The Peace In Ukraine Coalition is cautiously optimistic about emerging possibilities for ending the war in Ukraine. It is a good thing that the U.S. and Russia are talking. An end to the hostility between the two nuclear superpowers would bring a sigh of relief to people all over the world.
We do not know if the Trump administration, Russia and Ukraine will be able to achieve a lasting peace in Ukraine. We encourage diplomacy, however, rather than fear it. We want the killing to stop as soon as possible. For three years we have been calling for a ceasefire, negotiations and an end to US weapons shipments that fuel the war.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signaled that he’s open to a ceasefire in Ukraine but that he has “questions” about the 30-day US-Ukraine proposal that need to be discussed.
“The idea itself is the right one, and we definitely support it,” Putin said, according to The New York Times. “But there are questions that we need to discuss, and I think that we need to talk them through with our American colleagues and partners.”
The Russian leader listed potential conditions for a 30-day truce, including a guarantee that Ukraine wouldn’t be supplied with more weapons.
China, Russia, and Iran released a joint statement on 14 March demanding an end to “unlawful” US sanctions against the Islamic Republic after meetings in Beijing between the three countries, which were aimed at jumpstarting stalled nuclear talks between Tehran and Washington.
The three countries “emphasized the necessity of terminating all unlawful unilateral sanctions” after talks hosted by Beijing on Friday morning, according to the joint statement read out by Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaxou.
“The three countries reiterated that political and diplomatic engagement and dialogue based on the principle of mutual respect remains the only viable and practical option in this regard,” read the joint statement.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry revealed on 12 March that Beijing will host high-level talks with Russia and Iran this week for negotiations on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear energy program.
Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu will chair the tripartite summit scheduled for Friday. Joining him will be Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi to “exchange views on Iran’s nuclear activities and regional security issues,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning stated on Wednesday.
A spokesman from Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the talks in Beijing would focus on “developments related to the nuclear issue and the lifting of sanctions.”
The race to ReArm Europe showed no signs of slowing during a debate in the European Parliament on Tuesday, as political representatives across the spectrum threw their weight behind the military expansion plans of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa. The only occasional rebuke from centrist and right-wing parties was that the proposal doesn’t go far enough in light of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and the widening disconnect between his administration and European governments.
This would be the first road bridge between these two allies, allowing trucks and buses to transfer goods and people. There is already a rail bridge between the two countries, which recently have been strengthening ties.
South Korean firm SI Analytics announced that it captured the photos on March 3, and they showed that preparatory work had begun for an 830-meter (900-yard) section of road, including the bridge over the frozen river in the northeastern part of North Korea.
Experts said that when completed, the bridge will likely boost trade and tourism in North Korea, and possibly increase Moscow’s influence in the region.
On the Russian side of the border, the satellite images show that preliminary work for the bridge reaches less than 300 meters (330 yards) from the land.
A yellow structure, believed to be a pillar that would hold up the bridge, can be seen on the frozen surface of the river. Additionally, construction materials can be seen in a staging area on the Russian side.
Work proceeds on a new Tumen River bridge linking North Korea and Russia, March 3, 2025.(PleiadesNEO imagery with analysis by SI Analytics)
“The groundwork will be completed before the river thaws, with the actual bridge pillars being installed in the spring,” SI Analytics said.
Meanwhile, on the North Korean side, construction is underway on the road that would connect to the bridge. It appears that the ground has been compacted, but the road has yet to be paved. Heavy equipment like bulldozers, trucks and smaller cars can be seen at the construction site.
Moscow selected contracting firm TonnelYuzhStroy LLC, to oversee design and construction of the bridge, with a deadline for completion set at Dec. 31, 2026, media outlet Interfax.ru reported.
“Although the Russian government has allocated a two-year construction period, it seems that the rush to complete the groundwork even in the bitter cold is intended to show ‘tangible results’ in accordance with the demands of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” SI Analytics said.
North Korea observers said that the construction of the bridge would be a boon for overland shipping between North Korea and Russia, as only one other bridge connecting the two countries exists, and it is only for trains.
The new bridge will contribute to North Korea’s economic growth, Joung Eunlee, a research fellow at the Seoul-based Korea Institute for National Unification, told RFA Korean.
“Land routes can actively transport much more logistics and people than railways,” she said. “If a bridge is built between North Korea and Russia, then the volume of goods transported will be much larger than railways, the transport time will be faster, and the volume of trade will likely increase.”
Quid pro quo?
The bridge is likely being built in return for North Korean military support of Russia in its war with Ukraine, said Bruce Bennett of the U.S.-based RAND Corporation.
“Creating a new bridge would be a direct way for Russia to increase trade with North Korea,” he said. “I believe there is no doubt that this is, at least, a partial payoff to North Korea.”
The new bridge is likely to lead to increased economic, social and military exchanges, and could weaken the effectiveness of sanctions on North Korea over its nuclear ambitions, SI analytics said. Additionally it could reorganize the balance of power in the region, increasing Russian influence at the expense of Chinese.
“China’s response will likely to be a key variable going forward,” SI Analytics said.
But the overall effect of the new bridge could also be relatively mild, Kim Young-hee, from the Institute for North Korean Studies, at Dongguk University in South Korea, told RFA.
“It would have an economic effect, but North Korea would require a lot of travel by train or car to enable trade with Russia,” she said. “Geographically, China is better. Russia is far away, so transportation costs are higher than to trade with China.”
She said that trading with China was more cost effective, so Pyongyang would likely still trade primarily with Beijing.
Translated by Claire S Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Cheon Soram for RFA Korean.
Europe’s resistance to America’s rapprochement with Russia and peace efforts for Ukraine means stagnation which will only hinder its development towards a more autonomous structure.
Another point of Hahn’s piece is made in his discussion about the future configuration of the government in Kiev. It is a warning to those who want to remove Zelenski:
Despite Zelenskiy’s weakened position domestically and internationally, this at least partially illegitimate president may be the last or next to last surviving pillar of the Maidan regime and the Ukrainian state. For all his narcissism, egoism, corruption, and mounting authoritarianism, Zelenskiy currently holds the Ukrainian elite together and is the face of Ukraine abroad, still well-liked in Europe. He remains a figure that minimally satisfies all the various factions in Ukrainian politics and is able to hold off opposition elements, many of which he has emasculated by banning parties and media and by either forcing their leaders into exile or arresting them (e.g., former President Petro Poroshenko and Viktor Medvedchuk).
With U.S.-Russia tensions as dangerously high as they’ve been since the worst days of the Cold War, there is potential new evidence that Russia was not behind a hack of the Democratic National Committee, although Congress and the U.S. mainstream media accept the unproven allegation of Russia’s guilt as indisputable fact.
The possible new evidence comes in the form of a leaked audiotape of veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in which Hersh is heard to say that not Russia, but a DNC insider, was the source of the Democratic emails published by WikiLeaks just before the start of the Democratic National Convention in late July 2016.
Woman at rally supporting peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Berlin, Germany. (Photo: Reuters)
When European Union leaders met in Brussels on February 6 to discuss the war in Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron called this time “a turning point in history.” Western leaders agree that this is an historic moment when decisive action is needed, but what kind of action depends on their interpretation of the nature of this moment.
Is this the beginning of a new Cold War between the U.S., NATO and Russia or the end of one? Will Russia and the West remain implacable enemies for the foreseeable future, with a new iron curtain between them through what was once the heart of Ukraine? Or can the United States and Russia resolve the disputes and hostility that led to this war in the first place, so as to leave Ukraine with a stable and lasting peace?
Some European leaders see this moment as the beginning of a long struggle with Russia, akin to the beginning of the Cold War in 1946, when Winston Churchill warned that “an iron curtain has descended” across Europe.
On March 2, echoing Churchill, European Council President Ursula von der Leyen declared that Europe must turn Ukraine into a “steel porcupine.” President Zelenskyy has said he wants up to 200,000 European troops on the eventual ceasefire line between Russia and Ukraine to “guarantee” any peace agreement, and insists that the United States must provide a “backstop,” meaning a commitment to send U.S. forces to fight in Ukraine if war breaks out again.
Russia has repeatedly said it won’t agree to NATO forces being based in Ukraine under any guise. “We explained today that the appearance of armed forces from the same NATO countries, but under a false flag, under the flag of the European Union or under national flags, does not change anything in this regard,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on February 18. “Of course this is unacceptable to us.”
But the U.K. is persisting in a campaign to recruit a “coalition of the willing,” the same term the U.S. and U.K. coined for the list of countries they persuaded to support the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. In that case, only Australia, Denmark and Poland took small parts in the invasion, Costa Rica publicly insisted on being removed from the list, and the term was widely lampooned as the “coalition of the billing” because the U.S. recruited so many countries to join it by promising them lucrative foreign aid deals.
Far from the start of a new Cold War, President Trump and other leaders see this moment as more akin to the end of the original Cold War, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik in Iceland in 1986 and began to bridge the divisions caused by 40 years of Cold War hostility.
Like Trump and Putin today, Reagan and Gorbachev were unlikely peacemakers. Gorbachev had risen through the ranks of the Soviet Communist Party to become its General Secretary and Soviet Premier in March 1985, in the midst of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and he didn’t begin to withdraw Soviet forces from Afghanistan until 1988. Reagan oversaw an unprecedented Cold War arms build-up, a U.S.-backed genocide in Guatemala and covert and proxy wars throughout Central America. And yet Gorbachev and Reagan are now widely remembered as peacemakers.
While Democrats deride Trump as a Putin stooge, in his first term in office Trump was actually responsible for escalating the Cold War with Russia. After the Pentagon had milked its absurd, self-fulfilling “War on Terror” for trillions of dollars, it was Trump and his psychopathic Defense Secretary, General “Mad Dog” Mattis, who declared the shift back to strategic competition with Russia and China as the Pentagon’s new gravy train in their 2018 National Defense Strategy. It was also Trump who lifted President Obama’s restrictions on sending offensive weapons to Ukraine.
Trump’s head-spinning about-turn in U.S. policy has left its European allies with whiplash and reversed the roles they each have played for generations. France and Germany have traditionally been the diplomats and peacemakers in the Western alliance, while the U.S. and U.K. have been infected with a chronic case of war fever that has proven resistant to a long string of military defeats and catastrophic impacts on every country that has fallen prey to their warmongering.
In 2003, France’s Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin led the opposition to the invasion of Iraq in the UN Security Council. France, Germany and Russia issued a joint statement to say that they would “not let a proposed resolution pass that would authorize the use of force. Russia and France, as permanent members of the Security Council, will assume all their responsibilities on this point.”
At a press conference in Paris with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, French President Jacques Chirac said, “Everything must be done to avoid war… As far as we’re concerned, war always means failure.”
As recently as 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, it was once again the U.S. and U.K. that rejected and blocked peace negotiations in favor of a long war, while France, Germany and Italy continued to call for new negotiations, even as they gradually fell in line with the U.S. long war policy.
Former German Chancellor Schröder took part in the peace negotiations in Turkey in March and April 2022, and flew to Moscow at Ukraine’s request to meet with Putin. In an interview with Berliner Zeitung in 2023, Schröder confirmed that the peace talks only failed “because everything was decided in Washington.”
With Biden still blocking new negotiations in 2023, one of the interviewers asked Schröder “Do you think you can resume your peace plan?”
Schröder replied, “Yes, and the only ones who can initiate this are France and Germany… Macron and Scholz are the only ones who can talk to Putin. Chirac and I did the same in the Iraq war. Why can’t support for Ukraine be combined with an offer of talks to Russia? The arms deliveries are not a solution for eternity. But no one wants to talk. Everyone sits in trenches. How many more people have to die?”
Since 2022, President Macron and a Thatcherite team of iron ladies – European Council President von der Leyen; former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock; and Estonia’s former prime minister Kaja Kallas, now the EU’s foreign policy chief – have promoted a new militarization of Europe, egged on from behind the scenes by European and U.S. arms manufacturers.
Has the passage of time, the passing of the World War II generation and the distortion of history washed away the historical memory of two world wars from a continent that was destroyed by war only 80 years ago? Where is the next generation of French and German diplomats in the tradition of de Villepin and Schröder today? How can sending German tanks to fight in Ukraine, and now in Russia itself, fail to remind Russians of previous German invasions and solidify support for the war? And won’t the call for Europe to confront Russia by moving from a “welfare state to a warfare state” only feed the rise of the European hard right?
So are the new European militarists reading the historical moment correctly? Or are they jumping on the bandwagon of a disastrous Cold War that could, as Biden and Trump have warned, lead to World War III?
When Trump’s foreign policy team met with their Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia on February 18, ending the war in Ukraine was the second part of the three-part plan they agreed on. The first was to restore full diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia, and the third was to work on a series of other problems in U.S.-Russian relations.
The order of these three stages is interesting, because, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted, it means that the negotiations over Ukraine will be the first test of restored relations between the U.S. and Russia.
If the negotiations for peace in Ukraine are successful, they can lead to further negotiations over restoring arms control treaties, nuclear disarmament and cooperation on other global problems that have been impossible to resolve in a world stuck in a zombie-like Cold War that powerful interests would not allow to die.
It was a welcome change to hear Secretary Rubio say that the post-Cold War unipolar world was an anomaly and that now we have to adjust to the reality of a multipolar world. But if Trump and his hawkish advisers are just trying to restore U.S. relations with Russia as part of a “reverse Kissinger” scheme to isolate China, as some analysts have suggested, that would perpetuate America’s debilitating geopolitical crisis instead of solving it.
The United States and our friends in Europe have a new chance to make a clean break from the three-way geopolitical power struggle between the United States, Russia and China that has hamstrung the world since the 1970s, and to find new roles and priorities for our countries in the emerging multipolar world of the 21st Century.
We hope that Trump and European leaders can recognize the crossroads at which they are standing, and the chance history is giving them to choose the path of peace. France and Germany in particular should remember the wisdom of Dominique de Villepin, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder in the face of U.S. and British plans for aggression against Iraq in 2003.
This could be the beginning of the end of the permanent state of war and Cold War that has held the world in its grip for more than a century. Ending it would allow us to finally prioritize the progress and cooperation we so desperately need to solve the other critical problems the whole world is facing in the 21st Century. As General Milley said back in November 2022 when he called for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, we must “seize the moment.”
Apparently, the greatest battles are fought within ourselves, and I can kind of run with that right now.
On one hand, you have the ex-comedy guy that somehow ended up in charge of a country with a bit of a Nazi problem, Voldemort Zelenskyy.
President Zelenskyy may well do something for Home Counties women of a certain age, but I’m always going to be a tad sceptical of a man that said he wants his country to become a “big Israel”.
Ukraine and Zelensky: no friends of ours
Part of this drive to become a big Israel involves “conscription squads” descending on towns and cities across Ukraine, searching for men between the ages of 25 and 60, KIDNAPPING them, and forcing them to sign up to stand in front of Putin’s army.
I still see a few lost souls on the left with a Ukrainian flag next to their social media user names. Honestly, Ukraine and Zelenskyy are no friends of ours, although they do have a deep and intimate relationship with the British tax payer.
May I remind you, Zelenskyy described the fugitive leader of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, as the greatest statesman of our times.
Child killer, ethnic cleanser, tyrant, evil genocidal murderer — add one of your own if you like — but greatest statesman of our times? Fuck off.
Then on the other hand, you have the greatest threat to world peace since himself, a Hillbilly MAGA fanatic masquerading as a vice president, and the world’s richest person egging them on from the sidelines.
President Donald Trump definitely doesn’t do anything for Home Counties women of a certain age, but I have absolutely no scepticism towards Trump, because he makes no secret of his desire to turn Gaza into a rich (white) man’s paradise.
Trump: truly evil
What can I say about Trump that hasn’t already been said?
Robert De Niro, an actor that is entirely familiar with portraying violent and dangerous characters, said of Trump:
I’ve spent a lot of time studying bad men. I’ve examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty. Yet there’s something different about Donald Trump. When I look at him, I don’t see a bad man. Truly. I see an evil one.
So there you have it. Two cheeks of the same, yet entirely different arse.
While some on the left will applaud Trump for cutting out the supply of American arms to Ukraine, let us not forget the very same American idiot is arming Israel to “finish the job”, in Gaza.
Don’t get me wrong, president Zelenskyy got exactly what he deserved. I’m regularly sickened to see European leaders emptying their respective countries’ coffers to fund and fuel further death and destruction.
Did anyone ask you how you felt about cuts to vital public services to fund a conflict in a former Soviet state? Nor me.
Take from the pensioners to give to Ukraine
What the Labour Party takes from Britain’s poorest pensioners with one hand, they give to Zelenskyy to fight an unwinnable war with the other.
Putin’s Russia is likely to win, and no amount of sabre rattling, Euros, or British Pounds from domestically-desperate liberals is going to change that.
Why aren’t the far-right flag shaggers apoplectic with rage with the military welfare being gifted to the tiresome Zelenskyy when there were 2,270 homeless veteran cases reported last year? The double standards are truly staggering.
This has to end somewhere and somehow because it is unsustainable and entirely unacceptable when there is a vast array of problems both home and abroad that need to be prioritised way ahead of Zelenskyy’s pocket money.
We seem to live in an age where the corporate media demand that you pick a side. If you’re not screaming “Slava Ukraini” from the rooftops you’re labelled a Putin apologist.
The Putin apologist label is often used to stifle perfectly legitimate criticisms of the Ukrainian regime in the same way Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters were wrongly accused of being virulent antisemites to stifle perfectly legitimate criticisms of the Israeli pariah state.
If we carry on as we are, Keir Starmer’s final bill for the Ukraine distraction will end up making Brexit look like a bargain.
I know it’s not a popular opinion amongst the British people, but if Ukraine is our problem so is Gaza, Lebanon, and South Sudan.
Why should a failed colonialist country like Britain get to decide the life of a child from Kyiv is worth more than the life of a child from Rafah?
Vote Labour, get ne-Nazis
Nearly 900,000 Russian sons and daughters have died fighting this needless war. Countless Ukrainian’s have perished, many of whom had absolutely no choice but to lay down their lives for someone else’s conflict.
Unless peace prevails, it will be British sons and daughters that pay the ultimate price for NATO’s ongoing expansion and Putin’s aggressive response.
The voices for peace are few and far between. There is no weakness in declaring death and destruction must come to an immediate end. A strong leader understands that every war starts with words and ultimately, ends with words.
Britain simply does not have that leadership. Starmer is no different to any of the previous occupants of Number 10, Downing Street.
If Keir Starmer was a genuinely principled leader, he wouldn’t be allowing British Labour MPs to parade members of Ukraine’s far-right Azov Brigade around parliament, would he?
Vote Labour, get Neo-Nazis.
They secretly harbour ambitions of a return to the ‘halcyon days’ of the British Empire and a time when Britain had an armed forces that rampaged and robbed its way around the world with no fucks given for the millions of victims of its colonial desires.
Zelenskyy got the brutal stage-managed slap he well and truly deserved, be in no doubt of that. Britain now has to decide if they want to be next in line for a pasting, and while that is unlikely to come from a mesmerised Donald Trump, it will take a bit more than a state visit to stop Mr Putin from reaching out and putting little isolated Keir Starmer flat on his backside.
US President Donald Trump has threatened Moscow with a new round of “large-scale” sanctions until a Ukraine ceasefire is reached. The restrictions would target the Russian banking sector and include tariffs on the country’s foreign trade, he announced in a post on Truth Social on Friday.
According to Trump, the Russian military “is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now.” Based on that, he said he was “strongly considering” slapping Moscow with another round of sanctions until “a cease fire and final settlement agreement on peace is reached” in the Ukraine conflict. The US president demanded that both Moscow and Kiev “get to the [negotiating] table right now, before it is too late.”
This comes after US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the sanctions imposed under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden, “egregiously weak.” Washington is prepared to tighten them, the official told the Economic Club of New York on Thursday. The Trump administration “will not hesitate to go ‘all in’ should it provide leverage in peace negotiations,” Bessent said.
In February, Trump extended certain sanctions against Moscow for another year. He then suggested that they could be lifted “at some point” during peace talks. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that Western nations might need to reconsider the restrictions imposed against Russia to secure an “enduring, sustainable” resolution to the Ukraine conflict.
On Friday, the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia called on Washington to ease sanctions on Russia, particularly in the fields of aviation, investment, and banking, claiming that they have been harming both Russian and American businesses.
The Kremlin also said this week that Western sanctions against Moscow would have to be lifted to mend relations between the US and Russia. Both nations agreed to work on restoring ties following a high-level meeting in Saudi Arabia last month.
Russia has repeatedly stated that it was open for peace talks, but has opposed a temporary ceasefire with Kiev, arguing that a true settlement of the conflict requires a permanent long-term solution addressing its root causes.
Russia demands that Ukraine demilitarize, denazify, adhere to a position of neutrality, and recognize the territorial “realities on the ground.” It also opposes any NATO presence on Ukrainian soil.
The oval office sparring between Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Volodymyr Zelensky was indeed a unique event. These gatherings are generally photo opportunities of little substance that work to the public relations benefit of all parties. An argument taking place as the cameras rolled was something that has never taken place before. Of course the United States often supports foreign leaders only to pull the rug out from under them when circumstances change. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein is but one example. The U.S. backed him in his war against Iran only to later invade his country and have him hanged.
There should be little doubt about how a lasting peace can be established in Ukraine. In April 2022, Russia and Ukraine were on the verge of signing a peace agreement in Istanbul, with the Turkish government acting as mediator.
The U.S. and U.K. talked Ukraine out of signing the agreement, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have since died or been seriously injured. Yet the framework of the Istanbul Process still provides the basis of peace today.
The draft peace agreement (dated April 15, 2022) and the Istanbul Communique (dated March 29, 2022) on which it was based, offered a sensible and straightforward way to end the conflict.
We reported this week about a Labour Party MP proudly meeting a prominent neo-Nazi’s wife. But it turns out there was actually a “roundtable discussion in Parliament” with members of Ukraine’s far-right Azov Brigade. And this is exactly what happens when our lapdog establishment media outlets whitewash fascism on behalf of the corrupt political order they defend.
Azov neo-Nazis in the UK parliament
Labour MP Alex Sobel previously said it was his “honour” to meet Ukrainian campaigner Kateryna Prokopenko – the wife of Azov commander Denys Prokopenko. But Ukrainian-American journalist Lev Golinkin is just one critic who has been voicing concerns about this type of meeting. Because he has outlined Prokopenko’s membership of “the White Boys Club — a right-wing group of fans of the Dynamo Kyiv soccer team — which previously posted “phrases like ‘100% White’ and ‘88’ (code for ‘Heil Hitler’), praise for Holocaust perpetrators, and Waffen-SS insignia” on social media”.
As a Jewish person himself, Golinkin rightly sees the danger in platforming and empowering people with links to Azov – a movement whose founder Andriy Biletsky once said Ukraine’s purpose was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [inferior races]”.
But fellow Labour MP Alistair Carns joined Sobel’s fawning over the Ukrainian far right by revealing the presence of actual Azov veterans in parliament:
I was honoured to take part in an important roundtable discussion in Parliament yesterday with the brave Ukrainian Veterans of the Azov Brigade who fought defending Mariupol, and who were illegally held captive by the Russians. We spoke about issues relating to the status of… pic.twitter.com/wdtcVzdgPV
Carns also suggested that Russian invaders had “illegally” captured Azov fighters. It’s unclear what he meant by that, as it is legal to hold prisoners of war providing they don’t face mistreatment in captivity.
The West’s dangerous whitewashing of the Ukrainian far right for Russia-bashing purposes
Russia has certainly committed crimes in Ukraine in what has been a devastating conflict that didn’t need to go on for so long. The war has hurt ordinary Ukrainians and Russians alike, but Western governments saw an opportunity to further their own interests by fuelling Ukraine’s resistance to the 2022 invasion. So as Golinkin has explained, despite the fact that “nearly every Western institution raised alarms about Azov” before 2022, the West gradually found ways to whitewash the group’s fascism and welcome it with open arms.
Boris Johnson welcomes fighters from Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion to the UK parliament.
The battalion’s founder Andriy Biletsky said Ukraine should “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen.”
It is notable for its recruitment of far-right foreign fighters from the U.S., Russia, and Europe, as well as extensive transnational ties with other far-right organizations.
But as Golinkin emphasised in 2023, Prokopenko is “the type of person who Western media says is an example of not a neo-Nazi”, but:
He’s been photographed numerous times with a Totenkopf, which is one of the most common neo-Nazi symbols in the world. And he was part of Azov’s beginning — he was part of Azov’s beginning from 2014, from when it was still just a battalion form of a neo-Nazi gang.
He criticised US establishment voices for calling Trump supporters fascists while at the same time “whitewashing neo-Nazis” from Ukraine:
it’s insane that we are doing this… because they’re our neo-Nazis, and we’re celebrating them…
He added:
Azov has remained a hub for neo-Nazis to come over, and they can get battlefield experience…
how many world countries have actual neo-Nazi units? So, Azov has used this war to their advantage. They’ve used it brilliantly.
The media’s role in glorifying the Azov Battalion
Golinkin continued by insisting that:
the same media who spent seven years tracking Azov and tracking its neo-Nazi nature, suddenly, at the beginning of this invasion, suddenly turned around and said that, all of a sudden, this organization stopped being far-right… It’s just an incredible feat of whitewashing, which is denying reality, with Western media across the board suddenly saying, based on nothing, based on propaganda, that this entire group that attracted neo-Nazis from all over the world, that we’ve reported on, has suddenly stopped, stopped being neo-Nazis, and now they’re OK.
He also argued that:
the message that we are sending is that if you are the right type of neo-Nazi, we will arm you, we will train you, we will take you to Congress, we will celebrate you across our media, you will be our hero.
That’s exactly what’s happening in the UK too. Dominant European nations are intent on pushing Ukraine to continue its unwinnable war that manyUkrainians don’t want but are beingforcedto fight. And they’re empowering the far right in the process.
Czech manufacturers Aero Vodochody and Omnipol have completed the delivery of six L-39 Skyfox training aircraft to the Vietnamese air force, Aero Vodochody said.
Vietnam – the first foreign customer for the aircraft – had already received the first batch of six aircraft last August. It now has a fleet of 12 advanced jet trainers that can also operate as light combat aircraft.
In order to modernize and strengthen its air force to deal with rising security challenges, especially tension in the South China Sea, Vietnam has been looking to buy planes and equipment from countries other than traditional partner Russia.
Buying weapons from Russia could also isolate Vietnam from its Western allies as Russia’s arms manufacturers face sanctions following its invasion of Ukraine.
Vietnam ordered the 12 trainers from Aero Vodochody in 2021. Omnipol, a strategic partner in the project, became a minority owner of Aero the same year.
Also in 2021, Vietnam signed a contract to buy 12 new U.S.-made T-6C Texan II aircraft, five of which were delivered last November. The Beechcraft trainers were the first military aircraft sold directly by the U.S. to Vietnam.
Two years earlier, Vietnam bought 12 Yak-130 jet trainers from Russia.
Aero Vodochody said that the Vietnamese air force received a theoretical and practical training kit with the completed aircraft, including a simulation training system for pilots and mechanics.
An on-the-aircraft training course will be held this year in the Czech Republic for Vietnamese pilots.
Adaptable, versatile aircraft
L-39 Skyfox is a turbofan-powered military trainer. Originally called L-39NG, the Czech manufacturers renamed the aircraft Skyfox last October saying the name fox “is perfectly suited to the aircraft due to its nature and behavior.”
“It may not be the strongest animal in the forest, but it is extremely adaptable, persistent, resourceful, takes care of its young like an airplane takes care of its pilots, and when it comes down to it, it can bite hard,” Aero said.
L-39 Skyfox aircraft with Vietnamese air force markings at an unidentified military airport in Vietnam, March 2025.(Aero Vodochody)
The aircraft, originally designed to support the training of pilots for Russian-made front-line combat aircraft, can also be used for training pilots of 4th and 5th generation aircraft such as the U.S.’s F-16 and F-35, it said.
The manufacturer said the L-39 Skyfox is also suitable for light combat as it can be equipped with rockets, missiles, bombs and guns with a total payload capacity of up to 1,640 kilograms (1.8 tons).
With a little adaptation such as by mounting sensors, it can be deployed for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance operations, border and maritime patrolling.
This week,Israeli media reported that Vietnam intended to buy two surveillance satellites worth US$680 million from Israel to “address China’s provocations against its neighbors in the South China Sea.”
The L-39 Skyfox reportedly cost less than US$10 million per plane to procure, according to Janes, the military intelligence company.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Staff.
AMY GOODMAN: President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress in a highly partisan 100-minute speech, the longest presidential address to Congress in modern history on Wednesday.
Trump defended his sweeping actions over the past six weeks.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four years or eight years, and we are just getting started.
AMY GOODMAN: President Trump praised his biggest campaign donor, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, who’s leading Trump’s effort to dismantle key government agencies and cut critical government services.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And to that end, I have created the brand-new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Perhaps.
Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight. Thank you, Elon. He’s working very hard. He didn’t need this. He didn’t need this. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.
AMY GOODMAN: Some Democrats laughed and pointed at Elon Musk when President Trump made this comment later in his speech.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s very simple. And the days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over.
AMY GOODMAN: During his speech, President Trump repeatedly attacked the trans and immigrant communities, defended his tariffs that have sent stock prices spiraling, vowed to end Russia’s war on Ukraine and threatened to take control of Greenland.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We also have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland: We strongly support your right to determine your own future, and if you choose, we welcome you into the United States of America. We need Greenland for national security and even international security, and we’re working with everybody involved to try and get it.
But we need it, really, for international world security. And I think we’re going to get it. One way or the other, we’re going to get it.
‘A declaration of war against the American people.’ Video: Democracy Now!
AMY GOODMAN: During Trump’s 100-minute address, Democratic lawmakers held up signs in protest reading “This is not normal,” “Save Medicaid” and “Musk steals.”
One Democrat, Congressmember Al Green of Texas, was removed from the chamber for protesting against the President.
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Likewise, small business optimism saw its single-largest one-month gain ever recorded, a 41-point jump.
REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEMBER 1: Sit down!
REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMEMBER 2: Order!
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Members are directed to uphold and maintain decorum in the House and to cease any further disruptions. That’s your warning. Members are engaging in willful and continuing breach of decorum, and the chair is prepared to direct the sergeant-at-arms to restore order to the joint session.
Mr Green, take your seat. Take your seat, sir.
DEMOCRAT CONGRESS MEMBER AL GREEN: He has no mandate to cut Medicaid!
SPEAKER MIKE JOHNSON: Take your seat. Finding that members continue to engage in willful and concerted disruption of proper decorum, the chair now directs the sergeant-at-arms to restore order, remove this gentleman from the chamber.
AMY GOODMAN: That was House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called in security to take Texas Democratic Congressmember Al Green out. Afterwards, Green spoke to reporters after being removed.
Democrat Congressman Al Green (Texas) . . . “I have people who are very fearful. These are poor people, and they have only Medicaid in their lives when it comes to their healthcare.” Image: DN screenshot APR
DEMOCRAT CONGRESS MEMBER AL GREEN: The President said he had a mandate, and I was making it clear to the President that he has no mandate to cut Medicaid.
I have people who are very fearful. These are poor people, and they have only Medicaid in their lives when it comes to their healthcare. And I want him to know that his budget calls for deep cuts in Medicaid.
He needs to save Medicaid, protect it. We need to raise the cap on Social Security. There’s a possibility that it’s going to be hurt. And we’ve got to protect Medicare.
These are the safety net programmes that people in my congressional district depend on. And this President seems to care less about them and more about the number of people that he can remove from the various programmes that have been so helpful to so many people.
AMY GOODMAN: Texas Democratic Congressmember Al Green.
We begin today’s show with Ralph Nader, the longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic, former presidential candidate. Ralph Nader is founder of the Capitol Hill Citizen newspaper. His most recent lead article in the new issue of Capitol Hill Citizen is titled “Democratic Party: Apologise to America for ushering Trump back in.”
Medicaid, Social Security, Medicare, all these different programmes. Ralph Nader, respond overall to President Trump’s, well, longest congressional address in modern history.
Environmentalist and consumer protection activist Ralph Nader . . . And he’s taken Biden’s genocidal policies one step further by demanding the evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza. Image: DN screenshot APR
RALPH NADER: Well, it was also a declaration of war against the American people, including Trump voters, in favour of the super-rich and the giant corporations. What Trump did last night was set a record for lies, delusionary fantasies, predictions of future broken promises — a rerun of his first term — boasts about progress that don’t exist.
In practice, he has launched a trade war. He has launched an arms race with China and Russia. He has perpetuated and even worsened the genocidal support against the Palestinians. He never mentioned the Palestinians once.
And he’s taken Biden’s genocidal policies one step further by demanding the evacuation of Palestinians from Gaza.
But taking it as a whole, Amy, what we’re seeing here defies most of dictionary adjectives. What Trump and Musk and Vance and the supine Republicans are doing are installing an imperial, militaristic domestic dictatorship that is going to end up in a police state.
You can see his appointments are yes people bent on suppression of civil liberties, civil rights. You can see his breakthrough, after over 120 years, of announcing conquest of Panama Canal.
He’s basically said, one way or another, he’s going to take Greenland. These are not just imperial controls of countries overseas or overthrowing them; it’s actually seizing land.
Now, on the Greenland thing, Greenland is a province of Denmark, which is a member of NATO. He is ready to basically conquer a part of Denmark in violation of Section 5 of NATO, at the same time that he has displayed full-throated support for a hardcore communist dictator, Vladimir Putin, who started out with the Russian version of the CIA under the Soviet Union and now has over 20 years of communist dictatorship, allied, of course, with a number of oligarchs, a kind of kleptocracy.
And the Republicans are buying all this in Congress. This is complete reversal of everything that the Republicans stood for against communist dictators.
So, what we’re seeing here is a phony programme of government efficiency ripping apart people’s programmes. The attack on Social Security is new, complete lies about millions of people aged 110, 120, getting Social Security cheques.
That’s a new attack. He left Social Security alone in his first term, but now he’s going after [it]. So, what they’re going to do is cut Medicaid and cut other social safety nets in order to pay for another tax cut for the super-rich and the corporation, throwing in no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security benefits, which will, of course, further increase the deficit and give the lie to his statement that he wants a balanced budget.
So we’re dealing with a deranged, unstable pathological liar, who’s getting away with it. And the question is: How does he get away with it, year after year? Because the Democratic Party has basically collapsed.
They don’t know how to deal with a criminal recidivist, a person who has hired workers without documents and exploited them, a person who’s a bigot against immigrants, including legal immigrants who are performing totally critical tasks in home healthcare, processing poultry, meat, and half of the construction workers in Texas are undocumented workers.
So, as a bully, he doesn’t go after the construction industry in Texas; he picks out individuals.
I thought the most disgraceful thing, Amy, yesterday was his use of these unfortunate people who suffered as props, holding one up after another. But they were also Trump’s crutches to cover up his contradictory behavior.
So, he praised the police yesterday, but he pardoned over 600 people who attacked violently the police [in the attack on the Capitol] on 6 January 2021 and were convicted and imprisoned as a result, and he let them out of prison. I thought the most —
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph? Ralph, I —
RALPH NADER: — the most heartrending thing was that 13-year-old child, who wanted to be a police officer when he grew up, being held up twice by his father. And he was so bewildered as to what was going on. And Trump’s use of these people was totally reprehensible and should be called out.
Now, more basically, the real inefficiencies in government, they’re ignoring, because they are kleptocrats. They’re ignoring corporate crimes on Medicaid, Medicare, tens of billions of dollars every year ripping off Medicare, ripping off government contracts, such as defence contracts.
He’s ignoring hundreds of billions of dollars of corporate welfare, including that doled out to Elon Musk — subsidies, handouts, giveaways, bailouts, you name it. And he’s ignoring the bloated military budget, which he is supporting the Republicans in actually increasing the military budget more than the generals have asked for. So, that’s the revelation —
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph? Ralph, if I — Ralph, if I can interrupt? I just need to —
RALPH NADER: — that the Democrats need to pursue.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Ralph, I wanted to ask you about — specifically about Medicaid and Medicare. You’ve mentioned the cuts to these safety net programmes. What about Medicaid, especially the crisis in this country in long-term care? What do you see happening in this Trump administration, especially with the Republican majority in Congress?
RALPH NADER: Well, they’re going to slash — they’re going to move to slash Medicaid, which serves over 71 million people, including millions of Trump voters, who should be reconsidering their vote as the days pass, because they’re being exploited in red states, blue states, everywhere, as well.
Yeah, they have to cut tens of billions of dollars a year from Medicaid to pay for the tax cut. That’s number one. Now they’re going after Social Security. Who knows what the next step will be on Medicare? They’re leaving Americans totally defenceless by slashing meat and poultry and food inspection laws, auto safety.
They’re exposing people to climate violence by cutting FEMA, the rescue agency. They’re cutting forest rangers that deal with wildfires. They’re cutting protections against pandemics and epidemics by slashing and ravaging and suppressing free speech in scientific circles, like CDC and National Institutes of Health.
They’re leaving the American people defenseless.
And where are the Democrats on this? I mean, look at Senator Slotkin’s response. It was a typical rerun of a feeble, weak Democratic rebuttal. She couldn’t get herself, just like the Democrats in 2024, which led to Trump’s victory — they can’t get themselves, Juan, to talk specifically and authentically about raising the minimum wage, expanding healthcare, cracking down on corporate crooks that are bleeding out the incomes of hard-pressed American workers and the poor.
They can’t get themselves to talk about increasing frozen Social Security budgets for 50 years, that 200 Democrats supported raising, but Nancy Pelosi kept them, when she was Speaker, from taking John Larson’s bill to the House floor.
That’s why they lose. Look at her speech. It was so vague and general. They chose her because she was in the national security state. She was a former CIA. They chose her because they wanted to promote the losing version of the Democratic Party, instead of choosing Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, the most popular polled politician in America today.
That’s who they chose. So, as long as the Democrats monopolise the opposition and crush third-party efforts to push them into more progressive realms, the Republican, plutocratic, Wall Street, war machine declaration of war against the American people will continue.
We’re heading into the most serious crisis in American history. There’s no comparison.
AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, we’re going to have to leave it there, but, of course, we’re going to continue to cover these issues. And I also wanted to wish you, Ralph, a happy 91st birthday. Ralph Nader —
RALPH NADER: I wish people to get the Capitol Hill Citizen, which tells people what they can really do to win democracy and justice back. So, for $5 or donation or more, if you wish, you can go to Capitol Hill Citizen and get a copy sent immediately by first-class mail, or more copies for your circle, of resisting and protesting and prevailing over this Trump dictatorship.
AMY GOODMAN: Ralph Nader, longtime consumer advocate, corporate critic, four-time presidential candidate, founder of the Capitol Hill Citizen newspaper. This is Democracy Now!
The original content of this programme is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States Licence. Republished by Asia Pacific Report under Creative Commons.
Europe stands ready to fight and die as peacekeepers to save Ukraine if necessary, but only with the Americans. So when they refuse to come and the disastrous Project Ukraine at last comes crashing on our heads, don’t blame us, blame the U.S.A.
Trump will become even easier to blame now that he has cut off military aid and intelligence to Ukraine.
The theater piece directed by Starmer at Lancaster House with an assembly of 15 European heads of government (and Justin Trudeau of Canada) was not really choreographed to try to convince Trump to reverse course, which appears unlikely, but as an elaborate presentation to save the hides of politicians who invested so much of their own political capital and wasted so much of their citizens’ money in the inevitable and humiliating defeat of Ukraine.
WASHINGTON _ Russian President Vladimir Putin has underlined his goal to increase engagement with Southeast Asia by recently dispatching a top aide to boost ties with the region towards a common goal for a more multilateral world order, analysts told BenarNews.
Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu’s talks with Indonesia and Malaysia last week were also in line with the desire of all three countries to diversify markets and power centers beyond the Washington and Beijing binary, said Emil Avdaliani, an international relations expert at the European University in Tbilisi, Georgia.
“Russia regards Southeast Asia as one of the pillars in the emerging multipolar world order. This means Moscow strives to foster political and economic ties with this vibrant geopolitical space,” Avdaliani told BenarNews.
Western sanctions on Russia after it invaded Ukraine “served as a major driver to look eastward,” he said.
“Russia understands that Southeast Asia has been in a difficult position after its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and Moscow has been careful not to impose its vision on the region,” Avdaliani added.
“Russia [also] understands that Southeast Asia pursues its own interests, which implies [they follow a] multi-vector foreign policy, balancing among big actors and not choosing any sides.”
Southeast Asia is by no means homogenous, which means that countries such as staunch U.S. ally the Philippines, and Singapore, which sanctioned Moscow, may balk at an expanded Russian footprint.
Russia’s renewed Southeast Asia engagement may also be uncomfortable for Manila because of Moscow’s relatively new partnership with Beijing, which many call “an alliance of convenience.”
For the Philippines, China is a thorn in the side because of its increasing assertiveness in the South China Sea, where both countries have contending territorial claims.
However, in a fractured – and fractious – geopolitical world order, nations firmly allied with Washington or Beijing may be realizing that they need to be self-reliant in safeguarding their interests.
For instance, Manila’s envoy to Washington, Jose Manuel Romualdez, told reporters earlier this week that countries need “to be always ready … to put up their own resources” to do what is best for themselves.
A billboard at the 21st ASEAN-Russia Senior Officials’ Meeting notes potential cooperation opportunities in civilian nuclear energy and technologies between Russia and member-states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, in Jakarta, Feb, 19, 2025(Russian Mission to ASEAN via X)
Southeast Asia’s nations overall, though, have for long been seen as following expedient foreign policies, which is a draw for Russia, according to analyst Muhammad Waffaa Kharisma.
“Southeast Asian countries are less constrained by transatlantic or European political decisions,” the researcher at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta told BenarNews.
“Most developing countries here can be quite pragmatic.”
Trade data reflects that pragmatism.
After a brief blip following Western sanctions imposed on Moscow after February 2022, Southeast Asia’s trade with Russia has been on the upswing.
Russia-ASEAN trade increased 10% to U.S. $17 billion in the January-September 2024 period, Moscow-owned news agency Sputnik cited a Russian minister as saying in November.
Trade between the two sides for the whole of 2023 totaled $15.8 billion, according to ASEAN data.
ASEAN member-states Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam, all of which profess non-alignment, increased trade with Russia especially in 2024.
The Indonesian government struck a defiant note when asked about a deepening of ties with Russia.
As long as the association was mutually beneficial and “respectful,” there was no reason not to expand relations, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman, Rolliansyah Soemirat, said.
“Why not cooperate with Russia?” he told BenarNews.
“Indonesia is not intimidated by any country as long as our national interests are upheld.”
Doctor Khaled Mohammed Abu Jari, 57, center left, head of the critical care department at the Beit Hanoun Hospital has his fast-breaking iftar meal with his family outside their tent in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip during the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadan.(Bashar Taleb/AFP)
Alexey Gruzdev, Russia’s minister of industry and trade, said the increase occurred because Russian businesses had “successfully adapted” to Western sanctions, Sputnik reported in November.
Analysts said there was more to it than businesses adapting.
Russia has capitalized on growing anti-West sentiment, particularly over the conflict in Gaza, to bolster its image in Southeast Asia, said Radityo Dharmaputra, a Europe and Eurasia expert at Indonesia’s Airlangga University.
Russia’s support for the Palestinian people is in line with Muslim-majority nations Indonesia and Malaysia, which have condemned what they say has been U.S. ally Israel’s disproportionate response to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas militants.
“This narrative has been a core part of Russia’s strategy,” Radityo said.
“By promoting an anti-West … message, Russia has effectively won support, particularly in Malaysia and Indonesia.”
‘Diversifying supply chains’
Additionally, some Southeast Asian nations proactively want to access alternate markets, which has also led to an uptick in trade with Russia, said Julia Roknifard, an international relations expert in Kuala Lumpur.
“It is about diversifying the supply chains away from the sole focus on the largest trade partners,” Roknifard, senior lecturer at the School of Law and Governance at Taylor’s University, told BenarNews.
“Russia, on the other hand, is interested in the products from Malaysia’s semiconductor industry.”
Following warnings by new U.S. President Donald Trump to tax imports, with a focus on countries America has a trade deficit with – especially Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia – a new market would help ease a potential trade slowdown in Southeast Asia.
The BRICS factor
Another Russian strategy to court Southeast Asia has been to market BRICS, a bloc of emerging economies it co-founded in 2006, as a pathway to creating a multipolar world.
BRICS is named after its founders Brazil, Russia, India and China, as well as South Africa, which joined in 2010.
Increasing cooperation within the BRICS platform was a priority of Moscow’s foreign policy, TASS quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov as saying in April 2023.
During Russia’s chairmanship last year, BRICS announced that ASEAN members Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam would become its partner nations.
Indonesia then formally joined the grouping as a member in January, and expressed “gratitude to Russia” for facilitating its membership.
A worker inspects semiconductor chips at the chip packaging firm Unisem Berhad’s plant in Ipoh, Malaysia October 15, 2021. REUTERS/Lim Huey Teng(LIM HUEY TENG/REUTERS)
A former Malaysian foreign minister, Syed Hamid Albar, said more ASEAN cooperation with BRICS was needed to “hedge” Southeast Asian nations’ relationship with major powers in an ever-shifting world order.
“Anyway, Russia is providing space for small and big nations to move forward from hegemony and operate under a new world order and multilateralism,” he told BenarNews.
US policy shift on Ukraine
Meanwhile, Washington reversing its adversarial stance towards Moscow over Ukraine would have implications across the world, including in Southeast Asia, analysts said.
Chester Cabalza, a security expert, spoke about the possible ramifications of this change in relation to the Philippines. Manila and Washington are bound by a longstanding mutual defense treaty.
“U.S. defense officials are still adamant on saving their defense ties with the Philippines,” Cabalza, who heads a Manila think-tank, International Development and Security Cooperation, told BenarNews.
Still, Washington’s shift has “gently reminded Manila to practice self-reliance,” he added.
Washington’s Ukraine pivot may also aid the expansion of Southeast Asia’s ties with Russia, indicated Radityo Dharmaputra, a Europe-Eurasia expert from Airlangga University
“There now appears to be a sense of relief in Southeast Asia regarding U.S.-Russia relations,” Radityo, head of the university’s Centre for European and Eurasian Studies, said to BenarNews.
“These nations seem to feel reassured that ties between Washington and Moscow have improved, allowing them to resume trade and diplomatic engagement.”
Iman Muttaqin Yusof in Kuala Lumpur, Tria Dianti in Jakarta, and Jason Gutierrez in Manila contributed to this report. BenarNews is an online news outlet affiliated with Radio Free Asia.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Shailaja Neelakantan for BenarNews.
The war in Ukraine is, but in reverse, the same situation that America’s President JFK had faced with regard to the Soviet Union in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the U.S. would have invaded Cuba if Khrushchev wouldn’t agree to a mutually acceptable settlement — which he did, and so WW3 was averted on that occasion. But whereas Khrushchev was reasonable; Obama, Biden, and Trump, are not; and, so, we again stand at the brink of a WW3, but this time with a truly evil head-of-state (Obama, then Biden, and now Trump), who might even be willing to go beyond that brink — into WW3 — in order to become able to achieve world-conquest. This is as-if Khrushchev had said no to JFK’s proposal in 1962 — but, thankfully, he didn’t; so, WW3 was averted, on that occasion.
How often have you heard or seen the situation in the matter of Cuba being near to the White House (near to America’s central command) being analogized to Ukraine’s being near — far nearer, in fact — to The Kremlin (Russia’s central command)? No, you probably haven’t encountered this historical context before, because it’s not being published — at least not in America and its allied countries. It’s being hidden.
The Ukrainian war actually started after the democratically elected President of Ukraine (an infamously corrupt country), who was committed to keeping his country internationally neutral (not allied with either Russia or the United States), met privately with both the U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2010, shortly following that Ukrainian President’s election earlier in 2010; and, on both occasions, he rejected their urgings for Ukraine to become allied with the United States against his adjoining country Russia. This was being urged upon him so that America could position its nuclear missiles at the Russian border with Ukraine, less than a five-minute striking-distance away from hitting the Kremlin in Moscow.
The U.S. Government had engaged the Gallup polling organization, bothbefore and after the coup, in order to poll Ukrainians, and especially ones who lived in its Crimean independent republic (where Russia has had its main naval base ever since 1783), regarding their views on U.S., Russia, NATO, and the EU; and, generally, Ukrainians were far more pro-Russia than pro-U.S., pro-NATO, or pro-EU, but this was especially the case in Crimea; so, America’s Government knew that Crimeans would be especially resistant. However, this was not really new information. During 2003-2009, only around 20% of Ukrainians had wanted NATO membership, while around 55% opposed it. In 2010, Gallup found that whereas 17% of Ukrainians considered NATO to mean “protection of your country,” 40% said it’s “a threat to your country.” Ukrainians predominantly saw NATO as an enemy, not a friend. But after Obama’s February 2014 Ukrainian coup, “Ukraine’s NATO membership would get 53.4% of the votes, one third of Ukrainians (33.6%) would oppose it.” However, afterward, the support averaged around 45% — still over twice as high as had been the case prior to the coup.
In other words: what Obama did was generally successful: it grabbed Ukraine, or most of it, and it changed Ukrainians’ minds regarding America and Russia. But only after the subsequent passage of time did the American billionaires’ neoconservative heart become successfully grafted into the Ukrainian nation so as to make Ukraine a viable place to position U.S. nuclear missiles against Moscow (which is the U.S. Government’s goal there). Furthermore: America’s rulers also needed to do some work upon U.S. public opinion. Not until February of 2014 — the time of Obama’s coup — did more than 15% of the American public have a “very unfavorable” view of Russia. (Right before Russia invaded Ukraine, that figure had already risen to 42%. America’s press — and academia or public-policy ‘experts’ — have been very effective at managing public opinion, for the benefit of America’s billionaires.)
Then came the Minsk Agreements (#1 & #2, with #2 being the final version, which is shown here, as a U.N. Security Council Resolution), between Ukraine and the separatist region in its far east, and which the U.S. Government refused to participate in, but the U.S.-installed Ukrainian government (then under the oligarch Petro Poroshenko) signed it in order to have a chance of Ukraine’s gaining EU membership, but never complied with any of it; and, so, the war continued); and, then, finally, as the Ukrainian government (now under Volodmyr Zelensky) was greatly intensifying its shelling of the break-away far-eastern region, Russia presented, to both the U.S. Government and its NATO military alliance against Russia, two proposed agreements for negotiation (one to U.S., the other to NATO), but neither the U.S. nor its NATO agreed to negotiate. The key portions of the two 17 December 2021 proposed Agreements, with both the U.S. and with its NATO, were, in regards to NATO:
Article 1
The Parties shall guide in their relations by the principles of cooperation, equal and indivisible security. They shall not strengthen their security individually, within international organizations, military alliances or coalitions at the expense of the security of other Parties. …
Article 4
The Russian Federation and all the Parties that were member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as of 27 May 1997, respectively, shall not deploy military forces and weaponry on the territory of any of the other States in Europe in addition to the forces stationed on that territory as of 27 May 1997. With the consent of all the Parties such deployments can take place in exceptional cases to eliminate a threat to security of one or more Parties.
Article 5
The Parties shall not deploy land-based intermediate- and short-range missiles in areas allowing them to reach the territory of the other Parties.
Article 6
All member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commit themselves to refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine as well as other States.
The Parties shall seek to ensure that all international organizations, military alliances and coalitions in which at least one of the Parties is taking part adhere to the principles contained in the Charter of the United Nations.
Article 3
The Parties shall not use the territories of other States with a view to preparing or carrying out an armed attack against the other Party or other actions affecting core security interests of the other Party.
Article 4
The United States of America shall undertake to prevent further eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and deny accession to the Alliance to the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The United States of America shall not establish military bases in the territory of the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that are not members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, use their infrastructure for any military activities or develop bilateral military cooperation with them.
Any reader here can easily click onto the respective link to either proposed Agreement, in order to read that entire document, so as to evaluate whether or not all of its proposed provisions are acceptable and reasonable. What was proposed by Russia in each of the two was only a proposal, and the other side (the U.S. side) in each of the two instances, was therefore able to pick and choose amongst those proposed provisions, which ones were accepted, and to negotiate regarding any of the others; but, instead, the U.S. side simply rejected all of them.
Washington and NATO have formally rejected Russia’s key demands for assurances that the US-led military bloc will not expand closer towards its borders, leaked correspondence reportedly shows.
According to documents seen by Spanish daily El Pais and published on Wednesday morning, Moscow’s calls for a written guarantee that Ukraine will not be admitted as a member of NATO were dismissed following several rounds of talks between Russian and Western diplomats. …
The US-led bloc denied that it posed a threat to Russia. …
The US similarly rejected the demand that NATO does not expand even closer to Russia’s borders. “The United States continues to firmly support NATO’s Open Door Policy.”
NATO-U.S. was by now clearly determined to get Ukraine into NATO and to place its nukes so near to The Kremlin as to constitute, like a checkmate in chess, a forced defeat of Russia, a capture of its central command. This was, but in reverse, the situation that America’s President JFK had faced with regard to the Soviet Union in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the U.S. would have invaded Cuba if Khrushchev wouldn’t agree to a mutually acceptable settlement — which he did agree to, and so WW3 was averted on that occasion. But whereas Khrushchev was reasonable, America’s recent Presidents are not; and, so, we again stand at the brink of WW3, but this time with a truly evil head-of-state (America’s recent Presidents), who might even be willing to go beyond that brink in order to become able to achieve world-conquest.
Russia did what it had to do: it invaded Ukraine, on 24 February 2022. If Khrushchev had said no to JFK’s proposal in 1962, then the U.S. would have invaded and taken over Cuba, because the only other alternative would have been to skip that step and go directly to invade the Soviet Union itself — directly to WW3. Under existing international law, either response — against Cuba, or against the U.S.S.R. — would have been undecidable, because Truman’s U.N. Charter refused to allow “aggression” to be defined (Truman, even at the time of the San Francisco Conference, 25 April to 26 June 1945, that drew up the U.N. Charter, was considering for the U.S. to maybe take over the entire world). Would the aggression in such an instance have been by Khrushchev (and by Eisenhower for having similarly placed U.S. missiles too close to Moscow in 1959), or instead by JFK for responding to that threat? International law needs to be revised so as to prohibit ANY nation that is “too near” to a superpower’s central command, from allying itself with a different superpower so as to enable that other superpower to place its strategic forces so close to that adjoining or nearby superpower as to present a mortal threat against its national security. But, in any case, 317 miles from The Kremlin would easily be far “too close”; and, so, Russia must do everything possible to prevent that from becoming possible. America and its colonies (‘allies’) are CLEARLY in the wrong on this one. (And I think that JFK was likewise correct in the 1962 case — though to a lesser extent because the distance was four times larger in that case — America was the defender and NOT the aggressor in that matter.)
If this finding appears to you to be too contradictory to what you have read and heard in the past for you to be able to believe it, then my article earlier today (March 4), “The Extent of Lying in the U.S. Press” presents also five other widespread-in-The-West lies, so that you will be able to see that there is nothing particularly unusual about this one, other than that this case could very possibly produce a world-ending nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia. People in the mainstream news-business are beholden to the billionaires who control the people who control (hire and fire) themselves, and owe their jobs to that — NOT really to the audience. This is the basic reality. To ignore it is to remain deceived. But you can consider yourself fortunate to be reading this, because none of the mainstream news-sites is allowed to publish articles such as this. None of the mainstream will. They instead deceived you. It’s what they are hired (by their owners and advertisers) to do, so as to continue ruling the Government (by getting you to vote for their candidates).
When politicians in power are extremely unpopular, they generally turn to militarism and jingoism for a quick boost. Keir Starmer is now the darling of the U.K. media for his sabre-rattling over Ukraine and the prime minister is busily churning out tweets of military imagery.
In doing so he is attempting to pose as in defiance of Donald Trump and capitalise on the U.S. president’s unpopularity in the U.K., even though he was just last week fawning over Trump in the White House and inviting him on an “unprecedented” second State visit.
As ever, there is a great deal of smoke and mirrors here. The European leaders are going to come up with an alternative “peace plan” to present to Trump.
On Tuesday evening, hours after the Dow Jones stock index had closed — falling several hundred points for the second day straight in response to the U.S. imposing high tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China — Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress and declared a new “golden age of America.” In two days, global stock markets have shed trillions of dollars in value, far more than the U.
Labour MP Alex Sobel said it was his “honour” to meet Ukrainian campaigner Kateryna Prokopenko. But he forgot to mention some important context. Because Prokopenko’s husband Denys is the commander of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion. And as journalist Asa Winstanley pointed out, pro-Israel liberals like Sobel seem keen to cooperate with Ukraine’s far right.
This woman’s husband is Denys Prokopenko, the commander of Ukraine’s Nazi Azov Battalion: https://t.co/44oBvRTvrr
was initially formed as a volunteer group in May 2014 out of the ultra-nationalist Patriot of Ukraine gang, and the neo-Nazi Social National Assembly (SNA) group. Both groups engaged in xenophobic and neo-Nazi ideals and physically assaulted migrants, the Roma community and people opposing their views.
Its founder Andriy Biletsky claimed in 2010 that it was Ukraine’s purpose to:
lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [inferior races]
As Azov organised to fight in the areas of eastern Ukraine with large Russian-speaking communities from 2014 onwards, it received support both from the Ukrainian government and billionaire oligarchs. Over 14,000 people reportedly died.
When Russia finally invaded in 2022, it used Azov’s presence as a justification. And during the conflict, Azov has played a key role. Even the US initially held back support due to the group’s far-right links.
Palestine and Israel, Ukraine and Russia
Sobel, like others in the current Labour government, often spoke about genocide before Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza began in late 2023, but became very quiet about genocide as it was unfolding in occupied Palestine.
Pro-Israel voices and the far right have longcosiedup with each other, and that extends to billionaires and establishment liberals (including Labour in the UK). What do they have in common? They don’t really care about how many lives are destroyed by their political games. All seem to want power and resources without accountability. They want to be above the law. And we must call out their toxic alliance of death and destruction at every turn – including with the Azov Battalion.
