country into the colony of the Collective West led by the US Neocon administrationxii alongside with the task of the US/EU to externalize their own values and norms permanently. This „externalization policy“ is grounded on the thesis of The End of History by Francis Fukuyama:xiii

    “…that the philosophy of economic and political liberalism has triumphed throughout the world, ending the contest between market democracies and centrally planned governance”.xiv

    Therefore, after the formal ending of the Cold War 1.0 in 1989/1990, the fundamental Western global geopolitical project was The West and The Rest, according to which the rest of the world was obliged to accept all fundamental Western values and norms according to the Hegemonic Stability Theory of a unipolar system of the world security.xv Nevertheless, behind such doctrinal unilateralism as a project of the US hegemony in global governance in the new century clearly stands the unipolar hegemonic concept of a Pax Americana, but with Russia and China as the crucial opponents to it.

    Stability Theories and IR

    According to the Hegemonic Stability Theory, a global peace can occur only when one hegemonic center of power (state) acquires enough power to deter all other expansionist and imperialistic ambitions and intentions. The theory is based on a presumption that the concentration of (hyper) power will reduce the chances of a classical world war (but not and local confrontations) as it allows a single hyperpower to maintain peace and manage the system of international relations between the states.xvi Examples of ex-Pax Romana and Pax-Britannica clearly offered support by the American hegemons for an imperialistic idea that (the US-led) unipolarity will bring global peace and, henceforth, inspired the viewpoint that the world in a post-Cold War 1.0 era under a Pax Americana will be stable and prosperous as long as the US global dominance prevails. Therefore, a hegemony, according to this viewpoint, is a necessary precondition for economic order and free trade in a global dimension, suggesting that the existence of a predominant hyperpower state willing and able to use its economic and military power to promote global stability is both a divine and rational order of the day. As a tool to achieve this goal the hegemon has to use a coercive diplomacy based on the ultimatum demand that puts a time limit on the target to comply and a threat of punishment for resistance as, for example, it was a case in January 1999 during the “negotiations” on Kosovo status between the US diplomacy and Yugoslavia’s Government in Rambouillet (France).

    However, in contrast to both the Hegemonic Stability Theory and the Bipolar Stability Theory, a post-Yeltsin Russian political establishment advocates that a multipolar system of international relations is the least war-prone in comparison with all other proposed systems. This Multipolar Stability Theory is based on a concept that a polarized global politics does not concentrate power, as it is supported by the unipolar system, and does not divide the globe into two antagonistic superpower blocs, as in a bipolar system, which promote a constant struggle for global dominance (for example, during the Cold War 1.0). The multipolarity theory perceives polarized international relations as a stable system because it encompasses a larger number of autonomous and sovereign actors in global politics, which as well as giving rise to a greater number of political alliances. This theory is, in essence, presenting a peace-through model of pacifying international relations as it is fundamentally based on counter-balancing relations between the states in the global arena. Under such a system, an aggressive policy is quite hard to implement in reality as it is prevented by the multiple power centers.xvii

    A New Policy of Russia and Cold War 2.0

    A new policy of international relations adopted by Moscow after 2000 is based on a principle of a globe without hegemonic leadership – a policy which started to be implemented at the time when the global power of the US as a post Cold War 1.0 hegemon declines because it makes costly global commitments above ability to fulfill them followed by the immense US trade deficit – even today the cancer of American economy which the current US President desperately wants to heal. The US share of global gross production has been in the process of constant decline since the end of WWII. Another serious symptom of American erosion in international politics is that the US share of global financial reserves has drastically declined, especially in comparison to the Russian and Chinese shares. The US is today the largest world debtor and even the biggest debtor that ever existed in history (36.21 trillion dollars or 124 percent of the GDP), mainly, but not exclusively, due to huge military spending, alongside tax cuts that reduced the US federal revenue. The deficit in the current account balance with the rest of the world (in 2004, for instance, it was $650 billion), the US administration is covering by borrowing from private investors (mostly from abroad) and foreign central banks (most important are those of China and Japan). Therefore, such US financial dependence on foreigners to provide the funds needed to pay the interest on the American public debt leaves the USA extremely vulnerable, especially if China and/or Japan decide to stop buying the US bonds or sell them. Subsequently, the world’s strongest military power is at the same time the greatest global debtor, with China and Japan being direct financial collaborators of the US hegemonic leadership’s policy of a Pax Americana after 1989/1990.

    It is without any doubts that the US foreign policy after 1989/1990 is still unrealistically following the French concept of raison d’état that indicates the Realist justification for policies pursued by state authority, but in the American eyes, first and foremost of these justifications or criteria is the US global hegemony as the best guarantee for the national security, followed by all other interests and associated goals. Therefore, the US foreign policy is still based on a realpolitik concept that is a German term referring to the state foreign policy ordered or motivated by power politics: the strong do what they will, and the weak do what they must. However, the US is becoming weaker and weaker, and Russia and China are more and more becoming stronger and stronger.

    Final Words

    Finally, it seems to be true that such a reality in contemporary global politics and international relations is, unfortunately, not properly understood and recognized by the current US President Donald Trump as he is going to be just another Trojan horse of the US Neocon concept of a Pax Americana followed by the megalomanic Zionist concept of a Greater Israel of “From the River to the River”xviii, and, therefore, there are no real chances to get rid of the US imperialism in the recent future and to establish international relations on a more democratic and multilateral foundation. Therefore, the US-led Western turbo Russophobia since 2014 has already driven the world into a new stage of the post-WWII Cold War–2.0.

    ENDNOTES:

    i Peter Koenig, “Russian Exodus from the West”, Global Research – Centre for Research on Globalization, 2018-03-31: https://www.globalresearch.ca/russian-exodus-from-the-west/5634121.

    ii John Laughland, “Blaming Russia for Skripal Attack is Similar to ‘Jews Poisoning our Wells’ in Middle Ages”, Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity, 2018-03-16: http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2018/march/16/blaming-russia-for-skripal-attack-is-similar-to-jews-poisoning-our-wells-in-middle-ages/.

    iii David Gowland, Richard Dunphy, The European Mosaic, Third Edition, Harlow, England−Pearson Education, 2006, 277.

    iv Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilization and the Remaking of World Order, London: The Free Press, 2002.

    v Zigmantas Kiaupa, Jūratė Kiaupienė, Albinas Kuncevičius, The History of Lithuania Before 1795, Vilnius: Lithuanian Institute of History, 2000, 106‒131.

    vi On the Lithuanian occupation period of the present-day Ukraine, see: [Alfredas Bumblauskas, Genutė Kirkienė, Feliksas Šabuldo (sudarytojai), Ukraina: Lietuvos epocha, 1320−1569, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos centras, 2010].

    vii Ignas Kapleris, Antanas Meištas, Istorijos egzamino gidas. Nauja programa nuo A iki Ž, Vilnius: Leidykla “Briedas”, 2013, 123.

    viii About this issue, see more in [Зоран Милошевић, Од Малоруса до Украјинаца, Источно Сарајево: Завод за уџбенике и наставна средства, 2008].

    ix Срђан Перишић, Нова геополитика Русије, Београд: Медија центар „Одбрана“, 2015, 42−46.

    x David Kirbz, Šiaurės Europa ankstyvaisiais naujaisiais amžiais: Baltijos šalys 1492−1772 metais, Vilnius: Atviros Lietuvos knyga, 2000, 333−363; Peter Englund, The Battle that Shook Europe: Poltava and the Birth of the Russian Empire, London: I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd, 2003.

    xi On Napoleon’s military campaign on Russia in 1812 and its fiasco, see [Paul Britten Austin, The Great Retreat Told by the Survivors, London−Mechanicsburg, PA: Greenhill Books, 1996; Adam Zamoyski, 1812: Napoleon’s Fatal March on Moscow, New York: Harper Press, 2005].

    xii The US-led NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 is only one example of a gangster’s policy of a violation of the international law and the law on war when the civilian objects became legitimate military targets. Therefore, the attack on Serbia’s television station in the downtown of Belgrade on April 23rd, 1999 attracted criticism by many human rights activists as it was apparently selected for bombing as „media responsible for broadcasting propaganda“ [The Independent, April 1st, 2003]. By the same gangsters the same bombing policy was repeated in 2003 in Iraq when the main television station in Baghdad was hit by cruise missiles in March 2003 followed next day by the destruction of the state radio and television station in Basra [A. P. V. Rogers, Law on the Battlefield, Second edition, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004, 82−83]. According to the international law expert Richard Falk, the 2003 Iraq War was a „crime against Peace of the sort punished at the Nuremberg trials“ [Richard Falk, Frontline, India, No. 8, April 12−25th, 2003].

    xiii Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1992.

    xiv Charles W. Kegley, Jr., Eugene R. Wittkopf, World Politics: Trend and Transformation, Tenth edition, USA: Thomson−Wadsworth, 2006, 588; Andrew F. Cooper, Jorge Heine, Ramesh Thakur (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy, New York: Oxford University Press, 2015, 54−55.

    xv David P. Forsythe, Patrice C. McMahon, Andrew Wedeman (eds.), American Foreign Policy in a Globalized World, New York−London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2006, 31−50.

    xvi William C. Wohlforth, „The Stability of a Unipolar World“, International Security, No. 24, 1999, 5−41.

    xvii Charles W. Kegley, Jr., Eugene R. Wittkopf, World Politics: Trend and Transformation, Tenth edition, USA: Thomson−Wadsworth, 2006, 524.

    xviii On the policy of Zionist movement, see [Ilan Pappe, Ten Myths about Israel, London‒New York: Verso, 2024, 23‒49.

    The post Russophobia by the Collective West Opens the Doors of the Cold War 2.0 first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Dmitri Trenin on the intermediate results of the “special diplomatic operation”

    The war will not end in 2025. It will not end after the end of hostilities in Ukraine.

    We need to realize that the current conflict is not about Ukraine as such.

    This is a proxy (so far) war of the West against Russia. And this confrontation itself is part of an ongoing world war, in which the West is fighting to maintain world hegemony. This will be a long war, and the United States, with or without Trump, will remain our adversary. At stake for us in this struggle is not the status of Ukraine, but the existence of Russia. 

    The post The Europeans And The United States Against Russia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Russian counterpart on 10 July that Beijing and Moscow should strengthen strategic coordination to promote peace in West Asia.

    According to a statement by China’s Foreign Ministry, Yi said the two countries should push for a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear issue during a meeting with Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Kuala Lumpur. “Peace cannot be achieved through force, and applying pressure won’t solve problems.”

    Dialogue and negotiations were the solution to the conflict, Yi added.

    The two foreign ministers also discussed China–Russia coordination with the countries comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

    The post China, Russia Vow Coordination To Promote Peace In West Asia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • President Donald Trump thought he had gotten the deal terms and the cover story right, and also the prize for himself (the Nobel Peace Prize ).

    The deal was that under cover of an authorized leak to the press from Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Eldridge Colby, that the US was running out of ammunition for Israel’s war with Iran, for the Ukraine war with Russia, and for US military stocks at their DEFCON  levels,  Trump would pause ammunition deliveries to the regime in Kiev, and then persuade President Vladimir Putin to agree to an immediate ceasefire in exchange.

    That’s the ceasefire which, since February, Trump has been asking Putin to announce at a summit meeting between the two of them. That’s also the fourth ceasefire in the row which Trump has been counting as his personal achievements – between Pakistan and India on May 10; between Iran and Israel on June 23; and between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda on June 27.

    Only the scheme has failed.

    A Moscow source in a position to know explains: “The Russian calculus recognizes the tipping point [for US arms supplies to the Ukraine]. Until then the General Staff will grind away methodically, slowly. Then when the Western supplies run low, we will hit fast and hard. If you total the June attacks, the picture emerges clearly that Putin has chosen the Oreshnik option – without firing it yet  — over compromising on Trump’s terms. The outskirts of Kiev are burning like never before.”

    There are American exceptionalists who insist they thought of this before —  in 1943, in fact, when Walter Lippmann spelled out what has come to be called (by Ivy League professors) the “Lippmann Gap”.  This is no more nor less than the ancient maxim — don’t bite off more than you can chew. But in Lippmann’s verbulation:  “Foreign policy consists in bringing into balance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation’s commitments and the nation’s power. I mean by a foreign commitment an obligation, outside the continental limits of the United States, which may in the last analysis have to be met by waging war. I mean by power the force which is necessary to prevent such a war or to win it if it cannot be prevented. In the term necessary power I include the military force which can be mobilized effectively within the domestic territory of the United States and also the reinforcements which can be obtained from dependable allies.”

    From the Russian point of view, the first two of Trump’s ceasefires have been clumsily concealed rescues for Pakistan and Israel; the Congo-Rwanda terms remain undecided; and the “necessary power” to reverse the defeat of the US, its “dependable allies”, and its proxies in the Ukraine has already been defeated. It won’t be Putin, however, to announce publicly that Trump has no “comfortable power in reserve”.

    That, however, was Putin’s private message to Trump in their telephone call on July 3. “Russia would strive to achieve its goals,” was the way Putin allowed his spokesman to disclose:  “namely the elimination of the well-known root causes that led to the current state of affairs, the bitter confrontation that we are seeing now. Russia will not back down from these goals.”

    This is the reason Trump later acknowledged: “[I] didn’t make any progress with him today at all.”   It’s also the reason Trump beat a retreat  from failure. “I’m very disappointed. Well, it’s not, I just think, I don’t think he’s [Putin] looking to stop. And that’s too bad. This, this fight, this isn’t me. This is Biden’s war.”

    Here are the pieces of the intelligence assessment assembled in Moscow which led to the escalation of drone and missile attacks on Kiev since last Thursday night.

    The first announcement came from the Pentagon on July 1. “The Pentagon has halted shipments of some air defense missiles and other precision munitions to Ukraine due to worries that U.S. weapons stockpiles have fallen too low.”   The sources were authorized to identify Elbridge Colby, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, “after a review of Pentagon munitions stockpiles”. “The Pentagon had been dividing munitions into categories of criticality since February, over concerns that the DOD was using too many air defense munitions in Yemen…Plans were in place to redirect key munitions, including artillery shells, tank shells, and air defense systems, back to the U.S. homeland or to Israel.”

    Source: https://www.politico.com/
    Note the timing, according to Politico’s “three people familiar with the issue…The initial decision to withhold some aid promised during the Biden administration came in early June, according to the people, but is only taking effect now as Ukraine is beating back some of the largest Russian barrages of missiles and drones at civilian targets in Kyiv and elsewhere. The people were granted anonymity to discuss current operations. The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.”

    Colby has been the brains behind the strategy of sequencing Trump’s wars according to the bite-off-and-chew rule.  But he has not been acting alone. He reports to Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg,  a Jewish financier of Trump’s campaigns whose wealth has been accumulated in part from the US defence industry and from his one-time stake in Israel’s largest bank, Bank Leumi.

    The Colby-Feinberg idea was not to admit there was a “Lippmann gap”, but instead to persuade Trump the Israel war should take priority over the Ukraine war;   and that if that choice was made public, the Jewish lobby would prevail over the Ukraine lobby in supporting the president. Trump was also persuaded to acknowledge publicly there is a domestic shortfall of weapons, and in private get Putin to accept the ceasefire Trump had been promoting since their first telephone call on February 12.

    Trump dutifully announced at the NATO summit on June 25: “we’re going to see if we can make some [arms] available, they’re very hard to get. They [Ukraine] do want to have the anti-missile missiles, as they call them the Patriots,  and we’re going to see if we can make some available. You know, they’re very hard to get. We need them, too. We were supplying them to Israel and they’re very effective. 100 percent effective.  Hard to believe how effective. And they do want that more than any other thing, as you probably know.”

    Trump then tried with Putin on the telephone on July 3. He “once again raised the issue of ending the hostilities as soon as possible,” Putin’s spokesman Yury Ushakov confirmed  Trump’s ceasefire pitch in the Kremlin read-out.

    But Putin said no ceasefire now. “In turn, Vladimir Putin noted that we still continued the search for a political, negotiated solution to the conflict…the elimination of the well-known root causes that led to the current state of affairs…Russia will not back down from these goals.”

    “I’m not happy about that,” Trump said five hours later. “No, I didn’t make any progress with him today at all.”

    Another hour went by and Trump repeated:  “Yeah, very disappointed with the conversation I had today with President Putin, ’cause I don’t think he’s there. I don’t think he’s there.”

    In Moscow an official source noted: “He is not telling why Zelensky is not there, not signing on the terms.”

    Trump followed on the morning of July 4 in a telephone call with Vladimir Zelensky to discuss new Patriot missile and other arms deliveries to the Ukraine.

    Source: https://rollcall.com/factbase/trump/transcript/donald-trump-press-gaggle-after-air-force-one-arrival-july-4-2025/ 

    After the call with Zelensky, Trump was uncharacteristically silent. Zelensky did all the talking instead. “We spoke about opportunities in air defence and agreed that we will work together to strengthen protection of our skies. We have also agreed to a meeting between our teams. We had a detailed conversation about defence industry capabilities and joint production. We are ready for direct projects with the United States and believe this is critically important for security, especially when it comes to drones and related technologies.”

    Source: https://www.kyivpost.com/post/55728 

    “We also touched on mutual procurement and investment,” Zelensky added — “we exchanged views on the diplomatic situation and joint work with the U.S. and other partners.”

    This was a reference to proposals from German Chancellor Friedrich Merz to run down his remaining stocks of Patriot missiles and their radar and launch batteries; send them to Kiev; and buy more from the US.  The list of US arms shipments which have been halted reportedly include 155mm artillery rounds, Patriot air defence systems, Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System, Stinger, AIM-7 and Hellfire missiles.

    As the Kremlin interpreted the call, there was no sign from Trump that he was asking or telling  Zelensky to accept any of the Russian terms which have been tabled in Istanbul.

    At the State Department, spokesman Tammy Bruce stumbled awkwardly over what to admit was the Feinberg-Colby plan which Trump had accepted, and what alternatives remained for the Ukraine. The decision-making had come from the Pentagon, not from State, Bruce claimed. She then read out from a prepared script quoting a White House press release and a statement from Colby.    “We don’t make decisions about the shipping of weapons,” Bruce said. “The DoD statement made clear that they have robust options as we continue to work to assist Ukraine when it comes to the options they might have from the DoD, and I don’t doubt that. So we should, I think, be cautious about judging the nature of what has just occurred, considering our commitment that remains for the country of Ukraine.”

    Left: State Department statement by Tammy Bruce. Right, Defense Department spokesman Sean Parnell reads out prepared script. For more on the gap between DoD and State, read this.  

    “A capability review is being conducted,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell read out, “to ensure US military aid aligns with our defense priorities, and we will not be providing any updates to specific quantities or types of munitions being provided to Ukraine, or the timelines associated with these transfers,” he said. “We see this as a common sense pragmatic step …to evaluate what munitions are sent and where. But we want to be very clear about this last point. Let it be known that our military has everything that it needs to conduct any mission anywhere, anytime, all around the world.”

    In fact, as Colby said, the “capability review” had already concluded and Feinberg had agreed with the White House in early June —  before Israel launched its war on Iran on June 13.   As the US and Israel fired far more ordnance at Iran than Colby and Feinberg had anticipated, they became nervous at the backlash this caused at State and National Security Council. “The Department of Defense continues,” Colby told the New York Post,  “to provide the President with robust options to continue military aid to Ukraine, consistent with his goal of bringing this tragic war to an end. At the same time, the Department is rigorously examining and adapting its approach to achieving this objective while also preserving US forces’ readiness for Administration defense priorities. Department of Defense leadership works as a cohesive and smoothly-running team under the leadership of Secretary of Defense Hegseth. This is yet another attempt to portray division that does not exist…America’s potential adversaries know all of this and are acting accordingly.”

    Putin has acknowledged publicly there has been no movement from Washington or Kiev towards the Russian end-of-war terms. “These [Russian, US-Ukrainian] are two absolutely opposing memorandums,” he told the press, “but that is precisely why talks are set up and held – to find ways to bring positions closer. The fact that they were diametrically opposed does not seem surprising to me, either. I would not like to go into details, as I believe it would be counterproductive – even harmful – to get ahead of the talks.”

    From Ushakov’s read-out of the July 3 call, it is clear Trump and Putin were unable to agree on a date for a new round of Istanbul negotiations. “The two presidents will naturally continue communicating and will have another conversation soon,” Ushakov reported.   This is Russian for don’t call me, I’ll call you.

    The General Staff then launched its largest air attack on Kiev since the war began, continuing the operation from the night of July 4 through the night of July 5. The majority of the weapons used were Russian and Iranian drones. According to Boris Rozhin, the leading military blogger in Moscow,  “it is not entirely clear how the supply of missiles for the Patriot air defence system — if the United States will allow them — will save Ukraine from the growing flow of  Gerans [and Gerberas ]. Shooting down the Geran heroes with Patriot missiles is absolutely pointless from an economic point of view.” July 4 Min 22:54.

    Oleg Tsarev, a leading Ukrainian opposition politician based in Crimea, commented “several thoughts about the termination of the United States’ supply of some weapons to Kiev. This is certainly great news, but we should not forget that, firstly, we are not talking about stopping the supply of all weapons, but only about some of the names, and secondly, the rear of the Ukrainian Armed Forces is the entire European Union, all Western countries, on which we do not strike.  And thirdly, Ukraine is largely holding the front with drones and electronic warfare, and with the supply of these components they have no problems and none is foreseen.”

    Source: https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/russian-drone-attack-triggers-fire-roof-apartment-block-officials-say-2025-07-03/ 

    Map of Russian air attacks on the evening of July 4 -- source: https://t.me/boris_rozhin/171383
    For the July 5 map, click: https://t.me/boris_rozhin/171467 

    The Moscow consensus now is to escalate westwards from the front on the ground, and by air attack on Kiev, and wait for Trump. “Either Trump agrees on fresh direct shipments, or he will pretend that indirect shipments are a compromise, or he will abandon Zelensky to his fate. So we talk peace and keep moving on all fronts, keep hitting everything military. It is fast reaching the point where even if there was no Israel sector, Iran sector, Yemen sector, the US cannot save Ukraine. The US and Europe certainly can’t defeat Russia. That’s the calculus.”

    The post Tipping Point first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have spoken by telephone numerous times since the former reassumed office seven months ago. Not much appears to have been  accomplished by way of these exchanges, some of which have been lengthy, according to the accounts Washington and Moscow have provided afterward.

    No progress toward a durable settlement to end the war in Ukraine. Talk and desultory diplomatic contacts with a view to repairing the profligate damage successive American administrations have done to U.S.–Russian relations, but no substantive advances. O.K., it is what it is, as we say. But there was something singularly conclusive about the telephone conversation the U.S. and Russian leaders had last Thursday.

    The post Trump Dead-Ends Putin appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and forced labour among accusations upheld by court in judgment

    Russia has committed flagrant and unprecedented abuses of human rights since it invaded Ukraine in 2014, including extrajudicial killings, sexual violence and forced labour, the European court of human rights has found.

    The court’s grand chamber unanimously held that between 11 May 2014 and 16 September 2022, when Russia ceased to be a party to the European convention on human rights it had committed “manifestly unlawful conduct … on a massive scale”.

    Indiscriminate military attacks.

    Summary executions of civilians and Ukrainian military personnel.

    Torture, including the use of rape as a weapon of war.

    Unlawful and arbitrary detention of civilians.

    Unjustified displacement and transfer of civilians.

    Intimidation, harassment and persecution of all religious groups other than adherents of the historically Moscow-aligned Ukrainian Orthodox church.

    Intimidation and violence against journalists and new laws prohibiting and penalising the dissemination of information in support of Ukraine.

    Forcible dispersal by the Russian military of peaceful protests in occupied towns and cities.

    Destruction, looting and expropriation of property.

    Suppression of the Ukrainian language in schools and indoctrination of Ukrainian schoolchildren.

    Transfer to Russia, and in many cases, the adoption there of Ukrainian children.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • As lethal threats proliferate on the modern-day battlefield, it is imperative that armoured vehicles utilise a variety of self-protection means to improve their level of survivability. “If you can be seen, you can be hit; if you are hit, you can be killed.” This military adage as taken on increasing importance with the fielding of […]

    The post Passive and Active Combat Vehicle Protection appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • These past thirty years, the proponents of the Unipolar World have proceeded to methodically dismantle the norms, principles and diplomatic usages to such an extent that contemporary international relations are characterized by social media postings.

    First, UN resolutions have been construed to provide a veneer of legality to wars of choice against UN Member-States such as Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

    These gross violations of AA 2(4) of the UN Charter proceeded out of a deliberate intent to shirk the core principles of the UN Charter such as respect for national sovereignty and the peaceful resolution of international disputes.

    The post Are We Witnessing The Collapse Of International Law? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • At the 17th BRICS Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro from July 6 to 7, 2025, the bloc’s leaders issued a declaration reaffirming the bloc’s central role as a representative voice of the Global South.

    However, the declaration does not mention the word “genocide” when referring to the Israeli massacre of the Palestinian population, and despite condemning unilateral sanctions, it fails to mention one of the countries that has suffered the greatest impact from them: Venezuela, a strategic ally of China and Russia, two of the founding countries of the BRICS.

    In this regard, the final declaration condemns “the imposition of unilateral coercive measures contrary to international law” and denounces that such measures “have far-reaching negative implications for human rights, including the rights to development, health and food security of the general population of the affected states.”

    The post What The 17th BRICS Summit Declaration Says And Omits appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • After defence ministers representing their countries at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) were unable to adopt a joint statement at the end of their talks on June 26, several rumours regarding the meeting were viral on social media. One of the viral claims is that Russia signed a joint SCO statement supporting Pakistan. Another claim suggested that a closed-door meeting was carried out without India.

    Formed in 2001, the SCO is a grouping of 10 countries including China, Russia, India, Pakistan, and Iran. The defence ministers’ meeting took place in China’s Qingdao ahead of the upcoming annual summit.

    On June 29, X user @TheDailyCPEC claimed that Russia had signed the joint SCO statement. At the time of this article being written, the post had a million views. (Archive)

    X user @NavCom24 had also shared the viral claim that Russia signed the SCO statement. However, it was later deleted. (Archive)

    Meanwhile, X user @thinking_panda claimed that China, Iran, Russia and Pakistan agreed to a closed-door SCO meeting without inviting India. (Archive

    Several other X users, including @DefenseDiplomat, @BigWayneConley and @qazafi197476, shared similar claims. (Archives: 1, 2, 3)

    Click to view slideshow.

    We also found an Instagram post, which made similar claims. The caption reads, “A high-level NSA meeting is scheduled among China, Iran, Russia, and Pakistan under the SCO framework, but India has not been invited.”

     

    View this post on Instagram

     

    A post shared by Corporate Wire (@corpwire)

     

    Fact Check

    According to several media reports, the SCO joint statement was not adopted because Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh refused to endorse it as it did not mention the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, in which 26 civilians were shot dead by terrorists. India has blamed Pakistan for sheltering terrorist factions responsible for the attack. Pakistan has denied the allegations.

     

    According to Randhir Jaiswal, spokesperson from the Ministry of External Affairs, a joint statement was not adopted at the SCO. “Certain member countries could not reach consensus on certain issues, and hence, the document could not be finalised… India wanted concerns and terrorism reflected in the document, which was not acceptable to one particular country.”

    We found no news reports mentioning any other country, such as Russia, signing the SCO document.

    We then looked at the SCO charter available on the site of India’s Ministry of External Affairs. Article 16 on the procedures on taking decisions says that SCO decisions are taken by agreement without voting as long as no member objects. It says:

    “The SCO bodies shall take decisions by agreement without vote and their decisions shall be considered adopted if no member State has raised objections during its consideration (consensus), except for the decisions on suspension of membership or expulsion from the Organization that shall be taken by “consensus minus one vote of the member State concerned.”

    This meant that SCO statements are adopted by unanimous consensus. But to be sure, we also reached out to a journalist who has covered diplomatic and strategic affairs for over a decade to understand how countries adopt statements at the SCO. This journalist, who did not wish to be identified, clarified that the “signing” on the draft statement is only if all members agree to adopt it, which was not the case in this SCO defence ministers’ meeting. So, if one member state does not agree, there is no way that some member states sign the document and others do not. It is either adopted as a whole by all or it’s not, he reiterated.

    So, the claim that Russia ‘signed’ the joint SCO statement supporting Pakistan’s position over India is not true.

    Also, the SCO published a report on the defence ministers’ meet on June 26 in which Indian defence minister Rajnath Singh can also be seen among the representatives of the invited nations. This debunks the claim that there was a closed-door SCO meeting at which India was not invited.

    Also, one of the claims, which uses an image of the leaders of China, Pakistan, Russia and Iran is actually from a meeting in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, in 2023 and not the recent SCO meet in China.

     

    To sum up, the viral claims that India was not invited to a closed-door SCO meeting or that Russia signed a joint SCO statement favouring Pakistan are baseless.

    The post After SCO defence ministers’ meet, false claims of India being left out and Russia signing joint statement go viral appeared first on Alt News.


    This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Prantik Ali.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The Indian Navy (IN) commissioned two different types of frigate on 1 July, one built in Russia and the other in India. Notably, this could be the last time India resorts to buying naval vessels constructed overseas. INS Tamal, a Project 1135.6 frigate bearing the pennant number ‘F71’, had been constructed at the Yantar Shipyard […]

    The post Delivery of two INS Udaygiri in one day marks a watershed for India appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Officials in Kiev are seeking clarification on a US decision to halt a delivery of air defense munitions to Ukraine, which a White House spokesperson said was taken to “put America’s interests first.”

    “We’re now checking with the Americans what’s really happening,” an anonymous Ukrainian official was cited as saying by the Washington Post on 2 July.

    Other Ukrainian officials were “silent or declined to answer, and seem to have been caught by surprise by the news,” the report added.

    The US Department of Defense announced halting shipments of air defense missiles and other precision munitions over concerns that stockpiles were running low.

    The post Ukraine Demands Answers After US Halts Missile Shipments appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • In March, The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, began receiving top secret messages from national security officials in the Trump administration after he’d been inadvertently added to an internal Signal chat. Many of those same officials oversaw recent military strikes against Iran. On this week’s More To The Story, host Al Letson sits down with Goldberg to discuss what “Signalgate” taught him about the Trump White House and his concerns for the future of American democracy.

    Producer: Josh Sanburn, with help from Steven Rascón, Artis Curiskis, and Julia Haney | Editor: Kara McGuirk-Allison | Theme music: Fernando Arruda and Jim Briggs | Digital producer: Nikki Frick | Interim executive producers: Brett Myers and Taki Telonidis | Executive editor: James West | Host: Al Letson 

    Listen: In Fallujah, We Destroyed Parts of Ourselves (Reveal)

    Read: The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans (The Atlantic)

    Read: All the Ways Trump Officials Are Downplaying the “War Plans” Group Chat (Mother Jones)

    Read: New Report: Trump Administration Just Got Hit With Another Signal Chat Scandal (Mother Jones)

    Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

    This post was originally published on Reveal.

  • By the end of the annual meeting of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in The Hague in June 2025, it became clear that everything was about money. In fact, the final communiqué was perhaps the shortest of any NATO meeting – only five points, two about money and one to thank the Netherlands for hosting the summit. The Hague Declaration was only 427 words, whereas in the previous year, the Washington Declaration was 5,400 words and ran to 44 paragraphs. This time, there was not the granular detail about this or that threat, nor the long and detailed assessments of the war in Ukraine and how NATO supports that war without limit (“Ukraine’s future is in NATO”, the alliance said in 2024, a position no longer repeated in the brief statement of 2025).

    The post The North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s Hallucinations appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • At this week’s NATO summit in The Hague, leaders announced an alarming new goal: push military spending to 5 percent of nations’ GDP by 2035.

    Framed as a response to rising global threats, particularly from Russia and terrorism, the declaration was hailed as a historic step.

    But in truth, it represents a major step backwards — away from addressing the urgent needs of people and the planet, and toward an arms race that will impoverish societies while enriching weapons contractors.

    This outrageous 5 percent spending target didn’t come out of nowhere — it’s the direct result of years of bullying by U.S. President Donald Trump.

    The post NATO’s Obscene Five Percent Pledge appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Iran’s Guardian Council ratified a bill on 26 June to suspend all cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

    The move came a day after parliament overwhelmingly approved the measure in response to Israeli and US attacks on the country’s nuclear sites.

    France and Russia have both warned against the move, urging Iran to maintain cooperation with the UN agency and avoid escalating the nuclear standoff further.

    The law halts all IAEA inspections, oversight, and reporting, and will remain in effect until Iran receives guarantees for the safety of its nuclear facilities and personnel, along with recognition of its enrichment rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

    The post Iran Ratifies Ending Cooperation With United Nations Nuclear Watchdog appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.