Across the scorched fields and ruined factories of Donbass, a new kind of soldier moves among Russian units—not born under the tricolor, but under the flags of the very nations arming Ukraine.
They come from America, Britain, France, and beyond. Men once proud of their military service now walk away from NATO’s wars and into the ranks of Russia’s armed forces—or into the humanitarian trenches of liberated towns. Why? Because they’ve seen through the lie.
Some fight on the front lines, side by side with Russians defending cities like Chasov Yar. Others deliver aid, rebuild homes, and film what the West will never show its citizens: that this war isn’t about democracy or borders, but about global power, corruption, and forgotten people.
Moscow and Kiev have been vying with each other to curry favour with the new U.S. administration. Just as Russian diplomacy appeared to be outstripping Kiev, things changed dramatically on April 30 with the signing of the so-called minerals deal between the U.S. and Ukraine in Washington.
Weeks of tense bargaining preceded the conclusion of the agreement, which at one point disrupted U.S. aid for Ukraine. But the latter showed extraordinary grit, tenacity and tact to hang on and, eventually, extracted out of the Trump administration what President Vladimir Zelensky called a “truly equal” deal. This must be the finest hour of Ukrainian nationalism and underscores that the country is far from a write-off on the geopolitical chessboard.
On May 2, 2014, Neo-Nazi gangs massacred 48 people who had rejected the U.S.-backed overthrow of a democratically-elected government in Kiev earlier that year. The deliberately-set fire in the Trade Unions Building in Odessa has never been satisfactorily investigated by Ukrainian authorities.
Eight days later two ethnic Russian majority oblasts in the east declared independence from Ukraine, leading to the U.S.-backed war against them by the unconstitutional government. Eight years later Russia intervened in the civil war.
This is how Robert Parry, founder of Consortium News, reported the story on May 10, 2014. He emphasized the effort by the U.S. government and media to bury the U.S. role in the 2014 unconstitutional change of government and the part played by Neo-Nazis in Ukraine, which the U.S. government, corporate media and their “anti-disinformation” allies are still trying to hide.
On April 23rd, Politico published an extraordinary article, “The US cavalry isn’t coming”, documenting in forensic detail the extent to which European defence planning and infrastructure has for decades been exclusively “built on the assumption of American support,” and “speeding American reinforcements to the frontlines.” Now, “the prospect of that not happening is throwing military mobility plans into disarray,” and the continent “stands alone” – defenceless, directionless, and bereft of solutions to the disastrous results of their prostration to US hegemony over many decades.
The agreement between Washington and Kyiv to create an investment fund to search for rare earth minerals has been seen as something of a turn by the Trump administration. From hectoring and mocking the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before the cameras on his visit to the US capital two months ago, President Donald Trump had apparently softened. It was easy to forget that the minerals deal was already on the negotiating table and would have been reached but for Zelensky’s fateful and ill-tempered ambush. Dreams of accessing Ukrainian reserves of such elements as graphite, titanium and lithium were never going to dissipate.
Details remain somewhat sketchy, but the agreement supposedly sets out a sharing of revenues in a manner satisfactory to the parties while floating, if only tentatively, the prospect of renewed military assistance. That assistance, however, would count as US investment in the fund. According to the White House, the US Treasury Department and US International Development Finance Corporation will work with Kyiv “to finalize governance and advance this important partnership”, one that ensures the US “an economic stake in securing a free, peaceful, and sovereign future for Ukraine.”
In its current form, the agreement supposedly leaves it to Ukraine to determine what to extract in terms of the minerals and where this extraction is to take place. A statement from the US Treasury Department also declared that, “No state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s Minister of Economy, Yulia Svyrydenko, stated that the subsoil remained within the domain of Kyiv’s ownership, while the fund would be “structured” on an equal basis “jointly managed by Ukraine and the United States” and financed by “new licenses in the field of critical materials, oil and gas – generated after the Fund is created”. Neither party would “hold a dominant vote – a reflection of equal partnership between our two nations.”
The minister also revealed that privatisation processes and managing state-owned companies would not be altered by the arrangements. “Companies such as Ukrnafta and Energoatom will stay in state ownership.” There would also be no question of debt obligations owed by Kyiv to Washington.
That this remains a “joint” venture is always bound to raise some suspicions, and nothing can conceal the predatory nature of an arrangement that permits US corporations and firms access to the critical resources of another country. For his part, Trump fantasised in a phone call to a town hall on the NewsNation network that the latest venture would yield “much more in theory than the $350 billion” worth of aid he insists the Biden administration furnished Kyiv with.
Svyrydenko chose to see the Reconstruction Investment Fund as one that would “attract global investment into our country” while still maintaining Ukrainian autonomy. Representative Gregory Meeks, the ranking Democrat on the House of Foreign Affairs Committee, thought otherwise, calling it “Donald Trump’s extortion of Ukraine deal”. Instead of focusing on the large, rather belligerent fly in the ointment – Russian President Vladimir Putin – the US president had “demonstrated nothing but weakness” towards Moscow.
The war mongering wing of the Democrats were also in full throated voice. To make such arrangements in the absence of assured military support to Kyiv made the measure vacuous. “Right now,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said on MSNBC television, “all indications are that Donald Trump’s policy is to hand Ukraine to Vladimir Putin, and in that case, this agreement isn’t worth the paper that it’s written on.”
On a certain level, Murphy has a point. Trump’s firmness in holding to the bargain is often capricious. In September 2017, he reached an agreement with the then Afghan president Ashraf Ghani to permit US companies to develop Afghanistan’s rare earth minerals. Having spent 16 years in Afghanistan up to that point, ways of recouping some of the costs of Washington’s involvement were being considered. It was agreed, went a White House statement sounding all too familiar, “that such initiatives would help American companies develop minerals critical to national security while growing Afghanistan’s economy and creating new jobs in both countries, therefore defraying some of the costs of United States assistance as Afghans become more reliant.”
Ghani’s precarious puppet regime was ultimately sidelined in favour of direct negotiations with the Taliban that eventually culminated in their return to power, leaving the way open for US withdrawal and a termination of any grand plans for mineral extraction.
A coterie of foreign policy analysts abounded with glowing statements at this supposedly impressive feat of Ukrainian diplomacy. Shelby Magid, deputy director of the Atlantic Council think tank’s Eurasia Centre, thought it put Kyiv “in their strongest position yet with Washington since Trump took office”. Ukraine had withstood “tremendous pressure” to accept poorer proposals, showing “that it is not just a junior partner that has to roll over and accept a bad deal”.
Time and logistics remain significant obstacles to the realisation of the agreement. As Ukraine’s former minister of economic development and current head of Kyiv school of economics Tymofiy Mylovanov told the BBC, “These resources aren’t in a port or warehouse; they must be developed.” Svyrydenko had to also ruefully concede that vast resources of mineral deposits existed in territory occupied by Russian forces. There are also issues with unexploded mines. Any challenge to the global rare earth elements (REEs) market, currently dominated by China (60% share of production of raw materials; 85% share of global processing output; and 90% manufacturing share of rare earth magnets), will be long in coming.
Kyiv-based Centre for Civil Liberties says tortured inmates bypassed amid focus on territory and security guarantees
Ukrainian and Russian civil society leaders have called for the unconditional release of thousands of Ukrainian civilians being held in Russian captivity, pushing for world leaders to make it a central part of any peace deal.
Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Kyiv-based Centre for Civil Liberties, which won the 2022 Nobel peace prize, said most of the discussion on ending the conflict, led by Donald Trump’s administration, focused solely on territories and potential security guarantees.
Despite U.S. pressure for a fast deal Russia does not expect any quick resolution of the conflict. It just announced a new unilateral ceasefire from May 8 to May 10, i.e. around the 80th anniversary of its victory in World War II on May 9.
It is another public sign that Russia is willing to adhere to a ceasefire agreement IF the conditions are right.
Trump still tries to behave like a neutral mediator in a conflict between Kiev and Moscow. He wants to impose a peace deal that projects his personal ‘greatness’.
But the U.S. has been and continues to be the main party of the war with Russia while Ukraine is the mere proxy force that does the bleeding.
How odd to look back now — now, as Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine ends in ignominious defeat—and think of that cornucopia of propaganda spilling out of what I called during the early months Washington’s “bubble of pretend.” Take a few minutes to remember with me.
There was the “Ghost of Kyiv,” an heroic MiG–29 pilot credited with downing six, count ’em, six Russian fighters in a single night, Feb. 24, 2022, two days after the Russian intervention began. The Ghost turned out to be a fantasy confected out of a popular video game.
So crude, the early Ukrainian propaganda, so rank.
It appears that what many of us predicted about Ukraine may be coming to pass. Last Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared on the CBS program Face the Nation. In response to a question about Ukraine from Margaret Brennan, Lavrov said,“Trump is probably the only leader on earth to address the root causes that got us into this war and wants to rectify it.” Further, he said, “The President of the United States, and rightly so, believes that we are moving in the right direction.” He added that some matters need to be “fine tuned.”
On Friday, Trump’s trusted envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow for talks with Putin. Does this mean that the endgame is in sight, that Trump will finally extricate the US from Ukraine? We know that in a single day, Trump can voice indisputable truths, including that if Zelensky continues on his present path “he could lose his entire country.” And when asked what concessions Russia has made, Trump replied that “Russia isn’t taking the entire country.” However, we also know that only hours later Trump might prattle on and prevaricate about negotiations while evading the truth that the US and the collective West have already lost the war. It’s axiomatic that losers in a war do not dictate the peace terms so it’s telling that here we have a case where the delusional losers, with the exception of Trump, are still trying to prolong the war. In the US, opponents of a peace settlement include the MIC, neocons, Democrats, Lindsey Graham Republicans and members of his own team like Kellogg and Rubio.
In any event, a reality-based analysis suggests that there is no deal to be had for Trump, no final settlement is within reach. Geopolitical analyst Larry Johnson is correct in asserting that, “Trump is playing a game of strip poker but he’s butt ass naked with no more cards to play.” The longer he dithers in exiting, the more likely he’ll be seen as a bluffing buffoon, all hat and no cowboy. Given this reality, sooner rather than later, Trump will walk away and simply say, “We made our best offer so now we’re getting out.” I suspect that Putin will understand this is about Trump saving face.
What will happen when Trump pulls the plug on the Ukraine Project? The vaunted “Coalition of Willing,” which once numbered 27, is now down to 3: Britain, France and Germany. I once thought that Macron was semi-serious about putting French “peacekeeper” boots on the ground in Ukraine but the absence of a US security guarantee renders that avenue inoperable. Further, this would be a bridge too far for the public to tolerate and the massive protests it would ignite would be political suicide for Macron.
The outcome for Ukraine is obvious: It will be decided on the battlefield where the Russian army is much stronger than it was in 2021. By all accounts, Russia is breaking through Ukrainian defenses across the board. On Saturday, Russian commander, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov said that Russian forces had taken the last village that Ukrainian troops had held in Kursk. Gerasimov also said that 76,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or wounded in the Kursk region. When the mud season ends in a few weeks, we can expect a major Russian assault and the absorption of more territory.
For Ukraine, the war is unsustainable. How long the Kiev regime lasts is impossible to predict but six to eight months is a plausible guess. The fanatical ultra-nationalist elements (Neo-Nazis/Azov/Bandera Battalion elements) will fight a rear guard action with support from Europe but eventual collapse is inevitable. Subsequently, I would expect Russia to control events in Ukraine, commencing with denazification. The country will never be allowed to pose a military threat to Russia.
The hubris of those provoking and continuing to cheer on this proxy war is diabolical and they did and do so in full knowledge that Russia would see it as an existential threat. In addition to all the horrific consequences that have preceded it, they are now responsible for the wholly preventable deaths to follow, the majority of which will be ever younger Ukrainian soldiers.
European leaders who warned that the Russians would advance to the English Channel will continue shouting “Russia, Russia, Russia!” British political analyst Alexander Mercouris is certainly correct in suggesting that “European unity is now built entirely around hostility toward Putin, toward Russia,” even if that means sacrificing Ukraine. Thus we can expect Europe to press forward with rearmament at the expense of a working class that’s already experiencing increasing immiseration.
Here in the United States, all the usual suspects, including some on the putative left, will vilify Trump for “cutting and running” on Ukraine. Sadly, I believe that we’re a long way from the point that our heavily propagandized fellow citizens grasp how they’ve been had, lied to about Ukraine by the ruling class and their servile mass media outlets. The next deception on the horizon is the “China threat” and the need to challenge and confront this dangerous duplicity could not be more urgent.
The episode of 25 April, dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the liberation from Nazi fascism, begins with the memory of Livia Gereschi. She was a foreign language teacher who, during a round-up by an SS unit in La Romagna in the Pisan Mountains on the night of 6 to 7 August 1944, rescued women and children. She managed to convince the SS commander to release women and children (including the writer and his mother), but was instead taken away with the men and shot on 11 August. The massacre of 69 civilians was carried out by the German 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division with the support of Italian fascists. The same division later committed the massacres of Sant’Anna di Stazzema (Lucca), Marzabotto (Bologna), and others.
The writer Manlio Cancogni recounts the massacre of 560 civilians on 12 August 1944 in the village of Sant’Anna di Stazzema through the testimony of survivors:
Germans led more than 140 people forcibly taken from their homes to the square in front of the church. They took them almost from their beds, half-clothed, their limbs still numb from sleep. They piled them first against the front of the church, and when they aimed their machine-gun barrels at these bodies, they had them so close that they could read in the stunned eyes of the victims, who fell under the blows without even having time to cry out. They piled the benches of the devastated church, the mattresses taken from the houses on top of the pile of still warm and perhaps still living bodies and set them on fire. And as they watched, unsatisfied, as the corpses were consumed, they pushed other men and women into the brazier, who were then led to the site, lifeless with fear. And then there were the children, the tender bodies of the children who served to excite this mad lust for destruction. They smashed their heads with the butt of their machine-gun, stuck a stick in their abdomens and nailed them to the walls of the houses. Seven of them were taken and put in the oven prepared that morning for bread and left there to roast.
The history of Nazism and its atrocities did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany eighty years ago. Hitler’s Nazism – history shows us – was an instrument of Western domination. It is therefore not surprising that Nazism re-emerged in Europe when the West again attacked Russia by organising the coup in Ukraine. Through the CIA and other intelligence services, neo-Nazi militants are being recruited, financed, trained and armed to go into action on Kiev’s Maidan Square in February 2014. The neo-Nazi formations are then incorporated into the National Guard trained by US instructors from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, transferred from Vicenza (in the North of Italy) to Ukraine, and joined by others from NATO.
The Ukraine of Kiev becomes the nursery of resurgent Nazism in the heart of Europe. Neo-Nazis arrive in Kiev from all over Europe (including Italy) and the USA, recruited mainly by Pravy Sektor and the Azov Battalion, whose Nazi imprint is represented by the SS Das Reich emblem. After being trained and tested in military actions against Ukrainian Russians in the Donbass, they are sent back to their country with a Ukrainian passport. At the same time, Nazi ideology is being disseminated among the younger generation in Ukraine. The Azov battalion is particularly involved in this regard, organising military training camps and ideological education for children and young people, who are taught first and foremost to hate Russians.
This article was originally published in Italian on Grandangolo, Byoblu TV and republished at Global Research.
A top Russian military commander was killed by a car bomb near Moscow. The attack happened just hours before US envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Friday, Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik was killed by a car bomb in Balashikha, a city near Moscow. He served as deputy chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.
According to TASS, Russian officials say Moskalik was the only person killed by the blast. Authorities believe the bomb was an IED containing submunitions and had the power of more than 300 grams of TNT.
Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania cite rising threats from Russia to justify once again using one of world’s most indiscriminate weapons
Rights groups have expressed alarm and warned of a “slippery slope” of again embracing one of the world’s most treacherous weapons, after five European countries said they intend to withdraw from the international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines.
In announcing their plans earlier this year, Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all pointed to the escalating military threat from Russia. In mid-April, Latvia’s parliament became the first to formally back the idea, after lawmakers voted to pull out of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which bans the use, production and stockpiling of landmines designed for use against humans.
Ukraine has encroached westwards over the past year on its friendly neighbour Moldova, a country that has stood by Kyiv against the Russians and sheltered thousands fleeing the war with Moscow, to build hydroelectric dams in a bid to overcome a crippling power shortage, people close to the matter said.
Troops, engineers and construction workers from Ukraine — which is engaged in a disastrous war with Russia since February 2022 and unsure of continued U.S. assistance under President Donald Trump — entered Moldova without informing its poorer, landlocked neighbour which also shares its border on the west with Romania.
The governing regime in Kiev is desperately trying to maintain its US support, as a defeat of the US-led, NATO proxy war in Ukraine looms. It is citing the collapse of the government in South Vietnam in April 1975 as a warning, saying that something similar could happen in Ukraine. At the time, the US defeat in Vietnam was a huge blow to the image and standing of US imperialism in the world.
Such pronouncements by the Kiev regime reveal a recognition that ‘its’ Ukraine has become a satellite of the United States – much as South Vietnam was widely recognized to be half a century ago. Then as now, Washington and its allies are desperately seeking to maintain their economic and military dominance over the world and to stop rising movements of liberation by the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The new guard of kleptocrats are seeking quick deals on Gaza and Ukraine, not because they want peace but because they’ve found a better way to make themselves even richer.
Anyone trying to make sense of the Trump administration’s policy towards Gaza should have a thumping headache by now.
Initially, US President Donald Trump called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the tiny territory wrecked by Israel over the past year and a half, so that he could build the “Riviera of the Middle East” on the crushed bodies of Gaza’s children.
He followed up last week with an explicitly genocidal threat addressed to “the people of Gaza” – all two million-plus of them. They would be “DEAD” if the Israeli hostages held by Hamas were not quickly released – a decision over which Gaza’s population has precisely no control.
To make this extermination threat more credible, his administration has expedited the transfer of an extra $4bn worth of US weapons to Israel, bypassing Congressional approval.
Those arms include more of the 2,000lb bombs sent by the Biden administration, which turned Gaza into a “demolition site“, as Trump himself called it.
The White House also nodded through Israel’s reimposition of a blockade that has once again choked off food, water and fuel to the enclave – further evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent.
But while all this was going on, Trump also dispatched to the region a special envoy, Adam Boehler, to negotiate the release of the few dozen Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
He was given permission to break with more than 30 years of US foreign policy and meet directly with Hamas, long designated a terrorist organisation by Washington.
‘Pretty nice guys’
The meeting reportedly took place without Israel’s knowledge.
One Israeli official observed: “You can’t announce that this organisation [Hamas] needs to be eliminated and destroyed, and give Israel full backing to do it, and at the same time conduct secret and intimate contacts with the group.”
In an interview with CNN at the weekend, Boehler remarked of Hamas: “They don’t have horns growing out of their head. They’re actually guys like us. They’re pretty nice guys.”
Then, in another unprecedented move, Boehler gave interviews to Israeli TV channels to speak directly to the Israeli public – apparently to prevent Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from misrepresenting the content of his talks with Hamas.
In one interview, Boehler said Hamas had proposed a five to 10-year truce with Israel. During that period, Hamas would be expected to “lay down its arms” and forgo political power in Gaza. He the proposal as “not a bad first offer”.
In another, he referred to Palestinian prisoners as “hostages”.
His approach left Israel quietly seething but unable to say much for fear of antagonising Trump.
‘No agent of Israel’
In parallel, Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff – who reportedly laid down the law early on to Netanyahu by ordering him to attend a meeting on the Sabbath – headed to Doha this week to try to restore a ceasefire deal he had previously negotiated.
He appears determined to push Israel into honouring the second phase of that agreement, which requires the Israeli army to withdraw from Gaza and halt its war on the enclave. That would pave the way for a third phase, in which Gaza is reconstructed.
Witkoff’s terms, according to reports, are that Hamas agrees to demilitarise and its fighters leave the enclave.
Israel is deeply opposed to a second phase. It wants to stick with phase one, in which it finishes swapping the remaining Israeli captives held by Hamas for some of the many thousands of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli torture camps.
The idea is that, once completed, Israel will be free to restart the slaughter.
Boehler reinforced Witkoff’s message, saying the White House hoped to “jump-start” talks and that the US was not “an agent of Israel” – implicitly acknowledging that, for many decades, it has very much looked like one.
Trump indicated a change of heart himself on Wednesday, telling reporters at the White House: “Nobody will expel the Palestinians.”
Sword of retribution
Apparently confounding Boehler’s claim that the US is able to make its own decisions about the Middle East, Trump was reported on Thursday to have removed him from dealing with the hostages issue following Israeli objections.
Meanwhile, Trump noisily shredded First Amendment protections on political speech, specifically in relation to Israel.
He signed an executive order empowering US authorities to arrest and deport visa holders protesting Israel’s year-and-a-half-long slaughter in Gaza – or what the world’s highest court is investigating as a “plausible” genocide.
That quickly resulted in the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of last spring’s student protests at New York’s Columbia University – one of the most high-profile of dozens of protracted demonstrations on US campuses last year, which were often met with police violence.
The Department of Homeland Security accused Khalil of “activities” – namely, campus protests – supposedly “aligned to Hamas”. These demonstrations, it alleged, threatened “US national security”.
“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump wrote on social media, declaring that his administration would be coming after anyone “engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity”. Axios reported last week that Secretary of State Marco Rubio planned to use AI to search through foreign students’ social media accounts for signs of “terrorist” sympathies.
These developments formalise Washington’s working assumption that any opposition to Israel’s killing and maiming of tens of thousands of Palestinian children should be equated with terrorism – a view increasingly shared, it seems, by UK and European authorities.
In concert, the White House announced that it was cancelling some $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University over its “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students”.
Confusingly, the university administration was among the most hardline in calling in police to crush the protests against the genocide. But the financial cuts had the intended effect, with Columbia announcing on Thursday it would inflict stringent punishments, including expulsions and degree revocations, on students and graduates who had taken part in a campus sit-in last year.
Some 60 other institutions have reportedly received letters warning that they are in danger of funding cuts if they do not “protect Jewish students” – a reference to those who cheerlead Israel’s war crimes.
That will come at a heavy price for other students, including many Jewish students, who have been exercising their constitutional right to criticise Israel’s crimes.
A sword of retribution now hangs over every single publicly funded centre of higher learning in the US: crush any sign of opposition to Israel’s destruction of Gaza, or face dire financial consequences.
‘Baffling rhetoric’
Does any of this amount to a clear strategy? Does it make any sense?
These mixed messages fit a pattern with the Trump administration. Its wider strategy is, as Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied territories, calls it: psychological overwhelming.
“Hitting us every day with XXL [extra-extra large] doses of baffling rhetoric and erratic policies serves to ‘control the script’, distracting and disorienting us, normalising the absurd, all while disrupting global stability (and consolidating US control).”
The White House is doing something similar over Ukraine.
It is now talking directly to Russia, shutting the door on Nato membership for Ukraine, publicly humiliating Ukraine’s president, while also threatening more sanctions and tariffs on Moscow unless it agrees to a rapid ceasefire.
The Trump administration’s goal is to normalise its inconsistencies, hypocrisies, lies and misdirections so they become entirely unremarkable.
Opposition to its will – a will that can change from day to day, or week to week – will be treated as treasonous. The only safe response in such circumstances is acquiescence, passivity and silence.
In the tumultuous political landscape Trump has created, the one constant – our North Star – is the western media’s uncritical cheerleading of the West’s war industries.
Consider the Biden administration. The media’s harshest condemnation came not over the destruction Washington wrought on Afghanistan during its 20-year occupation, but for ending the war – a war that had left the country in ruins and the official enemy, the Taliban, stronger than ever.
Contrast that with the media’s resolutely muted response to Biden’s 15 months of arming Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In doing so, the media eagerly cast aside their supposed humanitarian concerns, including their ritualistic nods to the post-Second World War global order and international law.
Similarly, the media have been openly critical of Trump’s overtures to Russia over Ukraine, siding with European leaders who insist the war must continue to the bitter end – regardless of how much higher the death toll of Ukrainians and Russians climbs as a result.
And predictably, the media have gone out of their way to accommodate Trump’s Israel-supporting, openly genocidal rhetoric and actions towards Gaza.
It was astonishing to watch outlets that regularly portray Trump as a threat to democracy contort themselves to whitewash his explicit call to exterminate “the people of Gaza” should the hostages not be immediately released. Instead, they mendaciously suggested he was referring only to Hamas leadership.
It is not just Trump and his team who are well practised in the dark arts of deception.
Illegitimacy trap
While the Trump administration may be playing fast and loose with Washington’s political culture, it is largely adhering to the West’s traditional script on Israel and Palestine.
Witkoff and Boehler are deploying a well-worn strategy, binding the Palestinians into what could be called an illegitimacy trap. Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.
Whatever Palestinians choose – and however much they are dispossessed and brutalised – it is they, and anyone who supports them, who are cast as the villains. The criminals. The oppressors. The Jew-haters. The terrorists.
This applies not only to Hamas but also to the accommodationists of Fatah.
Faced with relentless dispossession through decades of Israeli colonisation, Palestinian factions have responded in the two main ways available to them.
One is to adopt the course enshrined in international law as the right of all occupied peoples: armed resistance. This is the path Hamas has taken as it governs the concentration camp that is Gaza.
Every US administration, including the current one, however, has conditioned any talks about statehood on Palestinians renouncing armed resistance from the outset, dismissing their right in international law as terrorism.
For that reason, until now, Hamas has always been excluded from negotiations. The talks that have taken place – over its head – have operated on the assumption that Hamas must be disarmed before Israel is expected to make any concessions.
Hamas must relinquish its weapons voluntarily – against an opponent armed to the teeth, whose bad faith in negotiations is legendary – or it will be forcibly disarmed by Israel or its rival, Fatah.
In other words, peace with Israel is premised on civil war for Palestinians.
That appears to be the course the Trump administration will pursue. For now, it is demanding that Hamas “demilitarise” voluntarily. When that fails, Hamas will find itself back at square one.
Endless accommodation
Faced with Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from Gaza, Hamas has precisely no incentive to disarm.
In fact, it has a further disincentive. Its rivals in Fatah are all too visibly caught in their own, even more fatal, illegitimacy trap.
Mahmoud Abbas’s faction, which heads the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, has chosen the alternative to armed resistance: diplomacy and endless political accommodation.
The problem is that Israel has never shown the slightest interest in granting the Palestinians – even Fatah’s “moderates” – a state.
Even during the so-called apex of peacemaking – the Oslo Accords of the 1990s – Palestinian statehood was never mentioned.
Oslo was simply a nebulous process in which Israel was supposed to gradually withdraw from the occupied territories as Palestinian leaders took responsibility for maintaining “security” – meaning, in practice, Israel’s security.
In short, the Oslo concept of “peace” was little different from the catastrophic status quo in Gaza before the genocide began.
During its so-called disengagement in 2005, Israel pulled its soldiers back to a fortified cordon, and from there controlled all movement and trade in and out of the enclave.
In the vacated space, Israel allowed only a glorified local authority, running the schools, emptying the bins and acting as a security contractor for Israel against those not ready to accept this as their permanent fate.
Hamas refused to play ball.
Abbas’s PA, on the other hand, accepted this kind of model for its series of cantons across the West Bank – on the assumption that obedience would eventually pay dividends.
It hasn’t. Now Israel is gearing up to formally annex most of the West Bank, backed by the Trump administration. Behind the scenes, the White House is finagling support from the Gulf states.
Fatah cannot extricate itself any more than Hamas from the illegitimacy trap set for it by Washington and Europe.
Clinging to the old order
Paradoxically, critics in Washington – backed by the media and European elites – dismiss Trump’s moves on Ukraine as appeasement of a supposedly resurgent Russian imperialism, rather than as peacemaking.
These same critics are equally discomfited by the Trump administration’s meetings with Hamas.
All of this breaks with the decades-old Washington consensus, which dictates who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, who are the law enforcers and who are the terrorists.
In typical fashion, Trump is disrupting these former certainties.
The reassuring, knee-jerk response is to take one side or another. Either Trump is a mould-breaker, remaking a dysfunctional world order. Or he is a fascist-in-the-making, who will hasten the collapse of the established world order, bringing it crashing down on our heads.
The truth is he is both.
There is a consistency to Trump’s approach to both Ukraine and Gaza – despite the apparent contradiction. In both he appears determined to bring to an end a failing status quo. In the former, he wants an end to war and destruction by forcing Ukraine’s surrender; in the latter, he wants the running sore of a Palestinian concentration camp gone by forcibly emptying it of its inhabitants.
This new consistency replaces an older one, in which Washington’s elite perpetuated forever wars against painted devils that justified the siphoning of national wealth into the coffers of the war industries on which that elite’s wealth depended.
The pretexts for those forever wars had become so threadbare, and so destabilising in a world of ever-depleting resources, that the elites behind those wars were utterly discredited.
The far-right, most especially Trump, is riding that wave of disillusionment. And its success stems precisely from this rule-breaking, by presenting itself as a new broom sweeping away the old guard of corporate war-makers.
As the Bidens, Starmers, Macrons, and Von der Leyens sink deeper into the mire, the more desperately they cling to a crumbling system. Trump’s disruption works against them.
Feathering their nests
But the new guard is no more invested in peace than the old, as Gaza makes clear. It is simply looking for new ways to do business – new deals that still siphon national wealth away from ordinary people and into the pockets of billionaires.
Trump would rather strike lucrative deals with Russia’s Vladimir Putin over resources – in both Russia and Ukraine – than sink more money into a futile war that locks up the region’s vast potential profits.
And he would rather put an end to Gaza’s decades-long status as a no-go zone, a holding centre for Palestinians, when it could instead be transformed into a playground for the rich, its vast offshore gas reserves finally exploited.
The new guard of kleptocrats is less interested in forever wars – not because they have any love for peace, but because they believe they’ve found a better way to make themselves even richer.
This newfound openness to “doing things differently” has an appeal, especially after decades of the same cynical elites waging the same cynical wars.
But make no mistake: the fundamentals remain unchanged. The rich are still looking out for themselves. They are still feathering their own nests, not yours. They still see the world as their plaything, where lesser humans – you and me – are expendable.
If he can, Trump will end the war in Ukraine by cutting a money-making deal, over Kyiv’s head, with Russia.
If he can, Trump will end the slaughter in Gaza by striking a deal with Israel and the Gulf states, over the heads of Hamas and Fatah, to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from their homeland.
And if he can get away with it, Trump is ready for something else, too. He’s prepared to break heads at home to ensure his critics can’t stop him and his billionaire pals from getting their way.
The U.S. relationship with Ukrainian fascists began after the Second World War. During the war, units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) took part in the Holocaust, killing at least 100,000 Jews and Poles.
Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist OUN-B, was recruited by the C.I.A. after the war, according to a 2010 study by the U.S. National Archives.
The government study said, “Bandera’s wing (OUN/B) was a militant fascist organization.” Bandera’s closest deputy, Yaroslav Stetsko, said: ““I…fully appreciate the undeniably harmful and hostile role of the Jews, who are helping Moscow to enslave Ukraine…. I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine….”
Secretary of Marco Rubio said today (Friday) that “If it’s not possible to end the war in Ukraine , we need to move on.” Rubio told reporters that the Trump could decide this “in a matter of days…” (NYTimes, 4/18/2025)
The context: Russia has made its conditions very clear. (1) Ukraine must not join NATO. (2) Ukraine must give up the four oblasts and Crimea. 3) Ukraine must be demilitarized and not pose a military threat to Russia.
Although to this point Trump been unwilling or unable to do so, he must accept these nonnegotiable conditions and do it against the opposition of European leaders. Or conceivably, he could simply walk away.
British political analyst Alexander Mercouris reports that European leaders are meeting in Paris to, in their words, achieve a “fair and lasting peace in Ukraine” and for them, this means a “Ukrainian victory.” Even as they voice this objective, reliable reports indicate that Russian recruitment is running at 1,000 per day, which is more than enough to replace lost soldiers. Ukrainian forces are steadily getting smaller and for the first time, external military analysts can foresee the fall of Kiev as a real possibility. Russian forces are making significant gains and Ukrainians are retreating in several areas. Finally, there is no question that Europe lacks the resources to achieve anything in Ukraine.
Presumably, the US will explain to the Europeans that they’re engaged in a dangerous fantasy and that peace will occur only by accepting the Russian demands (see above). However, the British, French and Danish are considering sending troops to Ukraine via Romania. This will be absolutely unacceptable to Russians but will come as no surprise to them. The few thousand (probably French) soldiers entering Odessa will be annihilated. Here one wonders how long French citizens would tolerate the war if coffins began returning home. (Note: Some of you may recall my earlier post about European and US intervention in the Russian Civil War and how they were expelled. Russian citizens will be reminded once again of Western intentions).
Given the above, one is forced to wonder why European leaders are doing everything possible to undermine and sabotage any meaningful peace talks? Why are they pursing a doomed policy that’s bankrupting their economies? Why alienate the US and Trump? I don’t have a definitive answer but I suspect that Mercouris is close to one when he speculates that European leaders hate Russia and have come to loathe Donald Trump. They cannot accept that they’ve lost the war and Trump was actually correct. I’ll leave for another day to speculate about what this means for the Democrats and unprincipled “progressives” (think AOC and Bernie Sanders) who gave left cover to US imperialism in its proxy was in Ukraine. In my opinion, they have much to answer for.
The war in Ukraine will be over, and those who died will not be remembered as heroes or liberators. “Our own children will curse us,” said one of the participants in the Ukrainian army’s escape from the town of Selidov in the DNR. He witnessed extrajudicial executions and torture of civilians – old men, women, children – committed by his “brothers” before the retreat.
“The war will write it all off” – that must have been the opinion of the killers of civilians who thought they would remain anonymous. Unfortunately, neither in the West nor in Ukraine will cover up executioners and rapists. “Everything secret is coming to light.” The Ukrainians who organized the massacre in Selidovo, who were lucky not to be killed by a Russian bullet, will be searched and persecuted all over the world until the end of their days. Crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations. Thoughts on the terrible the war in Ukraine will be over, and the dead will not be remembered either as heroes or liberators. “Our own children will curse us,” said one of the participants in the Ukrainian army’s escape from the town of Selidov in the DNR. He witnessed the extrajudicial executions and torture of civilians – old men, women, children – committed by his “brothers” before the retreat.
There are subhumans in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), because what kind of person would do such a thing.
There are subhumans in the AFU, because what kind of person can do such a thing: The photo shows Ukrainian citizens killed by the AFU: T. Maslo (four gunshot wounds, traces of torture) and S. Smelyov (gunshot wound, entrance wound to the neck, burn marks, shot at a distance of several centimeters). Smelyov (gunshot wound, entry wound on the neck, burn marks, shot from a distance of several centimeters).
There are dozens and hundreds of such stories in the town of Selidov. The materials are taken from the report: “Mass shooting of civilians of the town of Selidovo by the AFU” in the International Public Tribunal on the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis (Russian). Each one is confirmed by irrefutable evidence.1
What happened-there is also a local resident Vladimir Vasilyevich Romanenko:
In the photo, Selidiv resident V.V. Romanenko shows the chairman of the International Public Tribunal on the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis M.S. Grigoryev his son’s wife’s hairpin at the place where his family was shot by Ukrainian soldiers.
“Right on this spot my family was shot, and when their bodies were burned, I didn’t see. Completely burned, most likely because Ssushnik saw me escape. In my hands I have my sister-in-law’s pin – Olechka’s little sister-in-law’s pin. She was standing right here. At 7 o’clock in the morning I went to the bathroom outside in the vegetable garden. I went out there and I hear a shout: “Everybody out of the house.” It was a man, Ssushnik, in Ukrainian camouflage with a green stripe. He was about 50 years old, not tall. When mine were taken out of the house and put facing the wall, he shouted to the whole street. There were two of them. One stood a little farther away, and the second one stood so that I could see very well. Romanenko shows the chairman of the International Public Tribunal on the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis M.S. Grigoriev his son’s wife’s hairpin at the place where his family was shot by Ukrainian soldiers.
“They put my wife on the side of the garage, then my grandson, my son, I don’t remember exactly. Then the daughter-in-law and the matchmaker – the daughter-in-law’s mother. My daughter-in-law started crying, saying, “What are you doing?” And he just started shooting. He shot my wife first. Then he went on shooting. I ran through the vegetable gardens, through the vegetable garden. Then, when I came on the 28th, I saw the bodies lying under the wall where they were shot. But they had been burned. The next day I went, found bags, collected the remains. Where it was burning, I covered the remains.“ ”Right on this spot my family was shot, and when their bodies were burned, I did not see. They burned them completely, probably because Ssushnik saw me escape. In my hands I have my sister-in-law’s pin – Olechka’s little sister-in-law’s pin. She was standing right here. At 7 o’clock in the morning I went to the bathroom outside in the vegetable garden. I went out there and I hear a shout: “Everybody out of the house.” It was a man, Ssushnik, in Ukrainian camouflage with a green stripe. He was about 50 years old, not tall. When mine were taken out of the house and put facing the wall, he shouted to the whole street. There were two of them. One stood a little farther away, and the second one stood so that I could see very well. Romanenko shows the chairman of the International Public Tribunal on the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis M.S. Grigoriev his son’s wife’s hairpin at the place where his family was shot by Ukrainian soldiers.
“Packed everything I had into five bags and buried it here in my driveway. Buried five people, five bags that were left-my family. Born 51, 55, 78, 74 and 91.”
The war will one day end, but such horrors as the massacre in the town of Selidove will forever remain in the memory of peaceful Ukrainians.
1 In March 2022, at the initiative of Russian and foreign human rights activists and journalists, the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation decided to establish an International Public Tribunal on the crimes of Ukrainian neo-Nazis and their accomplices. The International Tribunal is composed of public figures, human rights defenders and journalists from more than 30 countries. Its representatives carry out on the territory of Donbas and the liberated districts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions tremendous work in several directions:
collecting testimonies of victims and victims of Ukrainian war crimes, witnesses and prisoners of war;
public investigation of these facts;
disseminating objective information about them;
establishing the identity of the criminals.
The representatives of the International Public Tribunal in Donbas and the liberated areas of Ukraine have collected an extensive evidence base of information on Ukrainian war crimes. The information obtained is transmitted to the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, demonstrated at meetings of the United Nations Security Council, and used in the work of Russian missions abroad, at exhibitions and events, and in broadcasts on Russian television and radio.
The irrefutable evidence is interviews of people who saw everything with their own eyes in Selidovo. The interviews themselves are reflected both in the report and in the video format in the Telegram channel.
TAIPEI, Taiwan – North Korean forces deployed in Russia’s Kursk region may soon be sent into annexed regions of Ukraine that remain fiercely contested by Russian and Ukrainian forces, a senior Ukrainian official said.
As many as 12,000 North Korean soldiers are in Russia, according to Ukraine and the United States, to fight Ukrainian forces who occupied parts of Russia’s Kursk region in an August counter offensive. Neither North Korea nor Russia have acknowledged their presence.
“Russia plans to use the DPRK soldiers for war on the territory of Ukraine,” said Andrei Kovalenko, head of the National Security Service’s Center for Countering Disinformation.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK, is North Korea’s official name.
“But the Russians will manipulate and indicate that the North Korean soldiers are fighting on Russian territory by the Russian Constitution,” he said in a post on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday.
Russia annexed four Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson – after holding widely condemned referendums in September 2022. Kovalenko suggested that these occupied territories are the most likely destinations for North Korean troops.
The international community has not recognized Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian land and fierce fighting continues as Ukraine pushes back in those areas.
Kovalenko said Russia is also importing labor from North Korea, mainly young people aged 18-25, for industrial work. In return, the North Korean authorities receive US$1,000 per person from Russia.
Radio Free Asia has not independently verified his claims.
South Korea’s main spy agency reported in October that Russia would pay North Korean troops about US$2,000 per month each, although it was likely that most of the money would “remain with the state.”
Kovalenko’s remarks came amid reports that Russian artillery units were relying almost entirely on ammunition supplied by North Korea to sustain their bombardments along the Ukrainian front.
Between September 2023 and March 2025, four Russian-flagged vessels made 64 trips transporting nearly 16,000 containers from North Korea to Russian ports, according to satellite data analysed by the U.K.-based Open Source Centre. The shipments are estimated to have included between 4 million and 6 million artillery shells.
By comparison, Russia is believed to have produced no more than 2.3 million artillery shells domestically in 2024, according to Ukrainian and Western officials.
Although the Kremlin denied any arms transfers from North Korea in October 2023, at least six Russian artillery unit reports reviewed by Reuters news agency confirmed that between 50% and 100% of the munitions used in Ukraine this year were of North Korean origin. Three other unit reports made no mention of North Korean ammunition.
North Korea and Russia have been deepening their military and economic ties in recent months, with Pyongyang reportedly supplying Moscow with large quantities of munitions and other military aid for its war in Ukraine.
In return, Russia has provided technological assistance and expanded cooperation in various sectors, fueling concerns over potential arms transfers and security threats.
High-level meetings between officials from both countries, including defense ministers, have signaled a growing strategic partnership.
Edited by Mike Firn and Stephen Wright.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.
TAIPEI, Taiwan – Two Chinese nationals captured while fighting for Russia in Ukraine said they were tricked by false promises and online recruitment ads into enlisting, and criticized Moscow for exploiting foreign fighters in its war effort.
“I wanted to make money, but I didn’t expect to end up in a war,” said Zhang Renbo, a former firefighter from China, during a Ukrainian government press conference on Monday.
He and Wang Guangjun, both born in the 1990s, are the first confirmed Chinese nationals captured fighting in the Russian ranks against Ukraine. Their capture was announced by President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this month, who said “several hundred” Chinese citizens are believed to be fighting for Russia.
Wang said he lost his job last summer and came across a TikTok ad offering a lucrative opportunity to join the Russian military. The recruiter promised him a salary far above the Chinese average and offered to pay for travel and paperwork.
But soon after arrival, Wang claimed, the Russians confiscated his phone and bank card. He was unable to access the promised pay or contact anyone back home.
“Everything we heard from the Russians was a lie,” Wang said.
Radio Free Asia has not independently verified the men’s claims.
The two men said they signed enlistment contracts voluntarily but without any connection to the Chinese government.
Both claimed they were initially offered non-combat jobs – Wang in the military directly, Zhang through construction work – only to be placed on the battlefield later. Their route into the war passed through Moscow and Russian-occupied Donetsk before they reached the front lines.
Wang said he had been at the front for just three days before he was captured.
He described being sheltered by Ukrainian soldiers during a Russian gas attack after his capture and said he had been treated well ever since. In the video of the press conference, the two men appear to be in good health.
Zhang, who comes from a wealthier background, said he never saw any Ukrainian troops until the moment he was taken prisoner. Both men said they had not killed anyone during their time on the battlefield.
The two criticised Russia sharply during the press conference and discouraged other Chinese nationals from joining the conflict.
“It’s better not to participate in wars at all,” Wang said. “Real war is completely different from what we have seen in movies and on TV.”
They also denied any involvement by the Chinese state in their recruitment.
When asked whether Beijing was aware of their actions, they said China had issued general warnings against travelling to conflict zones and noted that Chinese citizens who join foreign militaries could face legal consequences. Still, both said they hoped to return to China as part of a future prisoner exchange.
“I understand there may be punishment,” Zhang said. “But I still want to return home and to my family.”
Russia has increasingly turned to foreign nationals to fill its ranks in Ukraine, recruiting fighters from countries including India, Nepal, Syria, and reportedly North Korea.
As many as 12,000 North Korean soldiers are in Russia to fight Ukrainian forces who occupied parts of Kursk in an August counterattack, according to the U.S. and Ukraine. Neither Pyongyang nor Moscow has acknowledged their presence.
According to Wang, he was placed in a training camp alongside recruits from Central Asia, Ghana, and Iraq, and said communication with commanders was limited to gestures.
Edited by Stephen Wright.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.
A March 29 article on America’s involvement in the war in Ukraine in The New York Times by Adam Entous “reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood.” “Understood” is a euphemism. It means the American and global public were lied to.
The article reveals that the war in Ukraine truly was, as former British prime minister Boris Johnson and U.S. secretary of state Marco Rubio have already said, a proxy war against Russia. U.S. military and intelligence were involved in every stage of the war, including supplying the weapons, the training, the planning, the war-gaming, the intelligence and the targeting.
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
