We are passionate supporters of all but one of the items on the Hands Off agenda for the April 5 rallies. We couldn’t agree more that the corrupt U.S. government should stop destroying, privatizing, firing, and giving away the post office, schools, land, Social Security, healthcare, environmental protections, and all sorts of essential public services. But we are deeply disturbed to see NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization) on the list of items that we are rallying to protect.
Many people believe that NATO is a peace-loving, defensive alliance, but the opposite is true. During the past 30 years, NATO has fomented a vast arc of violence stretching from Libya to Afghanistan, leaving villages bombed, infrastructure destroyed, and countless dead.
Originally formed in opposition to the Soviet Union, NATO not only failed to disband with the fall of the Soviet Union, but it increased from 16 members in 1991 to 32 members today. Despite promises not to expand eastward, it ploughed ahead against the advice of senior, experienced U.S. diplomats who warned that this would inflame tensions with Russia. While Russia bears full responsibility for invading Ukraine,1in violation of the UN Charter, we cannot deny the disastrous role played by NATO in provoking and then prolonging the war in Ukraine. Two years ago, then NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg admitted that insisting on NATO membership for Ukraine had brought on the Ukraine war. “[Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders,” he said.
The inclusion of NATO in the Hands Off list contradicts the basic Hands Off agenda. Right now, at the bidding of President Trump, NATO is openly and aggressively pressuring its member nations to move money from healthcare, retirement funds, and clean energy to weapons and militarism. Watch a video of the Secretary General of NATO publicly telling the European Union to move money from healthcare and retirement to war. It should be clear which side of the Hands Off agenda NATO is on.
NATO is a destabilizing, law-breaking force for militarization and war provocation. Its existence makes wars, including nuclear wars, more likely. Its hostility toward the few significant militaries in the world that are not among its members fuels arms races and conflicts. The commitment of NATO members to join each others’ wars and NATO’s pursuit of enemies far from the North Atlantic risk global destruction.
We would be happy to expand the Hands Off demands to international issues, such as Hands Off Palestine or Yemen or Greenland or Panama or Canada. But we do object to including a destructive institution like NATO, an institution that systematically and grossly violates the commitment to settle disputes peacefully contained in the UN Charter. If we are truly committed to human needs and the environment, as well as peace, diplomacy, and the UN Charter, then we should eliminate NATO from the Hands Off agenda.
We should go beyond that. We should recognize that while many government agencies are being unfairly cut and need to be defended, one enormous agency that makes up over half of federal discretionary spending is being drastically increased and needs to be cut. That is the Pentagon. The U.S. government spends more on war and war preparation than on all other discretionary items combined. Of 230 other countries, the U.S. spends more on militarism than 227 of them combined. Russia and China spend a combined 21% of what the U.S. and its allies spend on war. Of 230 other countries, the U.S. exports more weaponry than 228 of them combined. The U.S. spends more on war per capita than any other nation, except Israel.
This is not normal or acceptable, or compatible with funding human and environmental needs. NATO has taught people to measure military spending as a percentage of a nation’s economy, as if war were a public service to be maximized. Trump has recently switched from demanding 2% of economies for war to 3%, and then almost immediately to 5%. There’s no logical limit.
Companies that profit from war, like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, will always push for more military spending. So will NATO. While NATO allies consider Russia their most immediate and direct threat, their long-term adversary is China. The constant search for enemies leads to a vicious cycle of arms races. But there is a different path: the pursuit of disarmament negotiations, the rule of law and global cooperation. If we pursued that path, we could move massive amounts of money away from weapons to invest in addressing the non-optional dangers of climate, disease, and poverty.
The rational and moral international piece of the Hands Off agenda should be to eliminate both NATO and the voracious militarism that threaten the future of life on this planet.
1 It is a matter or record:
* that the current violence in Ukraine began with the US abrogation of a promise not to expand NATO one inch further east in 1990
*that the Obama administration engineered a coup to overthrow the elected president Yanukovych of Ukraine in 2014, and this precipitated the overwhelming Crimean vote to secede from Ukraine
* that Donbass oblasts voted also to secede from Ukraine, and that Ukraine began bombing Donbass
* that German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Francois Hollande signed on as guarantors of the Minsk Accords, which they admitted was to give Ukraine time to militarize and join NATO
* that US secretary of state Marco Rubio has admitted that it is a proxy war waged against Ukraine
If this is factually accurate, then to state “Russia bears full responsibility for invading Ukraine” is fallacious. — DV Ed
Now that Phil Goff has ended his term as New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, he is officially free to speak his mind on the damage he believes the Trump Administration is doing to the world. He has started with these comments he made on the betrayal of Ukraine by the new Administration.
By Phil Goff
Like many others, I was appalled and astounded by the dishonest comments made about the situation in Ukraine by the Trump Administration.
As one untruthful statement followed another like something out of a George Orwell novel, I increasingly felt that the lies needed to be called out.
I found it bizarre to hear President Trump publicly label Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator. Everyone knew that Zelenskyy had been democratically elected and while Trump claimed his support in the polls had fallen to 4 percent it was pointed out that his actual support was around 57 percent.
Phil Goff speaking as Auckland’s mayor in 2017 on the nuclear world 30 years on . . . on the right side of history. Image: Pacific Media Centre
Trump made no similar remarks or criticism of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and never does. Yet Putin’s regime imprisons and murders his opponents and suppresses democratic rights in Russia.
Then Trump made the patently false accusation that Ukraine started the war with Russia. How could he make such a claim when the world had witnessed Russia as the aggressor which invaded its smaller neighbour, killing thousands of civilians, committing war crimes and destroying cities and infrastructure?
That President Trump could lie so blatantly is perhaps explained by his taking offence at Zelenskyy’s refusal to comply with unreasonable and self-serving demands such as ceding control of Ukraine’s mineral wealth to the US. What was also clear was that Trump was intent on pressuring Ukraine to capitulate to Russian demands for a one sided “peace settlement” which would result in neither a fair nor sustainable peace.
It is astonishing that the US voted with Russia and North Korea in the United Nations against Ukraine and in opposition to the views of democratic countries the US is normally aligned with, including New Zealand.
Withdrew satellite imaging
It then withdrew satellite imaging services Ukraine needed for its self defence in an attempt to further pressure Zelenskyy to agree to a ceasefire. No equivalent pressure has yet been placed on Russia even while it has continued its illegal attacks on Ukraine.
Trump and Vance’s disgraceful bullying of Zelenskyy in the White House as he struggled in his third language to explain the plight of his nation was as remarkable as it was appalling.
What Trump was doing and saying was wrong and a betrayal of Ukraine’s struggle to defend its freedom and nationhood.
Democratic leaders around the world knew his comments to be unfair and untrue, yet few countries have dared to criticise Trump for making them.
Like the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, everyone knew that the emperor had no clothes but were fearful of the consequences of speaking out to tell the truth.
As New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, I had on a number of occasions met and talked with Ukrainian soldiers being trained by New Zealanders in Britain. It was an emotionally intense experience knowing that many of the men I met with would soon face death on the front line defending their country’s freedom and nationhood.
They were extremely grateful of New Zealand’s unwavering support. Yet the Trump Administration seemed to care little for that country’s cause and sacrifice in defending the values that a few months earlier had seemed so important to the United States.
The diplomatic community in London privately shared their dismay at Trump’s treatment of Ukraine. The spouse of one of my High Commissioner colleagues who had been a teacher drew a parallel with what she had witnessed in the playground. The bully would abuse a victim while all the other kids looked on and were too intimidated to intervene. The majority thus became the enablers of the bully’s actions.
Silence condoning Trump
By saying nothing, New Zealand — and many other countries — was effectively condoning and being complicit in what Trump was doing.
The lesson of history, going back to the Munich Conference in 1938, when British Prime Minister Chamberlain and his French counterpart Daladier ceded the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, was clear.
Far from satisfying or placating an aggressor, appeasement only increases their demands. That’s always the case with bullies. They respect strength, not weakness.
Czechoslovakia could have been part of the Allied defence against Hitler’s expansionism but instead it and the Czech armaments industry was passed over to Hitler. He went on to take over the rest of Czechoslovakia and then invaded Poland.
As Churchill told Chamberlain, “You had the choice between dishonour and war. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”
The question needed to be asked because Trump was using talking points which followed closely those used by the Kremlin itself and was clearly setting out to appease and favour Russia.
A career diplomat, trained as a public servant to be cautious, might have not have asked it. I was appointed, with bipartisan support, not as a career diplomat but on the basis of political experience including nine years as Foreign, Trade and Defence Minister.
Question central to validity, ethics
“The question is central to the validity as well as the ethics of the United States’ approach to Ukraine. It is also a question that trusted allies, who have made sacrifices for and with each other over the past century, have a right and duty to ask.
The New Zealand Foreign Minister’s response was that the question did not reflect the view of New Zealand’s Government and that asking it made my position as High Commissioner untenable.
The minister had the prerogative to take the action he did and I am not complaining about that for one moment. For my part, I do not regret asking the question which thanks to the minister’s response subsequently received international attention.
Over the decades New Zealand has earned the respect of the world, from allies and opponents alike, for honestly standing up for the values our country holds dear. The things we are proudest of as a nation in the positions we have taken internationally include our role as one of the founding states of the United Nations in promoting a rules-based international system including our opposition to powerful states exercising a veto.
They include opposing apartheid in South Africa and French nuclear testing in the Pacific. We did not abandon our nuclear free policy to US pressure.
In wars and in peacekeeping we have been there when it counted and have made sacrifices disproportionate to our size.
We have never been afraid to challenge aggressors or to ask questions of our allies. In asking a question about President Trump’s position on Ukraine I am content that my actions will be on the right side of history.
Phil Goff, CNZM, is a New Zealand retired politician and former diplomat. He served as leader of the Labour Party and leader of the Opposition between 11 November 2008 and 13 December 2011. Goff was elected mayor of Auckland in 2016, and served two terms, before retiring in 2022. In 2023, he took up a diplomatic post as High Commissioner of New Zealand to the United Kingdom, which he held until last month when he was sacked by Foreign Minister Winston Peters over his “untenable” comments.
Ironically, it was the US under President Trump which has broken with the US national security establishment’s bi-partisan strategy of incremental encirclement and escalation against Russia. That break offered Europe the opportunity to escape the trap created by its past lack of policy vision. Instead, Europe has proved plus royaliste que le roi (more royal than the King) and has remained loyal to the US national security Deep State.
In her recent “Threat Assessment” testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reasonably described Russia as a “formidable competitor.” However, in keeping with Trump’s desire for improved diplomatic and economic relations with Moscow, she avoided the word “adversary.” And, in a thinly disguised reference to Biden’s “Ukraine Project,” Gabbard said that Russia has gained significant information about US intelligence and weapons from the Ukraine war. As for Biden’s plan to weaken or overthrow Putin, Gabbard concluded that the Russian leader “is presently less likely to be replaced than at any point in his quarter-century rule.” Gabbard’s assessment was considerably at odds with those under Biden, which referred to Russia’s “malign influence” and a threat to the United States and its allies. Most important is the conclusion that “This grinding war of attrition will lead to a steady erosion of Kyiv’s position on the battlefield, regardless of any U.S. or allied attempt to impose new and greater costs on Moscow.” This is not an equivocal statement, and Trump surely knows it’s true.
One encouraging consequence of the report is that it leaves Democrats and liberals in the awkward position of supporting not just a lost cause but one that’s increasingly becoming known as a war provoked by the United States. Those who’ve long asserted that Ukraine was used as a proxy have been provided further vindication — as if any was needed — by the “expose” in the New York Times, titled “The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine.” The roughly 13,000-word piece is “secret” only if one relies on the Times as their only source of information. In any event, the article details how American military and intelligence officers shaped Ukraine’s strategy. Planning began with the US and Ukraine at a clandestine meeting in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 2022, a gathering known “only to a small circle of American and allied officials.” As the war progressed, “One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback by how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in the Ukraine operation. They are part of the kill chain now.”
One surely unintended takeaway for the reader from the Times’ investigation is US hubris. According to the authors, the Biden administration provided everything to Ukraine but boots on the ground, and the effort was succeeding until the Spring of 2023. At that point, Ukrainian generals went rogue, became disobedient, and denied their US overlords a devastating victory over Russian forces. The latter are barely stick figures waiting to be chopped down by Ukrainian forces, who the omniscient American advisors have been giving every advantage. Zelensky also receives his share of the blame because he was too obsessed with good PR to be an effective wartime leader.
Notably, none of the 300 (mostly anonymous) interviewees were Russian, so that perspective is absent. Not surprisingly, there’s neither a scintilla of remorse nor even a tacit admission of the price Ukrainians paid for allowing their country to be used by the United States in this manner. Finally, one is forced to wonder whether this duplicitous account of the war will be the “blame game” narrative for the Democrats when the war is lost.
Checkmate in Ukraine isn’t imminent, but nothing can be done to prevent the loss of this US-initiated war. Putin has a strong hand to play, and all indications point toward the conclusion that the longer the fighting continues, the more territory will fall to Russian advances. Whether Trump will be able to end the war remains an open question. We know that Starmer, Macron, Mertz (once he assumes the German chancellorship), and Zelensky all seek to sabotage peace. And in Kyiv, the Azov Battalion has morphed into the Third Army Brigade, and its leader is Andriy Biletsky, today’s Stephan Bandera. He and his Hitler-worshipping Nazi followers oppose any negotiations with Russia and will continue some rearguard action until they are finally vanquished.
Trump also faces strong opposition from neoliberal warhawks like Waltz and Rubio. I sense that if Trump wants an actual peace settlement—and I believe he does—he must instruct more capable and trustworthy negotiators that Moscow sees Ukraine as an existential threat and its demands are non-negotiable. Russia is clearly winning and continues to absorb more territory. Finally, I wouldn’t bet against Trump going back on his promise and walking away from the Ukraine Project, leaving the remaining parties to resolve matters.
Because the billionaire sector of the US ruling class behind Trump has a different world order in mind, the present iteration of European oligarchs find themselves up that proverbial creek without paddles. Trump isn’t even bothering to say, “Thank you for your service in fighting Russia” because he knows these vassals enthusiastically cooperated with a doom-to-fail war that killed well over a million soldiers. In a final desperate attempt to save themselves, Europe’s soon-to-be politically extinct vassals want Trump to give them a “security guarantee” before inserting their own “peacekeepers” into Ukraine. That will never happen
Some critics have employed words like delusional, crazy, and stupid to describe European leaders. However, it’s more accurate to say that these heads of state are so heavily invested in the fable, the fiction of the “Russian threat,” for over seventy years in order to maintain their junior accomplice role with Washington. Thomas Palley argues they have become a “US foreign policy satrap, a condition which still endures.” These leaders are certainly not “stupid,” and they know that if the truth about the “Ukraine project” gains traction — and Trump seeks closer relations with Russia — suspicions will rise within the European public that Russophobia was manufactured and remains a hoax.
Finally, as I have argued in the past, what makes Ukraine so difficult to grasp is the edifice of lies, the false narrative about the “Russian threat” that is so pervasive in the popular mindset and used to disguise the actual motives behind US imperialism. Political scientist Michael Parenti once characterized this as “suppression by omission,” in this case, the entire context of the war in Ukraine. We must use every means to bring those omissions to light.
At the rural orphanage where I volunteered, the place resembled a Dickensian workhouse. The staff’s main tools were antipsychotics and violence. The experience gave me a window into Putin’s Russia
European leaders gathered in Paris on March 27 for another summit on the war in Ukraine, continuing discussions launched alongside peace negotiations initiated by the Trump presidency. The stated goal of the meeting was shaping a roadmap towards a “robust peace.”
Judging from the conclusions of the summit, European heads of state continue to believe such a peace will be achieved by prolonging sanctions on Russia, financing more weapons for Ukraine, and preparing a so-called “reassurance force” to be deployed after a future ceasefire.
From Russia to the US, those who seek to uphold the law are coming under increasing pressure
What the law says on paper is irrelevant if it cannot be upheld, or even stated clearly. That is why lawyers are targeted – with harassment, disbarment from the profession or even jail – by repressive regimes.
Russia’s attempts to suppress the voice of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny did not end with his death in an Arctic prison colony. In a bleak coda, three of his lawyers have been jailed for several years. Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin were found guilty of participating in an “extremist organisation” for relaying his messages to the outside world.
Carrying banners reading, “Their gas, your cash” beside images of U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, eight members of Greenpeace Belgium took to the sea on Thursday to protest the arrival of U.S. and Russian liquefied natural gas imports into the port of Zeebrugge, as part of a larger campaign to push the European Union to abandon fossil gas by 2035.
The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté argues that the US and NATO provoked Russia in Ukraine by expanding NATO, dismantling arms control, installing military assets threatening Russia, meddling in Ukraine and blocking multiple opportunities for peace.
In the United States, for more than a hundred years, the ruling class interests tirelessly propagated anti-communism among the populace, until it became more like a religious orthodoxy.
— Michael Parenti, “Left Anticommunism”
I will argue below that the liberal Russia-phobic meltdown over Ukraine is because allowing a truthful dialogue would reveal that it was a proxy war against Russia, provoked by the United States. This, in turn, would risk a political identity crisis among those for whom belief in “The Russia Threat” has been a touchstone of their political identity. What are the consequences when one’s deepest political beliefs are exposed as not just deeply flawed but morally wrong? What if one concludes or even suspects that they’ve been complicit in sending over one million Ukrainian soldiers — human beings — to their needless deaths? What if the 80-year narrative about a Russian invasion of Europe never had any basis in fact and that remains true today? Why are the real reasons that European leaders went along with Biden and now seek to sabotage peace in Ukraine? What if one discovers that NATO was an extension of US imperialism? If the “Russian threat” is called into question by the evidence, what else is one forced to rethink about the United States, one’s political identity and past behavior? What happens when it’s no longer possible for one to claim the moral high ground? I wrote the essay (abridged here) some five years ago and I’m reposting it because I believe it has special salience today.
To know who I am is a species of knowing where I stand. — Charles Taylor
In the early 1980s, which now seems a few lifetimes ago, I began offering a college seminar course titled “The Politics of Personal Identity,” quickly dubbed “POPI” by students. It was designed as a capstone course and limited to twelve seniors. Most of the identity groupings around today were addressed in readings, films and guest speakers. During the final weeks of the course, each student was responsible for giving a 45-minute oral presentation: “Who Am I? What Do I Believe? Why Do I Believe It?” This was followed by a lengthy period of questioning from the other seminar members and myself. Each of our guest speakers gave presentations on this topic and I presented my own on the last day of class. Germane to this was an exploration one’s political beliefs and their consequences was the critical component of the course and in what follows below.
Before exploring identities like race, gender, class, ethnicity and others, we attempted to establish a framework by including the work of Canadian philosopher and political activist Charles Taylor and specifically, his pioneering ideas on the politics of identity. [Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989).]
For Taylor, “Selfhood and the good, or in another way, selfhood and morality, turn out to be inextricably intertwined themes. We are selves only in that certain issues matter to us. What I am as a self, my identity, is essentially defined by the way things have significance for me… We are selves only in that we move in a certain space of questions, as we seek and find an orientation to the good.” By his light, “Who I am” is most crucially this space of moral orientation “within which my most defining relations are lived out.”
Taylor goes on, “My identity is defined by the commitments and identifications which provide the frame within which I can attempt to determine from case to case what is good, or valuable, or what ought to be done, or what I endorse or oppose. In other words it is the horizon within which I am capable of taking a stand.” [Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of Modern Identity (1989).]
And this isn’t just a strong preference or attachment. It means that people are saying that if they were to lose this commitment or identification, “they would be at sea, as it were, they wouldn’t know anymore, for an important range of questions, what the significance of things was for them.”
There is a sense of the ‘self’ that conveys to these beings of requisite depth to their identity or those who at the very least are struggling to find one. Others, who we judge as shallow, also have commitments but we see them as conventional and not the result of deep searching. And, as Taylor notes, those without any framework at all are pathologically amoral.
We also read some work by the character actor and playwright Wallace Shawn, including this passage about how to act in a morally responsible way:
My daily obligation was, first and foremost, to learn how to make a correct and careful study of the world. If I didn’t know what the world was like, how could I know what action to take? And so it turns out that morality insists upon accuracy — painstakingly steady and researched. (Wallace Shawn, Appendix to Aunt Dan & Lemon (1987).
Shawn’s prescriptive obligation to study how the world works is especially difficult given that Americans are the most heavily propagandized citizens in the word. In any event, I hoped that Shawn’s words would resonate with the students, most of whom had also taken my intro course: International Politics: How the World Works, the bookend course to POPI. I was gratified that virtually all of the seminar participants made the connection and often referenced the intro course. (Note: I’m painfully aware of the immense difference between an intro course with two sessions for fourteen weeks to examine a subject versus the forced, frustrated and episodic nature of most exchanges about politics on Facebook and elsewhere.)
And further, one cannot be a self strictly on one’s own. For starters, who did I interact with that helped me achieve self-realization? Who are those around me right now who contribute to my self-understanding? Beyond the standard sources, how widely have I searched? Is there evidence to support my conclusions — in this case about the USSR/Russia — or am I relying only on tradition, feelings and the accepted authorities? How has the “community” or culture within which I identify, affected my moral stands? Finally, it’s virtually impossible to have a sense of who/where I am without some grasp of how we got there. This can be painful and tempting to avoid, especially as one advances in age and possible regrets loom. Taylor asks us to consider what type of life is worth living? “E.g., what would a rich meaningful life, as against an empty one, or what would constitute an honorable life or the like?”
In sum, my argument was that there’s a virtually seamless web connecting knowing ourselves, knowing how the world works, and knowing that something needs to be done — starting with oneself. Uncertainty, deliberation and experimentation about the specific course of action don’t detract from the wisdom found in the Asian proverb “To know and not to act is not to know.”
Change is scary. My cautionary note to younger folks was that the older one gets the harder it is to rethink one’s political identity and question beliefs in which one has a considerable material and especially, psychic investment. Too many people adopt conventional liberal views and behavior in hopes this will stave off the gnawing feeling that something is seriously wrong.
Wolfgang Kaleck, founder of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, talks about the need for a universal, international criminal justice system instead of one where only some nations are held to account. Kaleck is a longtime human rights attorney who has represented Edward Snowden. He twice filed war crimes suits against former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Germany.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! Audio and was authored by Democracy Now!.
It seems impossible to have a discussion with those who insist on calling for more billions for weapons, training, and mercenaries for Ukraine even after US/NATO wars have destroyed so many millions of lives. The cheerleaders for the US war in Ukraine are as misguided and indoctrinated by the Biden regime as the dupes who believe that Trump will bring us peace. Biden’s minions, like Trump’s, stake their position on a mountain of lies, lack of information, wishful thinking, and hatred of the other while invoking high-sounding words like sovereignty, democracy, and freedom.
The vast majority of people in Greenland oppose becoming part of the United States, despite Donald Trump’s threats to colonize their land.
A staggering 85% of Greenlanders do not want to join the US, according to a poll published in January by a Greenlandic newspaper.
Just 6% of people in Greenland support Trump’s proposal to annex their homeland. (The remaining 9% are undecided.) Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark, although polls have long shown that the majority of people there, who are of indigenous Inuit descent, consider themselves to be a separate country and want formal independence.
For the record, it was the U.S., from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden, that provoked the Ukrainian tragedy. And now it is the Europeans who can stop it.
NATO’s Eastern expansion led to the bloodiest military conflict in Europe since the Second World War, one that could lead to a Third.
Donald Trump in his first term tried to exit this crisis, only to be subjected to the Russiagate “scandal” and two unsuccessful impeachment efforts led the bipartisan U.S. War Party.
Eventually, they succeeded and took back power, facilitating Joe Biden’s 2020 victory with various manipulations, including producing a letter signed by 51 top, retired U.S. intelligence officers falsely blaming Russia for the criminal contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop that included his father’s involvement.
Hours after President Donald Trump announced an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin to avoid attacks on energy infrastructure in Ukraine, Russia conducted an attack on said infrastructure. The attack was reciprocated by a Ukrainian attack on Russian energy facilities shortly after. Trump touted the limited ceasefire agreement — technically a retreat from his previous aim to have a…
Sufficiently gruesome to learn of the casualties in the Ukraine/Russo war. More gruesome to learn that the statistics don’t reflect actuality and are only another weapon ─ humiliate the opponent and have the public believe the enemy ignores the deaths of its soldiers.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies (ISSS) is less sanguine: “…as of early January 2025, the IISS estimates that a minimum of 172,000 Russian troops have been killed and 611,000 wounded, of which at least 376,000 are severely wounded (disabled), with up to an accumulated 235,000 wounded but recoverable.”
For one simple reason, the statistics don’t seem credible ─ other longer and more deadly wars had fewer casualties. The much, much longer Vietnam War had much less American casualties and the horrific World War II, which featured several beach invasions and large infantry battles, had less American dead and about the same casualties as claimed for the Russian battalions in their present war.
In the three years of war in Ukraine, no large infantry battles have occurred; the battles are mainly heavy weapons pulverizing a civilian area, followed by troops entering and occupying after the area is leveled and the enemy leaves. The Russians may have lost a large number of troops in the early stage of the war (30,000?), during the attempt to invade Kiev and the decision to leave. Later months do not indicate the same rate of casualties. In the next largest battle, three months in Mariupol, Ukraine claims to have killed 6,500 Russian soldiers. Even if this is slightly exaggerated, the next largest battle had only 2000 mortalities/month, which equates to 72,000 deaths in three years of equally intensive battles, of which there were none. On the southern front, Russia captured Kherson with few losses and retreated across the Dnieper when Ukraine launched its only large offensive, ceding Kherson and showing no intention of sacrificing soldiers in a losing battle.
Contrasting with Kyiv Independent’s stats, is Mediazona, an independent (?) Russian online news source that methodically searched records to obtain military losses. Their meticulous “data service, in collaboration with the BBC Russian Service and a team of volunteers, concluded that, “…Over 95,000 people fighting for Russia’s military have now died as the war in Ukraine enters the fourth year…. Given the estimate above, the true number of Russian military deaths could range from 146,194 to 211,169.”
Why is the number of Russians killed in the three-year war a meaningful and controversial topic? This is Ukraine’s way of informing the public that it may have lost territory but is not losing the war. Russia cannot continue gaining meager ground with a massive number of their soldiers permanently interred in the ground. Russia will be forced into compromise. Dubious logic.
The Russians have all they want — Crimea, the Russian mainland linked to Crimea, and the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts incorporated into Russia. The war map, as of March 2025, tells that story
The Donetsk basin reaches to the dark lines. Russia needs only to capture Pokrovsk and Kramatorsk to control all the cities of the Donetsk Oblast, and effectively all of Donetsk and Luhansk. Their troops are at the gates of both cities. Super nationalist Vladimir Putin will not rest until his nation controls all of Donetsk, nor will he allow those who have died for that cause to lie buried without the cause succeeding.
Why this farce of “let’s end the war,” without ending the war, is a mystery. Zelensky mentions “guarantees,” undoubtedly meaning that other nations will prevent Russia from interfering again in Ukraine sovereignty. Doesn’t the Ukraine president realize that guarantees are only words on paper, that European governments say what they mean but don’t mean what they say and that governments who change with international styles may not recognize a previous government’s decisions. A solid guarantee has NATO or UN troops at the border between the two warring nations, a prelude to World War III.
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” ─ George Santayana, “Tipperary.”
The Russians are coming and Europe is preparing for war.
Hysteria has gripped the continent.
It is being spread by political elites who claim peace in Europe is no longer a given.
“Never again” is now a motto forgotten. As if two world wars born in Europe were not enough.
These are the only possible assessments to be drawn from the extraordinary March 5 European Union summit in Brussels at which rearmament and renewed militarization of Europe became the cause to unite an increasingly disunited EU.
Meanwhile, leading media are doing their part to whip up the cries of war.
The US government funded a Ukrainian military intelligence firm which smeared US Vice President JD Vance, US Counterterrorism Director Joe Kent, and Rep. Thomas Massie as “foreign propagandists of the Russian Federation.”
To this day, the online blacklist published by the USAID-funded Ukrainian group, known as Molfar, lists Vance, Massie, and Kent as “foreign propagandists” aligned with the Russian government, and demands their “removal from public positions, the introduction of sanctions, and investigations into personal involvement in crimes.”
Nothing could have been clearer than Russia’s repeated conditions for a permanent end of the war, rather than a temporary ceasefire: Ukraine’s neutrality, its demilitarization and denazification, the inclusion of four Russian-speaking oblasts into the Russian Federation and treaties establishing a new security architecture in Europe.
Equally clear was Ukraine’s utter rejection of these conditions, demanding instead the return of every inch of its territory, including Crimea, and Ukraine’s membership in NATO.
It is the reason the two sides are still fighting a war.
Thousands of Syrian Alawites continue to seek sanctuary at a Russian air base, fearing for their lives in the wake of a series of horrific sectarian massacres carried out by Syrian government-affiliated extremist armed groups.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday that about 9,000 people were seeking refuge at Hmeimim, an air base established by Russia as part of its 2015 intervention in the US-backed war that began in 2011 to topple the Syrian government of former president Bashar al-Assad.
Thousands of people have been sheltering at the Hmeimim Air Base near the coastal city of Jablah since 7 March, when extremist militants went from house to house in predominantly Alawite towns and villages, killing residents and looting and burning their homes.
May 18, 2015: Remains of an Eastern Orthodox church after shelling by the Ukrainian Army near Donetsk International Airport. Eastern Ukraine. (Mstyslav Chernov. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)
The way to prevent the Ukraine war from being understood is to suppress its history.
A cartoon version has the conflict beginning on Feb. 24, 2022 when Vladimir Putin woke up that morning and decided to invade Ukraine.
There was no other cause, according to this version, other than unprovoked, Russian aggression against an innocent country.
Please use this short, historical guide to share with people who still flip through the funny pages trying to figure out what’s going on in Ukraine.
The mainstream account is like opening a novel in the middle of the book to read a random chapter as though it’s the beginning of the story.
Thirty years from now historians will write about the context of the Ukraine war: the coup, the attack on Donbass, NATO expansion, rejection of the Minsk Accords and Russian treaty proposals — without being called Putin puppets.
It will be the same way historians write of the Versailles Treaty as a cause of Nazism and WWII, without being called Nazi-sympathizers.
Providing context is taboo while the war continues in Ukraine, as it would have been during WWII. Context is paramount in journalism.
But journalists have to get with the program of war propaganda while a war goes on. Journalists are clearly not afforded these same liberties as historians. Long after the war, historians are free to sift through the facts.
The Ukraine Timeline
World War II— Ukrainian national fascists, led by Stepan Bandera, at first allied with the German Nazis, massacre more than a hundred thousands Jews and Poles.
1950s to 1990 – C.I.A. brought Ukrainian fascists to the U.S. and worked with them to undermine the Soviet Union in Ukraine, running sabotage and propaganda operations. Ukrainian fascist leader Mykola Lebed was taken to New York where he worked with the C.I.A. through at least the 1960s and was still useful to the C.I.A. until 1991, the year of Ukraine’s independence. The evidence is in a U.S. government report starting from page 82. Ukraine has thus been a staging ground for the U.S. to weaken and threaten Moscow for nearly 80 years.
November 1990: A year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Charter of Paris for a New Europe (also known as the Paris Charter) is adopted by the U.S., Europe and the Soviet Union. The charter is based on the Helsinki Accords and is updated in the 1999 Charter for European Security. These documents are the foundation of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The OSCE charter says no country or bloc can preserve its own security at another country’s expense.
Dec. 25, 1991: Soviet Union collapses. Wall Street and Washington carpetbaggers move in during the ensuing decade to asset-strip the country of formerly state-owned properties, enrich themselves, help give rise to oligarchs, and impoverish the Russian, Ukrainian and other former Soviet peoples.
1990s: U.S. reneges on promise to last Soviet leader Gorbachev not to expand NATO to Eastern Europe in exchange for a unified Germany. George Kennan, the leading U.S. government expert on the U.S.S.R., opposes expansion. Sen. Joe Biden, who supports NATO enlargement, predicts Russia will react hostilely to it.
1997: Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security adviser, in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, writes:
“Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire. Russia without Ukraine can still strive for imperial status, but it would then become a predominantly Asian imperial state.”
New Year’s Eve 1999: After eight years of U.S. and Wall Street dominance, Vladimir Putin becomes president of Russia. Bill Clinton rebuffs him in 2000 when he asks to join NATO.
Putin begins closing the door on Western interlopers, restoring Russian sovereignty, ultimately angering Washington and Wall Street. This process does not occur in Ukraine, which remains subject to Western exploitation and impoverishment of Ukrainian people.
Feb. 10, 2007: Putin gives his Munich Security Conference speech in which he condemns U.S. aggressive unilateralism, including its illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq and its NATO expansion eastward.
He said: “We have the right to ask: against whom is this [NATO] expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.”
Putin speaks three years after the Baltic States, former Soviet republics bordering on Russia, joined the Western Alliance. The West humiliates Putin and Russia by ignoring its legitimate concerns. A year after his speech, NATO says Ukraine and Georgia will become members. Four other former Warsaw Pact states join in 2009.
2004-5: Orange Revolution. Election results are overturned giving the presidency in a run-off to U.S.-aligned Viktor Yuschenko over Viktor Yanukovich. Yuschenko makes fascist leader Bandera a “hero of Ukraine.”
April 3, 2008: At a NATO conference in Bucharest, a summit declaration “welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO”. Russia harshly objects. William Burns, then U.S. ambassador to Russia, and presently C.I.A. director, warns in a cable to Washington, revealed by WikiLeaks, that,
“Foreign Minister Lavrov and other senior officials have reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward expansion as a potential military threat. NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains ‘an emotional and neuralgic’ issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene. … Lavrov stressed that Russia had to view continued eastward expansion of NATO, particularly to Ukraine and Georgia, as a potential military threat.”
A crisis in Georgia erupts four months later leading to a brief war with Russia, which the European Union blames on provocation from Georgia.
November 2009: Russia seeks new security arrangement in Europe. Moscow releases a draft of a proposal for a new European security architecture that the Kremlin says should replace outdated institutions such as NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
The text, posted on the Kremlin’s website on Nov. 29, comes more than a year after President Dmitry Medvedev first formally raised the issue. Speaking in Berlin in June 2008, Medvedev said the new pact was necessary to finally update Cold War-era arrangements.
“I’m convinced that Europe’s problems won’t be solved until its unity is established, an organic wholeness of all its integral parts, including Russia,” Medvedev said.
2010: Viktor Yanukovich is elected president of Ukraine in a free and fair election, according to the OSCE.
2013: Yanukovich chooses an economic package from Russia rather than an association agreement with the EU. This threatens Western exploiters in Ukraine and Ukrainian comprador political leaders and oligarchs.
February 2014: Yanukovich is overthrown in a violent, U.S.-backed coup (presaged by the Nuland-Pyatt intercept), with Ukrainian fascist groups, like Right Sector, playing a lead role. Ukrainian fascists parade through cities in torch-lit parades with portraits of Bandera.
Protesters clash with police in Kiev, Ukraine, February 2014. (Wikimedia Commons)
March 16, 2014: In a rejection of the coup and the unconstitutional installation of an anti-Russian government in Kiev, Crimeans vote by 97 percent to join Russia in a referendum with 89 percent turnout. The Wagner private military organization is created to support Crimea. Virtually no shots are fired, and no one was killed in what Western media wrongly portrays as a “Russian invasion of Crimea.”
April 12, 2014: The Coup government in Kiev launches war against anti-coup, pro-democracy separatists in Donbass. Openly neo-Nazi Azov Battalion plays a key role in the fighting for Kiev. Wagner forces arrive to support Donbass militias. U.S. again exaggerates this as a Russian “invasion” of Ukraine. “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext,” says U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who voted as a senator in favor of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 on a completely trumped up pre-text.
May 2, 2014: Dozens of ethnic Russian protestors are burnt alive in a building in Odessa by neo-Nazi thugs. Eight days later, Luhansk and Donetsk declare independence and vote to leave Ukraine.
Sept. 5, 2014: First Minsk agreement is signed in Minsk, Belarus by Russia, Ukraine, the OSCE, and the leaders of the breakaway Donbass republics, with mediation by Germany and France in a Normandy Format. It fails to resolve the conflict.
Feb. 12, 2015: Minsk II is signed in Belarus, which would end the fighting and grant the republics autonomy while they remain part of Ukraine. The accord was unanimously endorsed by the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 15. In December 2022 former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admits West never had intention of pushing for Minsk implementation and essentially used it as a ruse to give time for NATO to arm and train the Ukraine armed forces.
2016: The hoax known as Russiagate grips the Democratic Party and its allied media in the United States, in which it is falsely alleged that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to get Donald Trump elected. The phony scandal serves to further demonize Russia in the U.S. and raise tensions between the nuclear-armed powers, conditioning the public for war against Russia.
May 12, 2016: The US activates missile system in Romania, angering Russia. U.S. claims it is purely defensive, but Moscow says the system could also be used offensively and would cut the time to deliver a strike on the Russian capital to within 10 to 12 minutes.
June 6, 2016: Symbolically on the anniversary of the Normandy invasion, NATO launches aggressive exercises against Russia. It begins war games with 31,000 troops near Russia’s borders, the largest exercise in Eastern Europe since the Cold War ended. For the first time in 75 years, German troops retrace the steps of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union across Poland.
German Foreign Minister Frank Walter-Steinmeier objects. “What we shouldn’t do now is inflame the situation further through saber-rattling and warmongering,” Steinmeier stunningly tells Bild am Sontag newspaper. “Whoever believes that a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is mistaken.”
Instead, Steinmeier calls for dialogue with Moscow. “We are well-advised to not create pretexts to renew an old confrontation,” he warns, adding it would be “fatal to search only for military solutions and a policy of deterrence.”
December 2021: Russia offers draft treaty proposals to the United States and NATO proposing a new security architecture in Europe, reviving the failed Russian attempt to do so in 2009. The treaties propose the removal of the Romanian missile system and the withdrawal of NATO troop deployments from Eastern Europe. Russia says there will be a “technical-military” response if there are not serious negotiations on the treaties. The U.S. and NATO essentially reject them out of hand.
February 2022: Russia begins its military intervention into Donbass in the still ongoing Ukrainian civil war after first recognizing the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Before the intervention, OSCE maps show a significant uptick of shelling from Ukraine into the separatist republics, where more than 10,000 people have been killed since 2014.
Ukrainian troops in the Donbass region, March 2015. (OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)
March-April 2022: Russia and Ukraine agree on a framework agreement that would end the war, including Ukraine pledging not to join NATO. The U.S. and U.K. object. Prime Minister Boris Johnson flies to Kiev to tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to stop negotiating with Russia. The war continues with Russia seizing much of the Donbass.
March 26, 2022: Biden admits in a speech in Warsaw that the U.S. is seeking through its proxy war against Russia to overthrow the Putin government. Earlier in March he overruled his secretary of state on establishing a no-fly zone against Russian aircraft in Ukraine. Biden opposed the no-fly zone, he said at the time, because “that’s called World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine.”
September 2022: Donbass republics vote to join the Russian Federation, as well as two other regions: Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
May 2023: Ukraine begins a counter-offensive to try to take back territory controlled by Russia. As seen in leaked documents earlier in the year, U.S. intelligence concludes the offensive will fail before it begins.
June 2023: A 36-hour rebellion by the Wagner group fails, when its leader Yevegny Prigoshzin takes a deal to go into exile in Belarus. The Wagner private army, which was funded and armed by the Russian Ministry of Defense, is absorbed into the Russian army. The Ukrainian offensive ends in failure at the end of November.
September 2024: Biden deferred to the realists in the Pentagon to oppose long-range British Storm Shadow missiles from being fired by Ukraine deep into Russia out of fear it would also lead to a direct NATO-Russia military confrontation with all that that entails.
Putin warned at the time that because British soldiers on the ground in Ukraine would actually launch the British missiles into Russia with U.S. geostrategic support, it “will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”
November 2024: After he was driven from the race and his party lost the White House, a lame duck Biden suddenly switched gears, allowing not only British, but also U.S. long-range ATACMS missiles to be fired into Russia. It’s not clear that the White House ever informed the Pentagon in advance of a move that risked the very World War III that Biden had previously sought to avoid.
February 2025: The first direct contact between senior leadership of the United States and Russia in more than three years takes place, with a phone call between the countries’ presidents and a meeting of foreign ministers in Saudi Arabia. They agree to begin negotiations to end the war.
*****
This timeline clearly shows an aggressive Western intent towards Russia, and how the tragedy could have been avoided if NATO would not allow Ukraine to join; if the Minsk accords had been implemented; and if the U.S. and NATO negotiated a new security arrangement in Europe, taking Russian security concerns into account.
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.
